Our early dinner wasn't as awkward as I thought as thankfully we had spent most of it talking about where we were all up to in our investigation. I had my trusty notebook out with all my notes and drawings I've been doing since this whole ordeal started. I had the names of all the victims, their ages and all other relevant information pertaining to where they worked and where their bodies were found. I had the drawings of all the symbols that were used on the weird skull thing we found in the school and what had been carved on to the bodies of the poor murdered women; some of the symbols had been borrowed from the covers of Blue Oyster Cult albums and subsequently didn't work for their intended purpose.

What I did discover though was the fact that warlocks are pretty limited with the magic they can actually do. Like my Aunt had mentioned to me ages ago, witches were just naturally stronger and more powerful; my Aunt felling every man in Mr Evans' coven was proof of that. Plus as I was sat opposite Liam in our booth, I could feel I was surpassing him massively in strength. Warlocks could do a lot of the same magic as witches could but for some reason, it wasn't as effective nor did certain spells last that long. Witches tended to develop their powers at a steady rate normally but some were quicker if they had a talent or were gifted. Apparently it took warlocks a little longer to master most things but when they did, they were in the bank due to all the practice they had to do. I had read in the My First Coven handbook that modern warlocks were descended from Druids. The book itself didn't have much to say about Druids well, nothing of interest anyway or anything good for that matter. It said that Druids were medicine men, religious leaders and advisors and pretty much just walked around a lot and had lots of meetings that didn't really amount to much.

'Waitrose? Are you kidding me?' Mr Evens looked perplexed as he glanced through my most recent notes. Liam leaned over to have a look himself and just grinned.

'And the police haven't figured this out yet?' Mr Evans continued.

'Well we're pretty certain it all revolves around Waitrose. All of the kidnappings have happened quite literally around or near the building.' My Auntie M said as she rearranged the innards of the cheeseburger she had ordered before picking it up and taking a huge bite, tilting her head sideways just so she could get it in her mouth. I was already halfway through my burger I was absolutely ravenous. I glanced down at the sheer amount of food my Aunt and I had ordered, we had over twice as much as what Mr Evans and Liam had got.

'We've asked some of our coven to keep an eye out in town, most of them live locally.' Liam added his two cents. 'They haven't really seen anything out of the ordinary.'

'And our bonded werewolf pack haven't picked anything up either.' Mr Evans continued.

'Yeah that's because werewolves aren't the greatest, all they wanna do is run around and hump things.' I heard My Aunts voice in my head. I tried to keep my face straight but ended up cramming more food in to my mouth to hide the fact I wanted to laugh. I could smell a slight, weird wet dog like smell emitting from both Mr Evans and Liam but it wasn't too offensive. I think I remembered being told or reading somewhere that warlocks didn't bond the same way with werewolves like witches did with vampires. Some did but it wasn't really that common.

'Werewolves are good at tracking granted, but they lack the experience vampires acquire over many lifetimes. Our vampires will do a better job now they know exactly what they're after.'

I was beginning to understand why there was a strange rivalry between witches and warlocks now; even between vampires and werewolves too. Obviously these were rivalries that had gone on for a very, very long time but even now, sometimes you could feel some apprehension. Witches with feminine energy were just better overall and it was a bit of a sore point with the warlocks, hence why some of them had this nasty habit of trying to steal our powers. But of course, most of these rivalries boiled down to whoever was, or thought they were better. Typical.

'Baal isn't making this easy on us though.' Mr Evans said as he squeezed a big blob of ketchup on to the side of his plate. 'We got the entire coven involved in trying to zero in on his energy and possibly follow a trail and the murderers energy too. Baal's quite good at masking everything to a specific spot though so that didn't come up with much.' He continued.

'Well we were thinking about taking a trip in to Waitrose tomorrow, see if we can't sniff this guy out. Maybe he shops in there or even works there.' Auntie M said.

'Is that safe?' Liam questioned. 'I mean,wouldn't this guy jump at the chance to capture some witches?'

'Yeah he probably would, but not in the middle of the afternoon in Waitrose. But...' Auntie M drew out the "but" for a few seconds. 'You may have noticed I'm particularly good at masking my own energy too.'

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

'That's true. I can't feel anything coming from you at all.' Said Mr Evans. Liam nodded in agreement.

'Maddie's getting quite good at it now, you're nearly a pro huh?' Auntie M nudged me with her shoulder. 'We can get tarted up tomorrow and go in and do a bit of a recce ey, get some posh snacks too.'

The ride back to the school didn't take long. We were in my Aunt's BMW which was out for possibly one of it's last runs before she got her big four by four Volvo out which she pretty much only used in the winter months and if she needed to physically haul a lot of stuff about. I was hoping to go back to her house where she had her garage. That place was the stuff of a petrol heads dreams. Some people collected stamps, some people collected coins. My Aunt collected cars. She didn't go for flash, expensive sports cars, but she went for what would be considered cult classics; sometimes even buying the cars in absolute states and spending even more money on them to get them to their former glory.

She had the E28 BMW that she had been using as her daily driver recently which was her current favourite. The only American car she had was a sixty-nine Pontiac GTO but she "had her feelers out" for a Pontiac Firebird like the one in Smokey and the Bandit. Auntie M even managed to acquire a R34 chassis Nissan Skyline which she rarely drove but took it out for a spin once in a while and a Mark One Volkswagen Golf. But of all the cars she had, my absolute favourite was her nineteen eighty one, three litre Ford Capri S. I think this was the car that made me appreciate cars in general.

In fact, I was getting pretty excited about starting my driving lessons in the new year when the bad weather passed. My mum said when she got me the lessons for my birthday that if I passed all my driving tests within six months, she would actually get me a car. Granted it would probably be a used one from one of our family dealerships and not a brand new fancy one like what all the other spoilt kids in this school got from their parents. But I wasn't ungrateful at the prospect of having a car given me. If there's one thing I had ground in to me from a young age especially with the privilege that having a family with money got you; it was that you should never look a gift horse in the mouth and appreciate what you had, as one day everything could just be pulled out from under you and as my Aunt so eloquently put it; you wouldn't even have a pot to piss in.

My Aunt and Mr Evans said goodnight to us as we all got out of the car, they walked over to the teachers dormitory leaving Liam and I to meander over to the boys and girls dorm.

'Maddie, are we like... cool?' Liam asked me after brief silence. 'I mean after, what I did.'

'Of course we are Liam!' I blurted out. Granted it was a bit of an odd experience having the most sought after guy in school randomly kissing me in the middle of the school library one afternoon. I did feel a bit weird after it but I guess that was because of my feelings toward Duncan, who in my honest opinion was winning.

'Oh good.' Liam sighed in relief. 'I thought maybe I had buggered everything up by kissing you. Um, well...' He stuttered slightly. 'I like you Maddie, I really do. But, I'm not exactly sure if I want a relationship or not at the moment. Everything's just so...'

'Fucked up?' I finished his sentence for him.

'Yeah, fucked up.'

'I understand Liam, you really don't need to worry so much.'

Liam smiled at me, he genuinely looked like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Ugh should I tell him I was dating Duncan?

I decided not to. I don't know if that was a good idea but if Liam really did like me, he wasn't exactly going about it the right way. Besides, had he been living under a rock recently? I'm pretty sure that all the gossip about me and the hot Scottish guy who comes to pick me up in his swish Audi had probably travelled around the school already. That is if people were actually bothered about me enough to even spread gossip in the first place as I was fairly invisible at the school, unless somebody wanted someone to try and mock or pick on me occasionally.

'Well if it's okay with you, can we be friends? Real friends?' Liam asked as he held his hand out. It was sort of cute actually, it was like he was a little boy making new friends in the playground at primary school.

'I thought you had friends?' I asked him, genuinely confused. He was really popular and he always had people around him. In saying that though I never really saw him going out with anyone, he stayed at the school mainly.

'They're friends but I don't think they're real friends, they only like me because I'm popular. They don't really know me, nor what I'm going through right now.'

Liam looked a little sad when he said that, I felt a little bad for him. I think I knew what he meant about friends especially with the situation we were both in, having to deal with a secret you couldn't tell anyone. I had my friends Katie and Victoria but they weren't part of this other world I was a part of and they weren't allowed to know.

'I know what you mean Liam. Of course were friends!' I said as I took his hand and shook it a few times. We just smiled at each other We had said we would be friends when all this started, then the weirdness happened with that kiss and now we were properly confirming our friendship. We were both going through the same shit, so why not have somebody to confide in? Yeah I had my Aunt and my cousins and the rest of my coven, but talking with Liam was different.

After our handshake, we said good night to each other and made our separate ways to our dorms. When I got to the steps of the girls dorm, I pulled my phone from my pocket as I had felt it vibrate as I was talking with Liam. I had a message from Duncan.

'What's your favourite kind of cake?'

'Either lemon drizzle or coffee and walnut. I do like pastries too.' I texted back. Within seconds I had a reply.

'Great, I'll make sure I make them with Arne for the next time you're up.'

'I look forward to them. Thank you.'

'No problem. Stay safe Maddie. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Sweet dreams.'

'Goodnight Duncan.'

I must have looked a right idiot stood in the cold right outside my dorm, grinning away at the messages. Oh yes I would be having sweet dreams tonight indeed.