12The council meetings were held in a brightly-lit back room of the bar, and by the time Jen and I arrived a minute or two past eight in the evening, everyone else was already there, sitting around a long, rectangular boardroom-type table, which appeared to be solid mahogany, or maybe dark cherry wood. Jim sat at the head of the table, facing the door, and the opposite seat at the other end of the table was empty. To Jim’s right sat Aaron, then Annie, then three other shifters and another Gifted. On his left sat another shifter and three more Gifteds, but the two seats closest to him were empty. On the table in front of one of these empty spots, the spot directly to his left, sat a package of colored pencils, and a large box of crayons that I suspected were the “colored wax sticks” that Je
