All of this got in the way of me actually finding the efreet. Which might, I thought, have been Loki’s intent. Maybe he didn’t want me going after the guy unprepped.

I was inclined to do that, but I really didn’t know much about him. And as a couple of days passed with no sign of him, I decided I’d been simply overreacting. He wasn’t really that interested in me.

I couldn’t assume every guy who looked at me like I was cute was going to be a stalker trying to climb into my pants. I couldn’t live like that, although it seemed some girls did. Some girls thought every guy who looked at them like that was a prospective rapist. I wished I could believe they were wrong in all cases.

Of course, if anyone tried to rape me, I’d kill him. I doubted I’d even think about. I was pretty sure Kanesha was every bit as capable.
Clara?

Clara knew what she had gotten into, but I hoped that flee into the distance wasn’t the last I’d see of her. I was probably worrying more about her than she was worrying about herself, I thought wryly.

Still, she was in that situation in part because of me, and because of angry ghosts…

…and then somebody else was waiting to snag me out of school. “This is starting to get to be a pattern. Need me to beat something up?”

Seb shook his head. “I sort of wanted to talk to you without something to beat up. Unless you count the efreet hanging around, and I don’t think he’s much of a threat.”

“He thinks I’m hot.”
Seb laughed a bit. “He also thinks Father Will is quite interesting, in a different way.”

So…that was where he was hiding. “Has he been asking about me?”

“Will told him you were taken.”

That intrigued me. As a Catholic priest, Will wasn’t supposed to approve of mine and Kanesha’s relationship. Unless he was saying it in general terms to help me out. I wished for a moment that “not interested” carried the same weight as “taken.” The latter might be true in my case, but I’d seen more than one boy refuse to back down from the former.

Men respected other men more than women. Mike was an exception. I was pretty sure Seb was. “Oh, I wanted to talk to you anyway.”

“Oh?”

“Know anyone who could train somebody with magical talent and a possible interest in hunting.”

Seb perked up. “I could find somebody. Is it a cute girl?”

I mock-punched him, although Clara was definitely a cute girl, and not that much younger than Seb.

“Hey!”

“Shouldn’t make a difference, right?

“It makes one to me.”