Sophie squeezed her eyes shut. Clenched them. She knew Mr. Proctor was a good man. She knew that these exercises would strengthen her ability. Which was gauged as a level four. Her eyes snapped open and realm slipped away like mist in the sun.

Proctor straightened, his lanky build unfolding itself to standing. He shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you. Thirty-eight seconds. That's two seconds more than yesterday."

Sophie sat up, her shoulders slumping, defeated.

One of the other AP girls smirked. "We've all done it Sophie, you need to get over your fear," she sneered and Proctor looked over at her.

"That's very unhelpful Madison. Considering you've been in realm... what, twice?" he placed his hands on his skinny hips and stared at her until her eyes dropped.

He turned away to the white board and Madison gave Sophie a look like, wimp.

That was fine, Sophie thought. She was the highest level in the class besides Amanda so that lame bitch could just bite her in the ass.

Dead center.

And she wore stupid clothes too, fashion challenged. Sophie grinned back at her and Madison's smile faded. Girls were bitches.

She was exempt, of course.

The bell shrilled and Sophie walked to the door to meet Buddy. There he was, lookin' so damn fine it made Sophie's breath catch in her throat. Sophie eyes took him in head to toe and couldn't find the flaws. Six-foot one of gorgeous Latino hunk. Blazing eyes, nearly black in a face a dusky olive color, the muscles that showed keenly striated from workouts.

He wasn't all for show either, he'd even given Caleb a run for his martial arts money. And held his own.

He was almost as cute as Jonesy. The jerk.

Speaking of jerk-alert, Sophie walked up to Buddy just as Jonesy sauntered by, his eyes narrowing on she and Buddy.

Sophie smiled into Buddy's gorgeous browns and did a long lean. She pressed her lips to his, he snapped his arms around her and pressed back.

With heat.

Jonesy walked by the AP class after promising himself he wasn't doing it to get a glimpse of Soph. Just as he did she kissed that pecker-wood, Hughes.

Damn, if that didn't just rustle his Jimmies.

He stalked off without turning back, so pissed he could hardly breathe. He didn't know why she got under his skin so bad.

She was sandpaper on a wound.

CHAPTER 15

I stared in disbelief at the auto-pulse that we'd all received in our readers. John and I looked at each other, then bent over the communication from the Top.

Kent Paranormal High, Administration:

Immediate thought affirmation required-

Freshman will assemble after their lunch hour for their depressant inoculation, followed by each subsequent lunch block until the last with our graduating seniors.

For those that are ill or have an excused absence, you will be reassigned to receive your sanctioned inoculation by the school nurse within seven days as of today.

Booster inoculations will be given annually.

Chen, Claudia, KPH acting principal.

We all thumbed our readers:

In receipt- auto response.

John shook his head, pushing his fro away from his eyes, where it promptly fell forward again. "I don't like this. It leaves you guys unprotected."

Alex held up his pulse-reader. "Don't have to," his huge hand dwarfing the thing.

Damn, he was big.

Jonesy cocked a brow. "K, why do you get a pass?"

"Parents are freaks about sanctioned crap, right?" Tiff asked, a bubble bursting. Jade jumped and I laughed.

He nodded. "Yeah, I have a Philosophical Exemption."

Jonesy frowned, wagging his finger at Alex. "That means your parents say, 'we don't dig this shit and we're not gonna dance'?'"

Alex nodded.

John shook his head. "Obviously, they didn't actually say that."

"Well no, Terran. But Jonesy got the main part of it right." Alex said, shrugging.

Tiff rolled her eyes. "My parents wouldn't look at this crap if someone paid them."

"What, they don't care about you getting the depressant?" I asked, not being able to believe having parents that didn't get in to all the shit personally.

She shrugged. "They're busy. They got all us kids and a ton of work to just live. Me getting a depressant inoculation so I don't have a 'death vibe' or something in the middle of the night won't matter to them." She lifted a shoulder in a shrug, sitting at the edge of a table in the commons, her feet swinging at the edge.

I looked at Alex. "So, if you did get the stick, what would happen?"

He shrugged. "I'd be weak again, I guess."

"That'd suck, Sims," Jonesy said with real feeling.

"What about you? Do you care, Jonesy?" I asked.

"Nah, I can't screw around with the lights. And," he waggled his eyebrows, "it was kinda fun making Micah's lights go on and off." He made a shrieking baby noise and Tiff's brows fell like a brick over her eyes.

"Ya ass hat! Your mom's probably really tired and you're making her get up to take care of the baby?" She crossed her arms, huffing. "Ya know, I wish I had just a little more AFTD! I'd resurrect an ant hill and have them march up your ass!"

John and I laughed, Jonesy scowled and Alex said, "And you guys call me perv-boy?"

Just then a really hot girl walked by, tinier even than Jade. She heard his last comment and paused.

Alex flushed a deep red. It was something to see, a six-four, muscled out sophomore embarrassed because a miniscule girl walked by and noticed his words.

"Perv-boy?" she arched a perfect eyebrow.

Cripes.

Alex shifted his weight as Mia walked up, saw the girl and said, "Hey Randi."

She turned to Mia. "Hi."

The girls smiled at each other and then Randi said, "Is this guy a perv-boy?" with a perfectly straight face.

Without skipping a beat, Mia said, "Yeah... I think."

"Huh," she said, eying him up. "Too bad, you were kinda cute."

Jonesy's mouth dropped open and she walked off, using every ounce of girl charm as she did.

She totally knew every guys' eyes were pegged on her like flies to manure.

She gave Christi a run for her money. Different lookin', smaller but just as hot.

Maybe she didn't have the troll attitude. That killed all beauty in my eyes.

Alex looked at Mia and said, "Nice, Mia. You could have totally saved that for me."

"No," she shook her hair and the honeyed strands slipped all over her shoulders. "It was too precious for words. Besides, you sit there and talk about asses, blow up dolls... " she looked at him.

The rest of us did too.

"Hey," he backed away, "I haven't said anything perverted in a long time!"

Jonesy said, "Yeah, a whole week. Great restraint, Alex."

We laughed and he glowered. It'd be okay. He may get a girlfriend that didn't mind his perv-vibe. I looked after Randi. She'd been interested.

Tiff smiled. "I betcha Randi would dig you... even with your weirdness." She grinned wider. "Ya know," she popped off the table onto her feet, "I'll set ya up, Alex."

"No way, you absolutely don't have to," he said, his face contorted in alarm.

"No... I like it," Jonesy said. "Set up Goliath here with the waif-princess."

Alex groaned, putting his face in his hands.

"No homo, right?" Jonesy asked. "Cuz, we already got one of them in the group."

"I'm not a homo, Jones!" Alex said loudly as Lewis walked up.

"Are you guys focusing on gay stuff again?"

God, awkward-much.

I shook my head, how to explain this. John waded in, "No, this hot girl came walking by..."

"Merranda Chen, dimwit," Tiff said to John... who was anything but dim.

Fan-effing-tastic, principal's daughter. Mental forehead-slap.

"Anyway," he gave her a look, "she heard him saying something about being a perv..."

"He called himself a perv?" Archer said, struggling for clarity.

John shook his head.

"Let me," Jonesy said.

Oh no.

"The deal was is when hottie came by, Alex had just been defending his lack of perviness..."

Archer held up a finger, "I have to offer dissent here, it was you that last week told me about that guy that committed bestiality... "

"Not now, Archer," Alex said through clenched teeth.

We all looked at him again.

"Oh for shit's sake, it was on the news!" he yelled.

Jonesy looked at him. "So you share this with Archer? Okay." Jonesy said slowly, giving Alex a significant look. "So, he was defending his non-perv status and then Miss Hotness cruised past, heard him and immediately asked if he was a perv."

Archer laughed. "How'd that go?"

Jonesy grinned. "Mia confirmed his pervness and she walked off, none the wiser."

"Choice," Tiff said.

"Dude!" Alex yelled at Jonesy.

"If it weren't true you wouldn't have been outed by the cute girl," Tiff said with a flash of logic.

"Wait," Archer said and we looked at him. "I don't think you can really label Alex that way. 'Outed' is more for people in my position." He shrugged, striving for accuracy at any cost. Huh.

Jonesy shook his head. "Nah, I like it as a label for muscle-head here."

Sophie and Buddy walked up. "Can you believe this?" she started complaining right away, brandishing her pulse-reader around like a weapon. Of course, it meant way more to her than to the rest of us.

I was okay with not raising corpses while I slept.

Yeah.

Jade came up right behind her. "Maybe you could get out of it," she said as she slid her arm around me. I pulled her in against me, feeling better that she was there.

Buddy sucked Sophie in against him and Jonesy opened his mouth.

Always a bad idea. "Let stud there protect you. He's got the moves," Jonesy said, all sarcasm.

Buddy did have the moves. I knew first hand. I'd have to be on my game if we ever went again.

He looked at me, his gaze steady. I stared right back.

John looked at the two of us. "You guys aren't going to have a problem, are you?"

"No, we've buried the tomahawk," I said.

"Interesting choice of words, Hart," Buddy said.

"Yeah," Alex agreed, giving me a considering look.

Zombies, tomahawks, zombies, tomahawks. Hmm... the Hart Anthem.

"Hey, snap out of it," Jade said, mock-punching my shoulder.

Jonesy laughed. "That's Caleb. Default-violence-automatic." He threw up his hands like, duh.

Jade frowned and Tiff smiled.

Jonesy got back on topic. "Yeah, have your boyfriend watch dog it, Soph. He's AP."

Buddy narrowed his eyes on him. "Spoken like someone that doesn't know shit about Astral Projection."

"What's to know? You float around in realm," Jonesy danced around, skipping, flapping his arms like little bat wings. "Then land somewhere cool. Ya complainer."

Wow.

Buddy stalked over to him and they stood toe to toe.

Great.

"Listen you shit-for-brains, there's some creep out there trying to sexually assault the girls in this school, right now. So realm isn't that great of a place to be... you got me?"

Jonesy stared at him, all swagger gone, as serious as I'd ever seen him. "Then do your job, dick. You're her boyfriend so protect her."

"I am!" he bellowed in Jonesy's face.

Sophie went forward and Tiff gripped her arm, shaking her head like, short memory?

I looked at the healing bruise on Sophie's face. Kinda slow on the learning curve there.

Jonesy leaned into the scream and in a low voice, commanding, said, "See that ya do. Otherwise, we'll have to run interference. And our groups don't exactly run together. Do you feel me?" Jonesy asked, his nose a fraction of an inch away from Buddy's.

There was a tense moment, all us guys on point. Then Buddy seemed to pull back into himself and with a stiff nod, walked off, pulling Sophie after him.

We listened to her heels as she clicked away, looking after her.

Jonesy looked the longest.

****

Target acquisition:

The agent read the pulse message carefully. Twice.

His superior was ready to move forward. The attempt on the first girl but a practice run. The one they really wished to terminate was now ripe for dispatch.

Sophia Morris.

It was perfect, really. With the implementation of the depressant she would be a lamb led to slaughter.