I'm listening to music and watching the telly at the same time while I write this. Which, sadly, I do a lot while I write this story. Luckily no Spongebob plot has slithered into my writing! (Yes, Spongebob)

Mind Trickster

I look into Klutz's deep hazel eyes, a mix of murky green and dark brown and vibrant lime. They are clouded with hate and anger.

Clouds are always hiding something.

I stop humming and fall into those bottomless spheres of fury.

Two tall figures with hoods hiding crooked smiles and crooked teeth linger by the door way, talking to a petite woman with long dark hair that falls loosely around her pretty face and dark eyes. They nod and smile, lopsided, yellow teeth flashing.

A small boy with a mess of black hair like his mother's slips into the hall before running back and crouching up the stairwell, which is off to the right, past the open door leading to a quaint bathroom. The short woman closes the door, clutching an envelope to her chest and looking triumphant and horrified at the same time. Her hair is greasy and split at the ends, and her face is wrinkled beyond its years.

She slips into a doorway to the right, into the small kitchen and slaps her palms next to the sink, looking up into a mirror hanging over it.

"It's for Xavier. It's for him." She whispers to her reflection, smiling half heartedly. "He deserves this."

I pull away from this image because it isn't what I was looking for. At least now I know a bit about Klutz. His house looks poor, his mother is pretty, but also tired and stressed. He looked fearful. He looked confused. He looked worried.

The Klutz in front of me glares at me intensely.

Stop it, you're scaring me.

Ha ha. That was sarcasm.

A ray of sun reaches into the room, and I'm reminded that I have to work fast. I can't have Klutz missing in action, he needs to attend his classes; I can't have anyone looking for him.

He's not here, don't look here.

That was a joke. Excuse me for trying to lighten the mood. It's so tense and awkward, with Klutz looking at me like I'm holding a gun in one hand and gasoline in the other. Looking at me like "Are you kidding? You stupid or something? I hate you and your stupid ways."

I drift into his head again, his confusing mess of mixed up thoughts and emotions and memories. Luckily, I'm used to people's unorganized minds and can sift through the stuff I don't need and the stuff that will help me. Anything to keep him quiet.

I'll try black mail first. Some of these memories are really embarrassing.

"Klutz!" I smile at him. He's funny, with that angry face of his. "You're funny." I thought he should know.

A stream of swears flows freely from his thin lips. Big words for such a little guy. I tell him so. I thought he should know that too.

"Stop calling me Klutz!" He whispers, trying to pack the intensity of a scream into his words. "My name is Xavier!" He hisses this last part, looking daggers at me.

The bathroom door opens and Sora drifts out like a ghost, slipping into her bed. I pull the hangings around her, watching Klutz. He opens his mouth to recommence the flow of cursing.

"Klutz, just… shh…" I whisper frantically when Sora shifts again in her bed. I want her to go to sleep. I really can sort this out, I know I can. I want Sora to trust me; I want her to think of me as a friend. I don't have many of those. Okay, I have one. Ichijou.

"My name is Xavier!" Klutz snaps with a flash of white teeth.

"Well, you wouldn't tell me that when I asked before and I've already named you." I inform him. It's his fault for being stubborn. Maybe I would call him by his real name if he hadn't been so reluctant to tell me what it was.

Xavier rushes forward with more swears. Predictable. I step towards him. Time to find some information I can use to my advantage. I swim through his head, trying to find something particularly note worthy.

A history of bed wetting, nightmares, hand me down clothes and street fights that are never won. Nothing I could really use against him. A swarm of faces with their eyes tipped downwards, always taller than him, always with better clothes, always calling him cute. Anger for those people. How dare you look down on me?

A younger Xavier walking the halls of a large Elementary School with tall ceilings and buffed floors, scuffing his old trainers against them, the hems of ripped jeans dragging. Everything so strange and beautiful, the neighbourhood green and perfect with kids in trim blouses laughing with other kids in trim blouses.

Returning to his house, with the peeling paint and dry grass and two kids smoking around the corner, greeting him with a flurry of well meaning words that would be insults in any other community. Waving and wishing for something better, handing in the perfect grades and asking nonstop if he could attend a boarding school; somewhere where he came from the same dorm as the other people, instead of the opposite side of town.

No, no, no, I'm sorry, hun, but we can't afford it. And you like your school, you wouldn't want to leave.

And the mother who just didn't understand that he didn't like his school; that the people there were tall and stuck up and perfect. They looked down at him with their straight smiles and walked with their shoulders squared and their pretty heads high and Xavier was only 5'2" and was the shortest in his class.

And then the men came, crookedly handing an envelope to his mother. Suddenly they did have the money, and she bought a nice house in Japan and he went to Cross Academy and don't ask questions.

The thoughts were those of someone who was emotionally falling apart at the seams. It's perfect. I sit on the floor in front of Xavier, chin angled upwards at his face. I'm not looking down on you Xavier, not anymore. Now will you listen to me?

He looks down on me, and the ghost of a smile brushes the corners of his mouth, but his eyes remain hard and he seethes like a little kettle.

I'm a little tea pot, short and stout, here is my handle, and here is my spout! When I get all steamed up, hear me shout.

"Xavier, if you go to class today and even drop a hint as to what happened tonight, you'll never be able to attend this school again." I don't know if this is completely true, but I think they would kick out the humans if use vamps started nipping at mortal flesh. "They will want you to go back home where you're safe from another little accident like this and you will have to keep going to that school with the people who don't respect you. You'll have to go back to losing fights in back alleys and being poked and teased by the victor and picking yourself off the ground without any dignity left."

I tilt my head, watching his reactions. Initially, there is disbelief, then turmoil in his head as he wonders if I'm right, then fear that I am right. And his facial expression doesn't shift a millimetre.

I smile. Success.

Tarot: 1

Klutz's inner tattle tale: 0

Some of his hair falls into his murky eyes as he watches me, casting his face into semi shadow. He still needs a little convincing. And there's a new look to his eye; suspicion.

"How did you know that?" His voice sounds different now, soft and a little scared. How did I know that? I read your mind, little boy.

"I know things." I tell him instead. This could help my argument. "I also know that that will be your fate if you blab, so try not to run your big mouth."

His eyebrow twitches. He likes being called big, but not particularly a big mouth. He wonders if I could really know this. He wonders if there is a way I could have found out about his life. He settles. I really do have an uncanny why of knowing things I shouldn't.

I giggle. That part's true. I probably shouldn't know these things.

He decides not to tell, but he's scared of Sora. He knows we're vampires.

Not we, Klutz. You don't need to think you know more than you're allowed to know.

"Yes, Sora's a vampire. You can't tell a soul, or they'll take all of us away. Back to the streets." Now I haven't revealed the whole Night Class. He'll just think its Sora. Unless he's really smart and notices that vampires are nocturnal and the Night Class takes classes in the middle of the nighty times.

"That's why she takes her classes in the night." He tells me, as though he's stating a fact to a hopelessly uninformed kindergartener. I guess he is kinda smart. And a little stuck up, too. "So… why does the rest of the Night Class take them… Oh." He breaks off. I chew on my lip.

"Are you going to bite me too?" He asks, without a trace of fear in his voice.

"Just don't scratch yourself." It could be funny if it wasn't so serious.

I love all the reviews I've gotten so far! Even in your wildest dreams, you could never realize how insanely happy they make me! I hope you're as happy as I am with the progression in this! Thank you reviewers, you are wonderful. And thank you to everyone who reads this, favs it and alerts it, you make me very happy as well! And thanks to my anonymous reviewer. I know most writers get mad when someone doesn't feel the need to make an account and review, but I am happy that you review even without an account, it flatters me somehow. I don't know.