Shocked, I looked at Alarik.

If that was true...

“But, she’s...”

“Julian, I think you should calm down first and tell me...”

But I had no time to waste, so I jumped up and pushed past Alarik.

Whatever they would give Bayla wouldn’t work... She was one of them, and who knew how disturbed she was right now.

“Julian! Come back here, boy!”

I ignored him and stormed through the door.

“Where’s Bayla?”

Grace gave me a disparaging look before turning back to the bowl of plants. She was crouched in the middle of the girls’ room floor, waving a twig in the air. Her eyes turned from brown to greenish, beginning to glow, but then it stopped abruptly, and she looked suspiciously at me, then at Julie, who was leaning nervously against the desk, bobbing up and down.

“If even the wolf can’t find her, and apparently, your magic isn’t as strong as Amara always claims it is...” it came disdainfully from the far corner of the room, where a person I hadn’t expected at all was sitting.

“Vivienna.”

“Julian.”

That coarse exchange revealed everything there was to know about us. We didn’t like each other, but we left each other alone, even though she once knew how to provoke me as well as Emely and Nash.

Vivienna had always been one of the very strict Quatura who seemed to hate all Senseque, especially the Copelands. It was clear that Nash’s position as future Alpha made him a potential enemy. In fact, as far as I knew, she was also entitled to a fairly high position in the ranks of the Councils, the controlling opposition of the Circle.

However, I was not really interested in that.

And suddenly anger rose in me.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I snapped at her.

“Excuse me?” She sounded surprised.

“If you hadn’t made such a drama out of the whole thing, it wouldn’t have come to this in the first place.”

I wondered why I was just getting involved in such a matter and immediately regretted it. What was I doing here anyway? Not only was I on Copeland’s territory, but I was also in a girl’s room full of witches.

“I’ll have to agree with him on that one, for once,” Grace laughed, her eyes focused on the stone bowl she was now crushing the other herbs in.

“Wow, I don’t believe it!” Vivienna looked at Grace in indignation.

“Relax, Vivienna,” she replied, completely absorbed.

“No, I’m certainly not relaxing! And I’m certainly not going to let these mutts get away with blaming me for something that wasn’t my fault!”

She jumped up and came toward me. Her look was that of an angry wildcat.

“Just get a grip on your little wolf friend, and this won’t happen.”

“Guys...”

All three of us looked at Julie in surprise. It wasn’t that she said anything strange, more that she could speak at all. She was so calm, probably the calmest girl I had ever met.

“There’s a human girl wandering around out there who is the biggest threat to us right now,” she pressed out quietly.

“She’s right. We need to put our rivalries aside right now because there’s something far greater at stake right now,” I snorted in frustration at the situation.

Vivienna looked at me with concentration for two seconds but then muttered, “Whatever!” and dropped back onto the bed where Bayla had been lying not too long ago, rolling her eyes.

“Then let’s hunt a human like wolves do, shall we, Julian?”

I ignored Vivienna, mustered all my control, and was about to say something, but Grace started muttering something in a language completely foreign to me.

“Invenire animam in carne et ossibus.”

Questioningly, I looked at Julie, who seemed to be eyeing me, but then looked back to Grace, both hands clutching her cell phone.

Grace, meanwhile, repeated the words, this time a little more tensely.

“Invenire animam in carne et ossibus.”

She opened her eyes, from which the bright green slowly disappeared.

“No matter what I do, I just don’t see them!”

Grace put down her stuff, took off the necklace with the emerald crystal, and threw it on her bed, annoyed.

“This can’t be happening...” Julie muttered.

Vivienna just rolled her eyes.

“So much for the prophecy.”

There it was again, the prophecy. Even if I didn’t believe in this mumbo jumbo of the gods, everyone else did. The Senseque, even the Ruisangors, and above them all the Quatura. Even if only the latter believed in the gods themselves. Gods whose existence they had probably made up.

“Don’t question the prophecy,” Grace reminded Vivienna.

“Who says I do?” Vivienna twirled one of her golden blond strands between her thumb and forefinger and looked out into the forest. “I’m just firmly convinced that the Circle has made some misinterpretations.”

“Grace may just be having a bad day, Vivi.” Julie tried to relieve the tension somehow, but only earned a disapproving look from Vivienna.

“So did the Earth Quatura, who misinterpreted the prophecy.”

Grace looked at Vivienna angrily, but then stood up and began marching up and down nervously, which began to make me nervous.