"Mr. D!" I yelled as we ran toward the car. He was reading a newspaper while humming along to a Beethoven's Symphony.

"Mr. D!" I said again as Jacques and I shoved ourselves into the back seat. This time he jumped up, almost tearing his paper apart.

"Let's go as fast as your car could take us, now!" I said.

"Is there a grizzly bear chasing you, miss?" he asked.

"Something ugly like that," I said.

"And you come back with another beautiful young lady..."

"Mr. D, JUST GO!"

"Alright, alright!" He said, starting the engine at last. Through the window, I could see pairs of red glowing eyes watching us from the dark wood. Then they disappeared. I was surprised that they didn't follow us.

Beethoven's music kept blasting as we shot out of the quiet road.

"Where are we going?" Jacques asked again when she noticed that we didn't go back to school.

"My home," I simply said.

"What?" Jacques shrieked, looking as if I was taking her to the graveyard. "Why don't we go back to the school?"

"Not now," I said.

"Who are those guys?"

"They're vampires," I said quietly, but Mr. D was lost in his music again, so it's not likely that he could hear us all the way from the back.

"Yeah, like I was so blind to see that," she rolled her eyes. "But why are they after you?"

"I don't know."

"Aren't they just like your relatives or something?"

"No!" I snapped, "I'm different."

Jacques raised her eyebrows in surprise, "How different?"

"They were humans who got turned into vampires, also called the undead,"

"And what kind of a bloodsucker are you then?" She asked, and I considered tossing her out of the limo for that. As usual, Jacques started to get on my last human nerve, but I tried to keep my cool just for the sake of Mr. D.

"I'm not turned," I said. "I'm awakened."

"What? You were born vampire?"

"Born half-vampire," I corrected her.

"And half-what?"

I turned myself around to face her.

"Like it or not, I'm also half-human," I said. "So you'd better show me some respect, alright?"

Jacques looked at me as if she was seeing me for the first time. "No freaking way."

I rolled my eyes behind my sunglasses and turned straight back. We sat in silence for a while.

"By the way," I started again. "How could you get out of the school?"

Because for all I know, the walls that bordered the Ultara Academy were too high, and nobody could climb up without setting off the security alarms.

"I just did," she said, shifting her face away to stare out the window. Why was it too difficult to tell me how she got out?

"Then why are you in the wood?" I tried again.

"Personal matter,"

"Maybe I should have left you there with those undead guys," I said.

"Then why did you come back?"

"Because your stupidity almost got you killed, why didn't you tell on me?" I said, turning to look at her. Jacques stared back at my face. I pulled off my sunglasses, which made her flinch and look away from my slightly glowing eyes.

Suddenly, my phone vibrated. I took it out of my bag and saw Octavia's number.

"Octavia?"

"Viv?" her voice was soothing, but not enough to make me forget what had happened earlier. "Are you home yet?"

"Not yet, but I'm going,"

"Thank god, I just had a bad feeling earlier," she told me. I frowned a little, but then I remember our emotional link. Octavia's intuition was quite accurate at that point.

"Octavia, we're in trouble," I said at last.

"What's wrong?"

"I met some unknown vampires roaming around the wood near our school," I told her.

"Oh, my...are you alright? Did they hurt you?" She asked in a frantic tone. I didn't need to see her face to know that she was in shock.

"I'm okay," I said quickly. "But I'm with...umm...Jacques now. I met her there, and I'm heading home with her." I glanced over at Jacques who tried to ignore my conversation.

"I'll be at your house soon," Octavia offered. "We will talk about it later."

"Okay, see you there," I said and flipped the phone shut. I leaned back on the seat with a loud exhale. The adrenaline rush was too energy-consuming, not to mention having an annoying succubus nearby.

"Hey," Jacques called me, I wanted to pretend that I didn't hear her, but it felt like she wanted to say something, so I glanced sideways at her direction.

"What?" I asked with a frown. Jacques just bit her lips for a second, like she was weighing something in her mind.

"I levitated," she simply said.

"You what?" my head snapped right up to look at her.

"You asked me how I got out of school," Jacques shrugged.

"Yeah, I know, but you mean...you could fly?" I asked with a freaked face.

"I said levitated," she emphasized the word.

"That's impossible!" I said. "How could you do that?"

"Come on, people do it all the time," she scoffed.

"No, they don't!" I protested wildly. "People don't go around levitating, causing stuff to move, or sucking people's energy. That's not even scientific!"

"Ah, science," Jacques said with a low snort. "Don't you think science makes people stop believing in what they can do? Instead of making us great, it limits our true potentials. We were born extraordinary but grow up average. How ridiculous people think of science like it is the greatest mambo jumbo in the world, but really, it's just the repetition of experiences that never change for millennia, and you just think that's all there is. How pathetic."

"I don't get it, repetition what? Never change for millennia what?" I said, thinking Alyssa would have a heart attack if she heard what Jacques said. "Science is the most accurate thing there is. It's the only way to prove something, like the law of gravity."

"Okay, so if you drop a glass to the ground, you expect the glass to fall, but if one day the glass floats in the air, it means the law of gravity is flawed, and what you call as science is no longer science."

"But the law of gravity still hasn't changed," I defended stubbornly.

"I didn't say it has changed," Jacques said, "All I'm saying is, science could only interpret a small portion of reality, and some are not even a hundred percent accurate."

"Well, you still don't have any proof like science does," I said.

"Try dropping something in front of me," she challenged.

"Whatever." I grimaced before I could get a severe headache thinking about that. "Anyway, how could you levitate then?"

"I was absorbing energy in the wood, and it just happened."

"You tried to suck energy from the trees?" I asked, giving her an obvious are-you-that-desperate look and laughed. Maybe a part of me just wanted to hurt her feeling, and sure enough, Jacques looked like she wanted to punch me.

"I absorbed energy from nature, you silly!" She corrected.

"What?" I said blankly, but Jacques looked serious. "How could you draw energy from nature?"

"Not just nature, but also the earth and the stars," she said. I made the funniest face as I stared at her, but Jacques ignored me and went on, "Look, you might not notice this, but every time we breathe, we draw life force from the universe."

"And you did that only by breathing?" I said.

"What? You think I need to do a human sacrifice?"

"But if you could do this stuff, why don't you stop draining people off energy?"

"It's easier to do with people," she said casually, "I'm a succubus, remember?"

"Aw...you can't just say that!" I said. "It's just wrong! You have an entire galaxy worth of energy, why do you have to keep doing it to people?"

"It's not easy like what you said," Jacques said. "It needs a lot of time and concentration, what else do you think I have to cut a lot of classes for? And sometimes the amount of energy I've drawn from nature is too powerful that I lose control of myself, weird stuff can happen to me."

"And levitation is one of those weird stuff?" I asked.

"I thought you were dumb,"

"You really are a freak," I shook my head in disbelief.

Then the limo parked in front of my house. I told Mr. D not to bother returning Jacques back to school. I figured that it would be safer if the girl stayed with us for a few hours. I didn't want the undead to pick up her scent, (I know they could never detect mine anyway). Mom already came back from the hospital this evening. She opened the door for us when she heard the limo drove off.

Jacque stood beside me, looking around herself.

"Oh, you've brought a friend!" Mom exclaimed when she saw Jacques.

"She'll be staying for a while, mom," I explained to her. "We have some project for school together."

"Then I'll make sure she stays for dinner too." Mom said in delight, reaching her hand out to Jacques.

"I'm sorry," Jacques said, recoiling back. I was about to shoot her a look. But then she added, "My hands are so dirty."

"Oh, that's okay," Mom said pleasantly. "Come on and get cleaned then."

We walked to the living room. Jacques was looking around as if my house resembled a zoo. Mom returned to her cooking, leaving us alone. I was pacing back and forth like an animal in the cage. And Jacques was sitting on the cushion with her legs crossed. Her eyes never stopped staring at me.

"Why are you scared?" She asked.

"I'm not," I said, and she made a snorting sound as if she knew it better. I was waiting for Octavia to show up. She always brings along a sense of comfort. Not that I was afraid, but my early encounter with the undead had stirred up a bad inkling inside me.

A moment later, Mom called out to us to join the dinner. I was actually relieved that Jacques didn't act like a total snob around Mom. She seemed like a different person, always smiling and being polite, never made a single whinny complain of anything. And the annoying thing was Mom also seemed to like her. I couldn't help being a little jealous. But I know Mom is like a saint, and even if she knew the real Jacques behind this good-girl image, she would still baby her the same way.

Octavia hadn't shown up. I hope she would be here sooner or later. I helped Mom clear the table after we finished the meal. But she wanted me to keep Jacques accompanied. She said it was rude to leave a friend alone. Sure, I wasn't going to tell her that Jacques was the last person I would want to be around. So I walked back to the table with two glasses of milk and orange juice. I think she had gotten over the fact that my dinner consisted of nothing but vegetables. But when I sat down, handing the juice to her, Jacques pointed to my milk glass.

"Is that really milk?"

"You can taste it if you like," I said indifferently.

"What kind of a freakish vampire that drinks milk anyway," she mumbled and just took a sip of her juice.

"Hey!" I protested. "It's not just any ordinary milk."

"Then what milk?"

"Breast milk," I said before I could stop myself.

And Jacques being her sarcastic self, just threw her head back and laughed at the top of her lungs.

"So that's your secret substitute, huh?" she said, still chuckling like mad. I just wanted to strangle her out of her last breath.

"What's wrong with that?" I tried to say. "You drank it when you were a baby too!" But watching Jacques, my mouth also started twitch in amusement. And then I just couldn't help myself and joined her laughter too. After a while, we both could breathe again, still sniffing.

"By the way, your mom is a great cook, I like her," she said afterward.

"Should I be worried about my mom now?" I said.

Suddenly Jacques looked down on her hands. And I didn't even know why she seemed to take it harder than usual.

"Hey, are you okay?" I asked.

"It's true that I couldn't stay with people I like without hurting them," she said quietly. "My parents couldn't be around me without getting sick. I have to come here, because everyone is getting tired of me, literally."

I stared at her without knowing what to say.

"I can't do this anymore, you know," she went on with a shake of her head. "You're right. What I did to your friends and other people is just wrong."

"Then you should stop," I said.

"Easy to say for you," she said. "I really need to absorb energy from people the same way a plant needs to photosynthesize from the sun, that's the only way we can survive. I tried to stop many times, but I couldn't help myself once it started again. Even I know I need to quit doing that before it consumes me, the compelling need to take others' life force is too overwhelming. "

"I understand you," I said, "We both are quite the same. But are there any other ways to avoid this? There should be another substitute for you, too, Jacques."

"I'm trying right now, as you already saw me in the wood," she said. "I know you hate me for what I did to Alyssa. I deserve that."

"I don't hate you," the words just slipped out of my mouth, but I guess it was part of the truth. "If only you don't feed off people's energy, we might have become...um...friends."

Cammie was so going to kill me if she knew I said this.

"At first, I just wanted to prove myself that it was only my own imagination," she said again. "Since I was young, I had noticed people around me getting exhausted or sick. I didn't realize I was taking random energy from them. Eventually, it became my taking vital essence from selected people by force. I know it's also counted as vampirism, but I refused to admit it. I only thought it was nothing but a psychosomatic effect. Until I attended the Ultara Academy, I saw you. You're the first real-life vampire I've ever seen. You seemed to prove that vampirism isn't all in my head and that I'm also one of a kind."

"Yeah, you're a psychic vampire, alright,"

"But I'm still a human," she shrugged.

"That's why you discriminated me," I said. Jacques just laughed.

"That's not true," she said. "I just felt creepy when I didn't see your aura, and your energy field always shielded up on me every time I saw you."

"Wait, you didn't see my what?" I said.

"Aura," Jacques answered, "The thing that surrounds living beings and plants like a hazy colorful mist, you know, just like a rainbow of electromagnetic field..."

"I know, but how could you see that thingy anyway?"

"I'm gifted with auric-sight," Jacques said. "Your two human friends have dominant orange and red aura, which are also their personality colors, and your mom, hers is violet, very interesting. But when it comes to you, I see nothing."

Well, until Jacques said that, I remember the orange stream of glowing molecules that Jacques had fed off of Alyssa.

"Why do you see everyone's aura but can't see mine?" I started to wonder again.

"I don't know," she simply said. "Maybe, you don't have it."

"But I was born from a living vampire and a human! I'm not even dead!" I said defensively. "And if you think about it, saying that I don't have aura is just as insulting as saying I don't have a personality!"

"I still can't see it," Jacques just shrugged.

"So did you see the aura of those dead vampires back in the wood?" I asked again.

"Oh yeah, they were surrounded by darkness, representing negative energy," she told me. "That's how I knew they weren't normal people."

All I could do was staring at Jacques quizzically. Octavia had said we were born against the natural law or whatever, so I guess maybe that's why there is a hole in Jacques's auric-vision.

"And how about you?" I asked in stiff tone, "Being a soul-sucker, you must be surrounded by darkness, too, right?"

"Wrong," Jacques said with a smirk. "My aura is gold."