"Well, I hadn't really thought about casting a circle. I was just gonna do a kind of purification prayer thing."

"Can't you cast a circle and then pray the prayer and ask for Nyx's help?" Stevie Rae asked.

"Seems logical," Shaunee said.

"Plus, if you really do have an affinity for the five elements, I'll bet we'll be able to sense it when you cast your own circle. Right, Damien?" Stevie Rae said. Everyone looked at the g*y scholar of our group.

"Sounds like good logic to me," he said.

I was still going to argue, even though everything inside of me felt relieved and happy and grateful that my friends would be there with me, that they wouldn't let me face all of this uncertainty alone.

Value them; they are pearls of great price.

The familiar voice floated through my mind, and I realized that I shouldn't question the new instinct within me that seemed to have been born when Nyx kissed my forehead and permanently changed my Mark and my life.

"Okay, I'm going to need a smudge stick." They looked at me blankly, and I went on to explain. "It's for the purification part of the ritual because I don't have any running water handy. Or do I?"

"You mean like a stream or a river or something like that?" Stevie Rae asked.

"Yeah."

"Well, there's a little stream that runs through the courtyard outside the dining hall and disappears somewhere under the school," Damien said.

"That's no good; it's too public. We'll need to use the smudge stick. What works best is dried lavender and sage mixed together, but if I have to I can use pine."

"I can get the sage and lavender," Damien said. "They have that kind of stuff in the school supplies store for the fifth and sixth former's Spells and Rituals class. I'll just say I'm helping out an upperclassman by picking some up for him. What else do you need?"

"Well, in the purification ritual Grandma always thanked the seven sacred directions the Cherokee people honor: north, south, east, west, sun, earth, and self. But I think I want to make the prayer more specific to Nyx." I chewed my lip, thinking.

"I think that's smart," Shaunee said.

"Yeah," Erin added. "I mean, Nyx isn't allied with the sun. She's Night."

"I think you should follow your gut," Stevie Rae said. "Trusting herself is one of the first things a High Priestess learns to do," Damien said.

"Okay, then I'll also need a candle for each of the five elements," I decided.

"Easy-peasy," Shaunee said.

"Yeah, the temple is never locked and there are zillions of circle candles in there."

"Is it okay to take them?" Stealing from Nyx's Temple definitely did not feel like a good idea.

"It's fine as long as we bring them back," Damien said. "What else?"

"That's it." I think. Hell, I wasn't sure. It's not like I actually knew what I was doing.

"When and where?" Damien asked.

"After dinner. Let's say five o'clock. And we can't go together. The last thing we need is for Aphrodite or any of the other Dark Daughters to think we're having some kind of meeting and get curious about us. So let's meet at a huge oak tree by the eastern wall." I smiled crookedly at them. "It's easy to find if you pretend that you've just run out of one of the Dark Daughter's rituals in the rec hall, and you want to get the hell away from the hags."

"That doesn't take much pretending," Shaunee said.

Erin snorted.

"Okay, we'll bring the stuff," Damien said.

"Yeah, we'll bring the stuff; you bring the puissantness," Shaunee said, giving Damien a smartass look.

"That is not the correct form of that word. You know, you really should do more reading. Maybe your vocabulary would improve." Damien said.

"Your mom needs to read more." Shaunee said, and then she and Erin dissolved in giggles at the really bad "your mom" joke.

I, for one, was glad that they shifted the subject away from me and I could eat my salad and think in relative privacy while they bickered back and forth. I was chewing and trying to remember all the words to the purification prayer when Nala hopped up on the bench beside me. She looked at me with her big eyes and then leaned into me and started to purr like a jet engine. I don't know why, but she made me feel better. And when the bell rang and we all hurried off to class, each of my four friends smiled at me, gave me a secret wink, and said, "Later, Z." They made me feel better, too, even though their easy adoption of Erik's nickname for me gave my heart a twinge.