Apprentices: Waxing Crescent

Good Girls Are Bad Girls Who Never Get Caught

I glance at Jake, noticing the I-told-you-so look on his face. Why didn’t he warn me. Damn it, we need to come up with some sort of code language for emergency situations like this.

“What party?” I want to know, returning my gaze to Marcus. He smirks triumphantly, then shrugs, shaking his head.

“You can’t be there because you’ll be avoiding me tonight,” he teases me. I hate this shithead. He knows very well that no party in the dorms happens without me. I stand up, grabbing my plate and carrying it to the disposal counter.

When I get back to the table, the boys are already eating the pile of food that Dave brought for them. That poor thing, always their porter. I guess it really sucks to be delta when there’s no omega around.

“Are you angry, Evelyn?” Marcus asks with his mouth full. Charming.

“I’m always angry around you,” I say, sharing a knowing look with Katie. The boys laugh again, nudging each other like they’re kids. Well, in a way, they’ll always be kids. At least some of them.

I meet Jake’s gaze, who is already staring at me in amusement. I smile at him, remembering the hot rendezvous from yesterday. Don’t judge me for speaking like a grandma, I just like the word. French is my favorite language.

“You can totally stop by after your detention. You always make the best booze,” Marcus suddenly says again. This time, he’s luckily swallowed the food before speaking. I glance at him with a confident smile on my face.

“I know. You losers don’t know how to party without me,” I say, making them gape at me in surprise. I already hear them protesting when I turn my head to check the clock. “Oops, got to go, we have classes in fifteen minutes,” I interrupt their offended chatter, before sending them a wink.

“You’re a witch,” Dave tells me, making me roll my eyes for the gazillionth time in one morning. Not the brightest pumpkin in the yard that one.

“No shit.”

I barely make it through the classes with a sane mind. Or without loudly expressing my opinion and possibly earning myself detention for the rest of the year. I mean the rest of the school year. The actual year ends way too soon.

Luckily for our little party tonight, Katie and I have advanced brewing on the schedule after lunch. I force myself to drink half of the water from the plastic bottle that I picked for lunch, then collect the half full bottles from my friends.

“Hey, I wanted to drink that!” Jake protests as I grab it from his hand, almost spilling the content over the table. I smile at him cheekily, knowing he won’t be angry with me once I arrive at the party in my usual style.

“You will drink it tonight,” I hint, sending him a suggestive wink before squeezing his bottle into my bag. Damn, it’s almost getting a little tight in there. But it doesn’t matter, as long as Katie distracts Mrs. Charley for long enough that I can steal alcohol. We always clean our cauldrons with pure ethanol and what do you get if you mix it with water? Boom, vodka!

Jake’s face darkens with realization. “Oh, you’re a bad one,” he remarks, but I can sense that he’s kind of turned on. I smirk, suddenly feeling the urge to lean over the table and suck at his face. But we don’t do that in public.

It’s a little frowned upon for an underaged werewolf to openly express his affection for someone before knowing their mate. Even if it’s just a friends with benefits type of relationship. Well, that’s actually even worse in their eyes. But that’s fine with me. I’m used to being called a w***e. Sheila made sure of that.

I used to be friends with her. In middle school, when everything is still sunshine and rainbows. Just kidding. Nothing is sunshine and rainbows in a school for supernatural beings. She had this big crush on one of our classmates, Luke, who is still hot like hell now, by the way.

It went something like this. She didn’t have the guts to tell Luke that she liked him. But I did. So, I pulled him aside one day, told him that Sheila liked him. To which he responded that he thought she was ugly, but I was pretty. And before I could put him in his place with a well-aimed slap, he already kissed me. Sheila saw it. Didn’t speak to me for the rest of middle school. And we were only twelve.

I started hanging out with werewolves after that and I did kiss a few of them. Just for fun. And practice. And because I had literally no one to tell me that kissing random guys at that age doesn’t look that good. Sheila, being the sunshine she is, made everyone call me a w***e. The b***h didn’t even let me explain what happened with Luke and then she played the saint.

Then, I had to visit the school therapist and process this urge that made me go around and kiss everything that walked. My classmates knew me by the lovely nickname for quite a while. And it took me a lot of time to get my reputation back where it belongs. On the top.

“Earth to Evelyn, we’ll be late,” Katie brings me out of my thoughts. The only friend that stuck with me through all the s**t that went down in my life. I turn to her with a grateful look, making her furrow her eyebrows in confusion. But she quickly picks up that I must be thinking about something from the past. I don’t know how she does. She just knows me that well, I guess.

“Yeah, sure, we’re leaving,” I respond before anyone else is able to sense that I’m not in the best state. No, I’m fine. I realized that if I keep telling myself that, I actually become fine after some time. Or maybe it means that I start believing my own lies.

The class seems to drag on forever. Especially because my bag is full of half empty bottles with water, waiting to become vodka. Wait a second, my brilliant mind clearly doesn’t even need to get drunk today with the quality of my latest statements. Pull yourself together, Evelyn.

I glance at my best friend, who seems a little nervous. I told her to play enthusiastic about extracurricular activities for this subject. Professors always fall for that and don’t have a clue what’s going on around them, because they’re so happy that someone is actually invested in their subject. There’s that and Katie just looks like a nerd. I’m sorry. Someone had to say it.

Towards the end of our advanced brewing class, I send my best friend a meaningful look and she gets up, striding towards the professor with a shy smile on her face. Perfect. I glance around quickly, trying to see if anybody’s watching me, then grab the full bottle of ethanol from my table, leaning towards my bag.

I’m sitting at the back of the classroom, so no one really sees me, unless they turn around directly. The only danger is the professor herself, but Katie stops in front of her so perfectly, that she’s blocking her view of me.

I work as quickly as I can, but there’s only so fast that my hands can open the caps, pour the liquid in and then close the bottles. There’s eight of them. It doesn’t go that quickly. And I don’t dare using magic in a room full of witches, because they’re all able to sense it. I don’t want anyone to know what I’m doing.

I notice Katie turning around just as I’m pouring the alcohol into the last bottle. f**k. I have to stop before it’s full, quickly placing it back on the table and putting the cap on the water bottle. I check that all the caps are secured tightly in their place, then get back up, but not before grabbing lip gloss from my bag. Just in case someone saw me ducking and rummaging through my bag.

Mrs. Charley sends me a pointed look as she pins her gaze directly on me, putting the gloss on my lips. “No makeup fixing in my classroom,” she tells me sternly. I finish as quickly as I can, putting the lip gloss away. But not before smiling at her sheepishly.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Charley, my lips were dry,” I explain, making her sigh. She then turns her attention towards another one of our classmates, who is asking her something about homework.

I turn towards Katie with a proud smile on my face, noticing that she’s finally relaxed. “Did you make it?” she asks as quietly as she can, still sounding a little nervous, but that isn’t even a shadow of how she was before.

I nod with a triumphant smile, making her breathe out in relief. I can barely wait for tonight. It’s going to be one hell of a party. But I have to live through four full hours of detention first.

My first detention is in the library, where I have to sort books that other students have left unattended. Boring. Makes me want to stab myself. In the eyes. With a pencil. That would feel less torturous than this.

The librarian even makes me stay until I’ve put all the books back and until then, I’m already late for dinner. In fact, I’m so late, that my friends are already leaving and I have to eat something while sitting all by myself, like a loser. But I don’t have time to think too much about that, because I already have to run off to the Warrior Headquarters.

When I get there, I remember yesterday’s conversation with my aunt and it makes shivers run down my spine. If the news about Cincinnati got to her to Dubai so quickly, it means that the whole world is worried about it. I mean our world. Not humans. They aren’t in danger as much as we are.

I focus on my paperwork again, trying to appear trustworthy to the warrior witches. Because I know that people always keep a close eye on you until they start trusting you. And I can’t afford to lose their trust before I even get the chance to earn it. But I will get to the truth.

I know it must be horrifying, judging by the fact that our whole secret society heard about it. And I know it might change my whole view on the Seminary and everything else that goes along with it. But I won’t stand by calmly and let us be eliminated one by one. I’m not that kind of person. I need to act.

That’s what I keep telling myself for the whole two hours, occasionally sharing a look with France. She seems occupied with some boring paperwork herself and doesn’t speak to me much today. I truly hope she’s going to keep her word and that she wasn’t just playing around with me yesterday. Becoming a warrior witch means way too much to me to have one of them take me for a fool. I want to be trained by her more than anything.

As my detention finishes, I tell everyone good night, faking exhaustion. I don’t need them to suspect that I won’t be going to bed soon. You see, parties are actually kind of illegal in the dorms. Boy and girl meetings as well. But who cares since I’m already known as a rule-breaker.

I unlock the door with Jake’s key. He lent it to me, so I could get in after detention. They didn’t want to risk getting caught, so they locked themselves in. And I’m glad they did.

The moment I step foot into Jake’s and Marcus’s room, pure alcohol hits me in the face. I quickly shut the door behind me and lock up. For context, I gave the amateur made vodka to Katie, so they wouldn’t just stare at each other for two hours, while I was still serving detention. Judging by their behavior, I should probably start to worry that there won’t be any drinks left for me.

They have loud music playing on someone’s phone and I snort as I realize they’re listening to nineties hits. “Seriously guys? Are you really that wasted?” I ask, only then making them notice me. Katie jumps on her feet, stumbling a little, but still manages to walk over to me without falling on her face and gives me a quick hug.

“No. We missed you. It’s terrible. Terrible music, terrible games, no fun,” she tells me quickly and quietly, making me shake my head in disbelief. She’s usually the quiet one, but not so much once she drinks a shot or two. Judging by her small eyes, she must have had more than that though.

“Alright, losers. Time to play a game,” I declare loudly, the boys all staring at me like I said something funny. Gabriel lifts his head from the bed, smiling viciously.

“Ooh, what kind of game?” he wants to know.

“Our own version of spin the bottle with truth or dare, of course. We never play anything else, Gabe,” Marcus explains, seeming the most sober of all my seven dwarfs. I almost laugh out loud at my own joke, but then I remember that I’m no Snow White. And that I’m screwing one of the dwarfs. Sighing, I plop myself down, Katie following my lead. Before I even ask for it, Jake is already passing me a bottle.

“Drink. You’ll need it if you want to play.”