Chapter 9

*Sophia*

Mr Crepsley was waiting impatiently for me, with two little people by his side.

"At last, you have chosen to make an appearance." he commented.

"We are now behind schedule, but no matter. We have at least two weeks before the council begins."

We set off, and I was pleased to note that one of the little people had a limp in his left leg. It would have been awkward if we had brought the wrong little people with us, Harkat would have been left at the cirque and we would never find out that he could speak. Having said that, I had to remember to call him 'lefty' as opposed to Harkat. As far as he knew, nobody bar Mr Tiny knew who he was yet.

We talked as we walked, me and Mr Crepsley. I had never really had much of a chance to bond with him before, as lame as that sounds, so I enjoyed our conversations. He taught me things about being a half vampire, such as which animals we could not drink blood from, (which included snakes, toads, cats) and about the history between vampires and vampaneze. I told him things about my old life, some of which he just couldn't seem to get his head around. We came to a stop about an hour before dawn, at a way station. Mr Crepsley explained that there were many of these on the route to vampire mountain, to help weary vampire travellers on their way. It was a cave, with a couple of coffins at the back, and a box with some matches to light a fire and bottles of blood.

We sat down on the dusty cave floor, and Mr Crepsley handed me one of the vials, which I drank gratefully. We had brought some food with us, but it would only last us a day or two. After that, we would have to catch and cook things ourselves. So I made a fire, while Mr Crepsley unpacked our dinner.

"So, this device...it plays music?" He was talking about my ipod, which I had in one ear as I was working.

"Yeah, thats right." I told him. "You press this button, see, and you can change the song."

"But, only you can hear this music, that is correct?"

"Well yeah, but you can too, if you put these in your ears." I showed him the headphones. He looked at them interestedly, then put them in. I had turned the volume right down, for as a vampire he had sensitive hearing, but he still got startled when I pressed play. After a while, he got used to it, and began to enjoy the music. He passed me one of the pieces of meat he had been cooking, I couldn't really tell what it was, but it was no worse than anything from aldi, and pointed at the screen of the ipod.

"What is this piece of music entitled?" he queried. Aww, he has to ask me to read things for him, I thought.

"It's called 'i'm not dead'" I told him.

"Well that much is obvious." he said. "If she was dead, she would not be singing this."

I laughed, and he handed me back my ipod.

"Quite enough of that, I think."

"You're right, we don't want you getting addicted to human technology, do we? Next thing you know you'll be asking the princes to get Sky so you never miss Hollyoaks."

"i never miss the Holy Oak? Why would I not want to miss a religious tree?"

"No, pet. Hollyoaks. Its a television programme."

"Oh, right."

What Crepsley said reminded me of Gwen. Once upon a time, we used to call Hollyoaks 'the Holy Oak' too. I wondered how she was holding up, whether she had been dragged into whatever Ash and Ree were up to. I hoped not. Not because I didn't want her to hate me like they did, though obviously I didn't, but because I didn't want to have destroyed her life like I had apparently destroyed Ree's and Ash's. When Crepsley was not looking, I sneakily checked my twitter for the first time since becoming a vampire, just to see what was happening back in their world.

I typed in gwenx, and looked at her twitter page. Spotting a tweet which read '#thosedays when you feel like you aren't even friends anymore', and wondered if she was talking about me. Knowing what Ash was capable of, she probably was. Great. I didn't know whether to be glad or sad. I was glad, because it meant Gwen wasn't being dragged into this mess, but at the same time I felt kinda dejected that she would think that it was me, not Ash, that she was complaining about on twitter.

After dinner Mr Crepsley retired to his coffin. He asked me if I would prefer to sleep on the floor, but I declined, recalling how comfy they were from the last and only time I had been in one. I stepped in and shut the lid, closing my eyes, and falling into sleep.

*Ash*

Gwen and Sadie were oddly distant with me the next morning. The conversation didn't flow like it normally did, they talked amongst themselves but excluded me slightly.

As Ree walked into the room, ready to go to Chemistry, the reason for them ignoring me became apparent.

"Where were you guys yesterday?" Sadie asked us. It would have been a casual enough question, except I knew that there was something up with them, which made me suspicious.

"We were at a funeral." Ree jumped in. "Of an old friend of mine. I asked Sophia to go with me, for y'know, moral support. I wanted to give them a proper send off."

"Oh right." Gwen looked uncomfortable. She blatantly did not believe Ree, but she was scared of telling her so, because of the touchy subject. Wow. Ree was a better liar than I had given her credit for.

We walked off towards Chemistry, Sadie and Gwen in front, Ree and I lagging behind. Although we were walking as a group, occasionally talking, I could sense that there was still a rift between us.

As I looked around the lab disinterestedly, Ree hit my arm with her pen and I turned round sharply.

"Have you seen what we're doing?"

"Chemistry?"

"No. Look at what we're using." She passed me a piece of litmus paper and I realised what she meant.

The litmus paper had reminded first her, and now me, of Steve.

Now all we had to do was find him.

Next stop. ICT Room.

After the lesson, walked off in the direction of the ICT Room, but to our surprise Gwen and Sadie ran to catch up with us.

"Hey gang!" Sadie said. "Are you going to do your ICT?"

"Er...yeah?" I said, knowing that was far from the case.

"Oh god we're so behind too!" Gwen exclaimed, looking stressed. "I'm seriously stressing about this, it's so lame how we have less than a week to finish it."

"I know, right?" Ree said, giving me a sideways look that said quite clearly, why are they here?

"Come on then...we've only got about half an hour and there's so much to do!" Sadie and Gwen propelled us forwards into the computer room, where we stood with a pained expression on our faces. So much for searching for Steve.