Chapter Eight

Anne hadn't known what to expect about Amaranth's ceremony making her a member of Circle Daybreak. Part of her had rolled her eyes, remembering some of the silly "ceremonies" the teachers had held for the students. There had been "graduation from kindergarten," for example, which had been sort of fun at the time but which she was embarrassed to remember now.

Part of her, though, had half-expected Amaranth to come up with something truly spectacular and frightening and awe-inspiring. Amaranth was a witch, after all. What sort of ceremony could a witch come up with, if she wanted?

As it turned out, the ceremony wasn't as grand as Anne had half-expected, and wasn't as embarrassing as she'd half-feared.

It started out vaguely silly. She was blindfolded, which she disliked even though she could see a little bit of the floor where the blindfold didn't come down quite far enough. A "mystery person"—who sounded exactly like Amaranth--asked her if she was willing to become part of Circle Daybreak, to defend other Daybreakers against Nightworlders and humans who threatened them, to be loyal to the ideals and goals of Daybreak. Anne dutifully agreed that she'd promise to do all of what a good Daybreaker would do. Then her blindfold was removed, and she could see that there were two other Daybreakers who were there and participating in the ceremony. Mary, of course, and a tall brown-haired boy that Anne knew vaguely as Mary's boyfriend, Neil. He smiled at her, and she smiled back.

Amaranth brought out a box of candles, and they each chose a candle and lit it. Then Amaranth told them all the history of Circle Daybreak, how it had formed to prevent peace between the humans and the Night World. How both groups had done terrible things to one another, and both groups had been full of prejudice and misunderstanding. But neither was irretrievably bad, and there were good people among both groups. How Circle Daybreak sought to mediate between humans and Nightworlders, and to create peace, and to stop unnecessary bloodshed and violence.

Anne had never thought of herself as a particularly good person. She believed she muddled through life the way everyone else did. She'd never seen herself as especially beautiful, or especially bright, or unusually talented at much of anything. She made fairly good grades, but she knew she wasn't even going to be close to being the class valedictorian. The most selfless thing she'd probably done with her life was to contribute to some charity drives. She'd never even imagined becoming a heroine, or giving her life for some cause.

But as she listened to Amaranth's hushed words, and watched the tiny flames over the candles, she suddenly wondered if that could change. If she could do something for good. Make a difference. Be a heroine.

She pushed the thought away with all the force of her common sense. She was just Anne Jamison, no one special, even if her mysterious father had been a notorious slayer. She'd never done anything particularly important with her life, and she didn't believe that was going to change. Heroes were, well, people who were a little apart from the rest of humanity.

But for just a minute, she could imagine herself fighting for Circle Daybreak, struggling for a cause she believed in, trying to protect innocent people and to stop the endless conflict between the human world and the Night World. Changing the world for the better, even if it was only a little tiny bit.

But all too soon, Amaranth finished her story about Circle Daybreak. Anne promised again—this time, with more intensity—that she would be loyal to Circle Daybreak and its ideals. Then they snuffed out the candles, and Amaranth broke the circle that she'd drawn, and they all started to laugh and talk.

As she stood, Anne felt a painful twitch in her right leg. It reminded her that her workout session with Mary before the ceremony hadn't gone as well as she'd hoped. She was much more motivated to learn to fight this time. Unfortunately, she didn't think she'd done any better than she had before Samuel had kidnapped her. She'd collected another set of bruises where Mary's practice sword had gotten through her guard, and sitting still for the ceremony had only caused her muscles to stiffen up and ache even more than they had before.

The way she winced and rubbed her thigh didn't escape Mary's attention. "Did I hurt you?"

"No. Or yes, but it's okay." Anne touched her bruised leg gingerly.

"I'm sorry."

"No. It was my fault. I didn't block you properly."

"You're learning, though," Mary said encouragingly. "In a couple of years, if you keep training every day, you'll probably be fairly good."

"But what can I do now?" Anne asked. She heard a plaintive note in her voice and tried to suppress it. "If I meet Samuel again—or if the Night World sends some other assassin—what can I do to defend myself? I don't think the Night World will wait a couple of years before they try again to kill me."

She was rather proud of the way that her voice didn't wobble when she said "try again to kill me." She was getting tougher, she thought. Maybe she still couldn't handle a sword very well, but she was becoming mentally stronger. That counted.

"Maybe you need a gun," Neil suggested.

Mary opened her mouth, but Neil was going on.

"I'm Neil Dessay. I think you were in my geometry class last year. You sat up front in the second row, and I was in the back in the fourth row."

Anne hesitated.

Neil seemed to understand. "You probably don't remember. I saw the back of your head every day, but you probably didn't see me at all."

"I saw you," Anne said. "Just not often."

"Yeah, that's why I like sitting in the back of the room," he told her amiably. "You don't see the blackboard as well, but you see all the people. It's the other way around when you sit in front. You see the blackboard, but you can't see who's paying attention to the teacher and who isn't. You learn a lot about people when you sit in the back."

"Neil's going to be a sociology major in college," Mary said, a little wryly.

"Well, that or a psychology major. I haven't decided yet." Neil didn't seem embarrassed. "By the way, I'm human. Like you."

"Two Nightworlders, two humans," Amaranth said, sounding pleased, as she returned from putting the box of candles away. "We're balanced now."

"I thought there would be more of you. I mean, more Daybreakers," Anne said cautiously. "Four people doesn't sound like a lot."

"Well, we have sympathizers in Circle Twilight, even though they don't want to break with Twilight yet and come over to us. And there are lots more Daybreakers around the world. But there are only the four of us here, in our school."

"Oh." Anne digested this. She'd somehow expected that she'd be part of a larger group. Knowing that there were only three other people who were part of her particular Daybreak circle somehow made her feel more isolated, in greater danger.

Well, she told herself, you'll just have to find a way to deal with the danger. Because no one else is going to do it for you.

"Maybe a gun would be a good idea," she said aloud. "But I don't know how to get one. They don't sell guns to minors, do they?"

"No," Mary said.

"But I could probably get you one, if you wanted," Neil said.

"Neil!" Mary didn't look happy.

"She needs something to defend herself," Neil argued. "She'd be a lot better able to defend herself now with a gun than with a sword."

"But a gun's illegal."

"So? We're already breaking Night World law just by existing," Neil reasoned. "I don't see anything wrong with defending ourselves. I've never heard anyone say that defending yourself against an assassin is wrong."

"But she ought to do it with a sword. Or some weapon that isn't illegal." Mary sounded very definite.

"You said yourself that she wouldn't be good with a sword for another two years. What's she supposed to do, hide for two years until she's good enough to defend herself? What if the assassin finds her in the meantime?"

"She can't hide for two years!" Amaranth looked horrified. "She and Samuel are soulmates. He's not going to hurt her. But if she hides from him, then they won't be able to form the soulmate bond. He'll go on being an assassin, and there'll be no one to stop him."

Neil was shaking his head, but Anne intervened before he could speak.

"I really think I need some way to defend myself right now. Maybe it doesn't have to be a gun. But I need something more than just a sword that I can't really use yet. Mary, you know how many times you could have got through my guard today and killed me, if you'd wanted to."

Mary looked unhappy. But, after a pause, she insisted, "We ought to obey the law as much as we can. All the laws."

"I'd rather break the law and use a gun to defend myself than be dead."

"Besides," Neil added, "this isn't the sort of situation that humans had in mind when they created gun control laws. They were thinking about teenage gangs, and drug dealing and . . . well, stuff like that. They weren't thinking about a girl needing to defend herself from a Night World assassin. If the legislators had known about the Night World, they'd probably have passed a different law."

Mary still didn't look convinced. But Anne was beginning to feel more certain in her own mind about what she wanted.

"Can you get me a gun, Neil? Just something I can use to defend myself, if I need to."

"You can't shoot Samuel!" Amaranth jumped in. "You just can't! Believe me, if you do you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Maybe the rest of all your reincarnated lives."

"I'd like to save my life this time around," Anne retorted. Then she relented. "But if he won't try to kill me, I won't try to kill him."

Amaranth eyed her. "Promise?"

"I promise."

"They could send another assassin after her, you know," Neil murmured. "If they find out that she and this vampire are soulmates, then they probably won't trust him to kill her, and they'll send someone else."

"I really need that gun," Anne said.

Amaranth hesitated and then nodded, reluctantly. "But I'll put some defensive spells on you, too. They'll help prevent you from needing to use the gun."

It was Anne's turn to consider. She decided that there wasn't any harm in having protection by Amaranth's spells, in addition to the protection that a gun would give her. What could be wrong with having double protection? "Okay."

Ivy Greer sauntered into the shop.

She had chosen to wear her new black leather duster that afternoon. She left it open in front so that it parted as she walked to display her red leather miniskirt. Her knee-high black calfskin boots, she believed, completed the picture.

She stalked with disdainful grace past the dusty display cases and up to the counter. The middle-aged and overweight man sitting there looked at her with less admiration than she thought appropriate, and she let some of her answering dislike drip into her voice.

"I want to buy a gun."

"Sorry." He didn't sound sorry at all. "It's illegal to sell guns to minors."

No vermin was a match for her.

She put her (imported) leather purse on the counter, took out her wallet, and showed him the I.D. she'd made on her computer at home. It was a horrible imitation of a real driver's license, but as his eyes took a perfunctory glance at it, she reached out with her own mind and pushed.

"I'm sorry," the man said, sounding genuinely apologetic. "My mistake."

She smiled at him with her best regal expression. Back when she'd been eleven, she'd practiced it every day in front of the mirror. She'd wanted to get just the right look, something that combined power and strength and contempt.

The Night World, after all, was a cruel place. If you weren't capable of defending yourself, you probably wouldn't survive. Ivy intended to survive.

The man showed her several guns that he had available for sale. Ivy chose a small one that she thought she could carry conveniently in her purse. It was a little heavier than she would have liked, but she supposed that guns weren't exactly like iPods or Palm Pilots. They didn't get smaller and better every year.

When it came time to fill out the mandatory paperwork and pay for the gun, Ivy pushed with her mind again. The shop owner promptly forgot that he'd ever had the gun, much less that it was necessary for Ivy to pay for it.

No vermin was a match for any Nightworlder, Ivy thought smugly, as she walked out of the gun shop with her black trench coat billowing around her and a new weight in her purse. It was true that humans bred faster than Nightworlders. But then, so did cockroaches.

It was a pity that Circle Daybreak couldn't admit the obvious. Whoever had most power, won. Only the fittest survived. It might not be fair, or right, or the way anyone wanted the world to be. But it was the way things were. And Ivy Greer was a realist.

She knew where she could get wooden bullets, as well as regular ones. She planned to provide herself with a good supply of both.

You never knew whom you might have to kill—vermin, Daybreakers, or Night World assassins.