Disclaimer: If I could, I'd have the male cast chained to my bed to do with as I pleased…So I don't own them, just in case you didn't know.
Author's Note: I've decided Caleb was born after the school cut-off date for enrolment and that's why his eighteenth occurs in the fall of his junior year rather than senior. This FanFic is set in their senior year.
"Let's drop in."
Reid laughed as the wind rushed up to meet him, his senses going crazy as nature enveloped him and brought him safely to the bottom of the cliff. Although he didn't like them Using on a whim for fun stuff, no matter how little, Caleb was keen not to provoke any of them, especially Pogue recently—though he and Tyler still had to wait till the spring until their birthdays to Ascend—into using their powers.
Reid had to confess he still cringed at the thought of what Caleb's dad had looked like the last time he saw William before he died. He'd never let on to the boys—least of all Caleb.
Caleb dropped down soundlessly beside him and Tyler grinned as he crouched, poised like a big-cat and straightened up. The party was already raging on the beach, the flares burning, the lights of trucks giving light to the sandy dance-floor, the fire creating a nice area for couples to grope in relative darkness, while one truck had the bed filled with coolers and a keg. Fast-paced music pounded from the huge speakers as the DJ flipped records. Reid grinned, ready to party, scouting potentials.
"Do you guys see Pogue?" Caleb asked, dark eyes scanning the beach. Reid could pick up Prettyboy anywhere. He was by the fire, dancing—no, grinding—with a black-haired girl he'd never seen before, and was immediately interested in because of the way she was so uninhibited around Pogue. Any girl who didn't stand drooling or try to get into his pants was probably brave enough to stand up to Caleb or get bashful Tyler to interact. She wasn't like the other girls on the beach, who were decked out in expensive Fifth Avenue fashions and Tiffany diamonds, sundresses over bikinis; she wore a black cardigan, low-cut, button-down, with a tie around the waist, and a pair of relaxed, faded denim jeans that were so old they were wearing thin around the knees and crotch. Hair loose and tousled, her grin as she danced and laughed aloud with Pogue wide and glittering in the firelight, she seemed to Reid to be the life of the party.
Of course, it was weird seeing Pogue grin, too. Since Kate had broken it off with him during the summer so she could go to UCSB, Pogue had been a complete basket-case. The guys all exchanged a look, impressed, both by the girl and the effect she had on Pogue. Since July, they'd all been really careful not to set Pogue off. Since his Ascension he had been teetering on the edge with a real short fuse. Reid in the lead for once, the three strode over the sandy embankment down a gentle slope to the set of people who weren't quite a group, standing two or three and talking awkwardly.
"Hey man," Caleb said lazily, a white-toothed grin revealed as he smiled at the girl as she and Pogue separated their hips. The girl smiled bashfully and tucked a strand of natural black hair behind her ear, which was pierced multiple times with tiny silver hoops, and a ring-and-ball tragus piercing.
"Guys!" Pogue grinned, knocking knuckles with them. "Hey, I want you to meet Lilah Shakespeare. She's Sarah's new roommate. She just moved here from England. Lilah, this is Caleb Danvers, Tyler Simms and Reid Garwin. They're all tools, so don't bother with 'em."
"Hey!" the boys yelled indignantly, and while Caleb laughed, Reid was first to dash at their second-in-command, Tyler on his tail. Laughing, he shrugged them off and Reid fell into place beside Lilah. Lilah—pretty name, he thought—unfolded the slender arms clamped defensively over a rather—whoa!—huge chest and stuck her hands in the pockets of her jeans. Lilah was suddenly bashful and blushed at them prettily. He glanced at Tyler, whose eyebrows rose, though he was the politer of the two and had long ago trained himself not to stare at girls' breasts or asses too long. The memory of a bitch-slap several years ago still served him well.
"Whereabouts in England did you live?" Tyler asked interestedly. Reid frowned intensely at her, picking out every detail of her face.
"Well, we have a house in Knightsbridge—in London—and my dad's family has an estate in Hampshire," Lilah said shyly. "I went to school in London."
"You're going to be bouncing off your goddamn walls here," Pogue said crabbily, and she gave him an eye-roll and a smile.
"Someone forgot to take his Midol this morning," Reid teased, and Pogue glowered threateningly. Lilah's mouth twitched amusedly.
"Actually, I like it here," Lilah smiled. "Well, I liked the scenery from the airport this afternoon. It reminds me of home." Reid paid attention to her voice. He loved that she actually pronounced the t's in words and didn't slur.
"You just flew in?" Tyler's eyebrows rose again. That was his habit. Reid rolled his eyes. But he had to admit—he'd seen Tyler after a flight, and his mother—Lilah looked damned good for a girl suffering jetlag. "Aren't you tired?"
"Yeah, but if I go to sleep now, I'll be up again at three o'clock," Lilah laughed, and she flashed lovely white teeth. He thought all English people had bad dental hygiene. All Americans are obese, he reminded himself. Stereotypes were stupid. It was like saying because Caleb looked dark and scary, he really was. Besides Tyler, Caleb was the most thoughtful guy—person—Reid knew. He was definitely the most controlled.
"Don't worry. I won't let you fall asleep. I'll just keep pestering you and pestering you," Reid grinned. He liked this girl, he didn't know why. Perhaps the fact she didn't bleach her hair or starve herself and she wasn't supremely self-confident set her aside from the Spenser private-school daddy's girls partying drunkenly around them. He grabbed her hand and surprised a laugh out of her as he tugged her encouragingly towards the people dancing to the Rihanna. She hung back, protesting laughingly. Probably wants to hang around Pogue some more, Reid thought resentfully. Given the choice out of the four of them, any girl would take Pogue over the others, if it was based purely on looks. Character, they'd go for Caleb, intelligence, Tyler. Reid was the fuck-up, and he would always be the one who started fights and ended up getting the shit beaten out of him by Caleb.
"Come and dance with me?" Reid smiled, taking her hand to tug her closer to the fire, training himself to keep looking at her face. He had no clue what was going on behind those eyes—lit up by the fire, they were a stunning lavender-teal, and the curling lashes were elongated by their shadows—as he rarely had any clue what was going on inside his own head, but it wasn't in his nature to ask questions. It was his nature to have a good time, and to make sure the people around him were enjoying themselves as well. Lilah laughed and let him take her hand, threading his fingers through hers, grinning. Yeah, he liked this girl.
"Who's this?"
Reid snarled and Pogue tensed his muscles beneath the leather jacket, itching for a fight, as Aaron stepped in between them and Lilah. He heard Caleb sigh heavily. What did they have to do to get this guy to realise that he should just back off? He was worse than Reid!
"Aaron, this is Lilah Shakespeare. She just moved here from England," Sarah said dutifully. Hell, she had to introduce Lilah's new classmates, didn't she? Reid didn't like that he might have to share her. Fresh faces were difficult to come by. So was a girl who hadn't already been through the Spenser mill. The dating-pool at Spenser was limited, considering Aaron used girls like Kleenex and the 'Sons of Ipswich' were the heartthrobs of the school.
"Do you speak English?" Aaron asked, and Reid choked on his beer with laughter. Lilah's eyes widened; she didn't look too impressed, and she tugged on Reid's hand, stepping back a little bit. Reid smiled as she glanced over her shoulder. She didn't like him, and that made him like her even more.
"Yes," she said tersely, hunching her shoulders and folding her arms over her voluptuous chest—which was easily admired with the low cut of her black button-up cardigan—where Aaron's eyes had been lingering. "Apparently baboons do too." Reid laughed at Aaron's expense; the guy didn't seem to realise this was an insult.
"Wanna drink?" Aaron asked, expelling a mouthful of cigarette smoke in Lilah's face before taking another drag. She didn't seem too impressed, and that was putting it mildly, that she had been interrupted by this greasy jock, who was now breathing his cigarette smoke directly at her.
"No thanks."
Reid swore he didn't do it.
And he swore, for a split-second when Aaron was taking a third drag from his diminishing cigarette, her eyes turned as black as the crashing waves a hundred yards away from them. And the spurt of fire that seemed to spark them. That couldn't have just been the reflection of the fire. Because the fire was behind her.
Aaron jumped back and yelled, dropping the cigarette as he choked for breath. The cigarette had been consumed by fire in less than a second, right as he breathed in, burning his fingers and lips.
It had jolted a sense of déjà vu in the boys, the scene; Aaron standing between Caleb and Sarah, picking a fight, Reid stopped from Using by Caleb. Except he swore he hadn't Used. Caleb had made them make a pact during the summer, after Pogue's blow-out, saying they'd only use their powers in the case of emergencies.
"Reid," Caleb's deep voice warned him, but Reid shot him a look. He hadn't done it.
But it didn't make any sense, what he'd seen. Unless she was…like them? Hell, she was from the Old World, where they'd all descended from originally. It was foolish to think these four—plus with Chase last year, five—boys were isolated cases of magical bloodlines.
Lilah merely ground the cigarette-butt with the toe of her tattered black Converse with a look of complete disgust as Aaron stumbled away to the cooler filled with ice.
"Obviously you're not a smoker," he whispered in her ear, and Lilah smiled bashfully as she tucked a strand of glossy black hair behind her ear. He grinned as Lilah grabbed his hand and tugged him towards the dancers as Sean Paul's 'Get Busy' came on.
He'd never been more turned on in his life. No, they didn't dance. Unless grinding shamelessly in public counted as dancing. At school dances—those his parents had forced him to go to—had been like this, low-lighting, fast-paced music and even faster girls. It was all in her hips. She moved her hips in teasing circles, pushed up against him, her arms draped over his as he held her waist. Or they'd dance with his hands on her butt, her arms draped around his neck, bodies pushed together. And while the keg kept flowing, so did their words.
She'd just flown into Boston airport this afternoon. She was English by blood, although her mother had been sent to Spenser when she was a teenager. Her father was ill and wanted her taken care of, so he'd sent her to Massachusetts near the only other living members of her family.
"I'll have to thank him for that," Reid grinned, and Lilah smiled in the firelight, as they rocked their hips so close together he was surprised he wasn't blushing. He couldn't help laughing. Everyone in Ipswich knew the Sons of Ipswich. It was nice to meet someone who didn't know, and who didn't have a pole shoved up her ass.
Lilah's powers were so great that she got even shy Tyler to come and join them, creating a Lilah-Sandwich, at which she laughed and put her hands on Tyler's shoulders to complete the set as Reid created the speed they grinded to. They convinced Pogue to dance again and even Caleb shimmied his hips in an attempt at dancing.
She did something to them, made them relax, made them feel that they were safe. That they didn't have to put up any walls around her and hide things from her. Like she was one of them, even if she was shy. They all—him, Tyler, Pogue, Lilah—partied as if they'd known each other their entire lives.
She smiled at him blissfully as a slower, more mellow song came on, as the party wound down. In the firelight, her skin glowed, glistening with a thin layer of sweat from dancing so long, and her eyes were so light and lovely that Reid began second-guessing himself.
Could he possibly have seen her using the Power?
For one thing, she was a girl. In all their long family histories, no female descendent of the first Five had ever been given the Power.
But their Power had to come from somewhere, and it had to be carried through the female line, if only dormant. They brought it from the Old World. And all of their descendents were…English.
A.N.: P.S. I LOVE REVIEWS. Please review my work. Constructive criticism is always appreciated. But if you say somethin' mean I'll hunt you down and gut you like a fish...I mean...I'll delete the review! HA! mellowenglishgal has POWER! It's a quarter-to-midnight, and I was in bed at three a.m. this morning, so...I think I'm becoming an insomniac. It's happened every day this week... I'm finishing my ramble now and hitting 'Save Changes'.