“We might as well wait outside,” Aisha murmured, glaring at the warlocks seated in the waiting room.

We exited the building and stepped outside onto the windy hilltop. I heaved a sigh, clasping the list in my hand.

Then I turned on the jinni. “You cured River’s brother of autism,” I said. “Say somehow we got a suitable heart… Are you certain that you, Nuriya or anyone else in The Oasis wouldn’t know how to perform this operation? Would it really be that much different than treating a human? You seem to be well-versed in human illnesses, even mental ones.”

Aisha shook her head. “If you were a human, we wouldn’t hesitate to use our powers. But you’re not. And swapping the heart of a vampire… Well, it’s kind of unheard of. Even though we could try, I don’t think we would want to risk it. Nuriya wouldn’t, I’m sure. Just in case we did something wrong… As much as I despise the idea of relying on a witch to do this, Ben, I think it might be the safest option.”

“Assuming this witch actually has Ben’s best interest in mind and doesn’t deliberately jeopardize the procedure,” Julie added darkly.

“Well, I will be by Ben’s side observing closely,” Aisha said.

Arron emerged from the castle and approached us. My eyes roamed him suspiciously, searching his hand. It was empty. He stepped forward and took the witch’s list from me, glancing over it as though he hadn’t left us.

I looked back at Julie. “Haven’t you had enough of all this by now?” I felt uncomfortable that she was still trailing along with us. I’d hoped that she would want to back out after what Aisha had wanted to do to her—and what Aisha had made clear she still wanted to do, if I would only let her.

Julie paused, shifting her gaze from Aisha to me. There was a look of determination in her eyes, and also what I believed to be sincerity. “I’ll stay,” she replied. “I’ve come this far… I’m anxious to see how it all ends up.”

Hopefully not in a pile of rubble.

“Tooth of werewolf,” Arron interrupted. “I suggest we procure that first.”

We?

“You’re coming with us?” I asked. I had been half expecting him to ask to be returned after fixing me up with an appointment.

“Like Julie,” he said, “I too am anxious to see how this ends.”

There was an unsettling glint in his eyes as he glanced up at me before resuming his focus on the list.

Tooth of werewolf. I could hardly believe that we were doing this. All just to get a private meeting with a witch, whom I still didn’t know could help me without requiring me to murder someone. Heck, for all I knew she might not be successful in helping me even with a fresh heart. And now these items… “Tooth of werewolf and scale of dragon. We need to procure them without killing,” I said. Even if I wanted to, I doubted we’d be able to pull off slaughtering a dragon anyway…

“The werewolf tooth and the merflor should be possible without murder,” Aisha replied. “As for the dragon scale… let’s just get the first two before thinking about that…”

“So we need to go to The Woodlands?” Julie asked.

“The Woodlands?” I frowned.

“That’s the realm of werewolves,” Julie explained.

“Yes,” Arron said. “We should head there now. We might find ourselves running out of time if we dally.”

On cue, Aisha made our surroundings disappear in a fog of mist, and the next thing I knew, we had arrived at the edge of a dense wood of towering trees that would rival even The Shade’s redwoods. The ocean roared behind us, wild waves crashing against a pebble beach.

Arron neared and addressed me in a low voice. “You’re going to need to let go of this aversion to killing,” he said. “We need to get this problem solved, and since you’re not open to any alternative, claiming lives—at least one life—is mandatory somewhere along the line. In fact, it would be much faster and easier to just kill a werewolf for a tooth than dancing around trying to figure out some other way.”

Ignoring his words, I marched toward the entrance of the woods.

“Aisha,” I called. “Come with me.”

I didn’t care what Arron said. During my bouts of bloodlust, one might argue that I had an excuse for murdering the way I did. But now that, thanks to Bahir, I had control over my thoughts and was aware of myself, I wasn’t about to look for an excuse for killing. I simply couldn’t justify it. We had to find another way.

As we entered the dense wood, I scanned the area and began to mull over how we were going to pull off this first ingredient. The best way would be to find a werewolf who was alone and corner him or her. Aisha would need to stun the wolf and anaesthetize the jaw so the creature wouldn’t feel the pain while we removed a tooth. Even that was uncomfortable to me—forcing a tooth from someone who had done no harm to me—but it was the best solution I could think of. Because I didn’t think that we would find an abundance of werewolf teeth in the undergrowth. And we didn’t have time to scour the place in search of one. We still had two more items to get before the appointment.

And so we moved swiftly and silently through the woods in search of our victim.

Then something occurred to me. The woods were dark due to the thick canopy of leaves overhead, but it was still daytime. If we came across a werewolf now, they would be in their humanoid form. The list stated ‘tooth of werewolf.’ But would the tooth be acceptable if it came from a werewolf’s human form? I doubted that if I pulled a tooth while the beast was in their human form the tooth would turn into a wolf tooth once night fell. The list didn’t specify, but I couldn’t help but feel that the witch would want the tooth of an actual wolf… in which case we had time to kill.