In Plain Sight (A Hunted Rose)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Halloween was here.  It was one of my favorite holidays, tied evenly with Christmas.  There was something about everyone you know getting dressed up and then trying to scare some of your closest friends enough to pee their pants.  All the fall scents that made you just think of warmth and peace that filled the air, and don’t forget to mention the candy.  Sure, vampires couldn’t taste the candy, but there was still just that experience of going door to door in a costume saying Trick or Treat!  It was plain, pure fun.

There was a haunted house set up in the school for the night of Halloween only.  It looked like it might be fun, but I was more excited about the big parade they had planned for the day before.  Halloween was on a Sunday this year, so the parade was on a Saturday.  Mrs. Anderson told me that all the little shops were going to be closed in order to help set up for the parade.  So, Halloween was only two days away!  I just had to last one more Friday of school, and then I had an entire weekend to enjoy the holiday. 

There was only one thought that was on repeat throughout my mind on Friday.  Halloween.  Halloween.  Halloween.  Halloween.

I hadn’t seen much of Rylan or his team since that first day I met them, but I caught glimpses of them around town.  It had been less than a week since they arrived, but for some reason it seemed like it had been longer than that, maybe because I had to listen to Cameron ranting at lunch every day about how his cousin and the others were taking over his house, and that he was going crazy because of it.

Deal with it, was what Ryder, River, Seth and Jason had said to him.  They were strangely unsympathetic, and when asked about it, they told me that they had put up with Rylan and his team crashing in their house at some point during any of the holidays.  They knew what it was like to have all of those guys in their house, it just turned out that it was Cameron’s turn to put them up. 

I continued sitting with the guys at lunch, and they didn’t say anything more about Liam, except to mention him in passing maybe once or twice in a simple comment that they probably didn’t even notice that they said. 

Liam wasn’t back yet.  Granted, it had only been a few days, but I didn’t know where he was or how he was doing, and because of that I was beginning to get a little worried.  I understood that he could take care of himself, but, well, I’ve already said how much I think of his use of common sense – or lack thereof.  I just had to trust that he would come back in one piece, and not covered in blood.  Andreas was someone Liam had mentioned a few times to me before, but never in much detail.  When I was living with him, he had been having some issues with another vampire and told me about the vampire that was, in his words, an egotistical, prejudiced, asshole of something that used to be a man.  From what I knew, Andreas was dangerous because of his money and connections – ones formed by fear and greed. I knew that Liam was more powerful though, and had even more connections, as well as money.  After all, vampires were more loyal to someone by choice, rather than by fear; I knew that it was sometimes the same with humans.

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I scratched at the itchy wig and tried to smooth out the lumps that were sticking up slightly from my mass of thick hair.  I had gotten it all up into a wig cap, but that did not mean that it looked good.  I pulled it down further on my head, adjusting some of the strands so that they rested over my ears better.  Next, I straightened the blue blazer I was wearing and brushed a stray piece of lint off of the black pants I was wearing. 

All in all, I didn’t look too horrible.  I didn’t get any colored contacts, but the uniform actually looked nice with my eyes – the blue made my eyes pop, making them look more purple than blue, and brought out my pale, but still luminescent, skin.  There was the little iron-on school patch that Ryder had included in the shopping bag, and it looked exactly like the ones on the show did, you know, minus the entire animated part of it…