I was in geometry, about to fall asleep, when the room shook slightly. The sprinklers above our heads began to drench us delicately with freezing water, the sirens wailing over the noise of the screaming that apparently went along with the fire alarms and emergency sprinklers. I stood up, deciding this allowed for a bit of rule-stretching. Leaving the rest of my class running in circles and covering their heads, I strode down the damp hallway, twisting through the crowd.

I spotted Angel and she waved, hopping over a puddle to reach me. She stretched her arms out on either side of her and twirled in a circle, splashing more water on me just as Gazzy and Iggy ran up, coming to a halt at the dancing Angel. Gazzy's hands were smudged with black and there was a streak of the same suspicious black on Iggy's left cheek. They were both panting and much wetter than me.

"I love school!" exclaimed a beaming, dripping Gazzy.

"This is grounds for expulsion!" Mr. Pruitt, our slightly ridiculous principal, screamed at us. He banged his fist against his wooden desk an stood up, his chair hitting the wall behind him and making a mark. He'd be pissed about that when he noticed it.

"The stink bomb was reason enough!" he continued at an even louder decibel, if possible. "But I stupidly gave you a second chance! You're nothing but a bunch of street rats! Vermin!" Ooh, he was creative. His wide range of vocabulary had us all impressed.

But, it was like, we'd been attacked a few days ago by wolf boys. Being shouted at by an overweight headmaster wasn't exactly all that threatening.

"My brothers didn't do the stink bomb! You never proved it – now you're accusing us again with no evidence! How… how un-American!" Max exclaimed, and I coughed a little to hide my grin.

Mr. Pruitt reached across the table to grab a startled Gazzy's wrists. He flipped them over and shook them in Max's face. "Besides that!" Max protested. He took another breath, turning a deeper shade of red, and I was actually looking forward to whatever he had planned when Anne burst into the room behind the assistant principal.

"Mr. Pruitt, if you could just let me speak to you for a moment…" Five minutes later we were out of there, but the silent car ride was almost as brutal.

"This was your big opportunity, kids," Anne said quietly. I rolled my eyes. Yeah, it was really disappointing that the principal of some preppy school hated us. It wasn't exactly a new feeling, being hated. "I'd had higher hopes for you all. You're intelligent, resourceful children, every one of you. You didn't have to resort to this and you know it. I'm disappointed that you had to stoop to the level of blowing up bombs to vent your feelings. Going to school is something you've never had the opportunity to do. You need to take advantage of this time… learn everything you can, watch, try new things… I'm really very upset." Were we home yet? The ride seemed longer than normal. "You're in big trouble, kids, and I'm afraid I'm going to have to punish you. Maybe if you're grounded you'll learn that being cooperative is the best way to learn and grow. I don't want any of you watching TV until I say so. Did you hear that, Zephyr? No TV. You guys won't be getting dessert for a while, either. I'd like you to think about your actions for a while. Grounded means no going anywhere you're not told, kids, understand?"

Nudge's eyes were glazed over, Max was looking out the window with a distracted expression, and I was pretty sure Iggy was asleep. No one said a word.

The second Anne's door closed for the night, mine opened. Max was peering around it, an excited look on her face. I shook the hair out of my eyes. "Hmm?" I asked, sitting up.

"I just saw a woman and a man on TV that I swear were Iggy's parents." I blinked in astonishment.

"Wha… what the heck," I managed.

"They were standing in front of their house. I saw enough to recognize it if I saw it again. Their name was Griffiths," she whispered to me. Iggy's last name. "Their kid disappeared fourteen years ago." When Iggy was born. "And the woman was the spitting image of Iggy." I shook my head slowly, processing this. Parents had always been this… mysterious, elusive thing in my mind. Something we all wanted in theory, but that was never going to actually happen to any of us.

Anyway, how strange was it that Max just happened to see this? "I can't believe you would just happen to see that," I said finally.

"I know," she agreed. "But how could it possibly be a setup? We weren't even allowed to watch TV today. I just – I think we have to check it out."

"How many houses are there in the DC area?" I asked her incredulously.

"This house had a big, dark church behind it, like on the next block. It was old-fashioned, and the spire was really tall. How many of those are there?" I sighed.

"About a million," I told her.

"Fang! This is a huge break! Of course we should go check it out!"

She was right.

As always.

Suddenly I looked up at her, my face serious. "But we're grounded," I pointed out. She looked at me for a second and then we both cracked up.

I noticed it right away, as soon as we were out of the house.

I was hot. Really hot. Like sweat-dripping-off-my-face hot.

It took Max a while to notice. "What's wrong?" she finally asked as she scanned the houses nearby for the right one. Shaking her head, she took off again. I followed, rolling my shoulders in discomfort.

"I'm way hot," I muttered. "But I don't feel sick. Just – way hot."

"Like I did? Huh. Give it a week; you'll be flying like the Concorde," Max reasoned. "I think. Or, you know, you're dying." She grinned at me, but something had just occurred to me, so I didn't grin back like usual. She noticed, of course. "What? You feel really bad?"

"No. But I just thought of something. I have your blood in me."

"So? It was just blood." She was missing the significant factor here. I clued her in.

"Not our blood. The red cells have DNA, remember? I got transfused with your DNA."

"Uh, so?" she asked. I shrugged.

"So maybe that's why this is happening. Maybe it wasn't supposed to happen to me." She thought about that.

"Hmm," she finally mused. "And we don't know if that's bad or good or nothing."

"Guess we'll find out," I muttered.

Three hours later, I was totally wiped out. Not only was I really hot, my wings ached and I was starving. It was bedtime for Fang. I glanced at Max. She looked exactly the same. Wordlessly, we took off in the direction of Anne's house. That was the communication we had – we didn't need words. We were just Max and Fang, best friends.

…just best friends?

Aaaaand I was officially so tired I was becoming delirious.

"Fang," Max said quietly. I turned to see her pointed at the house. Looking where she was pointing, I saw a rectangle of yellow with the black silhouette of Anne against the house. God. That was a little creepy. She'd noticed we were gone? At three in the morning? And she was still up looking for us?

We slid into my window. Max looked at me, exhausted, and extended her fist. Silently I stacked mine on hers and we tapped our other fists. I didn't even bother to kick my shoes off as I fell into bed, out almost before Max had closed my door on her way out.

But as I fell asleep, the image in my head was still that of Anne, waiting for us. Who was she?