Night and Day

Teeny Tiny Twilight

I let myself relax as I opened my locker, collecting my books for the next class.

I was regaining my control. Inch by inch, I would right everything that had been wronged from when she had ripped into my life like a hurricane. A fiery hurricane.

The bell rang as I gathered my own books up.

I wonder how Annabel would react to her own, personal, hurricane.

I grinned, my teeth flashing dangerously exposed, and for once, I didn't much care.

I always knew the flaws in my character. A lethal God-complex, a terrible habit of invading the privacy of the whole of the population—with the exclusion of one individual—and a terrible selfishness that branched off into other character flaws such as a poor control of my temper and an ambition that put Macbeth to shame. I was absolutely aware of the darker avenues of my character.

Who isn't, though? The truly ignorant might not, and the very few who actually believed themselves to be completely above reprimand. Unluckily—or luckily, I suppose, for the truly optimistic—I didn't fall into either of these categories.

When you possess a conscience, a funny thing happens. You begin to see all the flaws of yourself. Like sitting with a corpse, the longer you stay, the more terrible it becomes. All the pretty flesh rots, and you begin to see the skeleton beneath. And then there is horror, because you were hoping to find all those pretty white bones, but the lovely skin, the strong muscles, have tainted the fundamental structure from white to black, and you find that the very core is just as awful as the exterior.

Because of the exterior.

Beauty is suddenly ugly, and you only want to turn away from it. To run, and hide from this strange world that has always been the one you have lived in, only with less clarity. You pray for blindness and only find sight.

Very few people have watched a corpse rot, and while it hadn't been the height of my days—and probably not his either—it had been the turning point from rock bottom back to the surface.

Self is too much like a corpse. I have sat within my thoughts long enough that I knew—metaphorically—how black my bones were.

It seemed I missed a spot though.

I never realized how terribly proud I was until I fully realized what I intended to do—still intended to do, regardless. This was not putting a terribly self absorbed, rude, selfish (God, this sounds familiar) unpleasant woman in her place. This was not, in any way, shape, or form, justice. It was simply this: she had caused me great unease, and so I wanted to settle the score with her.

Selfish, malicious, short tempered...no, I far better fit the description of the person deserving justice than her.

She obviously hadn't intentionally caused my unease, and by anyone's estimations, I had brought it upon myself. She had never intentionally forced my hand towards intimacy with her, nor towards my desire to kill her. Not unless she was in control of the way her scent affected me, or that she happened to awaken the very worst of what I was capable of.

And she was again dragging out the worst of me, and yet I couldn't even lay blame on her. She was, in this instance, guiltless.

I walked into class with my books tucked under my arm, my conscience whipping uncomfortable questions at me that I didn't want to think too much about, but did anyway. My insides were trying to find inventive means of escape, most of which included crawling up my throat.

Annabel wasn't looking at me. I noticed that she had pulled her hair out of her ponytail, the elastic now on her wrist instead. She had her book open, reading with an expression that looked more fearful than I thought a text book was able to entice. She was leaning forward onto the desk, playing with a strand of hair mindlessly, almost roughly, in frustration. She didn't look up when I came in.

We were the only people in class except for Mr. Bertie, who was in the middle of filling the chalk board with his sloppy writing. Not even hand writing, his printing was a collection of scratch work. None of the students really complained though, as Mr. Bertie was a favourite teacher among too many of the students to really garner much criticism. Besides, he'd much rather lecture than write, making the topic of his calligraphy moot. Today we had a lab though, and we didn't have time for him to repeat again and again a single sentence while one lone student struggled to keep up.

My conscience—in fact, my contemptuous, ill-meaning plans to ease my indignation—forgotten, I took the seat next to Annabel. I was curious to see what it was about the text that was so upsetting. Not completely forgetting myself, I pulled my chair as far from hers as the desk would allow.

She hadn't looked up, but I figured she was permanently implementing an 'I'm going to ignore you for as long as I can' rule for every one of our encounters. If this was how she proposed to dissuade my interest, she was going about it the exact wrong way. Rather than secret, she would do well to reveal a little every now and then. The faster the puzzle was solved, the faster I would be able to successfully stifle my unbidden curiosity, the faster she would be safe, the faster I could sink back into the life I was familiar with.

The thought suddenly wasn't as appealing as it had been this morning. Even then, there had been a small little unwilling twitch in my chest. I suddenly wondered if this was going to get harder, rather than easier, as time passed. I dismissed the ridiculousness of this notion with a shrug. She was simply human. There were only about six billion more just like her. Approximately.

I checked my air, and then cautiously leaned in to see what she was reading from the text book. I still couldn't imagine that she would find anything upsetting enough in the academic writing that would garner an expression of such dread. She had her elbows propped on the edge of the table, leaning over her book in such a way that it blocked an easy view to what she was reading, causing me to have to lean in closer than would have been necessary had she been sitting up.

She looked up then, towards the front, and the hair that had been shielding me from her peripheral vision fell back and I suddenly realized as she spun and gasped at the proximity of our faces that she had not—as I had assumed—been ignoring me. She honestly hadn't noticed I was even there.

Poor human.

She went to stand, to take a startled step back away from me, but the chair hindered the movement and she ended up on the floor instead. It all seemed to happen in one fluent, yet graceless moment.

I blinked at her.

"What's wrong with you?" she cried, her voice shaking a little. Her heart was sprinting a mini-marathon in her chest. Mr. Bertie spared a look back, and then went back to writing, chalk clicking against the board.

I had been a tiny bit amused with her until she had yelled at me.

"I don't have the list with me," I said dryly. I stood, offering my hand to help her up. She ignored the gesture with a glare in my direction and picked herself up off the floor. "I didn't mean to startle you, I'm sorry," I said as I sat back down, contrite.

Or trying to be contrite, at least. I was actually quite entertained by her expression of shock. I chuckled. She levelled a look at me in a way that I'm sure was supposed to admonish me. I smiled broadly despite her chastising.

She huffed, and then shoved her text book towards me. "Redeem yourself," she ordered, still irritated and, judging by the pace of her heart, still recovering.

I took the text, angling it so that she could easily see what I saw. "What don't you get?"

She leaned in towards me, and I knew that I should lean back, but I couldn't quite find the will to do so. We were suddenly very, very close, and it would not be at all good for my image of normal if I suddenly jumped on her. I hadn't taken a breath yet, but my air reserve was low enough that I would need one soon unless I was planning to grunt my way though the rest of our conversation.

"I know mitosis is about splitting one cell into two identical cells, and obviously you had to copy the chromosomes inside the cells to do that, and that those contain DNA...but I don't understand what the DNA Polymerase and DNA ligase are doing. At all. This doesn't even look like mitosis." She looked scared again.

I tried to hide my smile, but it was hard. She had met with a hostile vampire with ease in the dark. Alone. Twice. She had not only met my gaze—quite a feat for humans—but stared me down. God, she was a whore; she regularly risked assault, battery, and rape on a regular basis. Did she even flinch at any of this, though?

No.

But the prospect of not understanding scared her.

Despite the ridiculousness of this, I felt like I was having an insight into her mind. She was used to knowing things, to understanding things quickly and easily.

She was intelligent.

"You are in luck. It doesn't look like mitosis because it isn't. This is DNA replication..." I stopped then, confused, though that was the least of my worries. DNA replication was in the grade twelve curriculum. Actually, it was the grade twelve advanced curriculum.

I flipped the book closed, as I looked at the cover. There was a little lady bug perched on the edge of a leaf rather than the snake lunging at a very startled looking mouse. I cocked my head at Annabel. We didn't have these text books at this school; they only offered middle level courses here.

I badly wanted to ask where she had gotten this text book from, but I was out of air. I was either going to have to sit mute for the rest of the class—very strange and extremely rude on my part, even if I hadn't wanted to talk to her—or I would need to take a breath.

I clenched my teeth, steeled my muscles tight against my bones to strangle even a twitch, and then inhaled.

For a short moment, not even long enough to fill the space of half a second, it was the most heavenly feeling. It wrapped around me and sank into my skin as if I were as permeable as a sponge, rather than a thick slab of stone. Her scent was pure euphoria until my body recognized that I was not, in fact, going to allow her blood to run smoothly down my throat, warming my cold flesh until it was like I was alive again...

Then it was agony.

My muscles trembled under my skin in impatience, as if they had a mind of their own, but I forced myself into absolute stillness. I swallowed back a sudden flood of venom, and I could swear my teeth were tingling.

It took every ounce of my century's worth of self-denial to keep my head, and even then, I could just barely control my expression.

I didn't want to think about this, that I was acting more animal than man. Animal instincts, animal desires, animal thoughts...this was essentially how I had lived as a hunter, but my targets had not been the weak and the sick, as most animals chose their prey. My prey had been the cruel and the vile. Murderers, paedophiles, rapists, lynchers... though, I was myself a lyncher in that way; I knew without doubt when my prey was guilty.

I never wanted to return to that life.

So I didn't think about it.

"Annabel!"

I had just been about to ask her about the origins of the text book, but William LeCroux, a shorter, fit boy with dark hair and dark eyes, jokingly pushed Micheal out of the seat he had taken behind Annabel as the class had slowly trickled in. He spared me one look as Annabel turned to look at him. 'What's Cullen doing with Annabel? I thought he haunted the back. Probably being a creeper up here now.' I met his eyes and he looked away quickly—a normal reaction in humans. 'Freak.'

I was surprised. As far as I knew, William never held any ill will towards me. I was even more shocked to find that the feeling was mutual.

I found a smile working its way up my lips, bemused by the girl and the wide variety of chaos that she wreaked on my life. My life and others, I judged, by the excited jittery thoughts bouncing around through William's mind.

Annabel smiled warmly, something I had yet to experience myself, and greeted him. "Hey. What's—"

He cut her off excitedly, and I almost hit him for it. "I got that song you were telling me about last week." He pulled out his iPod, the earbuds wrapped around the thin frame.

Annabel's entire face lit up, and then I was grinning too, just watching her. Like her blood had just moments before, something wrapped itself around me, soft as a caress, and sank into my bones. It was surprisingly pleasant. "You did? What do you think?" William teetered his hand in the air with an unimpressed expression. Annabel's expression dropped, disappointed. "Oh. Yeah, well, everyone has different tastes." she responded glumly, and then added quietly, "I guess."

William laughed, handing her the iPod, "I'm joking! It's already one of my top played songs on my playlist." 'Because it makes me think of you'

I caught verses of the song, a rhythm. There was a general focus on a wish, but he wasn't really thinking about the song. The petite brunette that was half turned in her seat to speak with him had him captured.

I almost laughed. William was thinking about how desperately in love he was with her, having listened to the song on repeat all night last night in bed, just thinking about her. How human. I'm sure in a month or so he would be desperately in love with another new face.

Annabel, who had been flicking though his songs, looked up to presumably make a comment on this, only to see that everyone within hearing distance was staring at her. Intently. She blushed again and quickly looked down, flipping her hair over her shoulders, erecting a liquescent mahogany wall around her.

I cocked my head at her, wanting an answer to this reaction. It would have been a fairly acceptable reaction to attention if had thought that she was at all shy. That wasn't the impression I had from her. She was too calm, too comfortable with social situations to be shy.

No, it seemed that she was embarrassed by the attention, almost nervous of it, as if it carried ill-intentions, though I couldn't understand why. Humans loved attention.

There was strength in numbers, so no human's instinct would pull at them to distance themselves from the herd. Humans, though, were not merely pack animals; they recognized the potential power the group had if they could only find their way to the top of the hierarchy usually obtainable through social status. The more friends you had, the more of the group you had behind you; the more of the group you had behind you, the more power you had; the more power you had, the more attention you could gather from the group.

Long story short; the brighter the spotlight, the bigger the following.

I was distracted by the loud squeal of Michael dragging his chair over from the back to plop down right next to Annabel, directly in the centre of the isle. He hadn't noticed her discomfort, or the oddness of that discomfort. Didn't she like having friends?

"What are you doing?" he inquired, nosily, it seemed to me.

Annabel tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and I was amazed at the simple gesture. Her hair was shinny, her body heat warming me even from where I was. I could imagine that her hair was soft and warm. "Um, unfairly judging Will by his music."

William was suddenly, exceedingly nervous. "Do I pass?"

She wrinkled her nose playfully, "Only if you have a really good reason for why I'm not seeing any Them Crooked Vultures on here."

William relaxed, laughing. "Because you haven't filched my iPod until now. I wasn't prepared."

I made a face. I wasn't particularly fond of Them Crooked Vultures. To me, they sounded like the collective vomit of four dying one hit wonders trying desperately to swim against the current before they became completely washed up. It was actually fairly pathetic.

Annabel, in perfect character, noticed. "What's that face for?" She had her eyes on me now, and though her voice was patronizing, her eyes were playful and open. Warm. It was an invitation to join their camaraderie as if I was one of them.

It seemed, for a moment, that it might just be the most anyone had ever given me, and I felt the sudden vicious pull of her, as if she were a magnet.

A magnetic personality. It was almost too cliche to swallow.

And yet, it wasn't. There was all this warmth, and buoyancy and excitement that hadn't been there before. Despite all the havoc she seemed to leave in her wake, all this good humour seemed to be originating from her.

I couldn't answer right away. For as congenial as the offer was, I was confused. Hadn't she told me in the hall just moments before that I wasn't to share her company, in any way, shape, or form? Now she was asking me to join in her conversation. I didn't understand the change. Not that I'd had the intention to honour her wishes outright, but still, the sudden change...

What is she thinking? I floundered for words and drew a blank. Nothing articulate swam to the surface, and so I was left staring at her mutely.

Michael only noticed the most shallow inflections on her voice, and he fed off of that. Feeling confident and wanting to please her in the way of backing her up, thinking it would make him look comparatively witty and attractively dispassionate, he sneered at me. "What's it to you, Casper?"

William, though not particularly pleased with Michael as he was fierce competition for Annabel's attention, was pleased someone was prematurely cutting me off from her growing group of admirers. 'He's weird, but he's good looking,' he admitted grudgingly. He feared that my looks might be the snare to catch Annabel.

I looked at her, so soft and sharp all at once, and couldn't believe that she would fall for the guise.

Then again, that was what my face and body were designed for, to attract prey. And she—despite some quirks in her instincts—was still human. Still prey.

I was about to laugh openly at Michael, both brushing him off as insignificant, and simultaneously defend myself to keep from falling in Annabel's regards. A fairly natural and automatic reaction when you needed to brush everyone off. When you lived a life like mine, distance was golden.

"Hey—!" Annabel cried, and she pressed her arm against mine.

I wasn't sure, but I was fairly certain I was having the vampire equivalent of a heart attack. My chest felt suddenly tight, and my skin burned, not only with the heat of her soft flesh, but also with excitement. I was suddenly splendidly aware of all my surroundings, right down to how the heat of her body shot heat against the left side of my body in a disjointed rhythm. Her heart was drumming around excitedly in her chest, and I was nearly shivering from the feel of her skin, naturally, willingly, shockingly, touching mine.

I wanted to jump up and scream, just to give this exhilaration an outlet.

Excluding the rapturous excitement, my body seemed to be hunting without the intent of blood. I was burning, of course, but the precipice I balanced precariously on didn't seem so fine in this one moment. I was still in danger of killing her, and I could do it so easily right now. The want hadn't lessened any to deter me, but my range for control seemed to have broadened slightly. Rather than balancing on a thin threat of control, it was now a thin wire.

Annabel was speaking, and I followed her gaze to our touching arms. Ivory against alabaster sunlight, and though she was pale—paler, in fact, than most of the people in this town—there was something about her skin that looked like it held the sun rather than burned from it."—my arm is almost as pale as his is." and then she broke our connection, and looked straight at Michael with a raised eyebrow. "And I'm not a ghost. Just half albino."

Despite the weary sarcastic quirk to her lips, Michael thought she was serious.

No one had the chance to comment. Mr. Bertie called the class to order then and started to do attendance.

This was good. I needed a second to gather my thoughts. My jovial mood crashed down with enough force that I thought I might shatter into thousands of little pieces of vampire all over the floor. What a mess. Thankfully I was near enough to indestructible that such a scene was avoided.

Comparing the significant difference in our skin—creamy living flesh to white ice—I remembered that I was not like her, and so her offer for me to join in with their human camaraderie was in vain.

Mr. Bertie's sudden consideration on the object of my affliction pulled me out of the slow downwards spiral I could feel myself getting snared in.

His considerable brow furrowed, as he stared at her, frustrated. 'Her name' He thought, desperately flipping through names in his head, looking for something that matched with the face of the girl before him whose smile was slowly growing in amusement. 'It's on the tip of my tongue.'

You and I both, I thought wryly, pulling in another breath delicately.

I had a dual view of Annabel's sugar sweet smile. Too innocent, I decided with a chuckle. "I'm not going to help you this time," she lilted cheerfully, a teasing smile pulling up the corners of her mouth, her head titling playfully to the side.

I noticed that when she smiled like that, truly cheerful, I could see the brilliant white of her teeth beyond the full pink of her lips.

I suddenly realized I was on the edge of darkness. Not moving into it, but away. It was a surreal feeling, one I was having trouble fully grasping onto. I wasn't even sure what I was supposed to do, to take that first step. For the first time in a long time, a very long time, I felt helpless. I dangled on a new precipice. The one I was familiar with had a strong gale at my back, pushing me towards the darkness, the all consuming fire. This strange new frontier was strangely calm, and I was looking out towards the light. Just one step...

'I wonder what it feels like to kiss her' Michael thought randomly, staring at her lips as I was. I glared flatly at my desk, at the swirling of synthetic wood pulp. The compulsion to steak a claim on a territory that wasn't mine shook me from my thoughts. I directed my concentration towards avenues that didn't end with me standing above a very broken Michael. Maybe with a little gore.

I grinned.

Mr. Bertie was giving Annabel a dark look, but he liked her in the way that teachers do. He thought she was refreshing, and even though she seemed to have a never ending collection of questions, he thought that she was intelligent. People like her were why he had wanted to become a teacher: young and inquisitive.

"It's instrumental," he decided, considering her.

"Ish," she agreed. A blush bloomed on her pale skin, and for the second time since I walked into the classroom, I wasn't particularly happy to be sitting beside her. I didn't enjoy conflagration as a hobby; masochism just didn't appeal to me the same way chess did.

I wondered where the blush came from though. Obviously I was not focusing on the blood itself; that should be the last thing on my mind. I was instead, wondering what had embarrassed her about his spoken thoughts.

Mr. Bertie squinted one eye at her. "And it reminds me of Lucy Montgomery."

We were both considering her now, though Anne of Green Gables was not what was on my mind.

"It's Annabel!" Michael unexpectedly exploded next to Annabel, making her start a little, and lean towards me. My arm twitched, wanting to wrap around her protectively. Impossibly.

"Hey!" Annabel and Mr. Bertie cried at the same time, but Annabel was close enough to push him—nearly out of his seat, actually. "I hearby vote you off our table!"

People laughed, William thought of brushing a stray strand of hair back behind her ear, and in return, I thought of breaking his arm. I could feel a new normal setting in.

When Michael didn't move immediately, William grabbed the back of his chair, and made to drag him back to the back of the room. Mr. Bertie gave him a sharp look that made him stop right away. "What?" William asked anyway.

Mr. Bertie shook his head, "They don't pay me enough." Then he turned to the chalk board. "Okay, note and then lab. Get started now so you don't have to finish it tomorrow at lunch or after school."

Everyone pulled their books out, and the chatter started as a low buzz. Annabel's books were already open, half of the note already copied.

I looked at her calligraphy, curious. I had always heard that it could tell you about someone's personality. Mine, for example, was very neat and though not completely diminutive, it was still small, sloping to the right, very little weight on my pen. I was well educated, freely able to express my emotions and rationed the amount of energy I put towards a task, or, in other words, thoughtful and careful. A tiny bit selfish.

I imagined hers would be similar. She had not demonstrated in any way a lack of intelligence, and though she could have a very cool demeanour, she had also smiled and laughed, whispered a threat at me, and admitted her desire to keep me safe from harm. She seemed very careful. I knew nothing about her, because she wanted it that way.

Then again, I really hadn't been trying all that hard to ferret out her secrets. It was well within my power to follow her home.

But is it in your control? the piece of me that wanted to hide her from the eyes of this room asked. The protective piece that worried I wouldn't be strong enough in the end.

I was shocked to find that, upon peering over at her page, her writing was messy, sloping to the left, her pen pushed hard enough into the paper that the next sheet probably carried scars.

Uneducated or uncoordinated, hid her emotions, and put vast amounts of energy into everything she did. Generous.

I stared at the differences between our writing, and felt a great crash of disappointment. Uneducated, I thought scornfully.

Here I had constructed an Annabel that didn't exist, based purely on her reactions, on her words, on her eyes, and, it seemd, that without the mental context as a guide, I was a useless judge of character. I looked at the advanced text she had flipped over, to hide its cover from her peers, and wondered how off I had been.

The two were like night and day, though. Truly like the two different pieces of her. Chime, who I knew only in night, and then Annabel, too bright for anything but the day. Even with her two identities...I was having a little trouble fitting this new piece in with either of them.

Looking at her, I could still see a sharpness about her eyes, an intelligent light that wove itself into the darkness of her irises. Her expressions were written so clear that I could almost trace where the little 'v' of worry sat between her brows, the patient lines around her eyes.

I was so sure that the Annabel I saw now was the one that existed, but maybe I had created her out of hope. Surely, if this prostitute carried so much potential for goodness, then maybe there was even just a taste of redemption within my own grasp. Maybe not everything was so black and white.

But she was not redemption, or a sign from a higher power to keep hope, and nothing in me augured for peace. Not in this life, and certainly not in the next. My soul had been promised for me towards a much darker power than the one I sought.

I finished my note, feeling like a coat of heavy stone had been laid across my shoulders.

No soul, no peace, no point.

Cheerful.

I smiled bleakly. Well, if I were bent for hell, I might as well make the most of it. It's the journey, not the destination, n'est-ce pas? I offered the first slide, a small rectangle of glass with a purple blob in the middle, to Annabel. "So, I'm confused," I started, barrelling right into a conversation like a furious bull.

Her shoulders perceptibly dropped as if my words carried a burden she carried. "Edward, we haven't even started the lab. Give it a chance before you give up."

I blinked at her mutely, thrown. "You," I said finally. "You confuse me."

"Oh. Sorry." She looked through the microscope. "Telophase."

She went to take the slide out, to replace it with the next. Stupidly, unthinkingly, still reeling from her casual disregard, I caught her hand. "Do you mind if I take a look?"

She ripped her hand out of mine, startled. "Go ahead," she managed, rubbing the offended skin where my flesh had stolen heat from hers. Her eyes were wide.

I quickly looked into the microscope, if only for somewhere else to look instead of the startled eyes. The startled eyes that suddenly were brimming with questions.

My hand tingled with warmth. Stolen, or otherwise, it was still a delicious feeling. Part of me wanted to 'accidentally' brush against her to prompt another bout of the sensation that felt so much like my nerves were waking up from a long hibernation, and they celebrating. The other part of me was intensely wary of her stunned expression, knowing that it would soon give way to curiosity.

"Telophase," I agreed, watching the cell's fight for partition while the chromosomes clung to their familiar twins. I myself was getting the hang of such intrapersonal wars. I chanced a glance at Annabel. She was retrieving the next slide for me. I slid it in. "Metaphase."

"Can I see?" she asked with over done casualness, and I pushed the microscope towards her. I wondered if she really thought I was wrong. And then I smirked at the idea.

I stared at her. "Doesn't it bother you? Don't you even want to know what makes you an enigma?"

She shrugged, pushing the microscope towards me without my having to ask this time. "Not really. Besides, I can't be too enigmatic if you can tell my why."

"Touché," I grumbled. "Anaphase."

She looked and nodded. I realized that she hadn't once reached for the paper to write down the names, and I wondered why. I looked at the sloppy, left slanted writing, annoyed that I still couldn't find the girl it portrayed in the one beside me. I may have been sulking.

"Oh fine, go ahead. How am I confusing, Edward?" I looked to see her cheek propped onto her palm, her elbow against the table. She didn't look enthusiastic.

I felt my muscles pulling into a grin I hadn't called for. "You couldn't resist."

"Never mind," she grumbled almost inaudibly, reaching to take the microscope. I inched it away, and she met my eyes again, looking more wary than irritated. And rightfully so.

"You're giving me mixed signals. One second you don't want me talking to you, the next you're practically dragging me into the conversation. How am I supposed to know what you want?" I grinned darkly at her, "I might just get so confused everything you've said will become void, and I might, possibly, stumble into your part of town." I shrugged. "Who knows?"

She was gaping at me. "What? I dragged you into the conversation?" she grabbed at the microscope furiously, pushing the slide into the stage with surprising gentleness despite the heated energy emanating from her. She took a deep breath, long and slow. "Interphase," she said in a much calmer voice.

I watched her curiously. She was using the microscope as an excuse for something else to look at while she cooled down. I didn't ask to check her answer. As much as an insolent boor I felt like for upsetting her—intentionally at that—I was also strangely pleased that I could shake her from her calm. I also felt...happy. Excited to be talking to her. High, in a way that I hadn't ever felt before.

Another symptom? Could she really cause such a great flux in me from one simple night? Not even really an hour of her time, and she had managed to turn me upside down. Stranger still, I liked it.

I think.

William looked up from his microscope, wondering if he should cut in. Wondering why I knew where her part of town was at all, and if he should be worried. He had no clue, and I realized, out of all these children, I was the one who knew her best. It was a pleasing kind of knowledge, like it gave me some claim to her that the others didn't have. Couldn't have.

She seemed to have controlled herself enough to feel that she could meet my eyes again. I hadn't even really noticed until she looked up again, but I had stopped breathing when she had looked away. I thought something was missing. I pulled in a deep breath through my mouth, fighting against her fire as it raged in my throat.

"I'm sorry I confused you," she said in a carefully controlled voice, still choleric. I pursed my lips against a smile. "I was only trying to be polite before. If you don't want me to talk to you—"

"Who said that?" I asked brightly.

She closed her eyes, teeth clenched. She pulled her hair up into a pony-tail, let it down, pulled it back up again. "You did, Edward." she nearly growled under her fleeting calm, barely holding onto her temper.

I was finding I really liked the way my name fell from her lips, especially when there was such a strong undercurrent of emotion. "Did I? I only meant to lobby for impartiality. I mean, if you can talk to me whenever, why can't I talk to you, also?"

"Edward, Mondays really aren't good for me. Can we do this tomorrow?"

I grinned. "Sounds like a deal to me," I agreed.

Her eyes flashed open. "Deal?" she gasped. Finally, finally, she was the one floundering.

Victory! I celebrated, my eagerness spilling over into a wide smile. All my teeth flashed, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered if it scared her.

And I broke my rule.

I touched her.

She was still looking a little blindsided when I took her hand, shaking it, holding on slightly longer than necessary, robbing her of her heat.

Heat garnered from life.

I burned in a delicious, new way. A way I liked. A way I wanted to chase. "Deal."

If I had been worried about that all consuming need of the second monster returning, there was none. Maybe in a deeper pit of me, but for now, in the light of day, she was Annabel. Chime waited for the sunset, but I was content here with the day. Pleased, warmed, clean with it.

She looked a little unbalanced when she looked back at the microscope, and for a second I worried she might fall off her chair. I reached to steady her—another excuse to touch her—but she didn't need it, and I dropped my hand. She stared down the long tube at the final slide clicking into place. "Prophase." She said, and a small smile tugged at her lips.

It is the beginning, I agreed.

I just didn't know of what.