I chewed on my fingernails after laying a set of clothes I picked up for Vincent on top of his bed. It was Mei’s idea, really. Apparently, I had to earn Vincent’s trust and approval by doing things like these. So far, I chose a navy blue turtle neck pull over shirt, a black jacket and some plain faded jeans paired with white sneakers.

I almost jumped back when he emerged from the bathroom in a robe, patting his dark wavy hair with a towel. I faced the wall and inched awkwardly away from him.

“Uh… I left your clothes on the bed,” I mumbled nervously, grabbing my clothes and towel from my chair slash sleeping bunk before hobbling to the bathroom.

Vincent didn’t say anything. He just stared at me knotting his brows, heading straight to his garment drawers.

I kicked the tub—which is not the best idea if your toe isn’t made of steel—and grouched under the hot shower.

I didn't think it would be easy.

I threw on a yellow sweater paired with dark fitted jeans and a black cardigan Mei lent me. The clothes were a little too tight but it was better than having to put up with whatever Rosario had to say if I tried to borrow from her.

Vincent was gone when I came out.

I noticed something sitting on my chair. It was a white canvas sling bag and I was sure it was from him. A torn small piece of paper fell from the pocket when I picked it up.

To Aramis.

A smile unwillingly pulled up the sides of my lips as I slung it over my shoulder and headed out, remembering to pick up the black and blue striped woolen scarf I unearthed from Mei’s dresser.

As I reached the main drawing room, I heard the revving of engines from the front yard. The yellow 4WD Land Cruiser waited outside with Archie in the driver’s seat.

“Newbie! Catch!” Amyr tossed me a small paper bag. He was already in his work clothes—a black suit and tie paired with dress shoes. Still, I couldn’t get the logic of hunting wraiths in a suit.

“Vince seems like in a good mood today,” he teased, a mischievous smile playing on his lips.

"Good mood, huh?" I rolled my eyes.

He just shrugged and let out a chuckle. “Believe or not, we’ve had worse. Since your arrival, the broken furniture rate took a drastic drop from an average of nine to two every day.”

Sigh.

I could feel my brain cells dying, just thinking of having to deal with Vincent for every single day of my life.

I headed for the door and found Vincent waiting for me at the front porch, his breath fogging the light-adaptive glasses he wore to hide his eyes, the cold autumn wind ruffling his dark hair.

My jaw almost dropped.

He wore the clothes I picked for him after all with the jacket slung over his shoulder. I bit my lip, feeling an involuntary smile coming.

I cleared my throat to get his attention.

“What?” he muttered, throwing me one of his signature ominous looks. He rubbed his hands together and blew on them. His cheeks were slightly pink due to the cold.

Instantly, I dropped my gaze.

“What are you waiting for? The fourth of July?” he grumbled.

"Someone's in a good mood." I laughed silently as I removed the woolen scarf from around my neck and started to him. “I hope I live that long. ”

I begun wrapping the scarf around his neck. If I were to be a good familiar, I would have to learn to be thoughtful. And as futile as most of my efforts had been so far, I really had no idea why I was trying so hard.

Mei told me to be patient. Really patient. Repeatedly, she told me that because of his upbringing, Vincent became very shy.

Vincent snatched my hand rather forcefully. “What do you think you’re doing?"

“Making sure you wouldn’t lose your nose to the cold. There.” I brushed a piece of dried leaf from his shoulder and tugged on his sleeve, towing him to the porch’s steps while he was still too surprised to get angry. “Let’s go. You sure this’ll work?”

“In theory,” he mumbled, still looking a little dazed as he gazed up at the gloomy gray sky, perhaps to watch out for wraiths.

“Okay, let’s do this.” 

I clutched his right arm, trying to remember the technique he taught me last night.

Transference.

It was simple, really.

In order to keep myself from attracting wraiths all the time, all I had to do was to stay as close to Vincent as possible and shift part of my life-force to him temporarily, making him sort of like a safety vault. A safety vault with serious anger management issues.

Easier said than done, judging by how many times I lost consciousness during our little practice. Plus, he was not the most conducive teacher, having that inborn scowl on his face.

According to Vincent, the dangers were high—I could accidentally transfer all my life-force to him and die. But this was the fastest way to do it, and I didn’t want to be stuck in a creepy old mansion of the rest of my numbered days, so I agreed (groveled).

Direct contact wasn’t really necessary. I just have to be not more than five feet away from him at all times while maintaining the transfer link but I didn’t want to take any chances.

I tightened my fingers around his arm. I didn’t notice that they even dug a little into his skin. When he paused to glower at me, I relaxed my grip a little and stepped outside the invisible barrier that protected the whole mansion. Seconds later, a few blurs of black darted into the woods and hovered overhead, screaming at us.

Wraiths.

Squirming, I looked at them from behind Vincent as we took cautious steps to the Cruiser.

“Relax,” he hushed. “Transfer some more to me.”

Closing my eyes, I found the transfer link—like a wispy thread connecting me to Vincent.

With some effort, I willed part of my life force to flow through him. I felt my energy sluggishly seeping away from me, making my vision fuzzy.

Vincent caught me around the waist just as my knees buckled.

“Too much! No. Stay with me,” he urged frantically and gave me a light tap on the cheek.

I tried to keep my eyes open and pulled a little bit of my life-force back to me.

“That’s it. Okay, now try to maintain that level without tearing my arm off,” he instructed, not letting his guard down.

Slowly, I let go of his arm, watching the wraiths’ reaction.

For a second or two, nothing happened.

I ended up screaming in fright when the wraiths veered towards me. I snatched Vincent’s arm and hid behind him, panting as I waited for the transfer link to reestablish.

As soon as it became stable, the wraiths seemed reluctant to attack, hovering up in the air for a while before disappearing into the woods.

Vincent’s shoulders shook as he laughed quietly. “Or maybe not. Just not too tight, okay?”

“Stupid wraiths,” I grumbled as I dragged him to the vehicle. My cheeks were burning. Ugh. Now, he was probably thinking how much of a scaredy cat I had been. “Why can’t we just kill them all so I could get on with my life?”

Vincent was still laughing as he opened the door and let me in first. “Had no idea you scream like a girl,” he commented, hauling himself onto the leather-swathed backseat.

“Just between the two of us, I am one,” I muttered looking through the window for fear that the wraiths would come after us. "Want to check my birth certificate?"

So far, it felt like I was getting the hang of this Transference thing.

“Seems like you two are having fun,” said Vladimir from the shotgun seat, glancing back at us with false blue eyes—contacts.

Archie maneuvered the car off the yard and into the narrow, almost unremarkable driving path through the woods heading to Route 61. The silver-haired man was so silent all the time, you wouldn’t even know if he went missing. Vlad should consider having a tracking device implanted on him, just in case.

Vincent just suppressed his chuckles, falling eerily quiet as he averted his eyes from us and impassively looked out to the window. Shaking his head, Vladimir gave me a small smile.

“So, anyone care to tell me why we still have to go to school?” I asked.

It was Vladimir who answered. “Surveillance, Aramis. We investigate wraith activity through the children, since North Schuylkill High is the largest school within a considerable radius from Centralia.”

Funny how he called people in high-school children when he, himself wasn’t anywhere near puberty.

“Wraiths commonly meddle with the Living and they’re especially attracted to people nearing they’re expiration dates,” he continued. “We trace their movement through the residues they leave on people. First you will note strange changes in behavior like inattention, memory lapses, wandering and insomnia. But you’d know for sure that a Living had contact with wraiths through their eyes—they’d be stained black and only a Reaper or a familiar like you would be able to see it.”

I nodded thoughtfully, recalling those familiar symptoms—the ones I had not so long ago. Looking at Vincent, I felt a pang of guilt in my gut. So that was why he tried to approach people in school. He was investigating wraith activity, meaning he had nothing to do with the subsequent deaths. Those people were about to die anyway. I felt horrible, mainly because people—including myself—accused him to be somehow responsible for those deaths, when the truth was he was just trying to help.

Vladimir yawned and protruded his head from the front seat. “As my brother had obviously forgotten to inform you, wraiths are wicked souls with the sole purpose of feeding from and draining life-force of dying humans, thus, shortening the victims’ lifespan even more. They’d do anything—accidents, manipulation of human minds, murders, etcetera. Preventing those things from happening is our key role.”

I thought about Dad; how he was almost driven mad before my death, how he tried to stab me while he was under the influence of wraiths. All of it happened a few days back but it felt so distant to me now as though it was a lifetime ago.

“So basically, we just have to make sure that people die on their scheduled time of death,” I clarified.

“We?” Vincent grumbled, the gap between his brows furrowing. “Don’t think I changed my mind just yet. You won’t last two seconds in a real mission.”

With a sigh, I just managed a small smile and said “Okay."

It was just then that I remembered to open the paper bag Amyr gave me. I fumbled inside the bag and found the largest chocolate-banana muffin in the universe.

“What in the world—”

“Breakfast!” Vladimir trilled cheerfully as he grabbed the almost pie-sized muffin from me and started nibbling on it. “And since you’re stuck with Vince, you have to go to school.”

"How lucky of me."

The next thing I found was a small box of animal crackers; only, the cookies weren’t animal-shaped. They were shaped like wraiths and shrunken heads and ghouls of several sorts. Gingerly, I fished one wraith cracker, scrunching my nose with disgust. “Who eats these things?”

Vincent snatched the crackers from my hand, smirking. “That’d be me. Prissy.”

“No wonder you’re always so grumpy,” I muttered to myself in an undertone, hoping he hadn’t heard me as I took out a normal-looking sandwich, thanks to Amyr. “Where’s Mei by the way?” I asked, chewing on my PB and J toast.

“She’ll be there,” Vladimir replied, brushing the crumbs from his black button-up shirt. “Mei usually goes straight to school after her early morning patrol from Centralia. We have to keep twenty-four hour surveillance in there to keep the souls properly lined up for the Gates. As for me, I don’t like running that many miles. My arthritis is killing me.”

I stifled a laugh when I realized that he wasn’t joking. “Aren’t you too young to have arthritis?”

“That’s what I’ve been telling him,” Vincent agreed, rolling his eyes. Finally, something that we both agreed on.

“Try living as many hundreds of years as myself and we’ll see if your rickety joints can take it.” Vladimir stuck his tongue out at us and let out an annoyed “Hmp,” before grousing silently to himself.

As we arrived at the school parking lot, Mei was already standing there, smiling at us. She ran to us, falling a step back behind Vladimir as we headed to the school entrance.

“Nice scarf, Master,” she complimented Vincent who just grunted in reply, averting his eyes. The familiar smiled at me as though she was trying to convey some secret girl code.

If I just hadn’t known Vincent to be the most uncaring person on the face of the planet, I would even say that his face went red on that little comment. But I might just be imagining things, who knows?

Immediately, I grabbed the sleeves of Vincent’s jacket, vigilantly eyeing on my surroundings for any sign of wraiths. Luckily, I didn’t spot anything black and smelly—except for Billy the hobo from across the street.

But as soon as I started to relax, several pairs of curious eyes darted to my direction, giving me either puzzled or startled looks. The crowd of students parted, leaving a pathway for us as they huddled together, whispering to each other as they threw perturbed looks at our direction.

Maybe it was Vincent’s infamous reputation, or Vladimir being the boy-genius, or Mei’s sheer exceptional beauty that got their attention. However, it got me thinking that perhaps they were wondering how the drowned girl who lived to be a crazed window-jumper got mixed up with the bunch. Automatically, I looked down and avoided eye contact.

“See you two at lunch,” Vladimir said nodding at Vincent and me. “If you make it that far,” he added grimly.

Ugh. Have some faith, people!

When we arrived at the classroom, I immediately spotted Carter and Lindsay in the front row. They exchanged meaningful looks, staring expectantly at me, perhaps for some explanation about my current predicament with Vincent Sinclair, certified school weirdo.

I managed a smile, wanting to go to them but Vincent tugged on my arm and dragged me to the back of the room. People were staring, muttering under their breaths as he hauled our seats so that they were practically side by side. No one complained, so far.

“Sit down,” he ordered casually, making the class unnervingly silent.

I did what I was told, rummaging the contents of my bag as my free arm still clasped on his sleeve. It made me feel stupid—like a five-year old with separation anxiety. But I didn’t want swarms of wraiths messing with my classmates either. From the bag, I took out a pen, a notebook and what looked like a single diamond stud earring inside a tiny black box.

“Put that on your left ear,” he said, seeing that I did what I was told.

It felt a little weird since I wasn’t really used to wearing jewelry. Before I could ask Vincent what it was for, Rosario entered the room, her hazel eyes fixing at me, giving me a strong feeling that she would’ve loved it very much to rip me apart rather than teach me Spanish. Ironically, I just gave her a small smile. All I wanted was to live my remaining days meaningfully and creating an arch enemy out of my co-familiar wasn’t a top priority in my to-do list.

Beside me, Vincent just plopped a pair of headphones on his ears and slumped on his table—the usual. Not like Señorita Cruz, la maestra could do something about it. I sniggered at the thought.

But before I could rejoice, Vincent lifted one of his headphones and said, “Oh, and Rosario will be your permanent trainer from now on,” then placed it back and resumed his scheduled morning nap before I could complain. I was starting to think that maybe Amyr’s style of teaching while trying to crush my skull wasn’t so much of a bad idea.

Rosario. My trainer.

My forehead crumpled as I imagined the Spanish teacher flogging me with a wicked whip as she cackled evilly at my miserable fate. I felt like crying and strangling Vincent no matter how cute he might’ve look while he was sleeping.

Cute? Ugh. Now, I must be going nuts.