9. Zane
9
ZANE
T he school halls always had a special glow in the early morning, so Zane always liked showing up early for school.
The gray stone walls were a decidedly lackluster color and porous, which meant that when it rained or was a particularly dewy morning, one could see glimmers of water in them.
The water would often dry up by the time their first class started, but its fleetingness did not diminish its beauty.
This was the only time Zane managed to find peace in his life.
It wasn’t very often that he didn’t have to care for his younger sister and brother.
As much as he loved them, he also loved his time away from them.
Being so close to them meant it was too easy for them to get on his nerves.
Zane began making his way to his first class when he heard someone shout in a room he was passing.
Curiosity got the best of him as he sneaked up to the door and opened it just a crack to see what was happening.
He was shocked to see the girls of the school picking on someone.
They were playing “Keep Away” with someone’s potion book.
He wasn’t typically one for interfering in other people’s business, but when he saw Lea jumping desperately to get her book back, he knew he had to do something.
His stomach churned at the thought of someone bullying her.
Zane threw the door open, and it made a loud crack against the wall, startling everyone in the room. “What’s going on here?”
“Oh, it’s just you, Zane. I thought it was a professor.” One of the girls laughed it off and continued tossing Lea’s potion book around.
“You’ll be lucky if I don’t report you to the professor. Now give her back her book.” Zane crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at who he assumed was the queen bee of the situation.
“You want it back? Fine.” She glanced behind her at an open container of Flume Powder and knocked it over. Then she dropped the item into the Flume Powder, and it disappeared. “Oops.”
“I’ll rip your hair right out of your head!” Lea shouted as she charged at the girl. She managed to grab a good chunk.
With a chunk of her red hair in Lea’s hand, she screamed bloody murder.
“Why can’t you just leave me be!” Lea screamed more out of frustration than anything. All she wanted was peace.
“Hey!” Zane intervened and pulled Lea away—the rest of the girls scattered once they saw what Lea did.
“I’ll get you for this, rat!” The red-headed girl rubbed her very sore bald spot on her head before running out of the classroom.
Zane pulled Lea close to him, protecting her as she crumbled in on herself.
Big tears began flowing out of her eyes, but she tried wiping them away with her hands so Zane couldn’t see.
“Hey, don’t cry about it. We can get you a new potion book.” Zane pulled Lea’s face up by her chin so that she had to look at him.
“It’s not just about the book. I had recipes in there… Potions of things I can’t get back. We need to find my book… Please .” Lea pleaded with him, and Zane couldn’t deny her.
“Fine. It couldn’t have gone far. The flume powder only allows travel for up to 100 feet.”
Zane and Lea searched high and low for her potions book, but it was nowhere in the school.
Lea was beginning to lose hope, but Zane wasn’t about to give up on her.
“We haven’t checked outside. She likely dropped it in a bush.” Zane suggested, which lit a dim candle of hope in Lea.
She heartily agreed and followed Zane to the outside courtyard, right outside where the supply room was.
There were only a few bushes along the side of the building, making it easy to find the book.
The only issue was the book was not in pristine condition.
Zane fished it from a mud puddle and held it out for Lea. “Well… we found it.”
“Oh, no!” Lea grabbed it and flipped through the pages.
Some of the words were running, and the pages were already warping.
Zane looked curiously at the intricate potion recipes. He’d never seen someone his age with such potion writing prowess. He realized that if Lea had been able to enter that contest with them, she would have smoked the competition.
“She would be a worthy opponent… Or partner.” The gears turned in his head as he hatched a plan.
“I think I can still salvage some of these recipes.” She carefully opened each page and hung it upside down by the spine of its books so the pages could dry.
Zane stared at her intently, biting his bottom lip in deep thought. “I need to get going, so I’ll leave first. I hope everything works out with your book.”
He offered her a quick smile before rushing out of the room and to his first class, which he shared with Jax. He ran up behind an unsuspecting Jax and almost successfully scared the daylights out of him.
“Dude! What the hell?” Jax griped at him as he fixed his coat.
“I was here early and ran into a certain someone.”
Zane raised his eyebrow and smirked, waiting for Jax to guess, but it was too early for Jax to give any kind of shit about who Zane saw this morning. “Lea. I saw Lea. More importantly, I saw her potion book. She’s got to be one of the most skilled potionists in this school.”
“She helps me out here and there with projects, but I don’t know if she’s the most skilled.” Jax was annoyed at Zane’s accusation.
Even though Lea was considered a friend to Jax and Zane, Jax never really cared to learn much about Lea… Other than how useful she could be to him.
“This isn’t time for an ego check, Jax. Do you want our potion business to take off? We need to start working with Lea.” Zane was so set on this plan that Jax could not shoot it down now.
“Fine. We’ll discuss it with her, but I barely want to share the glory with you. You want me to share it with another person?” Jax sneered.
Zane was surprised that Jax would talk about a friend like that. “Without her potions, there is no glory.”
“It’s difficult enough to get potion patents… Even if we had all the money and connections in the world—which we don’t—they might just turn us away based on status alone. I have my talents, but it’s nowhere near enough… Lea possesses a unique intuition and understanding of potion mixing. It’s almost as if she could see the potions play out in her head before she begins. She is the only person who can get us where we want to go. How can he not see that?” Zane would love nothing more than to say these things out loud, but he knew Jax well enough not to bring up their poverty-stricken status. It was decidedly a sore subject.
“You really feel that strongly about this, huh?” Jax blinked a few times before giving way to the idea.
Zane had never been so forthright about their business before. Was he so convinced Lea was a safe bet, or was it because he had a helpless crush on her and couldn’t figure out another way to be around her all the time?
“I do.” Zane nodded assuredly.
After class, Jax and Zane fanned out around campus, looking for Lea.
Jax was the first to find her, hiding in the auditorium, and Zane joined moments after. “There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.”
Lea snapped around in her chair, hearing the voice but hardly believing who it was. “Why? Do you have a project you’re struggling with?”
Zane could hear Jax’s teeth gnash against each other as he tried to keep his composure.
“Nope, just wanted to chat with a good friend.” Jax soothed whatever nerve she had struck and continued.
“What about?” Her eyes looked nervously between Jax and Zane.
The intense way they looked at her made her fearful of their “friendly chat.”
“We heard that you’re good at writing potions.” Jax leaned over the chair beside her, bringing himself closer than she was prepared for.
Zane was irritated by their proximity, but he knew that if anyone were going to convince her to join them, it would be Jax.
Lea glanced at Zane knowingly. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with someone glancing at my potion book this morning, would it?”
“You’re a sharp one. Lucky for you, he did, or else we wouldn’t have known the full extent of your talent. You see, we are trying to form a little potion business of our own, and I think we could make something beneficial for all of us with your writing skills, Zane’s mixing skills, and my connections.” Jax’s charm didn’t waver one bit despite Lea’s interrogation.
Lea’s face was still contorted; she was unsure if this was a good idea for her.
“Imagine how wonderful it would be if we were a team. We could win competitions together and maybe one day have our own company.” Zane chimed in, drawing Lea’s attention to him. He could see in her eyes that she trusted him more than Jax, but he knew she wanted to look at Jax, not him. “Team Mandem Lunair.”
She winced, trying to put together why he chose that team name.
Zane quickly scrambled to defend himself. “Lunair because we’re all werewolves, and Mandem because we are a group of unsavory lower-class citizens seeking a better life in this world.”
This explanation at least elicited a small chuckle from Lea.
“That’s not too bad.” She shook her head, covering her smile with her hand.
“Come on then. Join us. Then we can spend all the time together that we want.” Jax tapped Lea’s chin with his pointer finger and pulled her face back to him. He was laying it on thick for her and didn’t need to.
Lea was intrigued from the beginning and said, “Alright. Let’s do this then.”
“Excellent. Let’s make the pact right here, right now.” Jax produced a small metal quill. He first pricked his finger, and the pen gobbled up the blood droplets into the quill’s clear part. Then he passed it to Zane, who did the same.
Lea gave it one last thought before reaching out and pricking her finger. Suddenly, she leaned over herself, feeling a burning sensation in her shoulder. She pulled down the sleeve of her dress to reveal a werewolf sigil that she didn’t recognize. “What is this?”
She tried to make sense of the details within the sigil, but the thorny Rose vine that lined a circle around the sigil and the complete Lunaire symbol in the middle weren’t enough to conclude.
“It’s just the marking of our pact. This assures us that we will stay a group no matter what.” Jax explained as he tucked the quill into his coat pocket.