Disclaimer: I give all credit to the creator of Inuyasha and Meg Cabot, the author of Hauntedin which this fic is based upon. Like literally. Because I think, everyone should read this book. Why not make it something people like to hear. A Sesshomaru/ Kagome romance! only I am going to change the ending to it ends up Sess/Kag

Previously on Haunted...

The fog swirls around me, spilling into the chasm and seeming intent on taking me with it. I am waving my arms to keep from falling, grabbing frantically for something, anything, to hold on to.

Only there's nothing to grab. A second later, an unseen hand gives a single push.

And I fall.

You again.

Chapter 1

"Well, well, well," said a distinctly masculine voice from behind me. "If it isn't Higurashi, Kagome."

Look, I won't lie to you. When a cute guy talks to me—and you can tell from this guy's voice that he was easy on the eyes; it was in the self-confidence of those well, well, wells , the caressing way he said my name—I pay attention. I can't help it. I'm a sixteen-year-old girl, after all. My life can't revolve entirely around Lilly Pulitzer's latest tankini print and whatever new innovations Bobbi Brown has made in the world of stay-put lip liner.

So I'll admit that, even though I have a boyfriend—even if boyfriend is a little optimistic a term fro him—as I turned around to see the hottie who was addressing me, I gave my hair a little bit of a toss. Why shouldn't I? I mean, considering all the product I'd layered into it that morning, in honor of the first day of my junior year—not to mention the marine fog that regularly turns my head into a frizzy mess—my coiffure was looking exceptionally fine.

It wasn't until I'd given the old raven shine a flip that I turned around and saw that the cutie who'd said my name was someone I'm not too fond of.

In fact, you might say i have a reason to be scared to death of him.

I guess he could read the fear in my eyes—carefully done up that morning with a brand-new combination of eye shadows called Mocha Mist—because the grin that broke out across his good-looking face was slightly crooked at one end.

"Kags," he said in a chiding tone. Even the fog couldn't dull the shiny glimmer in his silvery flowing hair. His teeth were dazzlingly white against his tennis tan. a/n could you imagine him with that kind of tan...sigh so dreamy...so who is this guy?! You'll find out...soon. "Here I am, nervous about being the new kid at school, and you don't even have a hello for me? What kind of way is that to treat an old pal?"

I continued to stare at him, perfectly incapable of speech. You can't talk, of course, when your mouth has gone as dry as...well, as the adobe brick building we were standing in front of. What was he doing here? What was he doing here?

The thing of it was, I couldn't follow my first impulse and run screaming from him. People tend to talk when they see impeccably garbed girls such as me run screaming from seventeen-year old studlies. I had managed to keep my unusual talent from my classmates for this long, I wasn't about to blow it now, even if I was—and believe me, I was —scared to death.

But if I couldn't run away screaming, I could certainly move huffily past him without a word, hoping he would not recognize the huffiness for what it really was—sheer terror.

I don't know whether or not he sensed my fear. But he sure didn't like my pulling a prima donna on him. His hand flew out as I attempted to sweep past him, and the next thing I knew, his fingers were wrapped around my upper arm in a viselike grip.

I could, of course, have hauled off and slugged him. I hadn't been named Girl Most Likely to Dismember Someone back at my old school in Brooklyn for nothing, you know.

But I'd wanted to start this year off right—in Mocha Mist and my new black Club Monaco capris (coupled with a pink silk sweater set I'd snagged for a song at the Benetton outlet up in Pacific Grove)—not in a fight. And what would my friends and schoolmates think—and, since they were milling all around us, tossing off the occasional, "Hi, Kagome," and complimenting me on my ever-so-spiffy ensemble, they were bound to notice—if I began freakishly to pummel the new guy?

And then there was the unavoidable fact that I was pretty convinced that, if I took a whack at him, he might try to whack me back.

Somehow I managed to find my voice. I only hoped he didn't notice how much I was it was shaking. "Let go of my arm," I said.

"Kags," he said. He was still smiling, but now he looked and sounded slyly knowing. "What's the matter? You don't look very happy to see me."

"Still not letting go of my arm," I reminded him. I could feel the chill from his fingers—he seemed to be completely cold-blooded in addition to being preternaturally strong—through my silk sleeve.

He dropped his hand.

"Look," he said. "I really am sorry. About the way things went down the last time you and I met, I mean it."

The last time he and I met. Instantly I was transported in my mind's eye back to that long corridor—the one I had seen so often in my dreams. Lined with doors on either side—doors that opened into who-knew-what—it had been like a hallway in a hotel or an office building... only this hallway hadn't existed in any hotel or office building known to man. It hadn't even existed in our current dimension.

And Sesshomaru had stood there, knowing Inuyasha and I had no idea how to find our way out of it, and laughed. Just laughed, like it was this big colossal joke that if I didn't return to my own universe soon, I'd die, while Inuyasha would have been trapped in that hallway forever. I could still hear Sesshomaru's laughter ringing in my ears. He had kept on laughing...right up until the moment Inuyasha had slammed a fist into his face.

I could hardly believe any of this was happening. Here it was, a perfectly normal September morning in Tokyo, Japan—which meant, of course, a think layer of mist hung over everything but would soon burn off to reveal cloudless blue skies and a golden sun—and I was standing there in the breezeway of Shikon-no-Tama Academy, face-to-face with the person who'd been haunting my nightmares for weeks.

Only this wasn't a nightmare. I was awake. I knew I was awake, because I would never have dreamed of my friends Sango and Miroku sauntering by while I was confronting this monster from my past, and going, "Hey Kags," like it was...well, like it was simply the first day back at school after summer vacation.

"You mean the part where you tried to kill me?" I croaked, when Sango and Miroku were out of earshot. This time, I know he heard my voice shake. I know because he looked perturbed—though maybe it was because of the accusation. In any case, he reached up and dragged one of those largish tanned hands through his short hair. a/n SHORT! Yes! Sorry but I have this dream hair cut. The new fob Japanese cut. Where it like flows down to the neck. Yeah short! Sesshomaru would look hot in it.

"I never tried to kill you, Kags," he said, sounding a little hurt.

I laughed. I couldn't help it. My heart was in my throat, but I laughed anyway. "Oh," I said. "Right."

"I mean it, Kags," he said. "It wasn't like that. I'm just...I'm just not very good at losing, you see."

I stared at him. No matter what he told himself, he i had /i tried to kill me. But worse, he'd done his best to eliminate Inuyasha, in a completely underhanded manner. And now he was trying to pass the whole thing off as bad sportsmanship?

"I don't get it," I said, shaking my head. "What did you lose? You didn't lose anything."

"Didn't I, Kags?" His gaze bore into mine. His voice was the one I'd been hearing over and over in my dreams—laughing at me as I struggled to find my way out of a dark, mist-filled hallway at either end of which was a precipice dropping off into a black void of utter nothingness, over which, right before I woke up, I teetered dangerously. It was a voice filled with hidden meaning...

Only I had no idea what that meaning could be, or what he was implying. All I knew was that this guy terrified me.

"Kags," he said with a smile. Smiling—and probably even scowling, too—he looked like a Calvin Klein underwear model. And not just his face, either. I had, after all, seen him in a pair of swim trunks.

"Look, don't be this way," he said. "It's a new school year. Can't we make a new start?"

"No," I said, glad that my voice didn't shake this time. "We can't. In fact, you—you'd better stay away from me."

He seemed to find this deeply amusing. "Or what?" he asked, with another one of those smiles that revealed all of his white, even teeth—a politician's smile, I realized.

"Or you'll regret it," I said, the tremor back in my voice.

"Oh," he said, his golden eyes widening in mock terror. "You'll sick your boyfriend on me?"

It wasn't something I'd have joked around about, if I were him. Inuyasha could—and probably would, if he found out the guy was back—kill him. Except that I wasn't exactly Inuyasha's girlfriend, so it wasn't really his job to protect me from creeps like the one in front of me.

He must have figured out from my expression that all was not copacetic in Kagome-and-Inuyasha-land, since he laughed and said, "So that's how it is. Well, I never really thought Inuyasha was your type, you know. You need someone a little less—"

He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence because at that moment, Sango, who'd been following Miroku in the direction of his locker—even though we'd solemnly sworn to each other the night before over the phone that we were not going to start off the new school year chasing boys—came back toward us, her gaze on the guy standing so close to me.

"Kags," she said politely. Unlike me, Sango had spent her summer working in the non-profit sector, and so had not had a lot of money to blow on a back-to-school wardrobe and makeover. Not that Sango would ever spend her money on anything so frivolous as makeup. Which was a good thing, since, being sensitive skinned, she had to special-order all her makeup anyway, and couldn't just stroll on up to the M.A.C. counter and plunk her money down the way anybody else could.

"Who's you friend?" she wanted to know.

I was not about to stand there and make introductions. In fact, I was seriously thinking of heading to the administrative office and asking just what they were thinking, admitting a guy like this into what I had once considered a passably good school.

But he thrust one of those cool, strong hands at Sango and said with the grin that I had once found disarming but now chilled me to the bone, "Hi. I'm Sesshomaru. Sesshomaru Takeda. Nice to met you."

Sesshomaru Takeda. Not really the kind of name to strike terror into the heart of a young girl, huh? I mean, it sounded innocuous enough. Hi, I'm Sesshomaru Takeda. There was nothing in that statement that could have alerted Sango to the truth: Sesshomaru Takeda was sick, manipulative, and had icicles where his heart should have been.

No, Sango had no clue. Because I hadn't told her, of course. I hadn't told anyone.

The more fool I.

If Sango found his fingers a little too cold for her liking, she didn't let on.

"Nagami, Sango," she said, as she pumped his hand in her typically businesslike manner. "You must be new here, because I've never seen you around before."

Sesshomaru blinked, bringing attention to his eyelashes, which were really long, for a guy's. They looked almost heavy on his eyelids, like they'd be an effort to lift. My stepbrother Suikotsu has sort of the same thing going, only on him, it just makes him look drowsy. On Sesshomaru, it had more of a sexy rock-star effect. I glanced worriedly at Sango. She was one of the most sensible people I had ever met, but are any of us really immune to the sexy rock-star type?

"My first day," Sesshomaru said with another one of those grins. "Lucky for me, I already happen to be acquainted with Ms. Higurashi here."

"How fortuitous," Sango, who, as editor of the school paper, liked big words, said, her thin-black eyebrows raised slightly. "Did you used to go to Kags' old school?"

"No," I said quickly. "He didn't. Look, we better get to homeroom, or we're going to get into trouble..."

But Sesshomaru wasn't worried about getting into trouble. Probably because he was used to causing it.

"Kags and I had a thing this past summer," he informed Sango, who chocolate eyes widened behind her bangs at this information.

"A thing?" she echoed.

"There was no thing," I hastened to assure her.

"Believe me. No thing at all."

Sango's eyes go even wider. It was clear she didn't believe me. Well, why should she? I was her best friend, it was true. But had I ever once been completely honest wit her? No. And she clearly knew it.

"Oh, so you guys broke up?" she asked pointedly.

"No, we didn't break up," Sesshomaru said, with another one of those secretive, knowing smiles.

Because we were never going out, I wanted to shriek. You think I'd ever go out with him? He's not what you think, Sango. He looks human, but underneath that studly façade, he's a...a...

Well, I didn't know what Sesshomaru was, exactly.

But then, what did that make me? Sesshomaru and I had far more in common that I was comfortable admitting, even to myself.

Even if I'd had the guts to say something along those lines in front of him, I didn't get the chance because suddenly a stern, "Miss Higurashi! Miss Nagami! Haven't you ladies got a class you should be getting to?" rang out.

Kaede—whose three-month absence from my life had not rendered her any less intimidating, with her scrunched up face and even worse her loud voice accompanying her—came barreling down upon us, the wide white sleeves of her garbs trailing behind her like wings.

"Get going," she tut-tutted us, waving her hands in the direction of our lockers, built into the adobe walls all along the building's beautifully manicured inner courtyard. "You'll be late to first period."

We got going...but unfortunately Sesshomaru followed directly behind us.

"Kags and I go way back," he was saying to Sango, as we moved along the porticoed hallway toward my locker. "We met at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort."

I could only stare at him as I fumbled with the combination to my locker. I couldn't believe this was happening. I really couldn't. What was Sesshomaru doing here? What was Sesshomaru doing here enrolling in my school, making my world—from which I'd thought I'd rid him forever—a real-life nightmare?

I didn't want to know. Whatever his motives for coming back, I didn't want to know. I just wanted to get away from him, get to class, anywhere, anywhere at all...

...so long as it was away from him.

"Well," I said, slamming my locker door closed. I hardly knew what I was doing. I had reaches in and blindly grabbed the first books my fingers touched. "Gotta go. Homeroom calls."

He looked down at the books in my arms, the ones I was holding almost as a shield, as if they would protect me from whatever it was—and I was sure there was something—he had in store for me. For us.

"You won't find them in there," Sesshomaru said with a cryptic nod at the textbooks bulging from my arms.

I didn't know what he was talking about. I didn't want to know. All I knew was that I wanted out of there, and I wanted out of there fast. Sango still stood beside me, looking bewilderedly from my face to Sesshomaru's. Any second, I knew, she was going to begin to ask questions, questions I didn't dare answer...

Still, even though I didn't want to, I heard myself asking, as if the words were being torn involuntarily from my lips, "I won't find what in here?"

"The answers you're looking for." Sesshomaru's golden-eyed gaze was intense. "Why you, of all people, were chosen. And what, exactly you are."

This time, I didn't have to ask what he meant. I knew. I knew as surely as if he'd said the words out loud. He was talking about the gift we shared, he and I, the one over which he seemed to have so much better control—and of which he seemed to have such superior knowledge—than I did.

While Sango stood there, staring at the two fo us as if we were speaking a foreign language, Sesshomaru when on smoothly, "When you're ready to hear the truth about what you are, you'll know where to find me. Because I'll be right here."

And then he walked away, seemingly unaware of all the feminine sighs he drew from my classmates as he moved with panther-like grace down the breezeway.

Her chocolate eyes still wide behind her bangs, Sango looked up at me wonderingly.

"What," she wanted to know, "was that guy talking about? And who on earth is Inuyasha?"

Preview of Ch.2

I couldn't tell her, of course. I couldn't tell anyone about Inuyasha, because frankly, who'd have believed it? I knew only one person—one living person, anyway—who knew the whole truth about people like Sesshomaru and me, and that was only because he was one of us. "Sesshomaru Takeda comes off as a far better student than you did when you first applied to this school." "Perhaps Sesshomaru is looking for guidance."