He was pressing his lips up my shoulder, across my collarbone, and leaving a tingling sensation in their wake.

"Leaf," he said, his voice a plaintive whisper against my neck. He didn't even need to ask. I knew what he wanted. Needed. His sharp teeth scraped along my throat, softly, raising goosebumps across my skin.

"Okay," I murmured.

The word was hardly out of my mouth when there came a sudden searing pain, burning like a hot iron nail plunged into my skin. I squirmed away from him, but his teeth held fast in my neck. Slowly the pain ebbed away to be replaced with an unnerving numbness I wasn't sure I preferred. I couldn't feel it, but I heard him press two kisses to the wound, his lips sticky with my blood.

Then everything went dark.

My eyes flickered open, everything still a little hazy. For all I knew, I was still dreaming. Especially when I was in some bathroom I'd never seen before in my life, and Dawn was washing what seemed to be a small, red towel.

Wait.

"Dawn?" I asked, but my voice came out as a croak and I tried again. She wrung the cloth out in the sink, and I realised that the towel was white but stained. "Dawn?" My voice was stronger.

She turned and shushed me gently with a finger to her lips.

There was a dull throbbing in my neck, and I pressed my hand to it to massage the pain, only to find it wrapped thickly in some kind of gauze.

My eyes snapped open to see the familiar interior of my bedroom, six-thirty dawn streaming through the windows.

What the hell.

My hand immediately clutched at my neck, expecting the gauze from my dream, but not even an obscene amount of prodding provided any evidence that it had been any more than that—a dream, and an incredibly vivid one at that.

My eyes widened impressively when I looked at my reflection in the mirror, namely, my gauze-bereft neck.

There was a bruise below my ear, a few days old if one went by the yellow coloration. Now, this would have drawn no curiosity from me if I'd actually seen it within the past few days. But as far as I recalled, my neck had been rather bruise-free for the entirety of my existence. Blame it on a rather uneventful love life.

When I got to school, nothing was different. I watched Gary flirt with the girls and them flirt right back, thinking to myself, They have no clue. They had no clue they were winking at and giggling beside a murderer. I wanted to scream at them.

I swallowed a lump that had suddenly risen in my throat. A murderer. Never would I have ever imagined calling my best friend a murderer.

At lunch I tried to focus on my conversation with Dawn, but I couldn't even tell you what she was talking about. She seemed chattier than usual and had something to say about every bit of school and celebrity gossip. A few minutes later, our other friend Isobel joined us.

Isobel Castevet had confident facial features: bold eyebrows, a sharp, freckled nose, full lips that liked to stretch in a closed, teasing smile. Her eyes were an oddly catlike, mesmerising shade that couldn't seem to decide whether it was green or amber. Her hair was an enviable shade of russet. She'd moved here about three weeks ago and immediately attached herself to me for some reason.

"Hickey?" she asked with that teasing smile when her gaze locked on the high neck of my shirt that covered most of the bruise. She giggled, as if she'd said something very witty.

You could say that. But I only rolled my eyes and tugged the turtleneck up a bit higher.

Gary caught my eyes from across the cafeteria, and I felt a sudden icy panic grip me at the memory of my dream which, strangely, had remained as lucid as ever. He waved, and I returned a little hesitant wiggle of my fingers.

"He's cute," Isobel said, tilting her head thoughtfully. My mind seemed to reboot at her voice.

"Isn't he?" Dawn supplied. She gave me a meaningful look.

"Want him?" I asked. "I'm selling him for half the price I got him for at Kmart."

"Are you dating?"

"No. No, definitely not." For good measure I added, "Never." Isobel looked less than convinced. Dawn sent her a sly smile I would've liked to smack off her face.

Oh, please, I'd be a liar if I said I'd never imagined it. Crossing that best friend line, letting him kiss me all over, feeling him in return…the rush of teenage hormones that sent heat straight down into my very core. I'd be a liar if I said I'd never imagined him fucking me senseless.

But I didn't say it, because it was stupid and he didn't like me even a smidgen in that direction and I would always be doomed to be Childhood Friend Leaf to him while he bedded all the other girls at school. I'd always thought the guys were the ones who were supposed to be friend-zoned.

Oh, and not to mention he was a damn vampire.

"Why don't you make the first move?" Dawn asked, as though she'd read my mind. "It's the twenty-first century, Leaf. That's a thing you can do."

"Seriously," I insisted. "I don't like him like that."

I think I was even less convinced than they were, and that was saying something.

Three times, I considered confronting him between classes. Three times, I backed out before he saw me. He was the one, in the end, to confront me about it, appearing out of nowhere in his usual fashion.

"Hey there, stranger," he said, and I flinched. "So, why've you been avoiding me?"

"Gary, you're a...vampire," I choked out. I made the word as small as I could.

"Oh, I didn't realize I'd offended you."

"You can't honestly expect me to find that out and act like nothing happened."

"That's exactly what I expect you to do."

I crossed my arms over my chest and nearly stamped my foot in indignation. "Then I need an explanation. I'm kind of freaking out right now, and some answers would help."

He looked around at the students chatting and goofing off and jostling their way through the hallway. "We'll talk after school, all right?"

—

The last period of the day, History, passed by leisurely, as if it couldn't care less about my after-school plans. At a couple of points I was convinced the clock had simply stopped. Once it hit two-fifteen and the bell rang, I hopped out of my seat as if I'd been electrocuted and tore out of the classroom. If Mr Jay yelled after me, I didn't hear him.

I was waiting breathlessly by our bicycles for four minutes and sixteen seconds before Gary finally emerged from the school among the sea of students. His gait was casual, and it pissed me off immensely. He didn't seem to notice.

We wheeled our bikes toward the park down the street. Not the same park as… I shuddered when I thought about it. I itched to hop on and decimate the ride to the picnic area, but I didn't want to come across as overly anxious. Cool. Confident. Gary's a vampire. No big deal.

But as soon as those familiar wooden tables and benches came into sight, I wanted to book it back home. I forced down the feeling of nausea that was welling up inside of me. There was no going back. I needed to know everything.

"Lay it on me," Gary said as we took our seats across from each other.

Where to start?

"So the Club is…" I prompted.

"A gin rummy club," he said. The incredulity must have been obvious on my face, because he continued. "I'm serious. It's the school gin club. We're pretty damn great at it, too. We only let someone in if they can beat one of us, their pick." He grinned. "We've never had a new member."

"You expect me to believe the Club is just a bunch of card game enthusiasts."

"No, we're vampires, Leaf."

There was that word again. When he said it, it felt far more real. "How many?" I asked.

"Five of us at the school. Three of us not. Eight total."

I felt a little dizzy. "Five vampires at this school and no one's noticed?"

"We blend in pretty well," he said with a shrug. "Not like you noticed."

Not without some effort, I ignored the jab. "What do you do at the club? Besides boomer card games."

"We...strategize."

"I see," I said. "So you get the park, X gets downtown, Y gets Branchville, etcetera, etcetera. Better not to step on one another's toes while finding a bite to eat, eh?"

"That's not what I mean." Gary's mouth twisted into a thoughtful frown. "It's… I don't know how much I can tell you."

"I mean, jeez, is this some kind of secret society, Skull and Bones shit? You owe it to me to be honest."

"I don't owe you anything," he said, voice rising. "You aren't supposed to know anything about this. It was just bad luck. Who goes for walks that late anyway? Don't you know you could get yourself—" His mouth snapped shut.

"What? Killed? By a vampire?"

"Among other things." He made a sound of disgust. "I seriously don't get why you do that. There are bad things out there at night, even in your quiet little neighborhood."

"Yeah, well, I can't imagine anything much worse than you, to be perfectly honest."

The momentary flash of hurt across his face barely registered. It was the kind of thing I was going to feel bad about in a few minutes, but right now I was too hopped up on our typical caustic banter to care.

"You really don't get it, do you?" he said, more than recovered. "This isn't a game. You're not invincible. I don't want anything…" He exhaled. "You need to understand that there are bad guys out there, and they're not us."

"You still haven't told me who 'us' is," I said. "You said there are some of you at school?"

Gary bit the inside of his cheek, looking around the park. "Yeah," he finally said.

"So you, one. And?"

"Drew, you met him."

"Against my will."

"Paul Shinji."

I'd heard the name. He was in my History class, I was pretty sure.

"And… Promise me you won't freak out?"

"Out with it, Gary."

"It's Dawn."

What could have been a full minute passed before I spoke. "Excuse me?"

"Dawn," he repeated. "Berlitz. She's a vampire, too."

My mind was on spin cycle. That stupid crack I'd made yesterday, it was supposed to be a joke. I desperately wanted to go back to yesterday, when it was still a joke. A small part of me wondered if he was kidding, but there wasn't a hint of humor in his expression. My two best friends were vampires. Why not add Isobel and make it three for three, God?

"Are you okay?" Gary asked, and I wanted to scream at him. I wanted him to know what it felt like to have him take a sledgehammer to my comfortable, familiar world.

But at the same time, if I could accept that he—among others—was a vampire, why couldn't I accept that Dawn was, too? It wasn't any more of a betrayal than that of my childhood friend. Dawn had only moved into town a year ago from… I didn't remember. Had she never told me, or had I never asked? She'd slipped seamlessly into our little group of two, like she'd always been there. Had they…

"I get this is a lot to take in," he said, the understatement of the year, "but you have to believe me." When I didn't say anything, he rifled through his backpack to pull out his wallet. From a pocket I'd never noticed, he slipped out a photo.

It was a young man, about college age, maybe, and a blonde girl a bit younger. They weren't familiar to me at all.

"This is my brother, Red," Gary said to my surprise.

"I thought Daisy was your only sibling," I said warily. How well did I even know this guy?

"He's not related by blood," he explained. "But he's always been there for me. He knows what it's like to be like me."

I didn't press, as much as I wanted to. Wasn't Dawn "like him"; weren't all the others? Instead, I looked more closely at the photo. The guy, Red, was handsome in a way that reminded me of old movies, a sort of young Gregory Peck thing. He wasn't dressed the part at all, though, and his hands were hidden in the pocket of his sweatshirt. The girl's eyes were on him, not the camera.

"So who's she?" I asked. Your secret sister? I wanted to add.

"That's Yellow. She's his…" His brow furrowed. "She's his girlfriend, I guess. She's too sweet for her own good."

"Also a…?"

"Yeah. She hasn't been around long, though. We're trying—" He shook his head. "It's not important. Just promise me you won't make any stupid decisions?"

The profound look of concern he gave me, something much older than he was, drew the assent out of me.

—

"We're going out tonight," Gary said on our way home on Friday, and though the words were cryptic I could immediately guess what he meant. To hunt. "I just thought you might want to know."

"Why—" I started to ask, but I shook my head when he looked over at me. I already knew why.

It was a warning.

Stay home, he was saying.

I was nearly asleep that night with the help of 2 milligrams of my mother's Valium when there was some commotion outside near my window, a small group of drunk uni students, maybe, that pulled me groggily out of bed. I pushed the curtain aside to peer down at the pavement where a group of people walked beneath the orange streetlights, enjoying themselves and laughing and having conversations, and one threw something I couldn't see that clanged, hard, against a rubbish bin across the street. Another one pushed the one beside him, and the second duly reciprocated, and for a moment he looked up straight at my window. My heart stopped in my chest.

Gary.

There was no mistaking that spiked hair or handsome face. It was Gary Oak, disturbing the peace.

Now I was suddenly very awake. Screw the Valium. I threw on a pair of jeans and a jacket without bothering to change my shirt, thanking my lucky stars it was unseasonably warm tonight in the after-rain humidity. At the door I pulled on my trainers and slipped out silently to the empty street.

I cursed under my breath. Of course they were gone. I jogged in the direction they'd been passing until I got to an intersection, straining my ears to hear them in the relative silence. They couldn't have gotten too far. Just as I was about to give up and take a shot in the dark down the street to the right, there was a laugh. A girl's, but it gave me hope.

There was the bizarre sensation of a presence behind me, but when I cast a glance over my shoulder, there was nothing there. I shook off the feeling of being watched. No one was out at this hour, except for Gary's gang and me. I went left.

This was a smaller street, darker. I could see them on the next block as they passed by someone's pier lights. I rolled through my steps to keep them quiet as I approached them. They stopped on the corner under one of the few streetlamps here and loitered, unknowingly giving me time to catch up. I slowed as their voices came into hearing range and stopped some fifteen feet away from them, half-nestled into someone's hedges.

"...it's an instinct—"

"Why are you defending him?"

"He's a monster," someone else agreed. I recognized Dawn's voice and felt woozy.

"Oh, please, you're just jealous, goat-sucker."

"Fuck you, Oak. We have the moral high-ground here."

"Can it, guys," came another voice. Paul's, I was pretty sure. "We're not having this argument again."

I couldn't see it from the back, but I could certainly picture Gary's expression of distaste. He shoved his hands into his pockets.

I felt something brush the side of my canvas shoe. I didn't need much light to know what the thing now sitting stock still beside my foot was, as if he'd just realized where he was.

It was a big fucking rat. Before I could stop myself, I yelped, and he scampered across the street.

Sue me.

I clapped a hand over my mouth. The sound had slipped out without meaning to, but the damage was done. Time seemed to slow as they all turned to me, five, six, no, eight pairs of eyes on me, eight faces with expressions ranging from surprise to confusion to curiosity to outright disgust from the one I recognised as Silver, his red hair glinting under the streetlamp.

"Leaf," Gary said with a tone that couldn't decide to be concerned or chastising. "What the hell are you doing here?" He stepped toward me.

"Don't you know it's dangerous to be out so late? Alone?" Silver was jeering at me, and my hands balled into fists by my side. I imagined punching his pretty little face, and the fact that I was vastly outnumbered, by supernatural beings, no less, escaped me for the moment.

"I couldn't sleep" was the best excuse I could give Gary, and his lips pursed as he approached, his hands still in his pockets.

"Why can't you listen to me?" he asked quietly, but his voice was strained as though he were trying his damndest not to yell. "I hate to say it, but Silver's right for once. We're not the only ones out here."

For some reason, I got the distinct feeling he wasn't talking about people in general.

"What do you mean?" I asked, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to hear the answer. He frowned, glanced over his shoulder at the others, and held out a hand for me to take. I did, hesitantly, and he tugged me alongside him back to the covey.

Instinctively I zipped up my windbreaker all the way to my chin as we approached them. Gary's hand squeezed mine reassuringly, but I still couldn't relax. My eyes flitted between the members of the group: Dawn, who didn't meet my eyes, and Paul with his arm around her; little Yellow and tall Red from the photo; Silver and Drew. And another, the tallest.

"Gary," this one said, the word a warning. His face was shadowy and unrecognizable under the brim of a newsboy hat, but something in his voice was incredibly familiar. I couldn't place it.

"I'm not leaving her alone," Gary said, his grip on my hand tightening, and a pleasant warmth settled into my abdomen. "She already knows, so it shouldn't be a problem."

"We're actually celebrating Grégoire's two hundredth birthday," Drew explained with more than a hint of impatience, and I took my first good look at the only member of our party I'd never seen before, only for my mouth to drop open in shock.

Hardass Herriot.

Grégoire. Grégoire Herriot, high school biology teacher and two-century-old vampire, at your service.

"How do you do," he said in that odd accent of his. "Welcome to Rossignol."

Well, fuck.

A/N: KawaiiCelebi86, your heartwarming reviews bring a spark of light and joy to my otherwise bleak, pitiful existence. On that note

review please