Chapter 48

KATHERINE.

As the CMES meeting carried on, I only had one thing on my mind. ‘What the fuck?’

It was all I could think of as Theo told us about the history of the club, how there was a period when ghosts in Blackwood became erratic and left their primary haunting places, and how the CMES handled them when that happened. Turned out he’d said most of this during the orientation meeting but my dumbass had been fixated on watching Hunter instead.

I also found out that CMES clubs existed in Dumein and Staerdale too and there were periods when the ghosts there became erratic too. No one knew why they acted like that, but whenever they became erratic, it took months for them to stop so the CMES would be quite busy when that period came. All the talk about ghosts made me wonder if they only existed in werewolf universities but I didn’t ask because no one else asked questions and Theo had given me a pointed look when he said ‘Seems like you all read your booklet’ due to their lack of questions.

I actually wasn’t the only one that hadn’t read the booklet, Josie hadn’t either, but Theo didn’t seem surprised by that.

“You guys actually catch ghosts?” Josie asked, surprise evident in her voice, after Theo showed us the absorber and how to use it, and he gave her a look that said ‘Really?’. “Damn… Has anyone ever died doing this?”

‘God, no.’ The thought popped into my mind in a rush before I realized that I wasn’t sure since no one had exactly said that, and I frowned. ‘...Has anyone?’ I didn’t want ‘possibility of getting killed by a ghost during a club expedition’ added to my list of problems.

“You might be the first,” Theo replied and Josie’s mouth fell open while Hunter and a couple of people burst into laughter.

“Goddess. That’s not nice, Theo,” Lenore said next to me, a hand over her mouth to cover the face that she was close to laughing while her eyes twinkled.

“Tell him, Lenore… Wait, are you laughing?”

“No?” Lenore replied, her hand still over her mouth as her shoulders shook, and though I wanted to laugh too, Josie’s question was valid.

‘Keith hasn’t come back,” I commented and Theo raised a brow at me. We all knew he had gone to Tegan Hall to catch a ghost and that had been about an hour ago.

Now, I wasn’t implying that he was dead. I mean, he could be, but… God, I desperately hoped he wasn’t because that would be the last straw and I would drop out of this fucking club. Possibly even the school too. I would find some other way to prove that I could be the Alpha of my pack and figure out how to protect it from Silver Bow and Blue Moon. My mate could come find me instead.

Speaking of mates, my second potential mate still hadn’t come out of the room he shut himself in. Hunter had said he’d be here for the meeting and technically, he was here for the meeting. I just couldn’t see him.

Josie drew her brows together as if she was wondering who Keith was and when realization dawned on her face, she gaped. “Oh my God. Is he dead?!”

Theo shook his head at us and carried on with explaining what the devices on the table were like we weren’t worth his time and I frowned at him because I needed to know if ghost-catching or whatever they called it took this long. I caught Hunter’s gaze behind him and he smiled at me before mouthing ‘Keith’s fine’. That made my shoulders relax a bit but I still had a lot of questions.

And why the hell was the ghost-catching stuff left to students?!

“This looks like it’s fun to operate,” Lenore said as she picked up the absorber and I nodded because it really did. Before I could speak though, Jackson, the second-year member that had shared the packets during the club’s orientation meeting, did.

“It is.” He moved closer to her as she turned to face him. “But it can be difficult to keep a hold of it while it absorbs a ghost.”

“Huh. Have you operated it before?”

“Yeah, last year.” The way he was grinning from ear to ear and staring at her as he spoke told me he probably had a crush on her. “You’re holding it the wrong way.” He leaned closer to her and kept his arms around her, caging her between them, before holding her hands and angling the absorber upward so the opening through which the ghost got absorbed was angled up. “It packs a punch while absorbing so we hold it this way to not get hit in the face if our grip on it loosens.”

“Ohh.”

‘Wow.’ He could have done that without positioning himself that way, he could have even told her the right way to hold it and she would have gotten it, so yes, he definitely had a crush on her. Was she aware? …Was Theo aware?

Lenore looked oblivious right now, so I doubted she did, and Theo looked… Theo wasn’t looking. He was still going on about how a ghost-scanner thing was created by some elementalists while Hunter demonstrated how to use it.

“Geez, get a room,” Josie said and I knew her words were directed at Jackson and Lenore because after Theo glanced at Josie, he glanced at them.

And that was it.

He just glanced at them and carried on with what he was saying without reacting. It was rather surprising because when I was in my pack Tiffany’s mate had gotten– ‘Oh,’ I thought as the fact that Theo wasn’t Lenore’s mate came to mind so I shouldn’t expect him to react the way my friend’s mate had reacted when another guy wiped ice-cream from the corner of her mouth.

But still, no reaction? His eyes didn’t even twitch.

A door slamming upstairs drew our attention and I looked up to Blake. ‘Finally,’ I thought, but my relief only lasted till when I saw how pissed he looked as he slowly stalked down the stairs. I had thought he was spending time upstairs to cool off but it was clear that he had been doing something else instead and no one in the main room spoke till he got off the stairs.

“Took you long enough.” Theo was the one that said that and I wondered if he did so to anger him further because Blake was clearly pissed.

A muscle in Blake’s jaw twitched and he took a step closer to where we all stood but before he could do anything else, the front door opened and Keith walked in.

“Fucking finally,” Josie said. “We all thought you were dead.”

“Speak for yourself,” someone coughed behind us while Keith made his way over to us and dropped the absorber on the table. As he began to talk about why he took so long, Blake walked into the room next to the stairs – the one connected to the storage room – and when I faced forward once more, I saw Hunter and Theo heading into the storage room.

I drew my brows together. ‘What’s going on?’