It had been far too long since I’d lowered my spell on campus. I was almost afraid to do it. To see the auras of the crowd of amorous followers who surrounded me the moment I got off my bike. To see the spirits and demons that might be clinging to them.

And to let those things see me.

Because that was the worst part of having Sight. They could tell. I had no idea how, but they always knew, and they would come after me. The benign ones were the easiest, because they usually just wanted help. Impossible help. How in the hell was I supposed to tell their great-aunt Gertrude her dead relative wanted me to call her a bitch? Yeah, that would go over well. Totally.

Then there were the grey spirits. The closest to human. They almost always just wanted to talk. The problem was, the conversations somebody with Sight had with those spirits was, more often than not, the tipping point for them. Say the right thing and they move on or become benign. But say anything else... I wasn’t up for taking that risk. I had created too many malignant spirits while Breylin and Makena were training me to ever trust in myself to handle a grey spirit.

If I wasn’t going to talk to grey or benign spirits, that just left the malignant ones. From relatively harmless knockers to malicious poltergeists and sirens to demons of every color, shape, and kind- they all gravitated to those with Sight. It only got worse when I hadn’t dyed my hair recently. All of the city’s spirits, and many spirits across the country as I’d learned on spring break my freshman year of college, knew Breylin. And since I was one of my father’s two great weaknesses, that meant they knew me.

Which was why I dyed my distinctive auburn hair black quite often. One of many reasons why my red eyes were hidden by colored contacts. And the biggest reason why I kept my Sight closed off; powerful spirits would be drawn to me otherwise, and easily be able to see my parents’ auras rubbed all over mine. And there would be trouble, pain, heartbreak, death- all of the things I was fighting so damn desperately to avoid.

But if Jackson was going to make it happen anyway, it might as well happen to me.

So I took a deep breath, letting the buzz of people talking around me cover the soft hum of the chant slipping past my lips. The words were invisible, but I could feel them wrap around me. Slinking chains of flowing syllables that curved along my body before binding tightly around my head. Most of their force focused just over my eyes, where another spell stood to block my Sight. The worst part came next. I could feel the chain of words draw back, like a snake about to strike, before the words surged forward and shattered both spells at once.

I couldn’t help the soft, choked sounds of pain as I pressed my palms to my eyes. That they came back wet with blood didn’t surprise me. It was the tiny, concerned blond whose face was shoved up into mine, that startled me into a quick step back. My bike wobbled as I leaned back over it in an attempt to get away from the spiked hair with blue tips that were almost up my nose.

"Wh-wha... what the hell’s bells are you doing, kid?" I stammered out the phrase my father had snapped at me so many times that I knew it by heart.

His eyes, a surprisingly pretty sapphire blue rimmed with thick lashes that belonged on a girl, widened with surprise and a little bit of hurt. "Your eyes are bleeding and you’re wondering why I’m concerned about you? Jeez, what’s your problem, kid?"

"Wh-wha..." I couldn’t come up with anything to say to him. He sounded too much like my dad used to, the constant babble that could jump from topic to topic in seconds. Even though he’d managed to stick to just one subject- how offended he was by what I’d said- it had the same lightspeed tempo as my dad.

"You heard me! Ungrateful little-" he fell into muttering under his breath, and something happened then that surprised me more than any of the ridiculous things he had done.

His aura got brighter.

That wasn’t strange in itself. The brightness of people’s auras, people’s souls, changed all the time. They got brighter with happiness, joy, or pleasure. And they dimmed with anger and sadness. Which was why he was weird. The kid was royally pissed at me, so by all rights that snowy white aura should have darkened toward grey. But all it did was grow brighter, until it sparkled like diamond dust. I’d never seen that before. As pretty as my dad’s aura got, as bright as it could light in the face of my father’s darkness, it never sparkled.

"Uhm... is there something on my face?"

HIs quavering voice, full of confusion, jerked me back into the moment. It made me realize just how intently I had been staring at his aura. It was still hard not to when it was so damn pretty with that diamond dust sparkle.

"A-ah... no. Sorry. Uhm..." I stumbled to a halt. Reaching up to wipe the remainder of the blood from my eyes, though I knew it would take a good scrubbing to get rid of all traces of the sticky red stuff.

"Bree."

A frown creased my face as I looked up at him. "Huh?"

"My name," he said, and the disbelief and annoyance in his voice couldn’t possibly grow any thicker. "My name is Bree. Well, Brennan. Actually that’s my last name but my friends. I mean not that you’re a friend. You’re actually kind of a dick, being mean to somebody who just wanted-"

His words were cut off in a muffled garble of nonsense. My hand was pressed firmly over his mouth, and I was damned lucky it was just my hand and not my lips; years of seeing my father shut Luca up the same way- or sometimes the other way around when Luca wanted to embarrass him- had made it an almost automatic reaction because it was so nauseatingly normal at home. I’d barely brought my hand up in time, my lips just an inch away from the back of it.

"I’m going to invest stock in duct tape," I muttered, before freezing up. If I hadn’t seemed creepy with blood dripping from my eyes, I’d certainly done it then. I sounded like a goddamn serial killer. And yet, instead of the greying of fear I expected, I got more sparkles thrown across his aura. Lustful ruby instead of clear diamond, if played across his aura the same way it danced in his eyes. A wicked sort of glint in those sapphire eyes was followed by his tongue flicking out to trace a teasing path up the heart line above my palm.

I hissed in a breath and yanked my hand away, shocked by how that simple action had sent heat straight to my groin. It was like I was a thirteen-year-old again, running out of the house with Makena so I didn’t have to think about sex- especially when it involved my father’s ridiculously loud voice. I’d gotten over that ’fear’ pretty damn quickly when an impossibly attractive hunter rolled into town with his even more attractive apprentice; by the time I was sixteen, I thought sex was the greatest thing on the planet thanks to them.

And then, of course, the hunters had to move on after just under a year. And though they begged me to go with them, I was already deep enough into my commitment to be normal that I had to say no. I lost them both. It still hurt a little, and the broken-hearted look on Mat’s face still haunted my dreams on the bad nights.

All of which had nothing to do with the kid in front of me, who was watching the expressions flicker across my face with rapt attention. My face flushed a hot red as I turned away from him only to feel his hand catch my arm, yanking me around to face those pretty blue eyes again.

"I am not done talking to you, don’t think I’m letting you just run off!" he snapped, his fingers tight around my arm.

My scowl was an automatic defense, but it didn’t seem to faze him at all. "Let go." It was as close to a snarl as I could get, as I tried to wrench my arm away.

He was stronger than I thought, and all I did was pull him closer. The weight of his body had me sitting down abruptly on my bike; it put me low enough that Bree, as ridiculously short as the tiny boy was, had to lean over a little to stay in my face. "Listen. Being a jerk won’t make me forget you’re bleeding from your eyes! You better have a damn good explanation, or I am taking you to the hospital right now!"

I had nothing to offer him other than wide eyes and a gaping mouth as his irritation stirred the sparkles in his aura so they danced wildly. My voice came out on a croak, and it was the best I could do. I knew it wasn’t going to be enough, and I was right. Bree yanked me to my feet and started to tow me further into the parking lot while my little crowd of worshippers stared in awe. Or maybe it was in fear for Bree’s life, because the last man who had touched me in a way I didn’t like suddenly fainted and had to spend a week in bed to recover.

What can I say? Sometimes what I am had its benefits. And nobody had dared to brazenly grab my crotch since then, so it was a victory in my books.

So it was no wonder the people who flocked around me were scared. Luckily for Bree, my aura wasn’t as strong as my father’s; though it was nearly in tatters after releasing my Sight, I wouldn’t pull on his aura unless I wanted to. Lucky for him, he was a little too cute to kill. And, far more importantly, I was’t sure that that gorgeous sparkly aura would do to mine, which I knew was on the darker side of grey.

"W-wait," I stammered, finally managing to say something intelligible, for all the good that did me. "I said... wait!"

Bree wobbled as I dug my heels in, and even then he managed to drag me forward another few steps. It made me wonder just what kind of inhuman creature that kid really was. When he stopped making progress, he whipped around to frown at me. With one hand on his cocked hip, the other still wrapped almost painfully tight around my wrist, his eyes lit up with an indignant anger. Definitely inhuman, because he was just too pretty.

"Stop fucking staring." His snarl surprised me into paying attention again, meeting his gaze to find he actually looked... amused?

"I-"

"Whatever you’re going to say, don’t. I know I’m a sexy hunk of a man, but that does not give you permission to stare!" His tone, his expression, the smile flickering at the corner of his mouth- he actually made me relax and laugh a little. Which was a bad move on my part. The moment I relaxed, I was being dragged through the parking lot again.

"H-hey!" I yelped, my feet, scuffling at the pavement as I tried to find enough traction to make him stop again. "I told you to let me go! It happens all the time, I swear. And I have to get to class! If I’m late-"

"I think Prof Kingsley will be fine with you missing class because you’re bleeding out of your eyes!"

"But it stopped! And wait- how the hell did you know my first class is with Professor Kingsley? You’re not one of those annoying groupies, are you?" My eyes narrowed with suspicion.

Bree made a sort of hissing noise, and I yelped as his grip tightened until it hurt. "One of those assholes who hang around pretty people hoping it will rub off on them? Hell no. I just have the same fucking class as you, you jackass!"

That really startled me, enough that I barely registered the cheerful beep of a car, or Bree shoving me into the passenger seat. We had the same class? How in the hell had I never noticed him before? Without being able to see his aura, I would have assumed he was normal and flirted with him until he either gave in and agreed to date me, or he punched me and told me to stop. But maybe that was the problem- maybe the spell to block my Sight after my tinkering past what Breylin had taught me, and it was so efficient it even kept me from seeing people if they were too far past normal.

"And it hasn’t stopped, by the way. Look!" Bree reached up to flip down the visor on my side, tapping up the cover so I could see the mirror.

I made a horrid sort of gasping sound when I realized he was right- and wrong, because there was more than just blood. The spells had destroyed my contact lenses along with filling my eyes with so much blood that the red of my irises blended with the red my whites had turned. The spells had hurt my eyes so badly the blood leaked slowly like tears, making crimson tracks down my face. It was no wonder my groupies had been so scared.

I was scared.

"You see?" Bree asked.

I wanted to tell him he was right and something was wrong, but then I’d end up in a hospital. Breylin had more than enough money, so that wasn’t what I was worried about. No, it was Tris. The bastard who had miraculously showed up every single damn time I ended up in the hospital for over a decade. Tris was the last person I wanted looking at the effects of my combined spells on my eyes.

"Yeah, it happens a lot," I lied, and was proud my voice stayed steady. "It’s some kind of genetic disorder that we’d probably be able to name if I had access to my parents’ medical records."

Bree stared at me for a few seconds, the keys in the ignition but the car still silent. "Orphan?" he finally asked, and I was nodding before I could stop myself. "Welcome to the club."

"You too? Which orphanage?"

"West Temple, on Ruth and Second."

"No shit! That’s where I was staying, right around the time-"

"That creepy monster thing crawled in through the window and almost killed us all. But those two guys-"

"Totally saved our asses! It was-"

"So fucking cool!" We said it at the same time, and it was so much like old biddies chatting in a hospice that I couldn’t help it. I broke down laughing so hard the blood was thick and warm like real tears. And maybe Luca was a little right about my laugh being infectious, because Bree started laughing not long after me. The two of us bent over in the seats of his car as we laughed almost hysterically over our own misfortune.

Bree stopped before I did, hs laughter cutting off in a horrified gasp. It made me pause, my breath hitching hard in my throat when the end of my laughter marked the beginning of blinding pain. And I meant blinding quite literally; my world became a wash of scarlet that I couldn’t see past. It had panic welling in my throat, fear clenching my chest tightly so that I could barely breathe. I flung my hands out, searching desperately for something to ground myself with.

"Calm down!" Bree’s voice, high and sweet, pitched to a shriek like a switch had been flipped. My flailing hands were stopped suddenly, wrapped in a soft warmth that had to be his hands. His voice was lower, calmer, when he spoke again. "Calm down, man. You’re going to be okay. Just listen to my voice and answer my questions. What’s your name?"

I paused in my struggling for a moment, near hysterical as I realized he didn’t know my name. So close to hysterical, in fact, that I gave him my real name instead of the fake name scrawled across my school papers. "Keller. Keller Ritsu."

"Alright, Keller Ritsu." His voice was ridiculously calm, even a little soothing, as he let go of one of my hands. It had my breath hitching until he twined his fingers tightly with mine. I clung to him, my unexpected life raft, as he squeezed my hand. "I’m going to take you to the hospital, okay?"

"No!" It was horror and fear, making the word shake as I tried to abandon my raft, my free hand searching for the door handle.

Bree just clutched my hand tighter, until it was painful. "Shut up. I wasn’t really asking for permission, it’s just habit. I so don’t need your feedback."

"I-"

"Sh!" Though I couldn’t see his face, I was sure he was glaring at me.

My mouth opened and closed a few times. I could feel the pout that scrunched up my face as the car jerked a little before settling into the softer purr of a vehicle on the road. "I-"

"No! Don’t even!" Bree snapped the words before I had a chance to speak.

It had the pout turning into a frown in a heartbeat, and I was caustic when I spoke again. "Christ, can’t I at least pick the god damned hospital, you tyrant?"

"Oh for fuck’s sake, I ought to just let you bleed out if you’re going to act that way."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah really!"

"Fucking do it then!"

"Maybe I will!"

A soft growl left my throat, and I sounded far too much like my father for comfort. "God damn it, just let me-"

A sharp jerk of the car had me pulling in a sharp gasp, terrified. I was sure only Bree’s grip on my hand kept me from slamming into the dash. Bree was cursing violently, and I figured I had pushed him to far. That the jerk had been him slamming on the brakes. He really was going to throw me out.

My heart lurched, my throat almost closed with fear, and I was terrified to be left alone when all I could see was scarlet. So of course my voice came out hard and sour. "I don’t even need you! You’re the one who towed me away! Stop being so-"

My words turned into a sharp, fearful yelp as Bree yanked hard on my arm. Bringing me forward so that I was tipped over the center console, and I was so scared he was going to hit me. I didn’t know what it would do when already my head was filled with pounding agony. My eyes squinched closed tightly, and I was sure I looked just as scared as I felt.

My eyes snapped open on relex, the scarlet swirling violently, when what I felt instead of the hard impact of a fist against my face was the clash of lips pressed to mine. It startled me into stillness while Bree kissed me, my tongue playing against my lips until they blossomed open for him. It shocked the hell out of me how eagerly my body responded, wired with adrenaline and untouched for so long. And I really didn’t want to think about where the pleased purring was coming from. Whatever it was, it had my breath coming in soft pants when Bree pulled away just as suddenly as he’d kissed me.

It was dead silent for a moment, before he snorted. "Sure, you’ll shut up now. Annoying as fuck, and you’re way too attractive for your own good. God, you even taste like blood, and I can’t bring myself to care. You fucking suck, and I hope you realize that."

All I could do was blink, my mouth still parted from his kiss as I sat there frozen solid from the shock. What the hell had just happened?!

"Christ. Whatever- I’m not even going to bother to worry about it," he muttered, so softly I almost didn’t hear it. Then he raised his voice for me. "Which hospital did you want to go to?"

"Wh-wha-

"Which. Hospital?" His voice got lower, a little darker.

It was the thing that finally snapped me out of my shock, and I jerked upright in my seat again. "Saint Catherine’s," I answered, my voice sharp. "And if you so much as look at me wonky again for any reason, I’ll tear your head off. Who sexually harasses a blinded man anyway? What the hell."

"Oh? Do you want me to let go of your hand, then?" Bree asked, and his fingers started to slip out of mne.

I was moving before I could think about it. Lunging forward, trapping his hand between mine so he couldn’t pull away.My face flushed a hot red, and I was absolutely certain I looked and sounded sullen, even pissed off by my own instinctive reaction, as I let out another soft growl.

"What? Don’t want me to let go, huh?" Bree asked. When I kept my silence, he laughed softly. "Better stop being an asshole, then."

I made another soft growling noise- but I didn’t say another word. Tipping my head down so my dyed black hair would hide my face from him, I felt heat drop onto my hands when I knew I wasn’t crying. I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was cling tighter to Bree’s hand as the icy fingers of fear clutched tighter around my heart.

Bree made a soft sound that tore at my heart. "Don’t worry, Keller. I’ll take good care of you. You’ll be just fine, I promise."

The sound I made then was pure fear, choked and turning into a sob at the end as my head dropped further and the heat dripped faster onto my hand as I really did start to cry. "Help me... please... Saint Catherine’s," I begged, and I was sure my grip on him was getting painful as black crept in on the edges of my scarlet world. Quickly growing in proportion to my fear and panic until my head was spinning and I knew I wasn’t going to last.

"Stay awake! Keller! Oh shit, please, just hold on!"

His pleading voice and the roar of his car’s engine were the last things I heard, and I felt bad that I couldn’t reassure him before the agony swallowed me whole.