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Author's Note: YAY! Many reviews, lots of Favourites! I am very happy! So, as a reward, here's another chappie for you.

From waging bets with sex as the stakes, it was more than cold-shower for Reid on Sunday morning to have Lilah act like he was Public Enemy No. 1 or something. She was cruel to him, and to anyone who crossed her path. On Monday Lilah walked into the History lecture-theatre and chose to sit next to some nobody he didn't even know the name of rather than him. And he was being adorable this morning!

"It's nice to know she's not talking to you, either," Sarah said, drawing her almost botox-smooth forehead in a frown. "I thought she was just giving me the cold-shoulder for borrowing her pink sweater yesterday." Reid narrowed his eyes. He tapped his pen irritatedly against his notebook, watching Lilah as she wrote continuously, filling pages of notes and flow-charts. Yesterday she had not brought up their bet—and lack of payment—once, and it was annoying Reid. More than a little bit, and more than enough to be hurt by the way she was ignoring him.

She's playing you hot and cold, he thought, but he couldn't even convince himself of that. Because why would she be mean to Aaron? No, why would she be meaner to Aaron, or bite Reid's head off this morning when he'd asked how she was? Her bad mood continued all day, until swim-practice. She was doing a breast-stroke exercise, and Coach chose to call her out on her—perfect—technique. Or rather, Pogue chose to call her on it on Coach's behalf.

"Lilah, come here, you got your arms wrong."

"It's not brain-surgery, Pogue," Lilah said shortly, glaring.

"Hey, what's with the attitude?" Pogue asked gently, frowning concernedly down at Lilah.

"What's with your life?" Lilah retorted breezily from the water. Reid watched her cautiously. If she got angry, she might Use, and that would be messy. Especially since neither Pogue, Tyler nor Caleb knew she had the Power. "Aren't you embarrassed that the most important thing in your life is the correct technique for a swim-stroke?"

"Listen, I'm sorry that you and Reid didn't work out," Pogue said carefully, and Reid shot him a warning look with wide eyes, "but don't go all Mariah on me."

"You think this is about Reid. You're not even close, you're not even in the same postcode as close," Lilah said, her voice rising.

"Then what's wrong?" Pogue asked tenderly.

"What's wrong is how pointless all of this is," Lilah said desperately, and Reid could sense real grief overwhelming her. Focus, he told himself, frowning at Lilah, trying to penetrate her thoughts. Her brain was chaotic, a blurring montage of thousands of different memories and bits of information all whirling around, all of them focusing on either him, Reid, or her father, her mother, schoolwork, swim-practice, the unkindness of Kira and Aaron's infatuation with her.

"Don't say that," Pogue frowned, but he kept his words gentle.

"It's true," Lilah said, and her expression had turned wild. "What difference does it make if you're going out with one of the popular kids or you go to the right parties, or you know the technique to some stupid stroke to do at some inconsequential meet that I could care less about?" And with that, she pulled herself up the chrome ladder and stalked off, whipping her swimming-cap off with a snap and striding determinedly to the girls' showers.

Pogue turned to stare at Reid. He shrugged, wide-eyed. What the fuck was that all about? he heard Pogue think, mirroring his own thoughts.

After practice had ended, and the chatter of "new girl" Lilah's behaviour had picked up, Reid showered quickly and went in search of Lilah. He tried her on her cellphone (the number he had acquired on Friday) but there was no answer, it went straight to voicemail.

On Tuesday, Lilah wasn't in lessons, and word from Sarah was that she hadn't come back to the dorms last night after practice. She'd left her phone in her dorm and, of course, they couldn't call home, because home for her was two-thousand miles away. Pogue told them she hadn't turned up on his doorstep, and hadn't left a message on their answer-machine, the same with Caleb when Reid asked. She'd almost disappeared off the face of the planet. Reid had never been anxious about anyone in his life except the boys, and maybe Sarah last year when Chase Collins had stolen her from the dance. But this was different. He was jumpy, his heart raced, eyes alert for any sign of her as he walked through town after practice.

"Maybe she's out pinching babies," Kira suggested tartly, when he asked the girls around her dorm whether they'd seen her.

Lilah sat on an intricately-carven stone bench, glaring at a black marble headstone etched with the words:

Pearl Parry-Shakespeare

Beloved Wife and Mother

Always love.

July 13, 1964-

September 9, 1991.

She struck a silver Zippo and held it up to a cigarette perched between her lips, but the flame flickered and died in the breeze that made her hair billow around her and dislodged the crisp leaves already turning in the Massachusetts autumn. She tried again, but it wouldn't light.

"Come on," she growled, giving up with a huge sigh.

"There are a lot of smokers in this place," someone commented, and Lilah glanced up: Who the hell would be coming to the cemetery at six o'clock at night? Apart from her, that was. The dark-eyed woman was beautiful, real timeless glamour right out of the thirties or something, with a silk Chanel scarf wrapped over her dark hair, leather gloves, matching heels. It was Caleb's mother, Evelyn Danvers, as she had introduced herself to Lilah on Saturday when she had come with Caleb into town to meet Sarah after they'd gone shopping.

"I don't really smoke," Lilah said glumly, tossing the brand-new packet of cigarettes back into her purse. Her dad would probably have killed her if he even caught a whiff of cigarette-smoke about her. Of course, he was dying of cancer so he couldn't really talk. He was pretty much a living reason why she shouldn't smoke. Evelyn made a thoughtful noise and walked silently to the grave, laying down a bouquet of stunning burnt-ochre sunflowers bound with chocolate-brown ribbon. Her mother's favourite flowers. You should have brought her some, she thought. Evelyn kissed her fingers and pressed them to the top of the marble, whispered something Lilah didn't hear and came to sit beside her, smoothing the seat of her skirt beneath her.

"She was a firecracker of a woman, your mother," Evelyn smiled wistfully, the dying sun illuminating the silver hairs among the black. Caleb had her dark eyes and curling lashes.

"I've only ever seen a picture of her," Lilah said resentfully. Her father seemingly went deaf whenever she asked about her mother.

"She used to swim for the Spenser team too," Evelyn said, and Lilah's shoulders fell guiltily, playing with her fingers. Evelyn moved the sheet of Lilah's hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear, rubbing his finger against her cheek. "She was my best friend in the whole world." Evelyn's voice choked with emotion. "You've got all of her looks. And she was a wily one, just like you, Caleb tells me. Your daddy didn't stand a chance." Lilah smiled tearfully. She hated not knowing about her mother.

"You know, my brother Christopher is buried here," Evelyn sighed heavily. "I lost him just about the same time as your mother," she waved her gloved hand upwards elegantly, "passed away. We had an argument just before he died, and I didn't go to the funeral. But now I come by and visit, apologise and tell him about Caleb. It always makes this week a tough one." Lilah stared at the tombstone, but somehow the sunflowers kept drawing her attention away from the cold unfeeling dead stone.

"They're all tough," she whispered. Evelyn nodded in agreement, and they sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the unmoving stone, and the sturdy petals of the sunflowers that flickered slightly in the breeze.

"Reid has called me asking about you," Evelyn said after a little while, softly, almost as if she was talking to herself. Lilah made herself look up. Reid's worried about me, she thought, gasping softly. Evelyn smiled wistfully to herself. "He was always a sweet boy. He's worried about you."

"I remember the first time I ever saw my William," she sighed. "He was on the junior-varsity football team, a quarterback, and he had his arm broken the first game of the season. He missed a week of school, and I was at my wit's end by the end of that week, scared to death he'd never come back." Lilah glanced at her. What was she trying to say? Evelyn smiled and gently pressed her lips to Lilah's temple.

"Don't stay out here too long, my dear," she said softly. "You'll freeze." She got up, bid goodbye to Pearl, as if she could hear her, and the soft crunch of the grass got softer and softer as she walked back to the street.

Lilah didn't meet anyone until Wednesday lunchtime. She'd snuck back into the dorms after midnight and had left before Sarah woke up, and had spent her hours racing through Ipswich in her zippy little Mini. The light was red, hanging over the intersection, and she glared at it, waiting for it to change. The passenger door suddenly burst open and Reid jumped inside, slamming the door as he tugged on his seatbelt. She didn't even acknowledge him until she was setting the revs, counting down. She knew this timer now.

"If I were you, I would get out of the car now," Lilah warned viciously. She wasn't in the mood to see anyone, even her Reid.

"Not until you tell me why you're so pissed," Reid said resiliently, gripping the dashboard as she released the handbrake and squealed across the intersection. She'd been in the car when Reid was driving, several times, and he drove as recklessly as her, but she was scaring him. She raced through the streets, and as she reached 80 and pitched over the single-lane bridge, flying over the other side before she touched down bouncily, right in the path of a Defender. Reid reached out and jerked the steering-wheel, so the car bounced over the dirt of a little lay-by by the footpath along the riverbank before she stopped.

Reid stared at her, shocked, wide-eyed, hand still on the wheel. Tears welled in her eyes, burning, gasping as she gripped the wheel with white knuckles, clenching her eyes shut as they burned from her mascara. She had driven over that bridge twenty times today—and nothing had happened. She heard the passenger seat creak, and shivered as she felt Reid lean closer, but he didn't touch her.

"She was driving over the bridge, on the way to pick me up from the Parrys'. The driver of the lorry didn't see her, and he knocked her car over the edge and into the water," she sniffed. "She couldn't break the window to get out." She gasped and shuddered.

When she'd lived in England, she couldn't imagine it, her mother's death. But here, the very same bridge, everything came in vivid flashes of film, like she was watching a flickering movie-screen, broken and disjointed. The illuminating beam of her mother's smile from the photograph, and the overwhelming franticness as the glass creaked ominously, the car sank like an anvil, murky water pressed from all sides, the seatbelt wouldn't unbuckle. And the lorry, she could picture it, multiple-times the size of the Land Rover, coming straight towards her, unable to control the car as it was pitched backwards into the brick-and-flint wall, not knowing the end was coming as the water rushed up to meet her.

Lilah had just had the life scared out of her. She hadn't really meant to go that fast. Did her mother think that, now? Could she hear Evelyn when she had spoken at the cemetery? Could she hear Lilah's thoughts now? Had she sent Reid to the car so he could jerk the steering-wheel? Her little guardian-angel.

Reid undid his seatbelt and reached his arms around her, pulling her gently into a hug. She relaxed into the warmth of his body as he kept her close in the safe confines of his strong arms. She hugged Reid, closing her eyes and breathing him in as she cradled her head in his shoulder; warm, musky, clean, no cologne, only subtle deodorant, and his shampoo. She stopped trembling, the scare of the almost-accident wearing away quickly, and sniffed miserably, leaning away from him a little bit. He looked at her sombrely, his normally brilliant blue eyes darkened with emotion. He got the sleeve of his hoodie and gently wiped the tears—and mascara—from her cheeks, pressing his lips together thoughtfully as he watched hers.

A tremendous sense of calm enveloped her as she sat with Reid's arms around her, hugging her tenderly, warmth enveloping her as she shivered in her flimsy t-shirt. Reid smiled softly and shrugged off his jacket, handing it to her. She tugged it on with a tiny smile of thanks, shivering even as she adjusted to the black jacket and the warmth it had absorbed from Reid's body.

"I suppose nobody really has it all together, huh," he said softly, cocking his head to one side, shaking his hair out of his lovely eyes. Lilah shook her head. "You miss her?"

"Can't really miss somebody you've never met," Lilah said miserably. Something strange flickered in Reid's eyes, not the Power, just something. That was what sucked the most: she couldn't even miss her mother. She'd been ten months old when her mother was killed. All she'd ever known was her dad. "My father wouldn't even tell me anything about her when I asked."

"Sucks," was all Reid said, and she didn't feel like prying into his mind to see what he was really thinking and just couldn't put into words. It was enough that he was here with her now.

"It's not fair," she said miserably. Reid sighed softly, looking out the windshield.

"I know," he said darkly, glancing back at her. "Do you want to…I don't know, go to Nicky's and find the guys or something?"

"I think I like talking to you for a minute," Lilah said, glancing into his eyes. She thought she had the measure of Caleb now: the eldest, he assumed dominance in the group and authoritarian responsibility. They all looked up to Caleb, but Lilah liked level-headed and mellow Pogue more. But she liked Reid the most. All she could think about—and she had to work hard to make sure Reid didn't see it on her mind—was kissing him. She'd woken up this morning right in the good part of a really hot dream.

She played with her tongue-piercing, something she always did when she was thinking hard. It was her equivalent of chewing gum or a pencil-tip. He gazed at her as if he'd never seen anything more beautiful, eyes always flickering down to her lips. He's going to kiss me, she thought, mentally doing a little happy-dance. Was this it, was he going to kiss her? He was going to make the first move? She hadn't known whether he'd take their bet seriously—until she'd seen his crushed gape of incredulity when she'd denied him the bargained-for night. He cocked his head to one side thoughtfully.

"I didn't notice your tongue-piercing before," he said softly, and Lilah blushed. Oh.

"I get a lot of compliments on it," she said softly, looking down at her hands clasped in her lap, and Reid chuckled. "So what do we do now?" Reid glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

"Let's go back to the dorms," he sighed. "It's almost dinner." Lilah smiled and rolled her eyes, turning the key in the ignition. He's always hungry, she thought.

Reid sat frowning broodily at his boot, smacking his little silver cellphone against his chin, silently debating with himself. He dialled the number he'd punched into his keypad thousands of times before, and the voicemail kicked in. He went through to message number 7.

"Hi Reid, it's Mommy. Listen, we're about to board, so I'll call you when we land in L.A. and your daddy and I were talking, and when we get back, we're gonna have dinner at Macaroni Grill, your favourite. We'll be home in a week, if I can wait that long! I miss you already. I love you, baby." He smiled, eyes brimming over. He loved his mother's voice—sweet, light, carefree. The North Carolina lilt made it always affectionate.

"Hey," Tyler said softly, nudging his foot. Reid jumped; he hadn't even noticed his roommate walk in. "Whatcha doin'?"

"Listenin' to voicemail," Reid said, his voice dead even to himself. Tyler stilled, glancing over his shoulder as he tidied his bed. 'Voicemail', the key word whenever Reid was feeling morbid, depressed and self-loathing. Voicemail, the last time he heard his mother's voice before her flight from Boston to L.A. was hijacked and flown into North Tower.

"Don't start doing that to yourself again," Tyler said concernedly. Tyler knew all about Reid's troubles. "I thought you were getting over that. I mean it's been, what, five years?"

After his parents had died in 9/11, he'd gone off the deep end, and he'd never really been able to swim back to safe waters. It was Tyler who'd guided him partway back, but he couldn't do it all himself. He had been eleven years old. His second week at Spenser. He had recorded his mother's message onto a cassette, a CD; it was on his iPod, his laptop. When he'd first gotten his Power, he had used it to vent all his pent-up emotions. The guys thought he was going insane. He was, with grief, until Caleb told him his dad was dying. And suddenly he had someone to relate to. For just a little while, Caleb outranked Tyler in friendship.

"Can't help it," Reid mumbled, taking a photograph off his bedside cabinet, examining it. His mother beamed at a camera facing her from another angle; it got her in a three-quarter view, the square of her face, the high cheekbones, the dimples he had inherited, the stunning eyes, the pale blonde hair curled like a 1930s movie-star, the lipstick red and vibrant, making her white teeth glitter, the tiny straps of her black rosette dress on her slim shoulders. It was his favourite photograph of her. She looked so elegant, so classy; so otherworldly.

He took the photograph, and the one of his dad; a Red Sox game for his eleventh birthday, fifth grade, both of them wearing navy Red Sox caps and grinning identical cheeky smirks, Reid's sweet, chubby dimpled face dusted with sugar from a Churro, his dad grinning with a hot-dog in his hand as he slung his arm around Reid affectionately. He walked out of his dorm and went upstairs, to Lilah's room, where he found her face-down on her bed, listening to music. His mother's favourite was Eva Cassidy. He touched her waist softly and sank onto the bed as she rolled over and curled up, sitting cross-legged, plucking the earphones out of her ears.

"Hi. What's that?" she asked, cocking her head to one side, looking at the photograph frames.

"These are my parents," Reid said, placing the pictures on her chocolate-brown duvet. Her eyes flickered to the pictures and she seemed to be absorbing the very pigments they were coloured with.

"They were killed on 9/11 when their plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre," Reid said, breathing harshly out of his nose. Lilah glanced up, eyes wide with shock. She breathed out in a low whistle, shaking her head and looking at the pictures again. He could remember it exactly, being in homeroom when his teacher turned on the television at 8:50a.m., watching the footage captured of the plane crashing into the World Trade Centre. How Caleb had been the one to work out that it had been his parents' flight. The girls started crying. The teacher had to be revived. Reid sat in his desk staring at the television. Tyler had his arms around him. Later that day, the Provost coming to tell him his parents were dead. Tyler's parents were his new guardians. They wanted him to board with Tyler, his best-friend since the womb.

"You've got your mummy's sweet face," she said softly. I wouldn't know what to say either, he thought, resting his cheek against his knee, staring glumly at the photographs. He'd prefer to think of himself like his impulsively-sweet mother. He was impulsive, and Lilah said—no, thought—he was sweet. His father had been the one who wanted her to go with him to L.A. It was his fault they were both dead.

"Do you miss them?" Lilah asked.

"Every day," Reid shrugged. "I wonder how different my life might've turned out. How different I'd have turned out."

"I like you the way you are," Lilah said, as if to herself, but he heard her, and smiled. Okay, so I'm not a total fuck-up to everyone, he thought. It was okay if he was, but as long as he had one person's good-graces, he could brave the rest of the world. That's why he was so close with Tyler. He twitched a smile across his lips.

"Well, I just wanted you to know, you're not alone, so if you want to talk," he blushed slightly as Lilah smiled at him, "I'm here." Tyler had said that; 'If you want to talk, I'm here.' He would always be there for him. He always chose Reid over Caleb in a conflict. Similarly, Pogue always backed Caleb. Lilah smiled sadly and pecked his cheek, hugging his neck. He felt heat flush his face and he smiled into Lilah's shoulder as she sighed almost imperceptibly against him.

"What're you listening to?"

"Eva Cassidy," Lilah sighed wistfully. "'I Know You By Heart'."

"'Over the Rainbow' was my mom's favourite," Reid said, smiling.

A.N.: Please review!