Disclaimer: The Hollows series owes its creative genius to Kim Harrison. I am simply borrowing her setting and characters for some free entertainment. This story contains spoilers for the latest Hollows novel, Pale Demon.

Chapter 1

"Freak!" The girl's voice seemed to echo over the quad like a megaphone, followed by the taunting catcalls from her posse. "Go back to wherever you came from!"

Siobhan O'Brien didn't even wince anymore at things like this. She kept her head down and the hood of her sweatshirt up, pretending not to have heard. The hoots and taunts continued behind her as if she'd passed through a tribe of angry Howler monkeys instead of her fellow Juniors at her new high school. And like their monkey brethren, these girls were professionals at slinging shit. But as calm and uncaring as she seemed to the outside world, Siobhan shivered with a swirl of emotion on the inside. Blazing anger seemed to light through her, drawn up from the very ground she walked on and trembling at the tips of her fingers as if they wanted to take action on their own. "Fuck you, bitch," she hissed softly on her exhale, pushing the anger out as she'd practiced many times before. A swirl of wind rushed away from her, scattering dead leaves in a mini tornado that buffeted her fellow students passing close to her but quickly faded without any power or focus of its own.

All of this would become just another faded memory in a lifetime of different schools, different homes, and different foster parents. Nothing mattered until she reached eighteen and started a permanent life for herself. She'd have a place of her own, even if she had to live on the very outskirts of Cincinnati where only the bravest humans dared to tread since the Turn. She'd at least have space for pets - dogs, cats and, especially horses. And she'd go riding every day, far from all of this, under the cool shade of an old growth forest. Perhaps she'd even meet someone there who shared her loneliness and her love of wild things. Someone who would finally understand her...

Her daydream abruptly ended when Siobhan ran smack into someone who'd just stepped out of a nearby classroom. Her legs tangled with theirs and her heavy backpack overbalanced and would have sent her crashing to the ground except for two strong hands that grabbed her shoulders and steadied her. Her wide green eyes rose to view the person she'd accidentally run into.

"Ms. O'Brien, I hope this means you were rushing to get to my class and not bent on taking me out."

Siobhan turned bright red to the roots of her strawberry blond hair. It was her gorgeous chorus teacher, Randall Smith. His dark green eyes seemed to capture her gaze and her only thought was that he must have just finished teaching the PE classes he did to warrant a full time job as a teacher because his soft blond hair was clinging wetly to his neck. Her eyes followed a drop of water that slowly traced a path down the curve of his tanned neck like a watery caress.

"Ms. O'Brien?" His earlier teasing tone dropped to a more serious note when she failed to answer. He shook her gently before letting her go. "You okay?"

If she could have flushed any brighter, Siobhan would have. Her eyes dove back to the ground where everything was safer and she cleared her throat. "S-sorry, Mr. Smith."

"Hi, Randy," Beth Howard purred as she sashayed past. She was a senior in Siobhan's chorus class and thought she was God's Gift to Washington High. All the girls called Mr. Smith Randy when referring to him, but few were brave enough to use the name to his face. And none of them had any reason to suspect that he could live up to their pet name except in their wildest dreams. He was generally cool and aloof in and out of the classroom. But when he sang, Siobhan melted on the inside like a candy bar on the sidewalk during a hot summer day. From the gossip of the other girls, she assumed they felt the same way. He could have taken advantage of that fact, but he never did. The girls preferred to think he was playing hard to get and the boys all thought he was gay.

She took a moment to breathe in deeply before she stepped back. Pheromones, after shave, cologne - she didn't know what he wore but she loved the smell.

"S'alright," he said, a smile warmly coloring his voice. "I'll walk with you."

Since Siobhan was trying to stick to her eyes-down approach to life, she watched his dress shoes turn around and face in the direction she'd been heading. Unfortunately, that meant she now had a view of Beth's rear, tightly clad in designer jeans, performing what she would normally assume was a bee's dance to signal where the honey was. She sighed. And they called her the freak.

"I'm going to be casting the parts for our Holiday Concert," Mr. Smith mentioned casually. "I hope you'll try out for a solo."

"Uh-" Siobhan replied in her most articulate fashion. Why the crap did she always forget how to speak around him?

"You have a beautiful voice," Mr. Smith said softly, in a voice pitched so that no one else could hear.

Siobhan looked up to find him smiling down at her and blushed yet again. She knew her voice was good. Chorus was one of the few things she enjoyed at every school she'd ever attended. She loved to sing and was routinely complimented on her voice. But to hear him say so when she thought he sang like an angel was the highest compliment she'd ever gotten. "Thank you," she whispered, not trusting her voice to speak louder.

They must be close to the auditorium they practiced in, because they'd picked up a flock of teenage girls who swirled around Mr. Smith like brightly-colored butterflies. Siobhan dropped back, more comfortable in the background. There was a series of risers arranged atop a small stage in front of enough seats to hold the entire school population. The other members of the chorus class were scattered among the seats in small pockets, killing time as the waited for class to start. Siobhan walked past them as though she drifted in a fog, unwilling to make eye contact or draw attention to herself in any way.

A leg across the steps leading down stopped her forward progress and the hot anger rose within her again. Why couldn't they just leave her alone? She reluctantly raised her eyes to take in the young man leaning against one of the audience seats with his leg thrust out to block her path.

"Is there a problem?" Charles Phillips taunted with a smile, as though he had no idea why she had stopped in front of him. The two young men with him snickered nastily.

"Can you move your leg so I can get by?" she asked quietly.

"No."

Her hands clenched into fists and her teeth ground together.

Charles stood up to completely block her path. The difference in their heights was cancelled by her position on the higher step. He looked her up and down with a calculating slowness. "Not until you show me what's under that jacket you're always wearing…" He ran his tongue suggestively across his lower lip.

Her simple forest green jacket was a hand me down from one of her previous foster families, a warm, bulky darkness that completely enveloped her. Several sizes too large and fairly shapeless after countless washings it was meant more as a camouflage than a fashion statement. One of Siobhan's hands went to the small opening at the top of the zipper and clenched it closed.

Charles moved closer, joining her on her step so he could look down at her. "See my friends and I have a bet. They think you're hiding under that to conceal some deformity or something." He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a husky pitch. His finger traced the air, following the line of her jacket's zipper. "I think you have rocking hot body under there that's just waiting for the right guy to unveil it." His hand flicked the edge of her jacket off her head.

Freed from the confines of her hood, her soft reddish blond hair drifted free as though on a gentle breeze of its own. Though she was not directly in contact with the ground, she felt the heat and power of something just outside her grasp, something she could use to knock Charles on his ass and make sure he and his friends never bothered her again. Her hands dropped to her sides and her fingers splayed wide as something more than anger seemed to fill her with power. The noise in the room had ended abruptly when Charles touched her and she could feel all those eyes watching her, adding to her anger. It was like an old west gunfight and if she didn't take decisive action, she'd find herself mortally wounded and unable to defend herself ever again.

"That's enough," came the soft, decisive command behind her. She turned to see Mr. Smith on the step behind her, his green eyes almost black beneath his blond bangs as he directed his gaze first at her and then at Charles. She'd never heard or felt him approach and there was an edginess to his soft command that frightened her more than many of the screaming rants she'd heard in the past. Siobhan took a deep breath and felt the power drain away.

Charles stepped back and turned sideways, clearing the path for her. His brown eyes were downcast and his jaw clenched in frustration.

"Alright, people, let's get this show on the road!" Mr. Smith spoke loudly to the entire room, as if nothing had happened. The students pulled themselves reluctantly from their seats and headed up on stage. "Don't forget that Trent Kalamack is one of our big corporate sponsors this year and that a few of you will be selected to tour his property."

A new swell of noise accompanied this reminder, teenage girls sharing gossip about Cincinnati's most eligible bachelor who'd dropped out of sight in recent weeks.

"You remember when the papers broke the story that he was arrested at his own wedding?" one of the girls said to her friend as she passed Siobhan.

One of Charles' friends nudged him with a shoulder as they headed down the stairs, too. "I heard the fiancée caught him in flagrante delicto with Rachel Morgan."

"Sweet."

Siobhan pulled her hood back up and tugged the drawstring tighter. Most of her fellow students were jostling into their normal positions on the risers.

Mr. Smith stepped down next to her. "You have a gift. You shouldn't waste it on nobody's like him."

Siobhan frowned, not sure what he meant, but knowing that he'd spoken so only she could hear. A gift? She shook her head in confusion and followed him to the stage.