Honesty Falls

4+1

She became aware that everyone was staring at her only a second before she became aware of the passion fruit milkshake floating her way.

Embarrassed, she snatched it out of the air. "Sorry. I haven't eaten today, and I guess I was wishing I had one."

When none of them looked away from her, she winced and took a long sip of her treat.

"We're worried about you, Nevaeha Roe." Mr. Churchill announced with a frown.

She sighed and took another drink.

"What were you thinking to let Silas stay with you? He could drive anyone crazy." Benjamin grunted. "I heard that he__."

"The point being, you aren't usually so careless with your magic." Mr. Churchill said, and others nodded.

Not true. She just usually made sure not to be so careless around the council. It wasn't like she'd done anything wrong or like the whole town wasn't aware that magic existed.

Which she knew wasn't the point. A magical being had the responsibility of always keeping the secret at all costs. That's why you could never be too careful. If a stranger had been driving thru town and saw a milk shake floating through town, that wouldn't have been good for anyone. "I'll try to do better."

Mr. Hermann nodded. "See that you do. Especially in these times."

Mr. Churchill exhaled noisily. "Which brings us back to the point of this meeting. We've all been doing some thinking, and we think we were too hasty in saying that you shouldn't visit your dreamworld until we know what we are dealing with. Truth is, your dreamworld is our best shot at knowing what's coming. That isn't something we can afford to ignore any longer. Conway, keep tabs on her, and we want you and Sebastian to be searching for answers." He looked at the rest of the people around the table. "That means it's going to fall on us to manage the other situation."

Henry wore a heavy frown. "You mean there's more than Nevaeha being mated to a deranged shifter?"

"Afraid so. We were worried about any fall back on the death of that teen, but I don't think we could have anticipated just how much fall back we were in for. Since then, __."

Nevaeha stilled. "You mean Pike?"

Julio saddened. "No child. We hoped to spare you. You have so much to handle right now that we didn't want to burden you with more."

"Spit it out, Julio." Mr. Herrmann ordered, then just went on to tell her himself. "Nevaeha, we weren't able to save all the teens who were lost in the woods that night."

"The girl_."

Nigel offered her a tender look. "You saved her. She's fine, but the gentleman with her was not so lucky. Something got to him before any of us could save him."

"The last thing we needed was news to get around that more children went missing in those woods." Mr. Churchill looked at Mr. Hermann. "Remember how bad it was last time?"

"Horrible business. Nearly ten years ago since someone was stupid enough to enter those woods. I remember all the strangers sticking their noses where they didn't belong. Them crawling all over our town. The damn nosy vultures. We couldn't allow that to happen again."

Mr. Churchill nodded. "Not all of you know this, but the eldest council members made an executive decision to make sure that didn't happen again. We did a minor spell to clear their memories, then we had Conway's men move them and their car to that old bridge two towns over."