Brian blinked several times, staring at them. "Exqueeze me? I bacon your powder?"

Erica heaved a sigh. "Claire said not to tell anybody, but she's been having some weird psychic episodes ever since Book Day."

"Erica!" Claire cried again, irritated and embarra.s.sed.

"You almost pa.s.sed out in the girls' bathroom the other day!" Erica retorted emphatically. "I think he should know!"

"Hold the phone," Brian said. "Are you guys serious?"

Ignoring him, Erica continued, "Speaking of which, Claire, why didn't you know in advance that the scaffold was going to fall on us?"

"I'm not an oracle. I've only had one vision of the future. One! I have no idea how this works, or when the visions are going to come."

"You're having visions?" Brian sounded stunned, talking mostly to himself. "How did I miss that?"

"So," Claire said to Erica, "returning to my original question: Alec. What is he?"

"He could be an alien possessing a human's body," Erica suggested. "Or a visitor from the planet Krypton."

Claire rolled her eyes. "So-vampires are improbable, but aliens are believable?"

"At least they're scientifically possible."

Brian sat stupefied, sucking up the dregs of his soda through his straw. Shaking his head, he mumbled, "The truth is out there."

Yes, Claire thought. And I'm going to find it.

nine.

Alec was running. Fast. His combat boots made a clacking sound on the stone steps beneath him.

He was in a j.a.panese garden. But where? In Los Angeles? No, it wasn't Los Angeles-and, he realized suddenly, it wasn't a garden. It was a graveyard.

In the moonlight's glow, he recognized the stairs sloping sharply down the hillside in front of him, ringed by hundreds of red, centuries-old funereal gates. He'd been here many times before. This was the Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto. It was isolated and quiet at night-the perfect time and place to finish a job outside the public eye.

He ran on, his labored breathing growing shallower with every step. His quarry was nimbler than Alec had expected. Alec leapt down the steps two at a time, then three, but the man still maintained a good ten yards' lead. With the agility of a cat, his target turned a sharp corner at the base of the stairway and began to clamber up another one. Alec swerved to follow, trying to sight the retreating form along his silenced pistol, but he was visible only intermittently between the row of tightly packed, archlike gates lining the pathway.

The figure darted into one of the small cemeteries on the wooded hillside and Alec dashed after him, cursing silently. A firearm was useless here. The thick mist in the air obscured visibility, and the claustrophobic jumble of slender gravestones, many of them six feet in height, gave the man too many places to hide.

Alec paused, catching his breath as he holstered the gun and drew two long, curved daggers from his belt. Treading as quietly as he could from one row of headstones to the next, he readied himself to lunge at the first moving object. The tinkling of a pebble on the cobblestone in the fifth row set him on hyperalert and he darted forward, steeling himself for action.

What he encountered around the corner, however, stopped him dead in his tracks. It wasn't the middle-aged j.a.panese gangster he was after. Instead, a tall Caucasian woman with platinum-blond hair was walking silently toward him, her blue eyes blazing with fury.

What the h.e.l.l? Alec thought, lowering his blades and stepping backward in confusion. He recognized the woman-and he remembered her crime-although he couldn't recall her name. But how was this possible? She couldn't be here. She was dead. Alec wanted desperately to turn and run, but his legs were rooted to the ground. All at once, the hairs p.r.i.c.kled on the back of his neck. He spun, weapons raised again.

The mobster he'd been chasing stood just a few yards away. But he wasn't alone. To his left stood a well-dressed, elderly businessman; to his right, a stocky, nondescript man in military fatigues. Behind them stood several other figures, all people Alec recognized, people whom he knew, with a certainty, no longer existed on this earthly plane. How was it that they were still alive? As one, the group slowly stalked toward him, now joined by more people of various ages and descriptions, all glowering at Alec with the same fierce glare of contempt.

"What do you want?" Alec cried out, brandishing his daggers. "Why are you following me?"

But he knew why.

Alec's throat tightened in fear and guilt. He was trapped, with nowhere to run. The large man in uniform suddenly pounced. Alec deftly swept him to the ground with a low spinning kick, then knocked another a.s.sailant away with sharp strikes of his elbows. But they just kept coming. More and more people, all faces he'd seen before, all as silent as the graveyard around him. Someone s.n.a.t.c.hed both blades from Alec's grasp and jabbed them sharply into his abdomen.

Alec jerked back and screamed, but no sound came from his throat.

He awoke with a gasp to find himself back in his studio apartment in L.A., trembling with relief, his body coated in sweat.

The nightmare again. He'd been having that same dream, in one version or another, over and over for years now. Would he ever be able to forget?

Too agitated to go back to sleep, Alec rose from his couch and-desperate for some distraction-crossed to the weapons cabinet. He concentrated on the lock, heard the tumblers move, and stood back as the heavy door unlatched and swung open. From the array of blades and firearms racked within, he yanked out a broadsword. Sinking down on the sofa, he mentally summoned his whetstone, rag, and bottle of oil and set to work sharpening the blade.

The recurring dream, Alec knew, was the least of his problems. As he worked, his mind drifted back to the far more pressing concern that had been haunting him for the past two days: the incident at school.

Except for the mishap with Claire's locker on Book Day and that one lapse in Spanish cla.s.s, he'd managed to keep a low profile at Emerson. That is, until Friday, when he'd been forced into using his abilities in the most blatant of displays-a move that was regrettable on so many levels.

He'd done his best to tilt the scaffolding and save those workers and his friends in a manner that was physically explainable. No one at the scene had seemed to question it, and he was pretty sure Brian and Erica hadn't seen anything. He wasn't so sure about Claire. He'd glimpsed an odd look on her face when he pulled her to safety. Did she suspect something? He hadn't waited around to find out. He dreaded going to school tomorrow, fully expecting her to give him the third degree. But it wasn't only Claire he was worried about.

The simple use of his powers wouldn't show up on the grid. But what if another one of his kind had happened to be nearby, looking for an aura? As far as Alec knew, there was no reason for the local Watcher to be at Emerson; however, Alec had been out of the loop for months. Anything was possible. If Zachariah had spotted Alec, he was screwed. He'd spent the past two days sweating it out, expecting a knock at his door any second with a warrant for his arrest-but it had never come.

Alec pa.s.sed his sword methodically over the whetstone, heaving a long sigh. Maybe he'd been lucky and was still flying safely under the radar.

His thoughts were interrupted by a deep voice.

"So this is it? Your secret hideaway? Your Bat Cave?"

Alec gasped and leapt up in alarm, his heart pounding, holding his broadsword at the ready. A figure stood before him-and it wasn't Zachariah. The man was over six feet tall, broad-shouldered but thin, with ebony skin and a mischievous grin. His head was shaved and he wore a dark gray suit with a crisp blue shirt.

"I must say," the visitor went on, surveying the room with distaste, "it's very quaint and ... spartan."

Alec's stomach tied itself in knots. Perspiration broke out on his brow. He lowered his weapon and asked quietly, "What are you doing here, Vincent? How did you get in?"

"I'm not here, actually." Vincent motioned toward the front window. "I'm outside. But I thought this illusion might prove more entertaining than knocking. Now, go open the door and let me in." With that, he vanished.

Aware that he had little alternative, Alec resheathed his sword and directed his attention toward the door, which unlocked and opened itself. Vincent entered, in the flesh this time. Alec mentally slammed and relocked the door, hovering between relief and fear as he tried to gauge Vincent's mood. "Did the Elders send you?"

"They did."

Alec's heart sank, his worst fears realized. Was this it? Was it all over?

"You should see that as a compliment," Vincent continued. "When you went AWOL after that a.s.signment in Johannesburg, they knew it would take their best Watcher to locate you. Even so, it took some heavy persuasion on my part to convince them that I could be impartial, considering our relationship."

"I thought I'd left a vapor trail to nowhere."

"Close. It took me three months to piece it together. By that time, I was pretty sure you were in L.A., but it wasn't until I remembered one of the surnames you used as a child that I finally tracked you down."

"So," Alec sighed, "your finding me has nothing to do with the scaffolding accident."

"Of course not. That was a stupid but understandable exhibition of your powers that you covered up well. No, I've been watching you for twelve days."

"Twelve days?" He'd been under surveillance for almost two weeks and hadn't even realized it? Was he losing his edge? But then he reminded himself, this was Vincent. Vincent, who could have been a fly on the wall and Alec wouldn't have had a clue. "Have you reported me?"

Vincent blew out an impatient breath. "Do you think I'd report my own G.o.dson?"

A flicker of hope rose within Alec. "Then what are you going to do?"

"I'm still trying to figure that out." Vincent sat down on the couch and regarded Alec with intense dark eyes. "I know you, Alec. I raised you. I trained you. You've always been a good little soldier like the rest of us. I think you're just ... confused right now. A bit misguided."

"No, I'm not."

"You should know better than to argue with me, son. A high school student? Alec, really? Of all the human experiences you could have tried, you gave up everything, risking your own life and the safety of billions, to choose something so ba.n.a.l? A period of life that most humans look back on with distaste and abhorrence? There are so many other places you could be spending your time."

Vincent snapped his fingers. Suddenly, they were no longer in Alec's dingy apartment, but in a box at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, one of the most magnificent opera houses in the world, watching a performance of Don Giovanni with a beautifully dressed crowd. "Isn't this an improvement?"

Alec shook his head, aware that the change of scenery was just an illusion Vincent had projected into his mind. "I'm not looking for entertainment. I wanted an ident.i.ty and a place I could fit in," he called out over the operatic score. "I don't look old enough to teach at Harvard. I had to go with what was believable."

"Yes, but couldn't you have used a little more imagination?" In the blink of an eye, they were on a tropical beach with bikini-clad waitresses offering them c.o.c.ktails.

"Knock it off, would you?" Alec said, annoyed.

Vincent took an elaborate drink from a tray and held it up toward Alec. "Mai tai?"

"You know I never drink."

"What? You're still following the Code? I knew you were a stickler for the rules, but now you've flown the coop! You're off the grid! You can do anything you want. Isn't that the point?"

"Some habits are harder to break than others."

Vincent shook his head, removed the umbrella from his drink, and took a sip. "You used to be so much more interesting. Your thirst for vengeance gave you such pa.s.sion and fire for what we do. Now, you bore me."

"A hundred years is a long time to do what we do, Vincent. I was loyal, I did my job, and I believed in it for a long time. But ... it caught up to me."

"What caught up to you?"

"The ... memories. Too much blood on my hands. I had to get out."

"No one gets out, boy. We have our orders and our duties. And you are neglecting yours with this self-indulgent fantasy. What's your plan, anyway? Do you really think you can live among them forever, pretending to be one of them?"

"Aye, at least ... that's my hope."

"Hmmmph." Vincent snorted and with a snap of his fingers returned them to Alec's apartment-keeping his mai tai.

"I like it here, Vincent." Alec struggled to keep the desperation out of his voice. "I need to do this. Please. Tell the Elders you couldn't find me."

"I suppose that's one option...," Vincent began, but then just sipped his drink in silence for a long moment, frowning.

Alec's pulse raced. His fate was in this man's hands. Vincent had been his father's best friend and had made good on his vow to take care of Alec after his parents died. Vincent cared deeply for him-Alec felt certain of that-and the affection and respect went both ways. Still, he wasn't sure what to expect. Vincent was known for his high principles. Would he turn Alec in or let him go?

"The thing is ... there's been a development," Vincent continued finally.

"A development?" Alec asked, puzzled by this tangent.

"Something interesting happened a week ago. It turns out it's a good thing I was here."

"What do you mean?"

"There's an Awakened at Emerson Academy."

"What? At Emerson?" Alec sank down beside Vincent on the sofa, astonished and upset. The first time an Awakened used their gift, it caused a brief shock wave of metaphysical energy that allowed the Elders to discern the individual's approximate age and location, but not who they were, their gender, or the nature of their powers. That was when the hunt began-the hunt that was one of the things Alec had walked away from forever. "s.h.i.te! Of all places, it has to be the school I chose?"

"What's that old saying-'Trouble follows you wherever you go'?"

Alec's heart clenched with worry. Surely, he'd be discovered now. "Does Zachariah-?"

"Relax, boy. Zachariah's been sent elsewhere. To protect you, I convinced the Elders to a.s.sign this particular Awakened to me instead, since I was here anyway."

Alec blew out a relieved yet surprised breath. "Thank you. But how did you convince them of that?" He and Vincent had usually been called in to take care of much older, higher-level targets. "A newly Awakened is a little beneath your skill set, isn't it?"

"From the surge that showed up on the grid, it appears to be a very unique individual." Vincent paused for dramatic effect as the mai tai disappeared from his hands. "We have reason to believe it's an actual Halfblood."

"A Halfblood? Are you serious? s.h.i.te. When's the last time one of those came along?"

"It's been eons." Vincent's expression darkened. "You know what they did to the last Halfblood, don't you?"

"I've heard about it, aye." Alec swallowed hard and glanced away, his concern for his own safety overshadowed by this new, potential threat to one of his cla.s.smates. Was it anyone he knew? If so, Alec felt sorry for them. Turning back to Vincent, he said, "So besides stalking me, I suppose you've been hanging around the school all week, looking for an aura?"

"Yes."

"Posing as who?"

"Whoever is convenient. I served you mashed potatoes in the cafeteria on Thursday."

Alec cringed and stood up, still grappling with this unwelcome news. "That's nothing short of creepy."

"Unfortunately, the target's been very difficult to identify. At first I thought it could be the case I've been working on for the past sixteen years."

"Oh. That one." Alec nodded slowly.

"However, now I'm not so sure. Although the boy I've set my sights on hasn't used any abilities while I've been around, he doesn't appear to have both of the talents I'd expect." Vincent heaved an irritated sigh. "And to make matters worse, of all times, I have to leave town."

"Where are you going?"

"There's a situation in New York that also requires my expertise and may take a week or more to resolve. The timing couldn't be worse. I hate to put this job on hold."