"Oh. My. God." Mac's jaw dropped, her coffee mug almost slipping from her grasp. "Holly, I am so sorry. Are you okay? How are you feeling? Are you - "

I held up a hand, cutting off her babbling. "Mac, I'm fine. Really. I just got a bump on the head."

"A bump on the head?" Mac snorted. "C'mon, Holly, that's one hell of a bruise on your forehead."

"She is right," Jamie agreed from the couch in the living room. "That bruise is rather bulbous."

"Gee, thanks, Jamie."

"Come off it, Holly, you were assaulted. You can't just blow it off like it's nothing."

I loved Mac and Jamie - the third member of our trio - like no other. They were my support system, the ones that held my hands while I trudged my way through classes at NYU to get my BS degree and listened to my complaining about the troubles in my life - like my school loans and the idiots I ran into at my job at a university library.

The one thing I didn't care too much for was that Mac and Jamie had the habit of ganging up on me on matters they were united on. Apparently, my assault was one of them.

I wanted to forget what had happened last night. I did not need my best friends reminding me of all that happened. Those clammy hands, the suffocating feeling, the screaming...that was something I could go my entire life without remembering.

Mac had come barging into my room around nine this morning, all but hysterical about the note my mom had left for her. She'd yanked me out of bed, forced me to eat a huge breakfast of waffles, Cinnamon Life cereal and eggs, then called Jamie and demanded that he come over for moral support.

I wasn't going to lie - I was still shaken up about what had happened. I was jumpy, startling at every loud noise or sudden movement out of the corner of my eye. I had no idea what would make me feel normal after what had happened, but I knew my best friends fussing over me wasn't the right answer.

But, a long soak in a hot bath with a good book could do wonders for a person if they were stressed.

"Holly?" Mac snapped her fingers in front of my face, nearly causing me to topple off the arm chair onto the floor. "Are you even listening to me?"

"I am now," I said sourly. "Will you please just drop this, Mac? Jamie? Seriously. So I got a little beat up, big deal. The police are looking for whoever it was and that's that."

Jamie assessed me with his unusually bright blue eyes over the rim of his coffee mug.

Jamie Sandoval was the type of person that made you feel like you were being x-rayed whenever he looked at you, and not in a good way. That was why so many people were uncomfortable around him. Jamie just knew things.

"I think you're lying," Jamie said, sighing heavily. "But whatever. You know we're here for you if you need us."

"I know, Jamie," I said, doing my best to smile at him.

"Well, duh!" Mac tossed herself down onto the couch beside Jamie, her vibrant red curls bouncing. "That's why we're the best. I just can't believe something like that happened to our Holly, you know?"

"Honey." Jamie gave Mac a pitying look. "You do realize we live in Manhattan, right? People are assaulted every day."

"Yeah, yeah, but I mean - "

"Guys, this isn't dropping the subject," I said loudly. "There has to be more important things we can talk about than my little trip to the ER."

"Okay, then. We can talk about my disastrous date the other night." Jamie got to his feet, stretched his lanky form, and slouched into the kitchen. "I swear, this guy would've made Lucas Ore look like a jewel in comparison."

Mac burst out laughing. "Oh my God. I am so sorry, Jamie. It was that bad?"

"Oh, yeah." Jamie made a sour face and shuddered for effect while he grabbed an extra waffle off a plate on the counter. "It was horrible."

I glared at the two of them, an embarrassed flush filling my cheeks.

Just because I'd had one terrible date my freshman year of college, Jamie and Mac thought that gave them the right to bring it up whenever there was an idiot that needed to be compared to someone.

In retrospect, Lucas Ore hadn't been that bad - he just had an unbelievably dull personality. The real shock came halfway through dinner when he started clipping his fingernails and dropping the leftovers into his empty water glass.

I'd left without a second thought, and Jamie and Mac never let me forget it.

"That's what you get for agreeing to a blind date," I said to Jamie smugly. "It's your own fault."

Jamie shrugged. "Well, he was cute. What was I supposed to do, just turn him down? Don't judge a book by its cover, the saying goes."

"Jamie, you'd go out with half the city's men just because they were cute," Mac pointed out.

Jamie shrugged again, sipping at his coffee. "Minor weakness."

Jamie was a sucker for a guy with good looks and a nice body - among other things - but he was also completely aware of that and perfectly fine with it. Just like he didn't give a damn when his family had disowned him for coming out - he was who he was, and that was that. It was one of the things I envied about Jamie the most - his self confidence was amazing.

I wasn't going to say I didn't have self confidence, but it could've been a little better.

Mac, Jamie and I spent the rest of the morning crowded together in the tiny living room, watching the cooking channel and chatting about the things that had been going on in our lives lately.

Mac's classes at NYU were going fine, but she had a dick of a professor that had a habit of assigning twenty page research papers every two weeks. Jamie was blowing through his classes like they were nothing, of course, and he was on the Dean's List.

There really weren't that many interesting things going on in our lives at the moment. We were college students and the only excitement we ever saw was...well, nothing.

Eventually Mac had to leave for a late shift at a grocery store a few blocks over, apologizing profusely about having to go, leaving me behind with Jamie and a marathon of sappy Lifetime movies and Chinese take-out.

None of us said anything aloud, but we both knew well enough that Jamie only stayed behind because I didn't want to be alone. And I really did not want to be alone.

I had no idea just what it was that attacked me in that alleyway, but the thought that whatever it was returning, showing up in my bedroom late at night to finish what it'd started, was slowly creeping into my mind. With thoughts like those moving in, the last thing I wanted was to be alone.

Jamie and I had just hunkered down with Ben and Jerry's finest to watch Titanic when there was a series of loud knocks on the door. I screamed.

"Jesus Christ, Holly!" Jamie yelped, grappling for the TV remote. "Calm down!"

He jumped up from the couch and headed for the door while I tried to stop hyperventilating.

This was only a few hours after the "assault" and already I was having panic attacks? How bad was this going to get?

"Goodness, Holly," Mom said as she strode into the apartment, grocery bags over her arms. "You just about shattered my eardrums."

"Sorry, Mom," I muttered, rubbing at my eyes. "You scared me."

"Obviously," Jamie said as he swung the door shut and locked it. "Your momma isn't going to hurt you, sweetie."

"Of course not," Mom said, clicking her tongue. She dropped her grocery bags on the counter and dug around in them, then headed over to the couch with a styrofoam container in her hands. "Here. I brought you this."

I took the container, popped the top and groaned. "Pancakes!"

Pancakes were my comfort food. Any day, any situation, no matter what had happened, pancakes never ceased to make me feel better.

Jamie plopped himself on the couch, picked up a flaky pancake and took a bite. "I love pancakes. So, Momma Eloise, you wanna watch Titanic with us?"

"That disastrous movie?" Mom scoffed. "I don't think so." She tossed an arm around my shoulders and pulled me to her side, giving me a comforting squeeze. "But I'll stick around for my daughter."

At the very least, I had pancakes, my gay best friend and my mother, and Leonardo DiCaprio for comfort until I stopped shrieking and jumping at the slightest movement.

I dropped the stack of non-fiction books onto the cart and pushed the cart out of the back room, into the outer portion of the library. I hated restocking books, but it was easier than filing and it was still a job I got paid for.

I had taken as much time off after the incident in the alleyway as I could without having it affect my grades in classes or my job, and now I was back. It wasn't as if disliked working at the university library - I loved books - but it was monotonous.

It was Tuesday night, it was nearing ten, and I wanted to go home. I had a paper due for my genetics class and it was looming in the back of my mind, due this Friday. And I hadn't even started it yet. I wasn't normally prone to this much procrastination, but I think I had a perfect reason as to why.

I pushed the cart into the World Religion section and started re-shelfing the books on Buddhism. The library was too quiet for my liking. Ever since that night, quiet was starting to make me much too uncomfortable. My shifted ended at ten, an hour and thirty-three minutes away, and that couldn't come fast enough.

My mind drifted to my impending essay as I re-stocked the books, focusing on the sound of the heavy texts thumping against the shelves for comfort.

"Excuse me - Miss Eberly?"

I jumped about a foot in the air with a loud shriek and spun on my heel, facing the person that had appeared quite literally out of nowhere.

My jaw dropped.

Standing in front of me was a very tall man with thick chestnut hair, sparkling white teeth, and looks that would make even Adonis extremely jealous. He had to have been filthy rich, too, considering the pristine Armani suit he was wearing.

"C-Can I help you?" I stammered, backing up into the bookshelf.

The man's smile widened, sending a sliver of fear down my spine. I may have not been some Einstein with some genius IQ, but I knew enough to tell that there was something very wrong with this man.

There was this...air that he had, something inhuman about him that gave him an almost ethereal appearance. It was breathtaking and frightening at the same time, and I found that I couldn't look away from him.

The man's smiled widened. "Yes, actually. I'm Stan Mitcham, attorney of law."

"Uhm..." I clutched at the bookshelves behind me as my knees started to knock. "O-Okay..."

"I heard that you were assualted the other night, near here," Stan Mitcham said, almost like he were readying himself for a long conversation.

"Er..."

Why exactly was I having trouble stringing together a coherent sentence?

"If the police - and I'm doubting they might - should happen to find the person that assaulted you," Mitcham said, "and should you happen to be in need of legal representation, here's my business card."

He held out a card with words scrawled across it in a cursive script. It took me several moments to force my arm to move to take the card from him.

"You know, that's a very nasty bruise," Mitcham said, gesturing to my face. "How're you feeling?"

"Fine," I said shakily. "Just fine."

Mitcham nodded, not looking very convinced. "Well, if you need anything, don't hesitate to give me a call, Miss Eberly. I'd hate for anything else unfortunate to happen to you."

He smiled again, showing off those unnaturally white teeth, and left, walking swiftly through the bookcases towards the exit.

I wasn't sure how long I stood there, staring down at the business card in my hands. Nausea was rising in my stomach, and I felt like I needed to vomit.

I jumped out of my reveries when I heard loud footsteps heading my way, and then Mrs. Abbott, one of my supervisors, appeared at the end of the aisle, a concerned expression on her face.

"Holly, are you okay, dear?" she asked, her chin wobbling. "You look like you've just seen a ghost."

Had Stan Mitcham been a ghost? Well, where ghosts usually as good looking as that man had been?

I immediately squashed the ridiculously stupid thought.

A ghost? Yeah, right. There were a lot of things in this world, but I highly doubted that ghosts existed. Where was the scientific proof? And I wasn't talking about the shows on TV where people went around, shouting at things in empty houses.

"No, I'm...fine," I said uneasily, taking a deep breath. "Just fine."

Mrs. Abbott didn't look convinced. "Look, sweetheart, why don't you take off early? Go ahead and go home."

"But I - "

"Really, Holly, go home." Mrs. Abbott headed over to me and patted my hand in a reassuring manner. "It's okay."

It was pointless trying to fight with Mrs. Abbott when she was dead set on something, so I nodded and left, heading back to the break room.

I was rummaging through the bag Mac had bought me as a get-well present, searching for my new cell phone, before I really knew what I was doing. The card was in my wallet, crumpled, from when I'd shoved it in there after I got home Saturday.

I curled up in one of the overstuffed easy chairs and dialed the number, my hands shaking the entire time.

The phone rang twice before the person picked up on the other line.

"Ayers."

For some reason, sweet relief flooded through me at the sound of his voice. From what I remembered of Detective Ayers, he didn't look like a man anybody would want to mess with.

"Detective?"

There was a beat of silence, and then Detective Ayers said, "Holly Eberly."

"Er, right."

"Can I help you?"

"Look, I'm not sure what to do here, so I just called you, because something really freaky just happened and I - "

"Okay, Holly? I need you to calm down."

Calm down? Yeah, like that was possible.

I took several deep breaths, but all that did was just make me feel like I was about to faint.

"Now, tell me what happened."

I repeated the story of that lawyer, Stan Mitcham, showing up and offering legal services, talking about the person that had assaulted me and possibly going to trial. By the end of the explanation I was practically hyperventilating, and I wouldn't have been surprised had Detective Ayers not heard a single thing of what I'd just said.

"Are you positive his name was Stan Mitcham?" Detective Ayers demanded, his voice taking on a sudden sharp tone.

"Yes, I have his business card right here, he just - "

"Where are you?"

"Courant Insitute Library, why? What's going on?"

"Stay put. Whatever you do, do not move."

The line went dead.

Oh, great. What the hell was happening now?

It took Detective Ayers barely an hour before he was bursting into the break room, closely followed by a man with sandy blonde hair, just as intimidating and as built as Ayers, if not shorter than him.

"This her?" the man said, shutting the break room door and locking it.

Detective Ayers nodded, crossing the room to where I sat on the easy chair, huddled underneath my coat.

"Holly, are you okay?" he asked, crouching down in front of me. "Mitcham didn't touch you, did he?"

I shook my head vigorously. "No, he just..." I thrust the business card Stan Mitcham had given me at Detective Ayers. "He just gave me this. Said I looked pretty beat up, and offered to be my lawyer if you guys ever found who ever killed that girl and attacked me."

Detective Ayers glanced over his shoulder at the man behind him, who had a suddenly dark expression on his face.

"If Mitcham's coming after her already, there's no doubt that she's one of us," the man muttered. "She's got to come with us, Roman."

"Wait, what? What's going on?" I said in alarm. "I'm not a detective."

What were they talking about?

"It wasn't supposed to happen this way," Detective Ayers snapped. "She shouldn't - "

"We don't have a choice." The man jabbed a finger at me. "Do you want her death on your hands, Roman?"

I jumped to my feet, bolted for the trash can beside the door and promptly emptied the contents of my stomach.

I had been through hell this past weekend, and now this was coming up? Something about my death and some eerily creepy guy coming after me?

Oh, God.

What the hell was going to happen to me now?

"Roman, we've got to go," the man said forcefully. "Before Mitcham shows up again with reinforcements."

Detective Ayers let out a harsh sigh and ran a hand through his dark hair, a hand on his hip. "Fine. Fine. Text Gina, let her know we're coming. Have her tell Crowley that we've had to speed things up."

He snatched my bag and coat off the chair, threw them at me and then gripped my right arm, all but dragging me out of the break room.

"Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?" I tried to wrench my arm out of his grasp, but his fingernails were digging into my skin, making it impossible. "Let me go!"

"Listen up," the other man said as he gripped my left arm. "We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way. Either way you slice it, it isn't gonna be pretty. So pick your poison, sweetheart."

"Sinclair, shut up," Detective Ayers snapped at him. "Don't make this anymore difficult."

We walked briskly through the library, catching a few curious stares from the last-minute stragglers checking out books before closing, and out into the brisk October night air.

Out on the sidewalk was an old parked Crown Victoria with flashing blue and white kojak lights that I was immediately led to.

"In you go, sweetheart," the man, Sinclair, said as he pulled open the back door and shot me a flirtatious wink.

I stood frozen to the spot, a thousand different scenarios running through my mind.

I could run, couldn't I? I could just take off running down the street and not look back. Never concern myself with what had happened in that alleyway and Detective Ayers and Sinclair again.

But even in the back of my mind I knew I wouldn't be able to out run these men. They would catch up to me in a second and drag me back by my hair. These men looked like they worked out just for the hell of it so they could purposely be as intimidating as they were.

As much as I didn't want to go anywhere with these men...I really would rather never come face-to-face with Mitcham again. It was a chance I really didn't want to take, but in all honesty, it was probably the lesser of two evils.

"Well?" Sinclair said, raising his eyebrows at me. "Are you going to let us do our job?"

I shot him a disgusted glare before ducking into the car, slamming the door shut after me.

Detective Ayers slid into the front seat and waited until Sinclair had shut his own door before peeling off the sidewalk and forcing the car into the traffic on the streets.

I bounced my leg agitatedly as Detective Ayers drove with little regard to traffic laws and Sinclair pulled his cellphone out of his pocket.

He immediately started talking to whoever was on the line in an overly cheerful voice.

"Hey, babe. We're on our way in with Ayers' girl right now. Yeah, I know this wasn't according to plan. No, it's too risky to talk about it over the phone. We'll be there in a bit. Well, tell Crowley to hold his balls, okay? There's nothing we can do about it right now."

He hung up with whoever he was