"Shit, sorry!"
The response was not what Zoe had expected and she swallowed the rest of her scream. The hands let her go the second she was back on her feet. Zoe blinked, and stared.
"Are you following me?" Zoe asked the first question that popped to mind. She could only take so many heart-racing events in one day – it was all getting too much. First the dream last night, then this morning with the déjà vu, the strange shadow, the weird Mrs Thornton, and then the ghost...
"No." The reply came indignantly.
"That's the second time today! Do you get off on scaring people like that?" Zoe demanded shakily, taking a step away from him. Her fear sank into a pit of fumes, and anger gave her more strength. "What are you doing here, Jess?"

"I thought I heard screaming." Jess said. He frowned and glanced toward the house. "It wasn't you, was it?"
"I... no." Zoe breathed, and followed his gaze to the house. Silence. The screaming had stopped. Regardless, Zoe didn't want to go back in there.
"Are you okay?"
Zoe looked at him, puzzled. "What?"
"You look a bit shaken."
"No, I'm fine. I just... I've been having a really weird day." Zoe frowned when Jess snorted. "What's so funny?"
"Define weird." Jess said.
"Anything and everything out of the ordinary." Zoe said. "Something that doesn't make sense."
"Like pigs flying?"
Zoe stared at him for a moment, dumb-struck. What a stupid example...
"Or, say, elephants hatching from eggs? That type of weird?" He continued, pacing in front of her and motioning gracefully with his hand.
It was then Zoe realized he was taunting her. His eyes were laughing at her.

"Don't be stupid." Zoe said and shook her head. "You wouldn't understand."
"And you wouldn't know weird if it looked you in the eye." Jess retorted.
"Oh, and you would?" Zoe demanded.
"I'm the embodiment of weird." Jess beamed.
"Well..." Zoe tried to think of the most hurtful thing she could say. "You must have inherited that trait from your mom then."
The insult glided off his shoulders like water. "Actually, no, she's pretty... ordinary. You, on the other hand, are not. Obviously." His tone became mocking. "You don't look ordinary, and you don't sound ordinary. If there was anything weird about your day, I'd say you were it."

"Get off my property before I call the police." Zoe pointed toward the woods, furiously trying to blink away the tears that had surfaced. Don't cry in front of him, don't Zoe... But his words were hurtful, and Zoe couldn't keep the lump from her throat or stop her tears.
"Go ahead. Knock yourself out. Tell them Jesse Thornton is on your doorstep and won't leave you alone. Go ahead, see what they say." He said shrewdly.
"I don't know what Haley sees in you." Zoe spat at him. "You're just a nasty... sadistic... arrogant... bully!"
"She sees what every other girl in town sees – something they ought to stay away from but can't resist." Jess glared at her. "But I appreciate your opinion."
"Just leave me alone." Zoe turned to go into the house, but halted in her tracks when he grasped her hand. Zoe looked at him, startled.

"I'm sorry. I came here because I heard screams – I wanted to help you. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. It's just... when people start talking about how weird this or that is, it gets to me because my whole life is just plain weird." Jess said, genuinely apologetic.
"Oh, your life is weird?" Zoe repeated, and yanked her hand free of his grasp. "Oh, shame. So you see dead people and angels and devils, and just pretend that you don't?"
Jess took a startled step back, yet he reached for her again. Zoe jumped out of his reach, glaring at him furiously through her tears.
"So you have to deal with hearing things that other people don't, feeling and smelling things that other people don't? So you work differently from everybody else but put up a farce to prevent them from questioning your existence?" Zoe continued and broke off in a sob. "Oh, I feel for you, Jess, I really do."

"Who have you been talking to?" Jess demanded, but his words fell on deaf ears.
"If you don't leave right now, I'll get my dad's shotgun and shoot you, I swear it." Zoe cried angrily.
"You're not..."
"Enough." A voice snapped from the shadows of the woods.
Both heads whipped in the direction, and Jess backed away from Zoe obediently.

A man stepped out from the shadows, bleach-blonde hair glaring in the dimming sun. There was something graceful and frightening in the way he walked toward them. As he approached, Zoe could make out details more clearer; like the straight nose, the sculpted lips pulled tight in unmasked apprehension, the almost too perfectly defined cheekbones, the thick black eyebrows knitted together in a faint frown, the long dark eyelashes that framed cat-tilted eyes – eyes an indescribable shade of blue that held her own gaze captive with its sheer inhuman beauty. He stopped a few feet away from her. Up close he was even more... beautiful, like a painting. He was too flawless, too perfect. Real people don't look like that, Zoe thought dumbly. She couldn't pin an age to him either – there were no wrinkles or fine lines to give away his age, he looked quite young in fact, but his eyes held an ancient wisdom in them that made him seem suddenly very, very old to her.

The world seemed to be spinning and falling into mist around her. It wasn't until those vibrant blue eyes turned away to fix on Jess, that Zoe realized she'd been holding her breath all the time. She let it out in a discreet, slow exhale.
"Go back to camp. Faye is waiting for you." His voice was different, too, holding an elemental sound that wasn't normal, or human. Like water over rock. It reminded her of the guy in her dream the night before – with the unnaturally beautiful voice...

Zoe stumbled a few steps away from the stranger before her, staring wide eyed. She didn't know who he was, and she didn't care – all she knew was that the guy in her dream was the shadow in her room, and that the guy standing in her backyard at that moment was the same thing that the shadow was.

"But... she's just a drama queen, she wouldn't have really shot me." Jess protested.
"Right now." The man said curtly.
"I just wanted to help." Jess mumbled. He looked at Zoe as he walked past her toward the woods. "See ya."
"I sure as hell hope not." Zoe retorted sharply, breathless with anxiety to have them both gone.
Jess disappeared into the woods. Zoe eyed the man cautiously as he finally turned back to her. It felt like she was thrown into arctic water when he looked at her; her whole body just seemed to stiffen, her breath rebelled in her lungs, and she found her mind filled with nothing but the wrongness of his splendour.

He looked at her for a long time. She wanted to tell him to leave, but her voice didn't come at command. She didn't trust herself to move, either.
Why is he just staring at me? Zoe wished for all the world that she could just turn invisible. She didn't move when he reached his hand toward her. She blinked when he wiped away the tears on her cheeks – his touch was so light, so soft that she barely felt it. He slid his hands into his pockets, gave her another long measuring look, and promptly turned his back on her.
Zoe could move again the moment his eyes left her, and she pressed both her hands against her cheeks, watching him cross the yard in a couple of strides. He slid into the shadows, as smoothly as though he was one himself. She stared at the gathering darkness for a few more minutes, confused, when the sound of a car coming up the driveway made her turn.