Title: Time After Time

Disclaimer: I don't own anything

Author's note: Emporium Power was the corporation that hired Sorenson and his team to determine if the place they wanted to build on could be a Native American burial site. And that is where Sorenson found the skull…

Chapter: The Unwelcome Fourth

"Have you noticed Liz acting strange lately?"

Maria glanced up at Alex's question, a frown marring her features. It was Wednesday morning, and slowly but surely the excitement about possibly performing in a show was pushing through her reticence to do anything school-related. Auditions were in the afternoon, and Maria couldn't help but grin.

"Not really," she answered Alex's question after a moment of thought. "Although she is starting to have second thoughts about the show, I can see that much."

Alex shook his head. "No, it isn't that. I don't know… I can't really explain it, but I just think something is… upsetting her."

"Maybe her relationship with Max is taking a toll on her?" Maria offered. "It can't be easy being in a relationship with a guy who is walking on the edge of a nervous breakdown."

"As opposed to being in a relationship with a guy who has the mental and emotional maturity of a two-year-old?" a voice huffed, and Isabel appeared, rolling her eyes and looking annoyed.

"Oh, come on," Maria challenged, "Space Boy is much better than that. He's at least got the capacity of a kindergartener."

Isabel shrugged. "Yeah, right." Lowering her voice, she said, "Max was upset this morning. Well, Max is always upset, but he was even more upset this morning. And he was driving Michael and I to school, and Michael's way to cheer him up was to talk about movies. Movies. I mean, Max is reeling from having been taken over by his ruthless, regal half, and Michael's idea of helping him deal with it is to talk about the stunts in Die Hard and how hot Cameron Diaz looked in Charlie's Angels. I mean, come on…"

"Did it work?" Maria asked.

Isabel shot her a pointed look. "This is Max we're talking about. What do you think?"

"Have you noticed Liz acting strange lately?" Alex questioned, his gaze now on Isabel.

Isabel blinked. "Uh… not really. Except that she is apparently stupid enough to want to date my brother." She looked between the two human friends, and asked worriedly, "Is something wrong with her? Is she being possessed? Because, really, I can only handle one near emotional-breakdown at a time, and Max isn't anywhere near stable yet."

"She just seems… upset," Alex answered with a sigh.

Isabel's lips turned up into a wry smile. "Did you miss the part of the conversation where she is attempting to date my near-the-brink-of-insanity brother?"

"Are you sure it isn't just cold feet?" Maria asked. "I mean… Liz hates the stage."

"And yet this entire thing was her idea," Alex countered, shaking his head.

"Liz is going to be onstage?" Isabel echoed, a little confused by the turn of the conversation. "Why?"

"The three of us are auditioning for the school play," Alex replied. "This afternoon. It's Othello."

Isabel considered this for a moment, then asked, "Can I come and watch and laugh at you?" Alex frowned and Maria pouted, but the statuesque alien just rolled her eyes at them. "I can't believe you would actually willingly do something like this. It's like… social suicide."

"You know, Izzy, I don't think they can drop any lower on the social status ladder," Tess' voice floated towards them as she materialized at Isabel's side.

"Hey, at least I'm not a fake, back-stabbing, manipulative…"

Maria's retort was cut off by Tess' casual remark, "I liked you a lot better when you were terrified we were going to kill you in your sleep." Before Maria could reply, Tess turned to Isabel and said, "Come on. You don't want to be late for class, do you?"

"Of course not," Isabel drawled. "Heaven forbid I miss out on all that fun." She gave Alex a quick kiss on the cheek and said, "I'll see you in second period."

As the two girls walked away, Maria shook her head and said to Alex, "You know, it's weird, but now that I know Tess actually does have the ability to kill me in my sleep, I'm actually a lot less intimidated by her."

Alex laughed. "Well, common sense and logic were never your strong points." Maria glared in mock outrage and hit him on the arm. He pretended to wince and rub his arm tenderly, even as he reflected on Maria's words. Prior to learning about the entire alien mess, he had only known Isabel from afar. She was stunning, of course, and probably every guy's fantasy, but she was also just so unapproachable. It was only after finding out that she was, in fact, alien royalty, that they were suddenly able to connect.

Life was very strange sometimes.

He and Maria continued to exchange pointless banter as they walked towards their respective classes, but Alex could not shake the feeling that Liz was hiding something. And he desperately wanted to know what it was.

While the day passed rather uneventfully for the alien hybrids and their human friends, Grant Sorenson was having an entirely different experience. The last of the tests had been run on the strange skeleton he had stumbled upon weeks ago, and although the pay was good and the scenery was a nice change from what he was used to, it was time to pack up and go home.

At least, that was what he had thought until the mayor of Roswell called him in for a conference.

He shifted uneasily in the chair, not knowing what to expect. He had written everything he could think of in his report, and although his conclusions were a little out of the ordinary, he was confident that it could all be explained somehow.

He just wasn't sure how.

"So," the mayor said casually, "you did not write in your report what you believed to be the cause of death."

Sorenson was momentarily taken aback, but answered soon enough, "I am not a medical examiner. I'm not really qualified to determine that. But if you need someone to do an autopsy…"

"I'm not looking for an official statement," the mayor cut him off sharply. "If I wanted that, there are plenty of people I could turn to. But you wrote…" he glanced down at the report on his desk, "that the skull showed signs of fractures. You did not elaborate on that. What is, in your opinion, the cause of such a thing?"

"Blunt force trauma," Sorenson answered. "It could be a cause of death. It could also just be what naturally happens when someone is buried. You find that often with old remains in which no coffin is used. The ground is not as stable as we would like to believe, and it shifts quite frequently. Stones and rocks may collide with the deceased's body. The older the body, the more brittle the bones, the more easily they break."

"And how does one determine which cause is the true one?"

Sorenson narrowed his eyes and said, "Turn it over to the Sheriff. He will certainly have people who can handle it." He had no idea why the mayor wanted to keep this out of the Sheriff's hands, but he had acquiesced early on to the request and kept quiet about his efforts. Now, however, he was about to leave, and he did not want to be dragged any further into a game of politics between the two.

The mayor raised an eyebrow. "It isn't that simple," he said softly. "And this may very well be taken out of all our hands." He paused, then asked, "You say you believe the skeleton to be between twenty and twenty-five years old?"

"Yes." Sorenson looked down at his hands for a moment, picking his words carefully. "It was difficult to determine, as I say in my report. The decay was… unusual. Not a pattern I've ever seen before."

The mayor nodded. "Roswell has been here for more than twenty-five years. That part of the desert could not have been used for a Native American burial ground. We would have known."

Sorenson shrugged. "There were no other bodies there, no artifacts. Nothing to indicate any type of ceremonial procedure occurred there. And since the leaders of the Native American community on the Reservation have denied using that land, it seems unlikely." After a moment of thinking, he added sarcastically, "Emporium Power will be pleased. They can go ahead and build their factory or whatever it was."

The mayor did not appear to be listening, or is he was, then he did not care. He was instead staring back at the report, his expression closely guarded.

When he looked up, his face was blank. "Will you excuse me for a moment, Mr. Sorenson?" Without waiting for a response, he rose to his feet and walked from the office.

Sorenson gave a weary sigh and rubbed his eyes. He had been dragged into this mess expecting it to be a simple job. Emporium Power would need to know whether or not they could develop on the land they had purchased, and he would investigate, report his findings, and leave. So how did a simple task like that turn into several weeks worth of tests? How did it become something that would end with a conference with the mayor?

He was sure it was politics, plain and simple. Certainly, his report had been strange. There were some abnormalities in the skeleton that could probably just be explained by congenital deformities. But the bone structure was denser than he had expected, and the decay rate was not what it should have been, given the location and climate. And then there was the matter of the various isotopes found on the body, isotopes that did not usually exist in nature. Cadmium, lithium, nitrogen…

Which meant either he had stumbled across some never-before-discovered species of humanoid life-form, a possibility that sounded ridiculous even in his head, or, more likely, he had stumbled across a dumping ground for radioactive and carcinogenic material.

As Grant Sorenson leaned back in his chair and pondered the various possibilities, the mayor of Roswell was meeting in an adjoining room with one of his… friends.

The woman was tall and brunette and had welcoming smile and sweet countenance. She leaned against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest, her pose languid and relaxed. Her eyes, a pale green, flickered back and forth between the mayor at the door through which he had entered, almost as though she expected them to be interrupted.

"This is a problem," the mayor said coolly.

The woman nodded. "I know, sir." She hesitated. "Do you think Sorenson suspects?"

"The truth?" The mayor waved his hand dismissively. "Hardly. Who would suspect that the skeleton is alien? He's not the FBI, he isn't trained to think that way."

"And you are certain…?"

"Oh, it is definitely alien. Although I still cannot determine who. However, I doubt that the archeologist will be able to provide more answers. He knows even less than we do."

"What do you want me to do, sir?"

The mayor considered this for a moment, then replied, "Sorenson may not suspect the truth, but he still knows too much. He will need to be disposed of. Not here, though. One more death will only bring unwanted attention. Let him return home, start on whatever his new project is… and then get rid of him within the following week."

For a moment, the kind expression on the woman's face slipped, and it was replaced by a sudden, almost feral, predatory gleam. Then she reverted back to her sweet smile and said, "Consider it done."

"Anything else?" the mayor asked. "How goes the other project?"

The woman took a few steps forward, eagerness written all over her face. It was clear that this was what she truly wanted to speak about, and so her words were filled with satisfaction as she said, "We have been successful."

The mayor gaped. "You found them?"

"The rejected Royal Four? Yes, I did." She stopped, then amended her comment, "We did. I had help, of course. They live in New York City. And while they seem to know a bit more about their past and their powers than the Roswell ones, they are oblivious to the fact that there is another set here."

They mayor was silent for a moment. Then he asked, "And are they truly as… disastrous… as we were lead to believe?"

The woman shrugged. "It is hard to say without further information. Certainly the scientists who created the Royal Four did quite a bit better when they made their second set. But I do not know how badly these rejected royals turned out. It is possible that their Rath could be the one we want."

"But not likely?" the mayor prompted, picking up on her reluctant tone.

"No," the woman murmured, "not likely. He has no loyalty to his Zan, which could work in our favor, perhaps allow us to convince him that he is better suited to rule. However, as far as I can tell, he has no loyalty to anyone save himself. He is arrogant, selfish, and greedy. I do not think he is the one."

"Has Khivar found them yet?"

"No, but he is close," the woman answered. "Very close. It is most likely what Nicolas has been doing since the ruined Harvest. Searching for them."

"And if he finds them…?"

"It will be disastrous for all of us."

The mayor lapsed into silence, thinking. They were running out of time. Although Courtney had been the only one of them to come with Khivar's skins, and therefore the only one who had already needed a new husk, he could still feel the clock ticking. His husk would expire within the year, and several of his co-conspirators would lose theirs shortly after. How much time did they really have?

But the rejected Royal Four… what did he want to do about them?

The scientists had screwed up their first attempt at creating the hybrids. They had failed to imbue their creations with the necessary essences, and so had essentially created beings who were supposed to rule, but would not have the right temperament to do so.

Of course, none of the scientists could bear the thought of just destroying their creations, particularly not when these beings contained DNA from the esteemed Royal Four. So they had sent them to Earth on a different ship at a different time, and promptly forgot about them, assuming they would be hatched, live their lives not knowing who they were, and then die here on Earth, never once even thinking of Antar.

If those hybrids knew about their past, then there was obviously a glitch somewhere in the plan. However, that might not have made any difference, given that they had no way of returning to Antar. They could remember all they wanted, but without action, they were still harmless.

But if Khivar should find them…

Who knew the havoc he could wreak? Would these amoral hybrids join him? It was certainly likely, particularly given how… persuasive… Khivar could be.

"After you have disposed of Sorenson," the mayor said finally, "I want you to go to New York. Do not make contact with the others, do not reveal yourself to them. But keep your eyes open. If Nicolas is there, I have no doubt that you will find him. And then we will determine how to proceed."

The woman nodded. "Of course." She turned to go.

"Oh, and Carla?" he called her back.

"Yes, sir?"

"Keep an eye out for the General's brother. I doubt Nicolas is the only one interested in finding the other hybrid General."

"And if I see… what is it he calls himself? Trevor? If I see him, what should I do?"

"He complicates matters. And I do not like complications."

Again, the feral smile crossed Carla's face. "I understand, sir."

Maria tapped her foot impatiently and looked around with an anxious frown. "Where is she?" she asked with a huff. "Liz is never late."

Alex scanned the auditorium, only half-listening to Maria. Auditions for Othello were due to start in a few minutes, and the room was filled with students clumped together, talking quietly. There were several he did not recognize, most likely freshmen and sophomores, and a few seniors that he knew but had never spoken to. Of the students in his own grade, the juniors, there were the expected computer geeks and drama enthusiasts.

"Alex?" Maria asked sharply when she realized he wasn't listening to her. "Alex, have you heard anything I've said?"

He looked at her with a sheepish smile, then said, "Um… a little?"

She rolled her eyes. "Liz isn't here yet, and auditions start in five minutes!" Maria muttered. "Where is she?"

"Uh…" Alex glanced around for a moment, then pointed, "she's right there, Maria. Talking to Mr. Turner, the drama teacher."

"Oh," Maria answered, now looking confused. "Why is she talking to him? Are we supposed to be talking to him?"

It appeared that the question would be answered by Liz herself, as the brunette detached herself from the drama teacher and hurried across the room to her friends, smiling broadly with evident relief. Alex and Maria both looked at her expectantly, and she said with glee, "I got out of it!"

"Out of what?" Maria demanded.

"Auditioning. Performing. Being on stage."

Maria's jaw drop incredulously. "But, Lizzie, this was your idea."

"Yes, it was," Liz agreed, adopting a look of mock displeasure, "and why did you let me go through with it? You know how much I hate performing. You're supposed to be my best friend, and best friends stop each other from doing really stupid things. Like making complete fools of themselves."

Maria raised one eyebrow. "So this is my fault?" Alex smothered back and laugh and Liz just shrugged. Maria sighed. "I thought we were going to do this together. You know, spend some quality time with each other."

"Oh, we are," Liz rushed to assure her. "I just convinced Mr. Turner to let me work in the costume and set design crew instead."

"So you and Alex are going to be hanging out while I'm learning lines all by myself?"

"Of course not," Alex replied, wrinkling his nose. "I'm working with sound, lighting, and special effects. I can't hang out with Liz, she's on the other team." His tone was laced with such disdain that Liz burst into laughter, her eyes lighting up with a true smile, something neither of her friends had seen in a while.

"I didn't realize tech and set design were so competitive with each other," Liz commented.

Before either could respond, Mr. Turner clapped his hands and called the group together. He was a fairly young teacher, probably in his mind-thirties, with mop of unruly brown hair and green eyes. Despite the fact that he was married and had two young children, he was still the object of quite a few high school girls' crushes. Something, Alex mused, that probably explained the large percentage of girls that had shown up for the audition.

"Alright, guys," Mr. Turner began, "we're going to keep this fairly short and simple. I am going to give each of you and scene to run through, not necessarily from a Shakespeare play. After that is done, I'll ask a couple of you to practice some lines from Othello. The cast list will be posted tomorrow morning. Any questions?"

There was a silence, and then a soft chattering as people began to talk with their friends again.

"Good," Mr. Turner continued. "Alright, can everyone take a seat? Try to stay quiet, folks, and listen for when I call your name."

Liz, Maria, and Alex chose seats in the back of the auditorium. As they sat down, Liz began looking around, taking in all the other students. Technically, neither she nor Alex really needed to be there for this, given that they were not auditioning. But she had made a point of having this be a group activity, and she couldn't turn her back on that idea now.

Besides, she knew Maria would appreciate the support.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Mr. Turner's voice calling across the auditorium. "Jennifer Davis, Lillian Blum, and Scott Powell. You three are up first."

Three students rose to their feet and walked towards the front of the auditorium, towards the stage.

"I swear, I don't even recognize half these people," Maria murmured. "Are you sure they all go to our school?"

"Yeah," Alex chuckled. "They couldn't really be auditioning for the school play if they didn't."

"Who are they?" Maria questioned, pointing at a group clustered near the front of the room. They were lounging about carelessly as though they were paying very little attention to what anyone thought of them, but Maria had spent enough time around Tess to know when that sort of attitude was entirely show. They knew they were the center of attention, and they expected it.

"I don't know," Alex answered uninterestedly.

"Yeah, me neither," Liz agreed. After a moment of staring at the group, however, she said, "I think the girl on the right, the one with the long brown hair and the blue halter top… that's Chris' little sister. She's a freshman."

"Chris? Wait… like Tess' boyfriend?"

"Uh huh." Liz paused for a moment, wracking her brain for anything she might have heard about the girl. Finally, she said, "I think she's apparently a million times worse than Tess."

Maria laughed. "Is that even possible?"

Liz leaned back in her seat and shrugged. "Hard to know." Although Roswell itself was not a particularly large town, the fact that it only had one high school, and that all the inhabitants sent their children to that high school, meant that it was a large enough student population for Liz to avoid ever having to interact with students not in her grade. As a result, while she was incredibly knowledgeable in the happenings of students in her own grade, she knew next to nothing about the others. In fact, she only recognized Chris' sister because she'd seen the two of them interact once or twice after school, and she'd only been paying attention because Tess had been with them.

She wasn't even sure she knew the other girl's name.

She glanced up towards the stage where the three students were just finishing up their lines. It was clearly a Shakespeare play, although not a scene that she instantly recognized. She could deduce it was one of the tragedies, however, as she watched one of the girls pretend to kill herself, crumbling to the ground with an anguished cry.

She thought, then, of Max.

"Lizzie?"

Her concern and fear at the thought of all that Max had been through and all that they would continue to be forced to endure must have shown on her face, because both Maria and Alex were looking at her with identical expressions of worry.

"Just thinking," Liz said, trying to wave it all away. They did not look convinced, but neither pushed the subject. They let her lapse back into silence instead, lost in her own thoughts.

Unnoticed by Liz, Maria and Alex exchanged apprehensive looks, and Alex mouthed quietly, "Believe me now?"

Whatever was bothering Liz, they could at least now both agree it was a lot more than just stage fright or second thoughts about the play.

Another group was called up, to run through their lines. This time, it was not a Shakespeare play. None of the students were particularly good, and the dialogue was delivered in a halting, stammering manner.

"I am going to be so much better than that," Maria declared in w whisper. "I mean… that boy on the right can't even talk without stuttering."

"Maybe he has a speech impediment," Liz admonished.

"He doesn't. Do you really think I'd be making fun of him if he did?" Maria defended herself. She'd had a couple classes with him over the years and knew that he could speak perfectly well. It was obviously just nerves that was doing this to him. Turning all her attention to Liz, Maria added, "I'm not Tess. I don't take glee in rubbing salt in people's wounds."

"Good point."

"Did you know that in the Middle Ages salt used to be used as a means to clean out cuts?" Alex offered.

"Nobody cares, Alex."

"I think that's kind of cool," Liz retorted.

Maria rolled her eyes. "Of course you do."

Liz smiled for a moment, but as her gaze moved back to the stage, her expression fell.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Alex questioned, unable to remain silent about her obvious distress any longer.

"Totally fine," Liz promised. "Right as rain."

"You ever wonder about that saying?" Maria asked. "I mean… what makes rain so right? It could be wrong, you know."

"Yes, but wrong as rain doesn't have quite the same ring to it," Alex explained.

The scene finished, and Mr. Turner called out, "Maria DeLuca and Courtney Banks."

Maria's head snapped up. "What?"

Sure enough, the blonde rebel skin could be seen rising to her feet at the other end of the auditorium. She looked just as surprised as Maria, and her light eyes widened slightly as she caught the pixie blonde's angry stare.

"What is she doing here?" Liz asked worriedly.

"Just go and run the lines," Alex advised under his breath. "We can deal with the rest of this later."

Maria made her way to the stage, taking the list of lines from Mr. Turner as she passed him. Courtney smiled nervously as she approached, and Maria hissed, "What do you think you're doing?"

Courtney chanced a glance around and replied, "It's not like I knew you were going to audition." She rolled her eyes and added sarcastically, "Trust me, being in this show is not actually part of some great scheme to kill you all."

"Yeah, well that is the problem, isn't it?" Maria shot back. "I don't trust you."

From the audience, Liz watched nervously as her best friend and the alien stepped onto the stage. She remembered what the Michael-from-the-future had told her, that Courtney might have been a good ally, they simply had no way of knowing since Trevor had arranged for her death long before they had been able to test her loyalties. So there was a chance that Courtney was perfectly trustworthy…

And there was the chance that she wasn't.

The lines, Liz recognized dimly, were from Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Courtney, reading the part of Abigail, the ringleader of the group of girls who had brought the full fury of the witch hunt upon the innocent citizens of Salem, was threatening one of her more reluctant followers, played by Maria.

Under almost any other set of circumstances, it would have been amusing to watch Maria struggle with the role of a meek, timid girl. Her usually exuberant and abrasive personality was so completely in opposition to the lines she was reading.

"What say you?" Courtney demanded.

Maria faltered, her eyes dropping even as she scanned the script. "Abby, I…"

Liz turned her attention to the director. Mr. Turner was watching the proceedings with a calculating stare, obviously impressed by both the readings. And, Liz was forced to admit with a reluctant sigh, Courtney was good. Good enough that she was sure to get a part in the play, as was Maria.

Which meant the two of them could very well be acting side-by-side.

The brunette glanced back at Courtney. She knew she should not be reading too much into this casting, but she did find it a little troublesome and ironic that Courtney was currently acting the role of a girl who had, with temperamental passion and a chilling indifference to those she hurt, committed adultery with a married man and then brought about the deaths of several innocent people.

Courtney stepped forward threateningly, her voice dropping to a low hiss filled with dangerous desperation. "Let you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you." The air around her seemed to condense, to form a shroud of wrath, and her light eyes took on a fiery look as she continued to deliver one of Abigail's most famous lines, "And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents' heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down!"

Maria froze, eyes going wide with horror. It was just a little too real for her comfort.

"Very good," Mr. Turner complemented them, nodding in appreciation. "I will want you both to remain after the general auditions to read some lines from Othello. You can take your seats now."

Maria did not need to be told twice. She bolted from the stage, hurrying towards the door of the auditorium and out into the hallway, Courtney close at her heels. Alex and Liz exchanged worried looks, then pressed through the crowd to join Maria outside.

When they finally made it through the mass of students and into the hallway, Maria and Courtney were standing close together, arguing fervently in quiet tones.

"…really, for God's sake, it was just acting!"

Maria shook her head as Liz came to her side. "The hell that was just acting," she spat back, her face flushed. "Like you weren't imagining murdering me the entire time."

"Well, of course I was thinking about that," Courtney retorted. "I was trying to get into Abigail's head. That what you do when you're acting, Maria."

"What are you even doing here?" Alex interrupted before the argument could escalate. "I thought we were pretty clear when we told you to stay away from us."

Courtney rolled her eyes in exasperation and looked from Maria to Alex and then back. "And I told you that I didn't know you would be here. Look, I'm just trying to do the same thing you want to do – keep my head down and blend in, while hopefully earning extra credit. I have to make a life here, too, you know."

"You should drop out of the play," Maria snapped.

But Courtney shook her head. "If you don't want to be in a play with me, then you are the one who should drop out. But, seriously, Maria, what are you so afraid of? That I will murder you in broad daylight while surrounded by a whole bunch of other people? You're being completely unreasonable."

"Yeah, right…" Maria drawled. "Because it's not like you haven't tried to lie and manipulate us before."

Liz narrowed her eyes and said in agreement, "Do you have any idea what Max is going through now because of you? Your little mind games, turning him into Zan…"

Courtney blinked, surprised.

Alex and Maria just stared at Liz, unable to comprehend what she had said. "Courtney did that to Max?"

"How do you even know that?" Alex asked softly. "Does everyone else know? Did we just not get the memo?"

"No, I…" Liz trailed off, unsure. She could very well tell them the truth, that she had learned this from a Michael who had travelled back from the future. "It's complicated. I… the others don't really know…" She glanced away for a moment, trying to cover for her mistake. "And my point is that you really can't be trusted."

Neither Alex nor Maria wanted to leave the subject of how Liz knew what she knew, but it was also clear that pushing her on it now was a bad idea, particularly since they were trying to present a united front against Courtney. So, unwillingly, they let the topic of Max's transformation drop and turned back to the problem at hand.

"She's right," Alex murmured, nodding.

"So you will forgive me if I have no desire to have you… what was it you threatened? A pointy reckoning that will shudder me?" She smirked and added, "Whatever that means."

"So why don't you just do us all a favor and make this easy? Quit the play."

Courtney shook her head. "No."

"Look, we don't care how good you are at acting," Maria hissed, her patience completely gone. "You were told to stay away from us, and that was not a request. It was an order, so stay away from us."

"No," Courtney repeated. "Not if it means dropping this play. I'm not doing anything wrong by being here. And you three are being completely unreasonable. You know, you might not like what is happening in your lives, but in case you've forgotten, you're not the only ones caught in this war. And I am not going to hand my life over to you and let you tell me what I can and can't do. I'm not putting your or anyone else in any danger by being here, and I am actually enjoying myself for the first time in a very long time, so do us all a favor and get over yourselves. This isn't about you."

"Well, of course you'd be enjoying yourself," Maria shot back snidely. "You and Abigail have so much in common. You know, such as trying to get with men that weren't yours."

Courtney did not even bat an eye as she replied, "You're right. And you know what else Abigail and I have in common? We both watched as people killed our parents. We've both seen reddish work done at night. And we both know what it is like to wish the sun had never gone down." She paused, looked at all three of them. "You can run to your royal friends and ask for their help if you want. You can have all four of them line up in a row and tell me to get lost. But it won't do any good. I've been fighting this war since before you've were born, and you don't scare me."

And without another word, she turned and walked back into the auditorium.

Next Chapter: Advice

Due: Sun 1/18