"Ah no I have-"

But the look in his eyes caught my attention. He was scared. He was keeping it buried, but it was there just below the surface. He might not remember me from that night but he did remember being hurt. I could see the other guys still standing, glaring at them.

I needed to get him away from them.

I nodded, grabbed my bag and unceremoniously got in Heather's face. She was in my way. "Move," was the only word I said.

She moved and looked surprised that she had. I allowed Brandon's hand on my back-actually it felt nice-and the two of us walked out of the coffee shop into the darkening sky.

He'd walked to the shop so I offered to take him home in Jared's BMW. He climbed in the pa.s.senger side and I put it in reverse. When the lights came on I looked forward at the coffee shop window.

Heather was staring back at me, her expression unreadable.

Against everything Father had said, I'd made my first enemy.

Brandon was quiet as I pulled out into the evening traffic. The sun wasn't quite down, but far enough over the horizon that it didn't bother me. I sensed he was angry as well as embarra.s.sed. My blood in his veins still held a strong pull, which shouldn't be happening.

I really wanted to ask Jared about it. But I couldn't. I'd lied to him about Brandon.

I'd never lied to Jared about anything-until now.

"Look, you can just drop me off at the next exit-I can walk home."

I glanced over at him. "Why? You don't want to be seen with me?"

A smile pulled at his lips. "That's my line."

"Why wouldn't I want to be seen with you?" I returned his smile. "You seem like a nice guy. And now I'm curious about you."

"Oh?" he looked at my profile.

"Yes. So...I figured...since you broke the barrier of-how did you say it? Oh yeah, Go Away, then I think I'm ent.i.tled to know what I can about you."

He laughed. It was a nice sound. And honest. "Well, I'm afraid you might be little disappointed. I'm not exactly interesting...or popular. At least not now."

"Well," I maneuvered the BMW into the right lane to slower traffic. "Well...look at that. Stop and go. I guess we have time to find out?"

"You've been driving long?"

My answer would be yes-that I'd been driving for over fifteen years. "No, but my brother's a great teacher."

"You have a permit?"

"I do." I wanted to avoid questions like this about me. I wanted to know more about him. "So you're in safe hands. Now, back to you, Brandon Fleetwood." I settled back in the seat and made sure the environmental controls of the car were good for him. It could be freezing inside and I wouldn't know. "What was happening at the coffee shop?"

"Oh." He sighed. "I would say it was a long story-but it's not, really. It's sort of an issue that came up over the summer."

"With Heather?"

"Mostly. See," he half turned in his seat to look at me, and I was surprised at how comfortable I felt with him. Was it my blood inside of him that did it? And if I felt like this with my blood in his body, how would it be if I had his blood inside of me? "Heather and I'd been sort of dating since junior high-"

"Sort of dating?"

"It's complicated. Well no it's not really. Heather's parents had a lot of money. Her dad was a CEO of Fumenta Incorporated and her mother actually runs a private investigation agency-works with the police sort of like-" he shrugged. "An auxiliary branch."

I pursed my lips. Wow, how small town was that. "She's sort of like a mercenary for hire. Blackwater?"

He laughed again. "I think that's a good a.n.a.logy. But we grew up together-Heather and me. Always doing stuff as kids and then it just seemed natural that when we got older, we'd be a couple."

"But... " I paid attention to the idiot driver in front of me. He'd already started weaving back and forth, slipping from the left lane into the right lane in some feeble attempt to get around the slow moving SUV in front of him. "I take it things changed. I mean...your dad fired her dad?"

"Yeah..." He sighed. "He made a lot of mistakes and was demoted. Meanwhile my dad's company came in and took over. The first thing my dad did was fire Heather's father because he'd already lost the company over half a million dollars."

"Wow. I mean...wow."

"There's a lot more to it between our families. My dad found out her dad had an affair about two years ago. At first he was pretty good about keeping it a secret. Her mom suspected something-I mean come on she's a detective, that's what she does. So she had him followed and got evidence in the affair. They nearly divorced, but didn't. a.s.sets were too mingled. So, they live in separate houses, in the same town, and they share custody of Heather."

I didn't want to feel sorry for Heather. But I really didn't want to hate her, or have her hate me. And knowing this much about her could prove valuable if she decided to cause trouble. It sort of...humanized her.

Brandon continued. "My dad had warned him that his affair, and the fact he wasn't paying attention to his job, was going to bite him in the b.u.t.t. But he didn't listen. So when it did, and my dad ended up in that position, dad felt like Heather's dad needed a wake-up call to end the affair and get his life together."

"So..." I glanced at Brandon but kept my concentration on the road. "Her dad resents your dad?"

"Not just resents. He blames my dad for everything. Truth was it was a series of bad calls, bad decisions and Mr. Cobb is blaming everyone but himself. Even his wife. Heather loves her dad, so he was able to convince her I was bad news and deserved bad things." He shifted in the seat. "That's when the bullying started."

"Over the summer?"

"Oh no, this started summer before this one. The bullying started then and has continued. My last few months of school last year were h.e.l.l. I managed to get a job on a shrimping boat over the summer in Fernadina Beach, Florida. But now that I'm back and school's started, it's all started back up again. I can't get away from her or her harem of hit men. I mentioned quitting the team to my dad when I woke up in the hospital."

"Anything he can do?"

"No, but he's supportive. He'll be behind whatever it is I choose. I just need to choose soon. I have a game Friday and I'm afraid they're going to kill me on the field and make it look like it was the other team."

I applied the breaks. The idiot in front of me just wasn't letting up. He was laying down on his horn now. It was six o'clock traffic. What did he expect? "Why didn't you press charges?"

"No sign of trauma to me. I remember being attacked in the woods on Monday. I remember coming close to drowning, and then..." he shrugged. "Nothing. They kept me overnight because I wasn't waking up immediately. And when I did wake up in the hospital, not a mark on me. But the other guys...cracked jaws, bruised, and one of them had a fractured skull. It sort of looked like I beat the c.r.a.p out of them and not the other way around. The chef of police is a friend of my dad's and he was pretty sure I didn't clock all of them. It's not physically possible. I'm not exactly football material."

I nodded slowly. "So their behavior toward you in the coffee shop is indicative of how they treat you in school?"

When he didn't answer immediately, I glanced over at him. He was looking at me with a strange grin. "What?"

"The way you talk. Indicative? Who uses words like that?"

"Me. I do." I reached over and used my knuckle to poke his upper arm. "Now talk to me. I'd like to know who it is that's hating on me now and why." When I glanced again he was still looking. "Why are you staring?"

"I don't know. You just seem....familiar to me. Like I dreamed about you."

I laughed. Nervously. "Oh, that doesn't sound stalker at all."

"No, no, no. It's just that..." he sighed. "I'm not kidding about dreaming about you. I think I had while in the hospital. A girl...with beautiful red hair, white skin and blue eyes. You...you just remind me of that dream."

"I do?"

"Yeah...maybe that's why I finally decided to say hi."

"Well," I forced a smile. "I'm glad you did. It's been nice meeting you." We were quiet as the guy on my left honked his horn at the lane-changer. "So...did anyone else see them attack you?"

"No one saw it. Julie Hunsacker and Anna Fortmeyer found me. Found us. I asked Julie out the moment I got out of the hospital."

I glanced at him. Must have been while I was in the mountains with Jared. "That go okay?"

"Yes. And no. We had a good time. Then Heather got to her. Threatened her. Now she won't even look at me."

"Wow." I winced. Why couldn't I think of something to say besides wow? "So...are they being punished for coming after you? Even though it looks like you beat the h.e.l.l out of them?"

"Unfortunately they were suspended from Friday night's game. Which of course, somehow makes me the enemy in the team."

"They attacked you, nearly drowned you in a creek, and you're the bad guy?"

"Yeah... that and I'm failing math. I'm afraid I'm not going to graduate, much less get into college at this rate. I don't need this stress right now. And with the Homecoming Dance a week from Friday-I'm pretty sure she's going to threaten me into taking her. I'll be screwed if I do and beat if I don't...or do." He leaned his head against the gla.s.s of the window. "I don't want to go with her, but I don't have a choice."

"Yeah you do," I heard myself say. "Because I'm going with you."

What was I thinking?

I'd just made a date with a mortal.

A jock my brother had told me to stay away from. A man I'd told myself to stay away from.

Maybe it was my lack of having a high school adventure. Maybe it was me wanting something more before I had to bond myself to Michel.

Maybe...

Maybe what?

Brandon was beyond happy. Though at first he thought I was joking. The lane-dodger had found an easy way out-released from his prison just as I turned to him and said, "No, I'm not joking. I'll go with you. I don't like being threatened."

And I didn't.

And I wasn't going to let Brandon be bullied. I felt a kind of ownership with him. Again, was it my blood inside of him? Or was it just...me?

We pulled into the driveway of his house. He lived only a few miles from the coffee shop, but the traffic had made the drive longer. It was a normal suburban house, much like the one Jared and I shared. Two stories, with a brick facade in front and well manicured lawn. It spoke of middle-cla.s.s wealth and stressed credit cards.

I pulled the BMW to the curb and cut the engine.

His smile had faded and that alarmed me. "What is it?"

"Carly...why did you say I was almost drowned? I didn't...I didn't tell you that."

c.r.a.p-Oh-La!

Think fast on this one.

"No you didn't. I a.s.sumed it. I know those woods-beside the coffee shop? There's a creek there, and if you were fighting-" I let the sentence hang, knowing that sometimes if you let the other person fill in the lie, they felt better about it. And they bought it easier.

"-then it just seemed natural they'd shove my head into the water and drown me." He smiled. "If you say so, Carly."

I didn't think he bought it, so avoidance was a good idea. "So...you have a nice night."

"Wait," he reached behind him and pulled his phone from his jeans. We'd already exchanged phone numbers, so what was he doing? I leaned over to see a calendar on his screen. "I have another math tutoring on Thursday. Tomorrow. So, is it okay if I meet you at the coffee shop again?"

I smiled. "Sure."

"And...we have the game Friday night...which I already told you about. It's the last one before the Homecoming game a week from now. Would you like to be at the game and cheer me on? I swear it'd help me knowing you were there-since I have to play alongside buddies of my attempted murderers?"

That wasn't really funny. Not given the circ.u.mstances of our meeting. But he didn't know that. So I smiled. "Sure," zombie-me said, not really engaging my brain. Or common sense. "What time is the game?"

"Eight. But get there at seven. Just come to the fence and I'll look for you."

I nodded and he got out of the car. I'd restarted the BMW when the door opened again and he leaned all the way in-and kissed my cheek. "Thanks," he said. He shut the door and ran to his house.

I sat still for few minutes-my brother's voice screaming in my ear.

"A football game? Friday?" Jared was even more wigged out than I though he'd be. We were in the kitchen, me just having microwaved a bag of blood and poured it into my favorite mug. "Carly-you're not in high school, remember? Technically you're too old for it."

"That's not what Father said," I opened the cabinet underneath to toss the empty bag into the hospital bucket underneath the sink. Usually the empties got recycled at the local blood bank, of which our people had ownership. No joke. "I'm still technically seventeen."

"Physically-"

"Mentally. Sort of." I'd tried to understand all the nuances of immortality. Or how the blood worked on us. We remained the age we were made for a very long time-our souls refusing to believe we would be locked for eternity to this stagnant state of being. And of course I didn't really believe it-till I'd met Michel.

He'd been turned at nineteen.

And five hundred years later still acted like a nineteen year old.

A very spoiled nineteen year old.

Impetuous, and deadly.

Jared seemed to be the only one I'd ever known that grew as the years pa.s.sed. Maybe his soul was older than everyone's. He seemed more mature at times, more so than Father. But right now he was acting a lot like Father.

He stopped at the still new stove and leaned back, his arms folded over his chest. He was dressed in jeans, a long sleeved black b.u.t.ton down, and donned a black golf hat. He looked kinda like a newsy from the past. Either way, the brim of the hat didn't hide the anger in his eyes. "That's not my point, Carly. Michel will be here Sat.u.r.day night."

"Right. We've got everything ready, right? We have plenty of blood, you found him a doll." Dolls were humans that liked being fed on by vampires. They enjoyed the connection between the two and in a way, became addicted to it. Unlike a Ghoul who is made a slave to a vampire and must drink vampire blood. Father had several Dolls and even more Ghouls, all of which took care of his business during the day. They doubled as body guards and ran interference with other Families.

Ghouls were essential.