"'Special weapons training'", I read from my training schedule. "That's going to be interesting."

"Sounds like it," Carl agreed. "But it could as well be explosive materials theory."

"Ugh."

"Or… not."

I followed Carl's gaze to see our instructor walk in, and laughed out loud. The heads of the six other students turned to look at me.

My special weapons instructor was none other than Dimitri.

His only sign of acknowledging the students assembled in the room was a curt nod to us. Without giving me the slightest sign whatsoever, he proceeded to pull down a canvas and turn on a projector connected to a small laptop on the front desk.

A few students giggled behind their hands. They were still looking at me. I realized that my face right now didn't make me look like the smartest person alive. I quickly checked myself.

"Before actually handling these weapons, I want you to know what they are, what they are used for and what their dangers are", Dimitri said. "Therefore, the first two lessons will be held in a classroom. When the practical lessons start, I will expect all of you to know everything we covered in this class by heart."

Unbelievable. He just comes into my class and holds it. Without the least secret sign of how queer it is to suddenly be back in the teacher and student roles that initially were such a hindrance in our relationship. Not even one wink.

Carl leaned slightly over to me. "Bet even you will not be able to make him laugh in the classroom" he whispered.

I raised my eyebrows. "Others might have been content to see him move a facial muscle."

"Wouldn't have thought you'd give up without even having tried…" He made an exaggeratedly disappointed face and sat up straight again.

"Tried? To make him laugh?"

"Exactly. I bet you can't do it."

"Are you provoking me into betting against you?"

"Oh, no, I'm just saying. No one can make this guy laugh."

"Of course I can. I did it a hundred times."

Carl leaned his head on his hand and grinned at me. "Show it!"

"You son of a bitch!"

"Are you in or out?"

"What do I get?"

"I'll relieve you of two night shifts."

"Not enough."

"Two… sexy-times night shifts."

I made a face. "Okay, that is so worth it. You're on."

"And if you don't succeed, you get my night shifts."

"As if I'd lose this bet."

"Let's shake hands on it, then."

We shook hands under the table, so that Dimitri wouldn't see. I probably shouldn't be getting into so many bets… but there really was no change I wouldn't win this. Making Dimitri laugh? Piece of cake. I just had to tickle his stomach… okay, maybe not the best solution for a classroom. I'd just have to remind him of the times we… no, also not classroom material. I'd just say something related to how… no, definitely not classroom-safe. Blast it. This might be harder than I thought.

Thinking of ways to trick Dimitri into laughing made the session pass by quickly. Not that I had taken in anything he had said, but I had thought of lots of things that had made me hide dopey smiles.

Since he still had made no sign to me that we were more than passing acquaintances, I didn't do him the curtesy of waiting. Instead, I just walked briskly ahead in the direction of the palace with Carl.

"Why didn't you tell me Dimitri was our instructor?" he asked me.

"Because I had no idea."

"Really? Do you guys talk?"

"Sometimes."

"I guess you separate guardian business from pillow talk, so there was no time for him to tell you," he teased.

"Close," I replied in a dignified tone. "Or maybe it's all this other important business that doesn't leave us the time to talk about minor things like teaching."

"Fool yourself, Rose. Are you going in?"

We had arrived in front of the office Lissa had set up in order to separate her living space from her working space. It seemed like a pointless division to me, seeing as Lissa worked wherever she happened to be when the work descended on her. "Yup. Come in and say hi to Lissa before your shift ends, she doesn't like it when you guys just stand outside and never show yourselves."

I entered into the little hall that led to several offices all belonging to Council members. The door to Lissa's was open. She was on the phone.

"I can do that. But if they decided to relocate her, there's nothing I can do."

She gave me a nod when she saw me coming in, but the call seemed to capture all her attention. "Yeah, you said that. But I'm going to have to call them to hear their side of it. No, I can't just do that, Adrian. We have a diplomatic relationship I have to uphold."

Adrian? I mouthed silently. Anything related to the Palm Springs group immediately put me on high alert. She grimaced mutely, but kept talking to the person on the phone. "Look, I'm going to call them and see what they say. I'm all in favor of her staying as your assigned Alchemist, too… I will. Yeah."

She put the phone down and sighed loudly.

"What happened? Something in Palm Springs?"

"Adrian says the Alchemist abducted Sydney. That's how he phrased it. It appears like they have pulled her back and replaced her with someone else. Her sister."

"Why would they replace Sydney? She's the best for the job," I said.

"What do I know about Alchemist job allocations? Maybe they want to toughen someone else up and are using the close-contact opportunity. What's funny is that they took Sydney away without any prior notification. At least, that's what Adrian says. Maybe she just didn't tell him."

Lissa didn't know about Dimitri's and my suspicion that there might be more to Sydney and Adrian's relationship than that of an Alchemist working with a Moroi.

"Is there anything you can do about this?" I asked.

She sighed again. "No. I'm going to call them and ask why they replaced her and I'll ask them to let her stay, because I promised Adrian. But I don't think that will help matters any. On the contrary, they might just not let her stay to spite us. They should have notified us, though. I'm going to call Hans, too, but I'm sure he would have told me if he knew about an impending replacement."

Lissa spent the next hour and a half on the phone, talking to the Alchemists, to Hans, the Alchemists again, and finally called Adrian with the news that she didn't know where they had placed Sydney and that they wouldn't put her back on duty in Palm Springs. Lissa was fairly frustrated when she finally put the phone down for good.

"Great. Now I wasted good time to achieve nothing."

"What did you want to achieve?" a voice said from the door. Christian had come in.

"Sydney disappeared and Adrian is giving me hell to make me find her. There's nothing I can… what happened to you?"

Lissa was out of her chair and halfway to Christian's side before I noticed the black eye.

"Chill out, Liss. We were training. I didn't pay attention."

"Can I heal it?" There was a hopeful note in her voice; she was dying to use spirit. Christian quickly and reasonably quenched that hope, though: "No!"

Lissa continued to make a small fuss about Christian, but he was much more interested in hearing about Sydney. So was Dimitri, when he joined us a few minutes later. Lissa got a few more calls throughout the day; amongst others, from Jill, who pleaded with her to have Sydney sent back because the whole Palm Springs group had taken so much to her. But there was nothing Lissa could do. She tried to at least find out Sydney's location, so that we could contact her, but the Alchemists were really uptight about her. It sounded like she was in big trouble with them. I knew she had skirted trouble before, for her adventures with Dimitri and me on the run. I hoped she wouldn't be transferred back to Russia or anything.

"Now, about you," I said menacingly as soon as the door had closed behind Dimitri and me that night in our apartment. "What did you think you were doing, not telling me about the instructor thing?"

"I was thinking that our personal involvement doesn't mean anything for our professional relationship," he replied.

"But it does," I murmured under my breath, thinking of my bet with Carl.

I didn't achieve anything the next lesson. And the next. This was getting really frustrating. Throw into the package that Lissa was already starting to fret about exams again – hadn't the semester just started? – and the continuing silence from Sydney and pleading calls from Adrian, it was kind of a frustrating time in general.

"Uh. Why can't I just sit in your classes without taking the exams," I groaned, letting myself fall face-down on Lissa's couch after another very serious special weapons training session. At least we would get to actually shoot from now on. "It wouldn't make a difference!"

"It would seem suspicious," Lissa replied heartlessly, "and it doesn't do you any harm to learn a thing or two. You should be grateful you're getting a college education. Not many dhampirs do."

"I know, I know!"

"Suck it up, then. Hey, I've got something that might cheer you up," Lissa said, her own mood picking up, too. "I'm going to the theatre in town with Tim tonight!"

I sat up. "You're doing what?"

"Don't start it, Rose. It's going to be safe. I got tickets for us and four other guardians. And I thought I'd pick the ones who actually enjoy a theatre show. It should be fun for all of us."

"Why aren't you going with Christian?"

Lissa sighed. "With the way he's behaving recently… "

"Seriously? You going to the theatre with another guy because you've had an argument? Aren't you two a bit beyond that stage in a relationship?"

"Rose!" Lissa exclaimed indignantly. "It's not like I want to get one on Christian by going with someone else! Tim and I talked about the play, and then I found out they play it here. Christian wasn't interested in going, I asked him!"

"Just saying… anyway. I guess it's a change from routine, at least. It's nice idea."

Lissa seemed relieved I had given my consent at last. Then I remembered something and groaned loudly.

"I can't go tonight! I have my crowd management exam!"

"Oh," Lissa said, looking crestfallen.

"Never mind," I said grudgingly. "You have fun."

"Did you forget about this exam? Did you study at all?" asked Lissa.

"I have so many exams to worry about, this one slipped my mind."

"Then you'd better cram," Lissa said sweetly.

Under her stare, I could no nothing but to spend the rest of the day studying while accompanying her to a few meetings. When she went to her room to get ready, I still had an hour left until my exam.

Luck had me run into Dimitri on one of his patrols around Court. With nothing else to do - except from studying, which I wanted to avoid – I joined him. We ambled up to the out of the way training field that had been set up for the Moroi magic training. Dimitri liked to watch how they were doing. I guess he thought of them as kind of his protégées, because he was still responsible for their physical combat training.

They were amazing. The Moroi had split up according to their element, and were doing precision training. I was witness to Christian illuminating a matchstick from a two hundred feet distance. Judging from the way he was sweating and squinting, it took a lot of effort and concentration to light up anything from this distance.

Unfortunately, we had arrived only to see the last few minutes of their training. Most of the Moroi were already leaving. Dimitri went on in his patrols, while I watched Christian continue for a while.

"You're quite persevering in this," I remarked.

One match lit up. "It pays."

Next to him stood a water user who now focused on the tiny flame. It would only burn for a few seconds. In this time, he would try to put it out with a well-placed drop of water on the match.

The tiny flame vanished. He and Christian both smiled victoriously.

"Well done," I said.

"Let's call it a day," Christian said to the water user. "This is more tiring than torching a handful of Strigoi at close distance."

We walked back to the small adjacent gym slowly, letting the others overtake us.

"Any more… occurrences recently?" I asked him conversationally when the others were out of earshot. I hadn't seen him go weirdo for a while, but Dimitri had said that he still seemed to drift off from time to time. Even Lissa had started to notice that he was behaving oddly.

"Any more what?" He was playing dumb.

"Anything to worry about. Oh, by the way, you know you're talking to someone who can see ghosts. It's not like anything could faze me."

His look when I mentioned ghosts was strange. Had I hit something there? For a moment, I thought he might talk, but then he apparently considered otherwise.

"Nothing worrisome to talk about. Why aren't you with Lissa? The culture club is departing soon, aren't they?"

"I can't go. I have a guardian exam to take," I said. "Why aren't you going, though? Is the theater really that bad?"

"She's seeing Romeo and Juliet," he exclaimed. "Yes, it is that bad."

"I see," I said, laughing. "I just hadn't thought you'd be so relaxed about Tim going with her."

Christian stopped in his tracks. "She's taking Tim?"

I stopped, too. "Oh, hell. You didn't know that bit, right?."

"And you're not going either," he said grimly. "How convenient." He started to pick up his pace.

"Hey, you're not going to make a scene with them, are you? Christian?" When he just mutely stormed on, I grabbed his arm and make him turn around to me.

"You should know by now that you have no reason to be jealous. Tim is just coming so Lissa isn't alone. Guardians are hardly good company when they're on edge in a foreign environment."

"I don't trust this guy," Christian growled. "Least of all when he's alone with Lissa. I'm telling you, he's been … he's up to something."

"He's been what? Christian, you've been talking in riddles about him all the time! What did he do to annoy you so much?"

"He's a spirit user! And he can use that against people. I don't trust him!"

"But what has he done?" He was being so vague that I just couldn't stop myself from thinking that Christian was acting really psychotic here. I was definitely more inclined to think he was exaggerating things than to believe Tim was trying to harm him. That was just plain crazy.

An idea hit me, then. I had seen fits of unreasonable behavior before. In Lissa, and in me. Back when we still had the bond. When I would take the darkness from her. Christian's weirdness had started around the time she had stopped taking her medications. What if he was in some way taking the darkness from her?

"Look, Christian," I said calmingly. "I just had an idea. We need to sit down somewhere and discuss this."

"Don't talk to me like I'm about to ignite a bomb," he said angrily. "I'm not going to let that idiot get away with this. He's not taking Lissa away by himself."

He jerked his arm away from me and continued his way out of the training field. I stood there for a moment, debating what to do and breathing deeply to keep my patience.

"At least calm down before you – Christian?"

He was stumbling, staggering a few feet before coming to a stop. Something was wrong… Had he been injured in training? How could I not have noticed? I raced after him, skidding to a halt by his side just as his knees gave way and he collapsed to the ground.

"Christian! What's…?"

The moment I touched ground next him, a wave of pain hit me, stronger than any pain I had ever experienced before. My chest was being ripped open; I was being burned alive; steel needles were being forced into me slowly. For a moment, I couldn't breathe. Then, a scream tore from my throat.

I barely noticed falling, but I was writhing on the ground. My chest was exploding. Someone was ripping my heard out, operating on me without anesthetics. My screams still filled the air, mixing with Christian's groans. I was dying. I couldn't survive this pain. I had to be dying.

Was Christian dying, too? Would we both leave Lissa alone here, in a mess we had helped create? I concentrated on Lissa's face in my memory; she had healed me so often. Even just thinking about her was good. But the pain didn't stop. Some wild beast was still ripping my chest open.

I can't let it get me, my conscious screamed at me through the pain. Focus! Where's the enemy?

When I forced my eyes open, all I could see was Christian dragging himself through the mud to reach me. He was breathing heavily, pain etched in every inch of his face.

"It's not real, Rose," I barely heard him groan. I was gasping for air, my breaths intermingled with whimpers and cries. What he said didn't make sense. The pain was too intense. The enemy. Where's the enemy? Where's the wound? I was clawing at my chest, but there was nothing. There was no blood on Christian's shirt either.

"It's not real," Christian said again. He had reached me, gripped me. "It's a spirit user messing with you. It's not real."

How could there be no blood when my chest felt like it was torn to pieces? Another scream tore loose.

"Rose, fight it! It's not real!" Christian's voice sounded strained. He was holding me. At least I wasn't dying alone.

"You can stop it. You're not hurt. Look at yourself!" He'd been writhing in pain seconds before. What had happened? Was he safe now? He was Moroi. Had to save him. They came first. But his hands were holding me down, easing my thrashing.

"Rose, you're not injured! You're not in pain! It's not real!" Not in pain? I was in agony. I just couldn't understand where it came from. It's not real. I can stop it. My thoughts became a little more coherent. There was no wound. Where did the pain come from? Calm down, Rose.

"Good, keep going, Rose. It's like shutting out the bond. You can do it."

Shutting out the bond. I did that so often. Kind of missed the time. I'd just keep all my thoughts to myself…

The pain stopped.

It was just gone, cut off. My body still felt sore, my heart rate was up to about four hundred, and I was panting desperately, but the pain was gone.

Gathering my wits, I became aware that I was basically lying in Christian's lap, with him gripping my shoulders. He'd realized I'd come out of it; he was helping me sit up.

For a while, we both just sat and caught our breath. From time to time his face was still clenching up, as if smaller bouts of pain still welled up within him. He didn't have my experience and ease in shutting out foreign influence on his own head.

"You okay?" I panted eventually. He nodded. I kept staring at him. "What the hell?" was all I managed to say.

"I don't know, Rose," he said. "I don't know. But that was a spirit user. That's the kind of thing only a spirit user can do."

"We need to…" I put a foot on the ground and tried to push myself up. "We need to check whether Lissa is still here." My whole body was shaking. Even though the pain hadn't been real, my system had received a shock. I managed to stand, but barely.

"We need to…" Christian was having similar problems in picking himself up. "…stop them."

We were not much of a cavalry. Both barely keeping on our feet, it was all we could do to drag ourselves back to the palace, only to learn that Lissa, Tim and the guardians had left fifteen minutes ago.

"We have to call her," Christian said with a desperate tone.

"We'll call her upstairs," I said. "But first, we'll get our wits back a little. And you need a feeder."

Christian was still frazzled, but he let me steer him to their rooms, where I asked the guardian guarding the empty apartment to get us a feeder. The second we were inside, Christian took out his phone.

I didn't feel as pressed in reaching Lissa as he was; there were guardians I trusted with her, and I still didn't think Tim was responsible for this. They had already left when the attack of us happened. I didn't think he was able to pull off a magic stunt like this, and couldn't think of a single reason why he would attack us. Let along the fact that I took him for a decent guy and couldn't imagine him doing anything of the sort. Suspicions had welled up in me briefly, with the shock and Christian's assertions, but I still wasn't convinced of his view.

"I can't reach her," Christian said. "She's not answering."

"She's in a theater," I tried to placate him. "She'd have turned off your phone there. We won't be able to reach the guardians either. We will just have to wait until she returns."

"But-"

"No, stop." I went up to him and steered him towards a chair, pushing him down on it. "Christian, we cannot be sure it's Tim. In fact, it seems really unlikely that it was him. There must be another spirit user at Court, though why he targeted us, I have no idea. You have to calm down. Lissa is safe."

In the end, there was nothing else he could do but wait. I informed Hans; he had to know about an attack like this. He was as disquieted as we were, but he shared my view that it was much more likely to be an unknown spirit user who had attacked us.

After that talk was done, there was nothing else for us to do but sit and wait for Lissa to come back. I tried to call her from time to time, but a theater play would last a while.

"What did it feel for you?" I asked, after a while, into the silence that had settled between us.

"Like when I was shot," he answered quietly. "In the side, from that Strigoi." When I wasn't immediately forthcoming, he gave the question back to me. "What did it feel for you?"

I couldn't be as certain as he was. "My chest hurt. I guess it could have been like when I was shot, but if I remember the pain from then, it was subconsciously."

He frowned. "Subconscious too, then. That's not good."

"What do you mean?"

He looked at me curiously, drawing in a breath but not speaking.

"Come on Christian, you can no longer hide that something is going on. You have to talk to us. Did this happen to you before?"

"Not like this. But that you shared this one confirms I'm not crazy. That helps a lot."

"It could be unrelated."

"I don't think so. I think that, whoever is doing this, and you know who I think that is – I think they mess with your memories. Have access to them. Play them back at you."

"What did they make you remember?" I almost didn't dare ask.

"Different things," he said calmly. I watched him closely while he spoke. Despite his composure, it was evident that this had shaken him. "The feeling of being starved, being hungry and weak, like in Spokane. Seeing fire suddenly flare up, as if I was doing it, in the middle of a crowd. It was always in a crowd. In the courtroom… it was like being hidden in a closet again, hearing my parents talk with Tasha. And… Tasha. I saw her. Normal, as a Strigoi… At that party… I thought she was standing there. It didn't immediately register with me that the whole room would be screaming if she were…"

My heart clenched. Christian didn't deserve this. It had been enough for him to go through all of this once. A part of me still wasn't sure whether he was simply imagining all of this. He'd been through enough to make anybody lose it a little. But I was probably the best address for crazy – if the girl who saw ghosts and had been able to feel another person's feelings didn't believe in a few unusual things, then who? Even I would have had trouble believing it, but sharing the feeling of totally inexplicable but agonizing pain out of the blue made him sound a lot less crazy.

"If… Tim was the one who did this," I began hesitatingly. "Why? Why would he hurt you?"

"Are you blind?" he asked sarcastically. "He likes Lissa. No, I'm not imagining that out of jealousy. He likes her. And he wants her."

"You are very sure of this." I needed some more time to take this in.

"I've had some time to figure it out. I realized it was him one day, when I saw him with this grin on his face. It's him, Rose, I swear it."

"But he was already in the car with Lissa today when it happened. How can that be?"

"I don't know," he admitted, but without really doubting his theory. "Maybe we're misjudging the time and they hadn't left at all."

"And why would he attack me?"

"That I don't know," Christian said, his certainty getting a little crack for the first time.

"Christian, I don't know about this," I sighed. "It could be, but it's just as likely that someone else is behind it. And the biggest refutation to your theory is still that Tim is a really bad spirit user. I just can't see how he could do it. He's just not capable."

"So he would have us believe. Do you remember Avery? She even managed to make Lissa believe she wasn't a spirit user at all. Tim might be doing something similar."

"But driving a person mad just because he's a rival for a girl is a bit extreme, don't you think?"

"Not if he's been using spirit. I'm sorry to say this, but if he's been using it excessively, normal standards don't apply to his behavior."

The door opened slowly; Lissa came in, moving quietly so as not to wake anyone. She was clearly confused to see us still sitting there. It was late. We had closed the blinds against the sunlight, and were sitting in semi-darkness.

"Why are you two still up?" she asked.

I sighed. "You'd better sit down," I told her. "This is going to take a while."

I plunged into the story while Lissa took a seat next to Christian. As I expected, she didn't take the Tim part of our story too well. She was aghast at what had happened to us, and agreed that a spirit user might be behind it. But she was adamant in defending Tim.

"There's no way he could do anything like this," she said. I was glad she was not getting angry, at least, but she seemed more worried than anything. "He was with me, he can't really use spirit, and I trust him. He's a good guy. Why would he do something like this?"

Then I started to recount Christian's other experiences – he didn't seem to enjoy going over it again himself –, and she just changed from staring at me open-mouthed and staring at Christian. Christian avoided her gaze, letting me do the talking, but I think he was grateful when she took him into her arms.

"Why didn't you say something?" she whispered in horror.

"You guys all thought I was going crazy even without knowing why I was behaving like I did," he said. "Wouldn't really have helped, would it?"

The dismal atmosphere around us was shattered by my phone ringing. Dimitri's name was on the display. He'd been on duty all this time and had only just heard from Hans what had happened. He wanted to come to us, of course, but I thought the day had been long enough for all of us.

"Go home, comrade. I'll be there soon. I think it's time for all of us to get some sleep. Maybe things will look different in the morning."