I technically can sleep in if I want to. I don't have any more morning classes until the new semester. I only have one test left to take. So, technically speaking I can stay cuddled up in bed with Vega as long as I want.

Sadly, I promised Asherah I'd meet her by eight in the morning.

So one thing that Vega and I struggle with, which I actually think it's very cute, is who is the bigger spoon between us. She claims she's a big spoon person, but somehow every night she winds up cuddled up to me, her head resting on my chest, my arms around her.

I'm totally the big spoon, I don't care what she says.

"Vega," I run my hand through her soft black velvet hair.

"Emm," she grumbles and snuggles even closer to me.

Another thing we struggle with, the girl hates getting up in the morning, though you would never know it by how she acts at breakfast. Personally, I find it super adorable to see her whiny face first thing in the morning. I'm not really a morning person either, but I can get up when I have to. Most of the time anyway.

"Vega."

"No!" she whines.

I giggle.

"I have to," I say softly.

"Don't leave," she pouts.

"I have to."

She whines.

"Think of it like this, after my test today, we can cuddle and sleep in all you want this break."

She cracks open one eye and glares at me, "Swear?" she asks.

"Promise."

She sighs and finally relents, sitting up with a grumpy look on her face.

I giggle and kiss her on the cheek.

She huffs and slides off the bed.

I stretch and fling the blankets off of me before getting up too.

She goes into the bathroom while I pull out a uniform to wear.

There is a knock on the door.

"It's me," Cyrene calls.

I drag myself to the door and let her in.

"I hate that you're a morning person," I complain.

"Early bird gets the worm." She pats my head.

"Is it a blazer day?" I hold up the black and purple blazer. "Or a sweater day?" I hold up the purple sweater.

"It's a, you better get dressed now or you will miss breakfast and be late, day." She says.

"No help, Vega!" I call.

"Blazer!" she calls from the bathroom.

Cyrene raises an eyebrow at me.

"Get your mind out of the gutter," I snap at her.

She smirks and says nothing.

"Where's your nightmare girlfriend?" I ask.

"She has a name, and if she were here, she'd bite your head off for saying that. But, she's not here, she's getting ready. She'll meet us there."

"Us?"

"I thought I should go, to keep the peace."

"Peace between Asherah and Lorelei?" I snort, "You wish."

She frowns at me.

Vega comes out of the bathroom with a yawn.

"Cyrene thinks she can keep the peace between her ex who still has feelings for her, and her current crazy overprotective girlfriend," I say to Vega.

"Ha! Good one, been there, done that." She says to Cyrene.

My turn to frown.

How many is plenty?

"Can we focus, please? Get dressed." Cyrene pushes me towards the bathroom.

I sigh and go to change and wash up.

It's going to continue to bug me until I find out, but I don't want to ask Vega directly. That would be weird, she'd wonder why I was asking. I'd have to tell her what her mom said to me. I'd have to come clean about what I said to her mom. It would be a whole thing.

Sigh.

I finished getting washed up and changed, and come out of the bathroom to just Cyrene, Vega left to go get ready.

"Let's go," she opens the door for me.

"No teleportation?" I ask.

"You do it, I'm trying to reserve my energy." She complains.

"I'm still pooped from yesterday," I sigh.

"So it looks like we are walking."

We walk in silence for a moment before I ask,

"Why didn't you side with Asherah last night?"

She stiffens next to me.

"You know she was right."

She says nothing for a long moment.

"Being petty with something like that is childish," I conclude as we get to the dining hall.

"I wasn't being childish," she gets defensive.

"You were."

"Was not! I just think it's time we stop playing devil's advocate and punish those who continue to harass us. A building was set on fire, while we were inside." She points out.

"No one was hurt," I say.

"Doesn't erase the intention."

I sigh.

We grab a quick breakfast burrito before I wave goodbye to my friends and walk with Cyrene to the main gate.

When we get there, Asherah and Lorelei are already there. A good ten feet between them. Yeesh.

"Finally," Asherah walks over to us.

"Sorry, burrito line was long." I indicate to my food.

She facepalms.

"Why didn't you just teleport," Lorelei walks over to Cyrene then gives her a long, hard, juicy kiss right in front of Asherah and me.

I make a face of disgust, Asherah has a similar face.

"I'm drained, I need to replenish my energy," Cyrene says as Lorelei pulls back.

"After last night, I bet you are." She teases.

I choke on my food and Asherah has to pat my back to help me get the food down.

Cyrene clears her throat, her face red.

"Anyway, let's go." She breezes past the topic.

Asherah and I share a similar look of horror.

We walk past the front gates to the parking lot where we all get into Asherah's car. I sit in the passenger seat, Cyrene and her witchy girlfriend in the back seat.

All around the parking lot are signs of vandalism and trash. It's clear heavy protests have taken place recently. I frown at the word Witch sprayed in red on the brick wall. Someone is scrubbing it off.

As we drive out onto the main road, signs of anti-Caster sentiments are everywhere. Way more than they were before, or maybe I just notice it now. It looks very out of place surrounded by the usual Christmas decorations.

We haven't even made it that far from the school before I get a headache.

I pout and slump in my chair.

"It's going to be uncomfortable for a bit, but so long as we have you back within a couple of hours you should be fine," Cyrene speaks up, noticing my new state.

We sit in awkward silence before Asherah turns on the radio.

"And what are they trying to pull here. Peaceful resolution," the talk show is interrupted by a loud buzzer sound. "Yeah right. Casters want what they always want, which is to control us."

She quickly changes the station.

I frown at the radio.

"Winter Solstice is approaching, supposedly that's when these witches get stronger. Why are we letting them continue to practice this Satanism? Witches need to be—" she changes it again.

"Headmaster Asherah Larson has refused to comment, yet again. Seems like she's running scared like the inexperienced little girl she is. They need to get someone in charge who knows what he's doing."

Asherah scoffs before turning the radio off again.

I giggle, she glares at me.

"What!? Come on it's funny." I say.

We stop at a red light.

"This just in, I am a big dummy who still cries to his mommy." I mimic the radio host voice.

She smiles at me.

"I am an insecure man-boy who is scared of casters, especially women ones." I go on.

She chuckles.

Cyrene and Lorelei chuckle too.

"Get a life." I shake my head.

"Honestly." Asherah agrees.

We all chuckle.

For a moment we sit in the nice comforting atmosphere.

See, everyone can get along if they actually put forth an effort.

When we pull into the familiar police station, I sigh. It's surrounded by protesters. Anti-Caster protesters. Asherah parks the car and we are quickly surrounded by media. We wait in the car while she calls Detective Perez, who comes out to escort us inside.

"Geez," I dust myself off.

People were trying to grab me!

"You okay?" Cyrene asks.

I nod.

Asherah pats my head, I smile at her. She smiles back. Cyrene eyes us, I catch her glaring at Asherah in the corner of my eye.

"Come with me," Perez sighs.

We walk to the back where the interrogation rooms are.

"If I never see your face again, it will be too soon." He says to me.

"Tell me how you really feel," I grumble as he opens the door.

Inside is five guys sitting at a table. 3 more lawyers, and several parental figures. The room is very cramped as we squeeze in.

Darius and I lock eyes, he quickly looks away from me, shame and pain written on his face.

"These are the guys who did the spray painting and fire. In the next room over we have the ones who attacked you." He explains.

Asherah sighs.

So it wasn't Darius's group who attacked us yesterday. That does make me feel a little better.

"Hello, I am the headmaster at Belmore, you can call me Asherah." Asherah introduces herself.

"What is the point of this!? Are you going to charge my son or not?" a mom says.

"The point of this is to try and get to the bottom of this and prevent it from happening again. We don't want this to escalate but your son has committed serious crimes. We want this resolved peacefully. Punishing these kids will not solve the problem." Asherah explains.

Everyone in the room visibly relaxes when they hear that Asherah doesn't plan to send them to jail.

"We have brought Emery here since she was the target of all three incidents. We think it might be personal. So, she wanted a chance to try and talk things out." Asherah says.

"We are just here to witness and observe," Cyrene says.

I sit down in front of the five guys, all of whom I recognize as students from my school.

They all look at me.

"Well, if you have something to say to me, now is your chance," I say.

None of them say anything.

"Why are you doing this?" I ask. "We used to be best friends Darius." I look at him.

The room stays silent.

"It's not what you think," I go on. "I'm not some brainwashed traitor. Things are just different now."

"How? They did this to you; how could you support them!?" one of them finally speaks up.

"True, they did this to me. They turned me into a Caster without my permission, but that can't be changed now. I'll admit, I wasn't what some would call a happy camper when I first got to Belmore. But I think you guys got it all wrong. I had it all wrong. I can't change what has happened to me, even if I wanted to, but I don't want to. Maybe there was a time when I did want to, but I have accepted myself."

"You're one of them now." Another says.

"I am. But I was also one of you before. Look at where you are? You are fighting a battle you don't even understand that has nothing to do with you. You are fighting for a version of me that no longer exists. Is that really worth throwing your entire life away? Forget for a second about Casters, and all of that. You're just in high school, you are going to ruin your own life before it's even begun. I don't want that, I'm sure your parents don't want that, and I don't think you guys want that."

"I just miss my friend." Darius finally speaks up.

"I'm still your friend." My voice shakes. "If I wasn't I wouldn't be here fighting for you. Trust me when I say, everyone was against you. I fought for you, it was my idea to come here and talk things out. I still believe in you, I still think there is good in you. I don't want this."

"What do you want?" one asks.

"I want this to stop. You guys have proven your point okay. Casters are scared of you, terrified that someone is going to take things too far. Don't start something none of us can finish. Belmore, it's my home now. It's home to a lot of people who don't have a home. Asherah, Cyrene, everyone there, they are my friends. They accepted me, even when I was like all of you. You call me a traitor, but I'm not. I'm still fighting for you, just not the fight you want me to fight. Casters are for real, just like you guys. They have midterms, and relationship drama, they even judge you on home much ketchup is appropriate to put on fries." I say.

Darius chuckles, wiping his tears.

"For real, a girl should be able to put as much ketchup as she wants without being judged!" I declare.

Everyone in the room laughs.

"See, we are the same still. I still watch the same tv shows I've always watched. I still read the same trashy memes as you. I still laugh at all the jokes we used to laugh at together. Just because I have powers now, doesn't mean I'm any less human than you. And trust me, having powers is not all it's cracked up to be. It's such a pain. I have to study even more just to learn how to control and use them." I whine.

Darius sniffles and keeps wiping his eyes.

"Here's is what I want from all of you. You have to promise to stop this. All of it, and stop anyone who even thinks about it. If you can do that, I'm sure you can all get off easy with just community service or something." I say.

"We plan on turning this over to the local authorities to handle as they wish, only if you agree. If not, Caster law will come down on you." Asherah says.

They all look at each other and nod in agreement.

"Okay," Darius says.

"We agree." His friend says.

"We're sorry Emery, things just got out of hand." Another guy said.

"You guys are good people, don't ruin your life for me. Trust me, I'm not worth it." I say.

"She's really not," Lorelei says.

Everyone laughs.

"Okay then," Asherah turns to Detective Perez, "I leave it to you."

"But" Cyrene speaks up. "If any of you are caught violating our agreement again, there will be no second chance." She warns.

"No trespassing, no vandalism, no arson, no harassment," Asherah adds.

"Who knows, maybe the rules at Belmore will change soon, and you can come to see the campus for yourself and visit me," I add.

"We are working on it," Asherah adds.

Then after lots of handshaking and some thank you from moms, we go to the next room.

I repeat my speech to the other thugs, but they are less receiving. Still, I convince them to agree, and once again they are warned about violating the terms of the agreement.

I'm not so friendly to those guys, they did spray paint me and beat up my friends after all. Plus I don't even know them. They don't even go to my old school. Still, we have to give them a chance to do the right thing. Now that they know the consequences that await them if they do it again.

When we walk out of the station the crowd goes silent as Asherah prepares to make a statement to the press.

"A resolution has been made. We have talked it through with the guilty party and made peace with them. We have turned this over to the local authorities. It's like I said before, we want peace. We have no quarrel with you, not even to known Caster haters. We just want to live in peace and harmony with the local community. I do have to thank Emery; it was her idea to try and talk things out and find a peaceful solution. Perhaps we should take a note from our children's book, if they can make peace, why can't we?" she finishes.

I move to make my own statement, "I was personally targeted several times, attacked, and had threats on my life. But I never gave up hope that this could be resolved without violence and without harsh punishment. I know many of you don't think very highly of me, but if I said it once I've said it a million times. I am not being held against my will, I am not being brainwashed, and I do not think Casters are the enemy. I have changed, I have grown as a person, I understand things I hadn't understood before. I urge you to try and grow and change too." I finish.

"Thank you all for your patience and understanding," Asherah says before we are escorted to the car.

I let out a giant sigh once we are in the car again.

Geez, that was draining.

And I still have a test to take!