Hey guys! Thank you for your wonderful reviews. I know I haven't been updating as often as I used to, but it's because I've been so busy. You know school and clubs and I'm a beta reader now! It's so much fun, but it does take up some of my time. Anyway, I've been thinking, and I'm not a hundred percent sure if I'll follow through with this, but I think I might need a beta reader of my own. I do have a friend who reads my work, and she's really good about giving an honest opinion, but we're both so busy this year. I looked through the beta reader feature that the site has, and well if my username hasn't given it away, let me tell you I'm VERY indecisive, so I just couldn't pick one. So I thought the best person to beta for me would be one of my readers. So if anybody's interested let me know. I'm also going to ask my readers over at . There are perks to being my beta, you'd get to see the chapters early :D and maybe be a little bit more of an insider when it comes to the plot, so my cliffhangers won't be so annoying. The reason I'm considering getting a beta is because I want to improve my writing so I need some good feedback and also because whenever I read through past things I've posted I find annoying little grammar errors and typos that I've missed. Anyway, I'm not sure yet, but if you're interested let me know. Enjoy the chapter!! Sorry for the long author's note. You guys are the best!

Emily and I watched as Juana sauntered out of the room with her stupid grin.

"What was that about?" Emily asked.

I sighed. "Nothing, she's just trying to get on my nerves."

"You okay?" Emily asked looking concerned.

"It's just stress," I said dejectedly. "Ethan found out about Anthony and me."

Emily's eyes widened. "What? How? Is he going to tell anybody?"

I bit my lip. "I'm not really sure. He wants to meet Anthony. He said if Anthony can prove he really is good, then he won't tell on me. Don't worry about that though, I'll deal with it. He doesn't know anything about you. And, if a miracle happens and he does end up thinking Anthony's good, maybe I'll be able to tell him about you."

"That'd be nice," she said smiling. "But, honestly, I'm not going to get my hopes up."

"Yeah, I know, me either."

The boys walked back into the room. "Hey there, you're out of your room. Do you need anything?" Eric asked Emily. He had a giant grin on his face.

She shook her head, but gave him a small smile. "I'm fine."

Of course, Juana had to show up. "How come you're never that happy to see me Eric?"

Anthony rolled his eyes at her. "What do you want to do?" he asked me.

I shrugged. "Anything."

He took my hand and started leading me out of the living room. I looked at Emily. "Do you need me for anything?"

"No, I'm fine," she said. "Don't worry about me. I think I'll go back up."

I noticed that Eric's face fell. "You know, you don't really have to spend so much time in that room."

She shrugged, but smiled at him. "I know, I just need to be by myself for a little while." She paused and seemed to consider something for a while. "Umm, I'm going to need to get some blood soon, I think," she had a mildly horrified expression on her face, "do you think you could take me?"

Eric leaped at the opportunity. "Yeah, sure we'll go tomorrow." He looked like Christmas had come early.

"Can I come?" Juana asked.

"No," said Eric firmly.

"But I need blood too. Unless, you'd like for me to go by myself. I don't want to ruin your date," she said.

"It's not a date," Eric and Emily said at the same time.

Mark stepped in. "Juana, I'll take you hunting." Eric threw him a grateful look.

"Hmm, well it's nice to know that someone wants to spend time with me." She walked over to him and linked her arm through his. He sighed and tried unsuccessfully to pull away from her.

Emily headed back upstairs, and Anthony started leading me toward the kitchen. "Do you want anything to eat?" he asked.

"No, I'm fine," I said.

He stared at me. "You don't look fine."

"Long day." I sighed.

I wanted to ask him what he was talking to his brothers about, but I didn't want to seem rude. I just wanted to prove Juana wrong.

"So what did you need to talk to your brothers about?" I asked hesitantly.

He shrugged. "Nothing really, just stuff about Juana. Plotting ways to get her out. Oh, and I don't know if you've noticed, but Eric likes Emily."

I rolled my eyes. "I think everyone's noticed that."

"Hmm, I'll have to tell him. He thinks he's being subtle. He doesn't realize how he grins like an idiot every time she's in the room."

"Don't make fun of him," I said laughing a little.

"Why not?" he asked. "He made fun of me."

"Really, what for?"

Anthony gave me a look as though it should be glaringly obvious. "Well, I met this hunter, and I couldn't stop babbling about her for a long time. It sort of drove Eric and Mark crazy."

I blushed, but couldn't help smiling. "Aw, you drove your brothers crazy over me?"

"Yeah, they thought I was idiot. You know fraternizing with the enemy and all that." He wrapped his arm around my waist to hold me close, and then his lips touched my cheeks softly.

Why had I been suspicious of him? Juana was just doing what she does best, getting on my nerves.

"So I was thinking, are you up for meeting Ethan tomorrow?" I asked him.

"Whenever you want me to meet him is fine with me," he said.

I took a deep breath. "Okay, tomorrow then."

I knew I should have been worrying about it. Ethan was not going to be nice about this. But, at the moment, Anthony was holding me close and running his fingers through my hair. That made it easy to forget how much problems I had.

He moved his lips along my cheek and stopped at my ear. "I love you," he whispered.

The next morning Ethan picked me up. I'd called him the night before to tell him that he could meet Anthony that day.

I could feel the butterflies fluttering around in my stomach as I waited for him to show up. When I saw his familiar red car pull up into the driveway, it was as though the butterflies had been given caffeine with the way they moved in my stomach. I took five deep breaths in a pitiful attempt to calm myself down.

Ethan didn't respond to my hello when I got into the car. He kept his hands at ten and two on the steering wheel and refused to take his eyes off the road. He's not normally an obsessively safe driver, but I think he wanted an excuse to not talk to me.

It wasn't until we were at school and out of the car that he spoke to me. "Lead the way," he said.

I was being as slow as possible as I led him to where I told Anthony we'd meet him in the back of the school. Anthony leaned against the wall looking calm and blasé. Why was it that he could always be so composed while I freaked out about everything? I supposed it had to do with that whole opposites attract thing. He looked at me and gave a small smile. Next to me I noticed Ethan stiffen.

Ethan was very still upon seeing Anthony. I could feel the tension resonating off of everyone.

I decided since this was mostly my mess, I should probably talk first. "Anthony this is my best friend Ethan. Ethan this is my –" I stopped, deciding the word "boyfriend" probably wouldn't sit well with Ethan. "This is Anthony."

Anthony extended his arm. "Hello," he said a bit uncertain.

Ethan didn't say anything in response. He stood staring at Anthony as though he was ready to rip his throat out. You would think that with Ethan's cute, good guy look, he would be completely incapable of a murderous expression, but I assure you that's not the case.

When it became clear that Ethan wasn't going to be polite, Anthony lowered his hand. For the longest minute of my life nobody said anything. Ethan simply glared Anthony as if staring at him long enough would prove the, "obvious" evil all vampires had.

"I know what you're probably thinking about me," Anthony started, "but I would never, ever hurt Evelyn."

Anthony's statement finally provoked a reaction from Ethan. He rolled his eyes. "You're hurting her by existing," he hissed.

"Ethan," I cut in, "you said you'd be good."

He looked at me, first furious and then he closed his eyes, and when he opened them his expression was more neutral. "Am I supposed to just believe that you're good," he asked.

"Yes," Anthony answered simply. "How do you want me to prove it?"

"Stay away from us," Ethan responded instantly.

"Ethan," I cut in again, "don't –" I stopped when I felt my cell phone vibrate in my pocket.

I frowned when looked at the caller ID. It was my mom. My mother, the person who calls me for only the most dire emergencies.

"Hello?" I answered the phone.

"Evelyn," her voice was cold. "Listen to me, I am going to ask you this question once, and you better be honest with me, do you understand?"

"Um, yes," I had a bad feeling about this.

"Have you seen or heard or had any kind of contact with Emily in the past month?" she asked enunciating each word carefully.

Well, on the plus side I had killer intuition. My initial bad feeling about this conversation had been correct. However, on the down side, it was highly possible that my mother could kill me for seeing Emily.

Now, it would seem like my best move here would be to lie through my teeth. But, it was highly possible that my mom knew the truth and was testing me. This isn't just me being paranoid either, she's done it before.

So, my solution? Easy, beat around the bush.

"Emily's been missing for a month," I said. I felt awkward, especially with the way Ethan and Anthony were both staring at me now.

"Evelyn, the reason I wanted you girls to stop looking for Emily is because Lucas leaked a trail that she was turned into a vampire," my mom said. I gasped appropriately. "The Administratio didn't want to believe it, but when we tried tracking her as a vampire…" she trailed off. "We're ninety percent sure that it's true, but we're still hoping…"

"So why are you asking me if I've talked to her if she's been turned into a vampire?" See how I addressed the problem by implying that I hadn't seen Emily without actually saying I hadn't seen her, while at the same time asking a question to find out how she found out that I had in fact seen Emily? I'm a genius.

"I fought with Lucas today, and he mentioned something about you 'fraternizing with our enemies,'" she was whispering.

"And you believed him?" I asked allowing a decent amount of outrage into my tone. "And why are you whispering?"

"I'm not exactly in the best condition to be having a condition right now, so I'll talk to you later okay Evelyn?"

So that meant she was in the middle of hunting. "Yeah, sure," I said relieved that I was getting off so easy. But don't think for a second that I didn't realize that she hadn't answered my first question.

I sighed in relief when closed the phone. "I heard something about Emily. Did they find her?" Ethan asked.

I shook my head. "They think she's been turned into a vampire," I said watching Ethan's jaw drop. "But they're not sure," I added partly to calm him down and partly to answer the questioning look on Anthony's face.

Ethan seemed to remember that Anthony was here. He looked at me, "we shouldn't be talking about this in front of him."

I sighed. Ethan's rude attitude was really bugging me. I wondered what he would do if he found out that Anthony knew more about Emily's present situation than he did.

Ethan stared at me for a long time. "Listen," he said to Anthony. "You have no idea how badly I want to kill you, but I'm not going to try because I don't want to hurt Evy. But you can't expect me to just be okay with whatever it is you guys are doing. If you leave nobody's going to have to get hurt."

"I'll only go away if she wants me to," Anthony said.

"Look," Ethan snapped. "Whatever kind of hypnosis you're using on her –"

"Wait what?!" I stopped him. "You think I've been letting him hypnotize me?"

"Probably some low level form so that you're mind isn't completely out of it," Ethan answered. "How else would you get involved with a vampire?"

"This is ridiculous," Anthony said, angry for the first time. "Just because you couldn't get a date with her doesn't mean that every other guy is just as incompetent."

Okay, that was a bit harsh. "Anthony," I admonished him.

"Sorry Evelyn, but seriously, what can I do to make this guy believe me?" he asked.

"Nothing," Ethan growled.

I was on the verge of tears. This was not good. I was about to say something to try to keep the peace, but my phone vibrated again.

"Yeah Nicole?" I answered.

"You need to come home now. And bring Ethan or at least tell him to go home too," she ordered.

"Huh? Why?" I was a little surprised at the urgency in her voice.

"It's about mom and Lucas. Come home now!"

I refused to let myself panic, not this too. "Something's wrong," I told Ethan and Anthony who were at the moment giving each other murderous glares. "Nicole wants us to go back to my house," I told Ethan. "Don't worry about giving me a ride, I'll teleport there." I couldn't imagine the horror of sitting through another car ride with him.

Ethan looked back and forth between Anthony and me. "I'll see you in a little while," he said, stalking off looking ready to kill somebody.

When he was gone Anthony came up closer to me. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to lose my temper, I just –"

"Relax, I know he was provoking you. We'll talk about it later, 'kay?" I felt so out of it. I couldn't even concentrate properly on him.

I teleported back home to see what it was that Nicole wanted.