Page 49 of After Darkness Falls

"Then who did order you?"

He looked beyond her shoulder. "Your friends are looking for you."

Let them look for a second.

"It was Levi, right?"

She only knew two vampires. Well, given the fact that they'd met all of three times, she couldn't really say she knew Levi, but no one else came to mind.

The vampire narrowed his eyes.

"I'll take that as a yes. Why is he making you watch me?"

"You'd have to ask him."

Chloe sighed. Asking him wasn't a good idea. Being anywhere near Levi wasn't a good idea. She could have a perfectly civilized conversation—if a little pushy and nosy, perhaps—with just about anyone else, but she lost her mind around him.

"Yeah, right. I'll do that, I guess."

With a sigh, she started to walk away before turning back.

"Wait."

He hadn't yet dissolved into the shadows.

"What now?"

"What's your name?" she asked him. "If you're going to stalk me, we might as well get properly acquainted first."

He smiled. "Mikar."

"Did you call me on my first day, Mikar? To wake me up."

He shrugged. "You had orientation at ten."

Chloe managed a real smile. He might be intimidating and rather cold—she wasn't even going to start on the whole 'I only care if you get murdered a certain way' thing—but she was fairly certain he was the kind of person she wanted in her corner. If a random attacker leaped at her, Mikar would have him flat on his back in an instant.

She fell asleep a lot faster that night knowing she had someone watching over her.

But that didn't mean she wasn't extremely curious, and slightly irritated, as to Levi’s reasons for hiring her a bodyguard to begin with. She knew she had to stay away. She didn't recognize herself around him. She didn't even recognize herself when she thought about him.

Who was she?

23

Quasi-reasonable

Time was flying at an alarming rate. One moment she was gaping at anything out of the ordinary, eyes widened all the way through Paranormal Intro and Immortal History, and then, somehow, she was used to it.

The elemental fights in the courtyard, the huntsmen kicking ass, the occasional shifter changing in the corridors, ravens coming to greet her between classes. Martie, the grumpy mailman. Fin, the strange Aos Si. The foxes, witches, wolves, and vampires—they were all part of her world now. She spent her Sunday mornings doing accounting for the huntsmen, studied every evening, and joined Jack’s races whenever he called for one.

By the beginning of March, just three months after she'd first entered Oldcrest, it was her normal.

The one thing she hadn't yet learned to accept was the weather. The snow had melted—when Gwen wasn't playing with it, in any case—and the sky had been sunny for days, but it was still so cold Chloe mostly wore her coat, thermals, and two pairs of socks.

This week, a cold wind from the west had picked up, making her grumble every time she had to go outside.

She was yet again cursing the damn weather on her way from the dorms to the Institute when Jack called her.

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