It was lunch time now, and for the first time since school had started the Juniors weren’t sitting with the Elders. Instead Ryan, Jessie, Leigha and Trent were all holed up in the empty Science lab that was being renovated that semester. The four junior members had some serious things to discuss. “You know that they’re just trying to keep us safe,” Leigha said quietly for what had to be the twentieth time in the past twenty-four hours. After all, the four of them had been having this conversation repeatedly since the meeting last night. “They are going to keep us as far away from the whole thing as possible.” “Come on,” Jessie said with a snort as she nabbed some of Trent’s chips when he wasn’t looking. “Like they really expect us to stay out of this. They’re bigger than the coven…you heard Aunt Amy…we’re the coven, and as the coven,” she looked at them all seriously, “it’s our job to look out for them.” “I think we’re just going to get in the way if we interfere,” Leigha said with a shake of her head. To everyone’s surprise it was Ryan who disagreed with her. “I don’t care what we get in the way of,” the quiet boy said with a dark glint in his eye. “That’s my brother…my family…going into whatever’s coming blind. You can sit here and stay out of the way all you want, I’m going to do whatever I can to help them out.” “Finally,” Jessie said in exasperation. “Someone who is talking sense. I’m with you Ryan. I’m not letting Alex, or any of the others, just walk bravely into some unknown danger because it is his destiny. I can’t stop them from doing it but I sure as hell can help protect them while they’re at it. We aren’t powerless ourselves guys,” she said to Leigha and Trent, especially to Trent – who oddly enough was against the plan to help them out. “We are the Willow Witches…the strongest and most revered of our kind. This is what we were born to do…why do you think that all of us were born so much different than other witches?” “We aren’t them Leigha,” Trent explained in a cold voice. “We aren’t the Royals. We don’t have that kind of power.” “No Trent we don’t,” his twin answered for them. “We have something greater…we have our love for them. We love them and we will do anything to protect them. That makes us the most dangerous thing out there…because we don’t care what happens to us as long as they are alright. Now you’re my twin, and every single demented scheme that you’ve ever come up with I’ve tagged along…this time it’s you that’s got to decide. Are you in or out?” Trent growled under his breath. He really hated it when Ryan got some bee up his butt and acted like he was the commander of the universe. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, the controlling nature really shown through. “What I’m going to do is help you get some perspective,” Trent said as he stood up. “Let’s go,” he said as he grabbed Jessie and yanked her behind him, dragging her completely out of the Science building and leaving Ryan alone with Leigha. “Let go of me you big coward,” Jessie spit out as Trent pulled her inside the currently empty greenhouse that was located beside the Science building. She wrenched herself away from him and moved further inside. Trent glared at her as he slammed the door behind them and waved his had over the knob, efficiently locking them both inside. “One,” he said as he began to stalk towards her, “get one thing straight…I am not a coward. Two, you’re an idiot…both of you are. We have no idea what the hell is coming out here and you want to go run in a meet it head on! Are you crazy? Alex will turn my blood to ice if he thought for one second I was going to let you go running in there.” “One,” Jessie said as she stood up to him. “You don’t decide what I do and neither does Alex. Two,” she poked him in the chest, “I never thought you would be the one against helping them.” “Who said I was against helping them?” Trent growled out, past angry now and beginning to work on furious. “Who said I was against helping them?” Leigha yelled one building over at the same time, since the same argument was occurring over there as well. Ryan was a little shocked that Leigha, such a quiet in introspective girl, was yelling at him like a harpy. “What I’m against,” both Leigha and Trent said in their respective buildings in unison, “is us hindering them even more by getting in the way.” “What they have to do,” Leigha said with a sigh, “is something we probably can’t even imagine doing.” Her voice softened as she looked at Ryan with large liquid green eyes…the Deluca green that Maria had as well. “If we run in there, following them around, they’re going to be worried about protecting us instead of protecting themselves. We are…” “We are their greatest weakness,” Trent said in a defeated tone that worried Jessie more than she wanted to admit. “Don’t you think I want to be there? In the thick of it, helping my brother…helping my sister? But we can’t Jessica. If we go in there all we’ll be doing is walking into our own deaths and leading them to theirs. This is something that they have to do on their own.” Trent sat down on a bench in the greenhouse, the fight gone from his body. He’d been up half the night waiting for Michael to get back home, and as soon as he had heard his older brother come in he had snuck into his room. ***Flash*** “What do you want Trent?” Michael asked in a highly annoyed tone. Damn their friends for interrupting him and Maria…and damn Maria’s mom for causing the interruption. Now he was going to spend the entire night extremely uncomfortable and if he tried to take a cold shower he was just going to wake up his parents, and his mom was almost nine months pregnant…he wasn’t about to face that kind of wrath. “We need to talk about tonight,” Trent said seriously as he sat down in his brother’s desk chair and turned on the light. “About what you want us to do?” “I want you out of it,” Michael said firmly, for the moment his discomfort from interrupted Maria-time forgotten completely. “Completely out…all of you. We can’t afford to have you in there. If something happened then we would…” “Drop everything to come to our rescue?” Trent finished for his brother. Michael nodded and looked at his irrational little brother in shock. “I’m not an idiot Michael,” Trent said in response to the look, “and this is a lot different than beating up some asshole outsiders that our bothering us. This is going up against something from our own world…something akin to us…and even I know the danger in that. I’m not an idiot, I know that this is the Elders’ fight and your fight alone, but you know as well as I do that the other Juniors aren’t going to let you go into it alone easily.” “I know you all are going to do everything within your power to help us,” Michael said as he looked at his brother with a new found respect. He’d always thought of Ryan as the leader, it looks like he was wrong. “But the best thing would be for you to do whatever you come up with far away from us with the shit actually comes down. You know that Ryan…” “Is going to fight me every step of the way?” Trent asked. Michael nodded and Trent gave a small grin. “I know that, and it’s taken care of.” “How?” “Leigha,” Trent said with a shrug. “Ryan’s completely whipped by her, and I don’t know how I know it, but I know she’s against whatever he and Jessie are going to cook up.” “Well you keep Jessie out of it too,” Alex said as he somehow climbed his way into Michael’s second story window. “If my sister gets hurt during this I swear to Hecate herself I’ll make you live to regret it.” “No prob,” Trent said as he looked directly into Alex’s ice blue gaze. He still couldn’t stop himself from shivering…sometimes Alex was even scarier than Michael, maybe it was because you got so used to thinking of him as being harmless. “Do you really think I wouldn’t be doing that already?” “Good,” Alex said darkly. “As long as it’s understood. You ready?” He asked Michael pointedly. “Ready for what?” Trent asked them both sharply. When neither answered the younger Guerin’s eyes narrowed into dangerous little slits. “If you want me to keep them safe then you are going to have to keep at least me informed of all that you can.” “We’re just going to watch over the girls,” Alex said with a sigh. “We’re meeting Kyle at Maria’s house because the girls are staying there tonight. We were just waiting until we thought they would have gone to sleep because…” “You know how they get when we get…” “Overprotective?” Trent finished for his brother. Michael nodded. “Fine,” Trent said as he started to move back to his room for his coat. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Michael demanded. “I’m going to wake up Ryan and we’ll camp outside Alex’s house. Someone needs to look after Jessie and Leigha too and they’re both there tonight. You guys take care of yours and leave the Juniors to me. Don’t worry, I’ll keep all of them away from you when the times comes if I have to tie them up.” ***End Flash*** “I’m not saying that we can’t help them Jessie,” Trent continued finally in a soft tone as Jessie sat down beside him on the bench. Tentatively he reached out and linked his hand with hers, “I’m saying that we have to do it at a distance.” “We are powerful in our own right,” Leigha echoed Trent’s sentiments in the other building as she kneeled down in front of him and forced him to look in his eyes. “And there is so much that we can do to help them…from a distance. Anything else is out of our hands ok?” Ryan looked away from her as he nodded. In the Science building Trent wouldn’t let Jessie look away from him while she agreed to keep her distance. She was too much like him, if she wasn’t looking him in the eye when she promised then she wouldn’t feel any remorse in breaking it later. “Fine,” she finally said with a painful sigh, tears forming in her eyes. “I’ll stay away, but we are going to do whatever it takes to help them.” “I know,” Trent said as he pulled her into a hug. His lips brushed her forehead in a kiss remarkably similar to the ones his brother bestowed on Maria the night before. “And I’ll…” “Do whatever it takes to keep you safe too,” Ryan said in unison with his twin as he softly kissed Leigha on the lips. It was their first kiss…together…hell…at all. And the only thing that tainted it was the fact in the back of their heads that something was indeed on its way. TBC

Part 26