Montreal, Quebec 1980

"Good morning Montreal! You're listening to CJAD, and it's a cold one out there so bundle up! Today's headlines are…"

Sophie hit the snooze button. It was way too early to get up. It was cold, and the bed that she was lying in was so warm... Just a few more minutes…

RING. The phone stopped her from slipping away into a dream. She forced herself to pick up the receiver and mutter what resembled a greeting.

"Mwhello?"

"Hey Sophie! Did I wake you? Sorry about that, just wanted to let you know that I'll meet you today around 5, instead of 4. See ya then!"

"Ok…"

Francis. Her best friend, she could always count on him, through all she had been through. He had always been there for her. Even before her calling.

Sophie got out of bed grumpily, why was it always so cold in the morning in her apartment? She didn't live in the classiest part of the city, but would it kill the landlord to install a proper heating system?

She quickly dressed herself, jeans and a comfortable sweater. Next door she could hear the television  blaring away. Some French all news channel. "More riots have broken out in the city, over the upcoming referendum. 23 people have been arrested, 8 have been taken to the hospital."

Sophie was used to hearing news like that. The upcoming referendum would decide if the province of Quebec would separate from the rest of Canada. On the one side there were the federalists voting against the separation, they were mostly Anglophones. Voting for the separation were the separatists, or nationalists, comprised mostly of Francophones.

It was all people could talk about in the city. Tensions were high between the French and English speaking of the province.  Each camp insulting the other, local immigrant's commerces being vandalized, riots, every day it was something else.

But Sophie didn't care about all this. She spoke French but could hold up her own in an English conversation. She didn't care if you were French or English, only if you were human or not.

She had to eat breakfast quickly if she wanted to meet Peter on time. Peter was her Watcher. He lived in the same building, but owned a bookshop on St-Catherine street in the central part of the city. These past few months had been a little hard on Peter, he spoke French, but had an obvious English accent, being from England and all. On more than one occasion he had found his shop graffitied with insults  by extreme French separatists.

Sophie opened the kitchen cabinets, hoping to fine more to eat than she did. Her eyes set on an old box of Pop-Tarts. She grabbed one, ate it quickly while filling her backpack for the day.

Outside, it was cold. Even though spring had supposedly arrived, it still felt like winter had just begun. She adjusted her scarf and set out for Peter's shop.

"You're late" Peter said from behind the counter while sorting out some papers.

"Metro stopped for awhile in between two stations. There's nothing I could do." Sophie put her backpack on the counter and took off her coat, and tried to bring back warmth into her frozen fingers.

"That's what you said two days ago. Find anything while patrolling yesterday?" He looked up from his papers to stare at Sophie from behind his small glasses.

"Just a couple of vamps in an alley near the apartment. Nothing too challenging."

"Don't get-" But before he could complete his sentence, she cut him off.

"Too cocky, I know, I know. Hey did you hear about the riots yesterday?"

"Hasn't everyone? I think I shall be glad when all of this is over."

"I just think all of this is stupid, who cares what language you speak? If people knew what really was lurking around at night, I think they would spend a lot less time bitching against other nationalities."

A customer entered the shop, smiled at Peter and Sophie, and disappeared behind a bookshelf.

"Well I'll be in the backroom training." Sophie declared. Peter just nodded, concentrating on writing out some book receipts.

The hours quickly passed as she trained. She was most at ease with a sword, but could do deadly damage with pretty much anything. It had been 3 years since she had been called. She was living in the streets when it had happened, drifting here and there in youth housings. It had been a chilly autumn night when a man had approached her. That was how it had all begun. Peter had bought his shop and hired Sophie, to insure her a decent income. To teach her in the ways of a Slayer, he had transformed the back room into a training facility. He was amazed by how quickly she learned, but also supposed that all Watchers were.

Sophie took a bottle of water out of her bag and wiped the sweat from her forehead.

"Getting tired? I thought you had that super endurance thing going for ya." Francis was standing at the front of the room, smiling at her.

"Hey, didn't hear you come in. What's up? Thought we were meeting at 5."

"There were pyromaniac acts near the supermarket, they thought it would be safer to close it for the day. Extreme nationalists acting up I think. So anyway, I thought you'd be here and maybe we could go grab lunch?"

"Yeah sure, I'll just change and we'll be off!"

As they walked together in the cold streets looking for a good and cheap place to eat, they talked about everything; from the latest hockey game to the cold weather, to her latest patrol. Francis was everything to her, and aside from Peter, the only person she could really count on in her life. She always thought that he had a little crush on her, but never asked him about it. He had been there on the streets with her, and after Sophie received her calling, he got a job as a truck loader. That hadn't lasted long, but since then, he always managed to find work and a place to live. Now he stayed in a building no too far from where Sophie lived.

"So you think this will all go away once the referendum is over?" He asked as they crossed a street.

"I think people will always argue over petty things like language, race and religion. I hope it gets better, but I'm not counting on it. Politics isn't my thing anyway. I'm not going to vote, and if I did, I don't even know what I would vote for!"

As they sat in the restaurant, Francis talked about his latest argument with his neighbor over the volume of the radio. She listened to him, but her eye caught the man sitting in the next booth. He was alone at his table, and was reading "Le Journal de Montréal". She didn't know him, but got an uneasy sense about him, and knew what that probably meant. She watched him get up, fold the paper he was reading, and go into the back of the restaurant. She looked at Francis, nodded in the direction that the man had taken, took a stake out of her backpack and slipped it into her pocket, and got up.

"Stay here Francis, I don't think this will take too long."

 The man at the counter eyed her as she pretended to go toward the bathroom,  but when she saw that he was no longer looking at her, she slipped into a corridor that the vampire had gone down a few seconds before. The walls were bare, wallpapered plain white and she could see that she was walking toward a single door near the end. There was light coming from the crack at the bottom of the closed door, and as she walked towards it she could hear conversation from within the room.

"This will be the biggest thing that any of us have ever accomplished! No one will ever suspect anything!" Other voices joined in the conversation, all agreeing with the first one.

She stopped in the middle of her tracks. She tried to calculate how many people were in that room. 4? 10?  4 she thought she could handle, but 10 was pushing it. Peter always told her that her main weakness was her confidence. More than once she had almost been killed because she attacked a group of too many vampires. She listened to Peter's voice in her mind and decided to not burst in the room. She made her way back to where Francis was seated and told him what had happened.

" We'll report to Peter about this, see what he has to say. Don't leave a tip, Francis"

"Well I'm glad your common sense kicked in and you didn't try to do anything rash, for once." Peter said as he looked at Sophie who was playing with a pocketknife. All three were seated at a table in the store. No customers were there, so they could speak without lowering their voices.

"It just seems weird, I think something is going on. With all the political tension these days, it's the perfect opportunity for killings to go unnoticed. People are too preoccupied to realize that there are more dead bodies turning up than usual."

"I agree Sophie, keep your eyes open and be careful! And don't take on-"

"More than I can handle, yeah, yeah."

"I'll be on the lookout with her, Peter. I'll keep Sophie company" Francis winked at Sophie, who smiled back.