Big thanks to SynethesiaTastesGrey who gave me my first review and told me about the line thingy to break up the text (: hope you all like this chapter. Usual disclamer: Everything (apart from Ava) beongs to Karen Chance. Please R&R I'll love you all forever :D


"Do you have any idea what you've done?"

I looked at the old, haggard man who was my head teacher. Mr. Black. He was about seventy years old and had grey hair and eyes that supported more wrinkles than a raisin. His suit hadn't faired much better either. It used to be some shade of gray that would have looked rather fetching on a younger man but his had been worn so much it had become dull except at the elbows and knees which had gone silvery through years of abuse. However unfit for the position he looked was more than made up for in his stern manner and steely eyes. He was perched on the edge of his desk with his arms crossed glaring down at me. Sat in the green leather wing backed chair I felt small, like everything was pressing in at me from all sides.

"Yeah. I put a friend in hospital." I said flippantly which earned me a none too pleased look.

"Do you have any idea how much hassle his parents are giving me? The doctors are saying he won't be out of hospital for a while and now he's going down hill. Do you have any idea how bad I feel?"

"How bad you feel? Cry me a river!" I incredulously shot back flying out of my seat. How dare he try and put me into another guilt trip? He didn't have a clue how bad I felt and then he was trying to make it seem like he felt worse then I did. "He's my best friend –"

"Then why did you do it?"

"You think I did this on purpose?" My anger was almost replaced with shock. I felt myself begin to shake with rage at his insane suggestion but rather than punch the rest of his life out of him – and it was tempting believe me – I walked out slamming the door behind me.

I found myself walking to the hospital which was yet another clinical looking room. The front desk was manned by a rather lost looking student who had the air of 'new volunteer' plastered on her forehead. I didn't bother asking her for help in finding Toby's room. Instead I walked round the back of the desk – ignoring her shocked expression – and found the folder that had his name on the front. Room b-12. I walked down the perfectly silent corridor feeling mildly queasy. Hospitals were never my favourite places to be, they were boring and you had to stay in bed all day. But the difference here was that it was my fault that someone else was in there. I know I hadn't meant to hurt him – I was tired, probably concussed and annoyed with myself. But they were only excuses. It shouldn't have happened. I should have had more control than that. I should have remembered that my magic, for some reason, was more harmful to the people around me than theirs was to me. I should have remembered that. There was no reason not to.

Which was probably part of the reason Mr Black was so annoyed with me. When we first began using dangerous magic and I'd beaten the hell out of a dummy without much effort. I was taken to his office where he had the dilemma of deciding if it was safe for me to continue training. He said that I would "be one of the best warriors the school had seen in a long time" but was that worth putting a whole class of future war mages at risk? I'd promised to make sure I restrained the amount of magic I used and I would certainly try my hardest to keep everyone safe. For a while that promise haunted me through self doubt and so far I'd been okay. But now… I was fine. Toby wasn't.

His door looked sadly at me but at the same time angrily as if it had a duty to protect him. That was supposed to be my duty. I was supposed to protect him from myself. I took a breath and gently knocked before poking my head round the door.

He was just lying there. Laying there, the monitors saying he'd declined in the last half hour. I closed the door behind me with a soft click that suddenly seemed too loud. His hand was cold and his lips were beginning to turn blue. The pulse monitor paused for a long time between each heartbeat leaving a heavy silence in the space that should have held another heartbeat.

"Come on, Toby. You're going to miss the start of the chess tourney if you don't wake up." I sighed and brushed some hair out of his eyes.

The hand I was holding twitched making me jump. Hope sparked inside me. Maybe he would be alright after all. But beyond that he didn't stir for the whole two hours I sat with him. Light was just beginning to fade making the sky go red when Mr. Jones stepped into the room. He stood on the other side of the bed looking rather unkempt. It was strange to see him like that, he was normally alert and his eyes looked engaged in what was around him. Now he just looked worn and kind of confused.

"You've been with his parents, huh?" I quietly asked.

"They aren't his parents exactly. More like… friends who've taken on the responsibility. They're worried sick. I can't say I blame them."

"Neither can I." A heavy silence ensued in which we both looked at Toby willing him to get better. "Why are you here, Sir?"

"Becca asked me to sit with him for a while."

I vaguely remembered her now that he said her name. She was the woman who I'd assumed was his mum when she came to visit. She was a really short, buxom lady who had thin, mousy brown hair and looked like she'd just been doing some baking with the amount of flour that covered her. She struck me as a jolly lady by nature that would do anything to protect him even though she didn't possess much magic.

"Neither of them will be coming to visit for a while since the vampire Consul summoned them. Ava they have to go." He said when he saw the frown that had no doubt crept upon my brow. "It's a summons they can't refuse."

The guilty part of me was relieved actually. I wouldn't have to face them, wouldn't have to apologise whilst they watched their near son lie in a bed dying. It meant I didn't have to go though the fear of them telling me I wasn't allowed to visit him whilst he either recovered or died. I was being a coward and I knew it. But it was so much easier than having to face up to them. I felt tears pooling in my eyes.

"I've got to go. Ermm… Lisa wanted me to er, do… something." I stiffly walked out of the room not caring for once if I looked weak in front of a teacher. Normally I cared about their opinion of me but this was different. This wasn't school work it was something that should never have happened. Especially not to him.


Mircea was looking for Cassie. She'd been hiding away a lot since the vision containing Pritkin's death. He understood some of what she felt but he didn't understand why she beat herself up about it. It wasn't like her seeing it happen caused it to happen. It would happen whether she saw it or not. He'd looked all over his personal suit in his Washington court but she was still nowhere to be seen. She wasn't even in the garden he'd made especially for her which was her usual thinking spot.

"Rafe have you seen Cassie?"

"She shifted over to Dante's about an hour ago. She said she'd told you."

"Mircea!" Pritkin hollered. "Where is Cassie? She's late for physical combat again."

Mircea suffered an unusual moment of indecision. Cassie was obviously more than upset about what she'd Seen and he wanted to protect her from more distress but she needed to face up to what was going to happen if she wanted to be the best Pythia she could possibly aspire to be. "Dante's. Bring her back if you want." He said after Pritkin had blinked once.

"Happily." He disappeared in a whirlwind of weapons and his long duster.

"Safely, Pritkin." He added knowing Pritkin's habit of doing things by force rather than take a more gentile approach.

Pritkin couldn't understand this sudden change in Cassie. She was reluctant to train at first but after MAGIC got destroyed she saw the necessity to be able to better protect herself than distracting people with her lousy shooting. He strode through Mircea's ostentatious house ignoring the stand alone vase that came from the renaissance period and pointedly turned his eyes away from the portrait of Mircea and Cassie sat together in the large ball room. His hurried footfalls echoed off the walls and marble floor. The neatly kept gardens were a relief to his senses which infinitely preferred the simplicity of the carefully kept lawns.

One of these such lawns was home to the entrance of the ley line that passed over Dante's. He put up his shields and pulled the line open and let it take him zooming off to Vegas. It occurred to him that the line he was travelling on was the very one that had destroyed MAGIC a few years ago. And he had to go through the very part of it that had ruptured. He could honestly admit to himself that he was a little bit nervous though he didn't know why. The rupture had repaired itself within a couple of days of the accident. Ruminating over the past he almost forgot to control where he was in the line and had to jerk himself back into the smooth currents of the middle of it.

The bright lights of Vegas came into stark relief against the darkness of its desert surroundings. Dante's was easy to find because of the magic radiating out of it like an aura signalling everything magical towards it. For the norms the mote was probably a factor for all those who wanted to get some sort of mystery spookiness into their trip. He found it amazing that the norms who went in there didn't realise that the 'attractions' in there were actually real not costumes i.e. Satyrs, Fey, Zombies… the list goes on, he thought as he left the line.

For the first time he could remember the front lobby wasn't alive with activity. For once he could actually see the entire length of the space and hear the echo of every tiny sound he made. Strangely it reminded him of living in seventeenth century France where all the large buildings had arched ceilings way overhead and long corridors that could quite easily hold a ball in them.

A satyr came to welcome him but he didn't let him speak before saying, "Miss Palmer do you know where she is?"

"No but I would like to. I hear she's a looker."

"I'm sure Lord Mircea would like to know you said that." Although the satyr wasn't under the jurisdiction of the Senate any person within the supernatural community would be wise to quake in their boots of even the mere thought of crossing that particular vampire. He didn't like vamps as a rule but even he had to admit that Mircea wasn't a man to be trifled with. "Where is she?"

The blonde haired creature thought for a moment, his goat knees almost knocking together in fear. "I don't know. Casanova probably does though he's in the shopping plaza with Augustine." He trotted off before he could be intimidated by those piercing green eyes anymore. One thing was for sure, he wouldn't be invoking the wrath of that mage ever again whether Lord Mircea was mentioned or not.

Pritkin found a portal he'd become aware of last time he was there which would take him straight to the plaza. As it happened he emerged and fell straight into Augustine who squeaked in surprise and then horror when he spilt a smoothie of some description all over himself. The fabric itself didn't appear to be too happy he noticed as snakes appeared on its surface and angrily hissed at him. Pritkin, for half a second, wondered why he even had a human drink but quickly dismissed his confusion – he probably only had it for show.

"What have you done mage?" he demanded looking down at his fast reddening blazer and trousers which clashed with his green glasses. They in turn clashed with the purple pencil that was tucked behind his ear.

"I'm looking for Miss Palmer." he said dismissively and turned to Casanova, "Where is she?" he knew Cassie well and had anticipated the she'd most likely asked anyone not to tell him where she was if he turned up so he let a flash of assertiveness fly over his eyes.

Casanova gulped, "Purgatory but she said not to be disturbed… Of course you may be the exception." He hurried when the mage looked even more displeased than before. "There's a portal over there." he pointed a shaky finger over to his left.

The portal was inside a mannequin which wasn't wearing an awful lot. When he immerged from the portal he was stood in a room behind the bar, obscured from the main room by a door. Through the small window he could see Cassie slumped over the bar, glass in hand. She didn't notice him come round the bar. He smelled alcohol on her and she looked fairly drunk which wasn't the best way to be when so many people wanted her dead. He saw no reason for her to be drunk.

"You're very late for training, Miss Palmer."

"I had another vision." She managed to slur. "People sat round a table discussing something. Something bad. Something about a… student. The person is important some how."

She turned to him with half glazed over eyes. But when she fully absorbed who the blonde hair and green eyes belonged to she jumped back in surprise. John was the last person she wanted to see because that meant her vision came back to her. She saw him fall, defeated, onto the blood slick battle ground.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded suddenly sober.

"Taking you back to your house." He took her by her upper arm and pulled her out of her seat.

She began to sluggishly protest but soon saw that her futile attempts were getting her nowhere and gave up opting for the choice that gave less of an audience. Anyway if she put up a big struggle he didn't have any qualms about taking her in a fireman's lift – Mircea had said to bring her back 'safely' not 'without embarrassment'.