A/N: Hey, here's another. Not really sure if anyone's reading this, but MEGA thanks to AwesomeCoolPerson for reviewing, really made my day 3 and thanks for saying that bit was funny, I'm quite funny in real life but my true funnyness does not come out in my writing :')

Happy Reading x

Chapter 4 – The House

The first thing I did when I went inside the house? Showered. I hadn't showered in three weeks, and being a teenage boy I was frankly in desperate need of one. The scalding water burned my side wound, but made me feel so much better, inside and out. It was like it was washing away the stench of the hospital, so like that of the School.

Then I dressed , in my Dirty Projectors T-shirt and black - obviously – jeans. I decided to look round, correctly guessing that Max would be too busy looking after the flock and making sure they were cleaned up.

On the ground floor of the, well, mansion, there was a large modern kitchen, with a wall separating it from the dining room. There was a big wooden table with eight chairs surrounding it at the other end of the kitchen – very spacious and open-plan. There were large French doors leading out from this space – useful for an escape, I noticed.

Interestingly, the upstairs was bigger than the downstairs. There were seven bedrooms – one for Anne, one for each of us. Coincidence? My guard was now up again, I had never trusted a grown-up before, except Jeb, who had turned out to be a coward and a liar anyway, and I wasn't about to start now.

There were five bathrooms. Five. In one house. Five bathrooms. This place just seemed too good to be true.

I went to Max's room, where she was towel drying her hair. "Yo, Max."

"What's up, Fang?" she smiled at me. I could tell she was in a good mood, probably due to the shower she'd just had.

"Just had a look around. Some okay escape routes, upstairs bigger than downstairs, and the fridge is massive," I said, in my usual, succinct way. I don't see the point in using more words than usual, so I don't.

"Thanks Fang, what would I do without you," she grinned.

"Well you definitely wouldn't survive very long," I told my best friend. She rolled her eyes.

"Get out, Fang, I'm in a towel." Oops.

About half an hour later, I heard Gazzy go ask Max if we could go flying. Me and Ig were playing an intense game of table tennis, and I certainly wasn't going to quit first. We were drawing at two games all, and, because this is bird-kid table tennis, the loser of each game had to fly around the house three times in penalty.

It hurt, especially with my side, but whatever. It was great.

Max leant out of 'her' bedroom window, and shouted down to us in the backyard. "Yo, guys! We're going flying; get your butts up and away now!"

Iggy looked at me. "Do you think she remembers that we're the same age as her?"

I chuckled. "Dude, its Max. Of course she does, she just doesn't care."

We flew around outside for a few hours. There was a massive red outbuilding that I could hear held animals, most prominent of which were horses.

"What is that, like, a plane hangar?" Nudge said, staring at the building. I certainly could have been, what with the size of it.

"It's a barn," I said. I could see Max keeping an eye on me, which kind of irritated me. She's my best friend, not my freaking mother, and she knew I hated to look weak.

We landed inside the entrance of the barn, after Angel had realised it may be a barn with animals. How exciting. Though I guess it would be to a six year old who had never seen a real farm animal before in her life.

The first animal we came to was a large gray horse, who was surveying us calmly. Gazzy was staring at it, like he was having a conversation with it, and he was intently looking at its huge rump – as if amazed that any animal could have so much farting potential.

Anne came up behind us, making the others jump. I heard her, so did Iggy, we have the best senses out of the Flock, even better than Max's. Except Iggy's sight, of course, since...y'know...he's blind.

Anne started giving Nudge advice on how to feed 'Sugar', and Nudgie was gazing at the horse enraptured. She was terrified of feeding it, even though this was a girl that could knock out two fully grown men at once. I glanced at Max, she was smiling softly at the happiness of her Flock.

I wondered about Anne. Here she was, after only just having met us, but already looking after us as if we were her own. There had to be some ulterior motive, it couldn't be that she was just being nice to us for the sake of it. Grown-ups were not nice; I'd learnt that from experience.

"You guys have another half an hour," said grown-up called suddenly. "Dinner's at six."

See? She was just too good to be true.

A few minutes later, we went out to Anne's pond in her backyard. It was huge but quite shallow, meaning it was still warm enough to swim in, even in early October. Especially for four bird-kids who had never been to a pool in their lives.

The whole place was kind of creepily idyllic. Having never seen such a perfect place before, and having been raised to be sceptical, critical and sarcastic (not intentionally, I might add), Max and I were very much on our guard.

We walked past the pond, and further out towards the rolling, beautiful hills in the background. See what I mean? I'm Fang. I'm manly. I do not use such words as beautiful and rolling, especially not twice in one day. It was too kind of picturesque.

There were yet more animals out here. "Anne is quite the animal lover." I remarked, falling into step besides Max. "Horses, sheep, goats. Chickens. Pigs."

"Yeah," she replied. "I wonder who's for dinner?" I grinned one of my rare grins at her, and saw her face go red. She strode past me, and up towards the Gasman and Iggy. What was that about?

Girls.

A/N: written to Summer Of '69 by Bryan Adams. What a legendary song. Anyone got any good rock songs? Review and tell me! x