I started this story over a year ago, like most of my stories, and haven't updated it in over a year...like most of my stories. Well, now that is going to change. This is part of my series of revisions, edits and improvements in all the stories I consider worth the effort. This story I will leave mostly the same, except for a few tidbits with the grammar and a deepening of some plot elements. I hope you enjoy it.


"Okay, so, we're going to be doing this next project in groups," Ms. Eason said calmly. I gave my short, plump teacher a begging look—group projects were pure hell. Weeks, solid weeks, of doing all of the work while my partners did, well, nothing. One would think that someone enrolled in AP Lit would be capable of actually working... "And I'm picking your groups." Pleading looks from the rest of class, but I relaxed some. That meant it would be fair, at least. She read out names, groups of three or four people each, before I heard my own name called. "Leia Price, Carrie Damon, Dell Hawthorne." Carrie and Dell were both new, and I didn't know much about them.

Except that Dell was hot. I found myself blushing—I had trained myself to judge people based on intellect and nothing else, but really. Even I could not ignore such blatant male beauty. I stood to go over to them (Dell and Carrie sat next to each other, near the back of the room), but they were already coming. Their movements were like dancing—that graceful, that elegant, like watching a cat. A predatory beauty.

"Hi, Leia!" Carrie spoke as if we were the best of friends, in a bubbly tone that solidified my half-formed first impression of her. That impression would be, of course, of a socialite teenager who dressed to kill and was nice to everyone but was dead weight on anything academic.

"Hello." I gave the halfhearted smile I usually gave such people. Graceful as a dancer she might be, but she did not have my respect enough for a full smile.

"So, does anyone know what we're actually doing?" Carrie demanded, but not in an impolite way. It didn't seem like she was physically capable of being impolite. Accidentally tactless, perhaps, but not impolite.

As I explained the mind-bogglingly simple assignment to her, I studied Dell. He was tall (much taller than my five-foot-four self), with dark brown hair that didn't quite cross the border to black and a delicately-structured face. But it was his eyes that caught me and held me in a tight, pleasant grip: they were blue, like mine, but they were incredibly pale, an almost glacial blue, and looking into them was like looking into an arctic lake.

Looking into a good arctic lake. "Do you understand it?" I asked Carrie. I hadn't really been paying attention to what I was saying, but I'd said the same things over and over, so many times that I didn't really need to pay attention.

"Yeah. So, um, let's get started?" That at least was a surprise. Maybe my first impression wasn't so accurate after all… We sorted out who was doing what without much input from Dell, who didn't say much, and the bell was about to ring when Carrie's hand accidentally brushed mine. I pulled my own away with a gasp—the tiniest amount of skin contact between me and another person was practically agony.

"Don't…do…that," I hissed, stuffing my hand in my pocket. I knew it was an accident, but I suddenly wanted to be as far away from Carrie as possible, as if she carried some sort of disease. She touched me…

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to," she apologized, clearly upset at having hurt someone, even on accident.

"Just…just don't touch me. I really don't like people touching me…" I was trembling, rubbing my hand over and over my jeans, trying to erase the sensation of her skin on mine. Just then the bell rang and I escaped out the door, leaving my startled partners and sprinting for my next class.


I watched her go, miserable to be left without her and not knowing why. Her reaction to being touched, the calm way she handled my bubbly coworker, everything about her seemed to speak to me in the deepest way. She was also, of course, beautiful: long, fine hair some indeterminate color between brown and blonde (tending slightly toward blonde) pulled into a tight ponytail that cascaded down her thin, cranberry-colored, sweater-clad shoulder. Vividly blue eyes that wouldn't meet mine unless they absolutely had to. A soft, pink mouth set in a serious expression, but I thought she might smile easily. I wanted to see her smile, fiercely I wanted to see her smile, which was a desire I couldn't explain. Perhaps I didn't hold humans in the contempt most Night People did after joining Circle Daybreak, but it was still difficult to think of them as people as a reflex.

Then I shook my head, trying to clear it of these thoughts. At the exact same moment Carrie chose to slap me gently across the face. "Come on! Some of us don't have superhuman strength to get to class, Mr.-Dell-Hawthorne-the-vampire-who-doesn't-have-weakness-or-pain-or—"

"Shut up, Carrie!" I hissed at her. "I'm coming, I'm coming!" She handed me my backpack, stuffed with books but feeling feather-light to me, and tugged me out the door. "It is beyond me why Lord Thierry chose you for this assignment," I muttered even though I already knew: Carrie was one of Circle Daybreak's most powerful witches, possibly one of the most powerful in the world.

Carrie and I walked toward our next class, she dragging me through the crowds of people and sighing exasperatedly every so often. Luckily, the class was AP World History, which, because I had lived through much of human history personally, I could ignore. This left me plenty of time to contemplate Leia Price. It was ridiculous—I'd seen her once, for the maybe fifteen minutes at the end of class we were given to speak with our groups, yet I was captivated. By a human, the snide corner of my mind that didn't believe the Daybreakers said.

Yes, by a human, I told that part of myself firmly. Plenty of Night People have human friends and even soulmates. Even Thierry has a human soulmate.

So?

Shut up. I turned to the teacher, who was explaining the Dark Ages in such a way as to cause Carrie to mutter, audibly even, something involving the words 'Burning Times.' I shot her a look that said, Shut up.

No one else can hear me, she mouthed back.

I jerked my thumb in the direction of Adler Mostro, our project. He was an eagle shapeshifter, one of the Night World's best spies—he was excellent at locating (and speedily dispatching) humans who knew about the Night World. As well as whatever Night Person told them. His methods were brutal, and that was why Carrie and I were here—to stop him.

Carrie gave a huge, exaggerated sigh before turning to the teacher with a look of perfect virtue. I returned to the puzzle of Leia Price.

"Hawthorne," the teacher called, and I twitched as if I'd been asleep. A girl giggled. "Who was king of England from 1154 to 1189?"

"Henry the second," I replied, glad it was such an easy question. I knew that king. Personally, I mean.

There was a soft, vaguely impressed sound from somewhere behind and to the side of me. A human wouldn't have heard it, but I did. I turned, slightly, and saw Leia sitting almost across the room and a bit behind me. How did she get here? and, How could I have been so blind as to not notice her before? were the two chief thoughts in my head. And then I noticed something: she sat directly in front of Adler Mostro.

That unnerved me. I couldn't say why.


Please review...of course, if you have already, there would be no point, not since I have left this chapter almost completely alone.