Hello everyone. I appreciated the kind reviews I received on my first chapter. This is my first fanfic so I'm flying by the seat of my pants a bit on this, but I have what I think are some fun ideas for the different directions this story might take in the future so please enjoy.

Chapter Two: An unexpected Guest

I woke up staring out across the grassy mall, my body propped against the trunk of a tree. A few snow flurries fell around me like dust and I shivered once, twice.

The presence was there, right beside me. I could barely catch the exhale of his breath he was so quiet and still.

I hardly dared to move and painstakingly I turned my head to regard the form crouching patiently beside me. My heart threatened to stop when I saw a pair of mismatched eyes studying my face, intense and unwavering. We regarded each other for a long few seconds before my fingers found a rather large stick beside me and I jumped up, holding it slightly over my shoulder like a cudgel.

"Okay, buddy! Back off!" I yelled, but I was dizzy and found myself leaning against the tree for support. My voice rang out through the clear, crisp night but the stranger hardly blinked.

His gaze never left me as he rose up, his gaunt form cloaked in black, his head easily rising above my own by a foot or more.

My face twitched slightly. "Look," I said, gulping, "I don't know who you are…." Those eyes – one the color blue of willow china, the other a brown not unlike my own dark curls – never left my face. Not once. "But unless you want me to report you to campus police, I suggest you take a hike and – "

"Christine."

There is was again. My name. And they way he said it, like he was spinning glass with his voice. It was like magic. I steeled myself against the pull of his voice and raised my stick a tad higher.

"I'm so sorry, Christine" he said in a half-whisper, and I finally got a glimpse of his face. The half bathed in the lights of far-off street lamp was solemn and pained, but the other half was concealed in a swath of porcelain white. "So sorry," he said again.

His tone cut me like glass, the pain evident in his voice affecting me as well and I screwed up my nose and my resolve against the strange feelings warring inside me.

I looked around, the campus utterly deserted. I took a step back as he took one forward, hands held up. "Christine, I …" he started and stopped, suddenly looking very confused. "Are you wearing fuzzy boots?"

I glanced down at my Ugg boots. "Uh, yeah," I said carelessly. "But how do you know my name?"

He started to say something and stopped, as if fully seeing me for the first time. Suddenly he started to really look around his surroundings, and I watched his eyes widen in fear and confusion.

"This isn't Paris…"

"Look, I don't know what's going with you, but I can direct you to some great resources here on campus if you are a student. Counselors and stuff like that."

"Wait, this makes no sense. You are speaking English!" he said, pointing an accusing finger at me.

"Yeah…" I let the stick fall a fraction of an inch.

"And where is your fiancée? He didn't abandon you, did he?" His voice faded to a growl.

"As much as I enjoy having a tête-à-tête in the middle of the night with a stranger in the darkest, creepiest part of campus, I think it is time for me to go."

And with that I let the stick drop entirely and finding my backpack a few short feet away, hauled it up, tossing it over my shoulder. I was a pretty good judge of character – I always knew the toads from the people worth giving the time of day to – and the person before me, strange as he was, wasn't a threat to me. Of that I was almost certain.

"Mademoiselle!" he called after me, but I kept walking – refused to look back. It wasn't until I felt his fingers brush my wrist again that I stopped.

"What do you want from me?" I snarled and he stared at me aghast. I didn't know it then, but it was about the worst thing I could have said to the man. I watched his eyes drop to the ground, his obsidian black hair shining in the dim light.

"I just…well." His eyes flicked up to meet mine. "You are wearing my coat, and it's rather cold out."

He was right about the weather part. It must have been about ten or twelve degrees out and the snow was starting to fall fast now. The coat part I was dubious about.

"Check the pockets if you don't believe me, mademoiselle. My composition book should be in one of them."

"Who are you?"

He looked askance. "Erik Destler. It's written in the front of the book."

So he was right about the coat part too, because I found his name written in curling letters on the front page of the book just like he said. Something else caught my eye just then as I flipped through the entries. One of the entries was dated from the 19th century.

I started to walk again and he followed as I hoped he would, ever the silent presence. I didn't stop until I reached the street corner just across from my dorm and we were both bathed under the light of a street lamp. His face was shrouded in the deep shadow cast by his fedora. He was wearing a thin silk cape that glittered faintly and his gloved hands hung limply at his sides as he waited for me to speak.

"What year is it?"

"Christine?"

I shuddered, thrown off every time by the way he said it. "The year, sir. What's the year?"

All I heard was 18-something or other. Something from the latter part of the 19th century. Someone here had to be delusional – and I was fairly certain it wasn't me, but this man, this – shadow – had just materialized out of a cold, snowy night after I had found a booklet in the coat I got from some strange old lady on the top floor of the library. Maybe allowances for an impossibility had to be made.

The next thing I heard was an unearthly growl as Erik pulled me to one side, his cape thrown protectively around me.

"What the hell –" I gasped and he covered my mouth.

"It's a monster!" he whispered as a sleek sports car stopped at the crosswalk, music blaring.

I wrestled out of his grasp, tired of being man-handled. "It's a car you cretin!"

The driver saw me and started to yell. "Yo! Raoul! It's that babe from the library!"

The guy with nice face rolled down the back window, perfectly white, straight teeth glinting as he gave me a hesitant wave which I returned awkwardly while the rest of the guys in the car starting hooting. He really did have a nice face, I mused. It wasn't that he was just good-looking; I sensed substance behind the fair façade which was more than most frat boys could boast.

"Next Friday!" the driver yelled, peeling out, his crimson red taillights fading down the street.

They must not have seen Erik who seemed to melt into the shadows effortlessly. I sensed some serious grouchiness from that quarter as I turned back around and found him regarding me with crossed arms.

"Where were we?" I asked him, tugging him along with me by the arm before anymore chance meetings could make my life any stranger or more confusing. "Oh, yes. You were telling me the date. Well my tall dark friend," I said breathlessly, "hate to make things weirder then they already are, but the year is 2017 and you're not in France anymore."

I waited for him to object the entire time I slid my card through the security door and took the elevator to the fourth floor. I expected him to start laughing hysterically and call me a crazy person, but he didn't. Not when we walked down my hall or when we finally slipped into my room. I had already thought about it and decided he needed someplace to stay the night. This was completely absurd, but I trusted him based on more that just my generally spot-on character assessment – he seemed familiar somehow.

I flicked on the light and he looked up in surprise at the LED twinkle lights strung across the narrow space I called my own. I was an RA so I got my own room, but it was small and cramped; a perfect shoe-box of a place that still somehow managed to become a refuge for the bewildered, overwhelmed and lonely living among us in the hall.

Erik scrutinized an old anime poster while gradually letting himself down onto one of my chibli character beanbags.

"Reminds me of Persia," he said to himself more than me, already trying to poke his finger down my pencil sharpener.

This was going to be interesting.

"Gotta make a quick call," I said, hitting Megan's name in my contacts.

"Chris, my darling friend. My dear, dear, darling friend." Her voice was a tad too high and I could loud music in the background.

"I thought you had to catch an early flight to Vegas?" I said, pacing as much as I could in the tiny space and trying to ignore a curious set of mismatched eyes.

"Yeah, well, I thought I could just head from – hey! I paid for that drink, it's mine, not yours – sorry, Chris. Like I was saying, you have to make the most of every minute. Is everything okay? You sound stressed."

"There's a boy in my room," I said bluntly and I could have sworn I heard someone choking on the other end.

"Whoa! Um, right. Well, I'm glad you took my advice about letting loose. Is he cute?"

I turned around in time to see Erik open the microwave door, shut it, and push the release button so it popped open again. He kept doing it a couple more time before moving on to the stapler which he started cursing when it pinched his finger.

"Hard to tell, Meg. Hard to tell."

"He better be as smart as you or you'll get bored in five. I know you," she said in an obnoxiously accusing voice delivered in a tone that jumped about a bit too much for my taste. "And before you say anything, I already ordered a cab. Should be here any second to take me to a hotel by the airport. But before we part, what's the problem?"

"The problem is – " and I stopped. On second thought this was going to be hard to explain over the phone. I really just wanted to hear Megan's voice. Sometimes I hoped my friend's brashness in all matters would wear off on me. "No problem. Have a safe flight, bestie."

"Thank you dahling," and the line went dead.

"This is your room?" My unplanned for guest said in an odd voice. He seemed less intimidating and more human under fluorescents with the table of periodic elements hanging behind him and the stuffed tiger on my bed regarding him with its glass eyes.

"Yep, this is my room."

"But I can't stay here…."

"I know it's tight and small, but here." I sat down on the floor, already pulling stuff out from under the raised bed. "I have a sleeping bag under here for camping trips and there's a lot more space then you realize. So –"

"But I can't!" The poor guy seemed mortified. Then I remembered Victorians were a tight-laced bunch.

"But you must," I said, with a tight smile. "And if you're worried about social conventions, honestly we really have none left so this isn't breaking any rules. You're sleeping under my bed – by university standards that's pretty prudish."

Not saying anything, he glanced around the room somewhat fearfully, jumping when the heater kicked on. I felt a twinge of sympathy and wondered if he had left any kind of a family or friend in the past – maybe this other Christine he mistook me for….

"As you wish," he said at last, his voice a rasp as he vanished under my bed.

Gently, I took the composition book out of the coat pocket and placed it carefully at the edge of the bed. In a moment, a gloved hand tentatively retrieved it and with a long weary sigh borne from hours of studying, I turned off the light and climbed into bed fully clothed, my eyes stinging from weariness. I would figure out what to do with Mr. Destler in the morning.

Before I drifted off, I could have sworn I heard the faintest of music playing somewhere far off. My eyes stinging now for an entirely different reason, I dreamt of a violinist and his daughter preforming again for a contented audience.