My heart sank. Bettina had been injured severely in the Land of the Lore. That ice capsule visual would haunt the rest of my days, but the memory of Tennessee struggling to hold her down when Thorne tried to heal her was like a living, breathing wound in my mind.

“Franks, be right back.” Tim wrapped his arm around Jackson’s shoulder “Come with me, son.”

“FRANKIE! LOOK!”

I glanced up, then did a double take. Mei-Ling stood ten feet away with neon-orange hair. My jaw dropped. “Already?”

“I’m an achiever, Frankie,” Ava said with a grin. She pointed her wand at me. “Not an over-achiever though, because that’s just crazy.”

“Ava!” I hurried over and gave her a hug. “Where’s Float?”

“In our dorm with Rootbeer.” She tucked her wand behind her ear. “Seamus wants to practice combat without her . . . and she was not having it, so we had to lock her in our dorm.”

“Do you and Seamus share a dorm?”

“Yep.” She pursed her lips. “Was it special treatment because of his hearing impairment and my being used to it? Maybe. But between us? I think it was more that they wouldn’t dare separate Rootbeer and Float.”

“And how could they?” I giggled. “Where’s Seamus?”

She pointed to a mat where her boyfriend was sparring some teenager I’d never seen. “He’s the most eager to train. Something about what happened at the fountain that night with you really spooked him.”

“Him?” I snorted. Then I turned and spotted the rest of my friends from Tampa. I gave them all hugs. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in weeks, but that’s probably not true, is it?”

“C’est la vie, mon amie,” Jo said with a wink, then she said a bunch of words in French so fast I didn’t differentiate one from another.

Madge shook her head. “My soulmate is trying to say the life of The Coven works like that, but most of that was phlegm.”

Jo’s eyes widened. She grabbed some boxing gloves off the bench and backed toward the mat. “Ah bon? Tu veux te battre. Allons-y. Battons-nous.”

“Thought you’d never ask.” Madge giggled and bounced after her soulmate.

“So, what do you think?”

I turned and ran my hands over my bestie’s new orange hair. “Epic.”

“We’re cohesive without being the same color.”

“Bestie problems.” I nodded. “Perhaps you should return the favor for Ava and show her some moves?”

Ava’s yellow eyes brightened. “Really? You know martial arts? Because I’ve got two left feet and hands like a windmill.”

Mei-Ling giggled. “C’mon, let me help you.”

Tomás rubbed his hands together and grinned. “All right, let’s see those fight moves, Frankie.”