Lilian Bates stood on the opposite end of my red wooden picnic table wearing a colorful windbreaker, a glaring mustard yellow top, and high waisted mom jeans. Her red hair was coiled neatly at the top of her head, round and shiny like the donuts I always forget to buy at the cafe. At eighteen, she acted as though she was a whole twenty years ahead of me, although I was twenty and she had yet to graduate high school. Her attire was always a throwback despite neither of us having been kids at the heart of the 80s.

“Lily, your punctuality is getting kind of scary. I’d hardly left the main office to go get coffee and sit down, and now you’re here.”

She hovered a hand over my cup of caffeine and wrinkled her nose before switching her palm over to the cup of hot chocolate. With a content sigh, she took the container and sat down in front of me, the cold wind blowing the visible steam coming out of the hole in the cap, the same steam that had completely gone away earlier only to reemerge under her touch.

“You’re not answering my question,” she said.

“AoF.”

“Ah, Yan. Why don’t you leave those writers alone? I don’t go around hunting for every author who uses the words witch and warlock to denote genders in the magic world. It’s an Old English thing.”

Peaking over from my laptop screen, I glared. “Where’s the Old English in Seduced by The Werewolf’s Six Pack.”

“That can’t be real.”

I fixed her with a single, disappointed stare.

“Okay, fine. I’ll drop it. I came here to talk about the obvious anyway.”

Sensing where she was going, I raised a finger. “Before you start, I don’t know anything about anything. I’m planning to find out later today. Mainly, how the hell did he manage to get Senator Rossdale into the mix? She’s always been the staunchest centrist in the U.S.U.S.”

The U.S.U.S stood for United Supernaturals of The United States, and we had everything from The House of Supernaturals to the Supernatural Senate. Our governments tended to mimic those of the countries we lived in, down to the divisive parties. Canada had a massive underground parliament. Mexico was in the midst of abandoning a monarchy led by witches.

They were never a perfect mimic. For example, we lacked a president, and a lot of our checks and balances relied on our politically savvy voters. And because we relied on everyday people, politicians (and their actions) had celebrity status and priority in our circles.

Lily was drinking from her cup and making a mhmm mhmm of assent. She put her drink down to say, “My mom says Grace and Rossdale are at odds. Grace barely won back his position during the November election, so to have to make such a giant, divisive decision right off the bat is probably driving him nuts.”

“Please,” I began after a snort of incredulity, “that’s the least of his worries. We have eight senators, and he’s the only one with the shittiest approval rating since — god, who was that guy, the one with the werewolf pelt draped over his mantel.”

“Teddy Covington.”

“Yeah, fuck that guy.”

She smiled and laced her fingers together before posing a question. “How do you feel?”

I shrugged, looking at the new messages on AoF drowning Red’s reply that I still hadn’t answered. “I’m fine.”

“Concerned?”

Oh god, she’s worse than the Listeners, I thought.

“Of course I’m concerned. Part of me can’t even wrap my head around the idea that my dad could propose a successful Avowal Bill,” I said, and Lily moved my laptop aside to get a better look at my state.

“Someone’s a bit too confident. It may not be 1922, but there’s still plenty of people who think it’s not the right time to make ourselves known. My affinity group worries that the moment Normals know we exist they’ll think we’re responsible for everything from tsunamis to floods.”

I sipped gingerly. Steam had long since disappeared from my drink, but hers was still alive and well. As long as there was water, Lily was in her element and in control.

“If you think my dad isn’t considering the blatant world-tipping the Normals are going to go through, you haven’t been my friend since middle school.”

“I’m saying that others don’t know how resourceful your dad is yet. It’s the largest step ever taken by a fledgling Senator. It’s highly possible it will fail. Although in my opinion, it will be the first to fail with grace.” She pursed her lips and withdrew her hands from the table, tucking them over her stomach. Lily carried herself professionally, but I knew it was born from her need to be stable, especially with the changes going on in her family. My parents were also divorced, but that was long ago. “What?” She asked.

I shook my head. In a paranormal romance novel, she’d be the fiery red-headed witch torn between the love of a human and a supernatural being. Ultimately, she’d choose whoever the author found hottest. In real life though —

“Your girlfriend broke up with you, huh?”

Her rigid shoulders slacked and the professionalism disappeared. “Did Marcel tell you? I told him not to tell you.”

“No, but you’ve been pretty sulky all week, and you always look over Marcel’s essay,” I replied.

“He doesn’t know how to cite his stupid sources.”

An offended gasp sounded behind her. I knew he was there, but I only acknowledged him after he sat down.

Marcel, sporting a dark green jacket over a plain white t-shirt and black sweats, pointed an accusatory finger at Lily before she smacked it away. This was pretty standard between the two of them. They had a similar dynamic to the “two bickering best friends who eventually fall in love at the end of a novel” stereotype, except...the two already tried dating during Marcel’s sophomore year and nearly destroyed our friendship in the process.

After a mild spat, Marcel turned to me. “Yan, have you answered any of the calls from Telesuper? Mayor Cathrow apparently went on their show.”

I raised an eyebrow.