10:30, The Day Before Yesterday

Prologue

There are few events less likely to brighten a person's mood than being woken up at three o'clock AM after going to sleep at one o'clock. As if that fact wasn't bad enough, there was, in Sirius Sangue's mind, no good reason for said awakening.

"You're not supposed to be here."

Christian Sangue, who could generally be relied on to contradict his first name, shoved the papers he'd been reading over his younger brother's shoulder to the side and gave him a look of exaggerated innocence.

"I got lost?" he offered. "And you really need to stop falling asleep at your desk, by the way."

Sirius didn't bother to honour that remark with a verbal response. He just glared at him. Christian correctly interpreted that look as meaning "don't push me".

"All right, all right, I admit it. I came here to see what those papers Colonel Brown sent you are about. And seriously, what's the idea?" He picked up one of them. "Why does he want you to start investigating the American president's past?"

"Because I have a reputation for finding things people would rather remained hidden. Now would you please leave? I'd like to get back to sleep, in my bed this time, but I can't leave this room while you're here. Official secrets and all that."

"Ouch," Christian said, feigning injury. "Hey, wait, what's this?"

Too late, Sirius realised what he'd seen. "Don't touch that!"

"Danielle Tamari, born 4th July, 1999," Christian read. He looked up, bewildered. "Isn't that the girl who was kidnapped and spent three months in hospital after she was found?"

"It is." There was more to the story than that, but it was best that Christian didn't know it unless there was no alternative. He had an irritating tendency to tell top secret matters to anyone within hearing range when drunk, and in this particular matter there was the risk that someone might hear who would realise it was more than just drunken ramblings.

"Why do you have papers about her? Surely you're not investigating her?"

"I'm not," Sirius answered. "But the American president is."

~~~~

Dani Tamari raced around the corner, holding the package against her chest. Unfortunately, since she wasn't looking where she was going, she collided with an elderly gentleman who was just coming out of an optician's.

"Sorry," she called over her shoulder as she ran on, leaving him grumbling about the manners of youngsters these days.

The first of her pursuers rounded the corner a moment later and collided with that same elderly gentleman. They got up and raced off without a word of apology. As the elderly gentleman got up, her other pursuer followed the first and - you guessed it - collided with him too.

Dani, looking back over her shoulder, was amused to see the man grab hold of her pursuer's arm and shout something at him that probably wasn't a compliment on how fast he could run.

Then her first pursuer grabbed her arm, which made her stumble, which in turn made him stumble, and they both ended up sitting on the pavement while passersby gave them incredulous glances.

"Either you're getting better at being the spy, or we're getting worse at being the police," Steven Brown observed, checking his watch. "We didn't catch you for seven minutes this time. By the way, what exactly is in that package?"

Dani blushed slightly. "It's... uh... just something I made in cookery class at school today. I thought we could have it for tea."

"You thought we could have what for tea?" Steven's younger brother, Gareth, asked, escaping the irate elderly gentleman and arriving just in time to hear this last part.

Dani sat down on a bench, unwrapped the package, and opened the box inside it.

"Carrot cake!" the boys said together. All thought of playing spies was forgotten as they began arguing over who would get the first slice.

The three of them returned to 9 St James Street, where Lacey Brown, the boys' mother, refused to let them have a bite of carrot cake.

"But Mum!" Steven looked heartbroken. "We haven't had carrot cake in ages!"

"So you won't mind waiting a little longer," Lacey said unsympathetically. "There's only half an hour till teatime, so you're not having anything to eat until then. And stop being so dramatic about everything!"

A distraction arrived in the form of the boys' father, Colonel Jackson Brown, head of the InGEN (Inter-Galactic Emergency Network) on Earth.

"Hello, everyone," he said. "I'm glad you're here, Dani, since I've something to say to you."

"Is it about the guardianship?" Lacey asked.

Since Dani's parents were murdered by her brother, Edward, she and her sister, Legina, were living with their other brother, Richard. This arrangement, however, couldn't last much longer, since Richard had to go back to university to get his degree in medicine, so Jackson and Lacey had applied for guardianship of Dani and Legina.

"No, it's not," Jackson said, somewhat evasively. "Dani... how would you like to go to New York?"

~~~~

"Have you given any thought to our conversation last night?"

"I've looked up about this girl you spoke of, and I fail to see why you're so interested in having her killed," the President of the United States said tranquilly, as if there was nothing in the slightest bit unusual in this situation.

He was sitting in a chair beside his bedroom window, sipping a glass of champagne. His wife was sound asleep on the bed. And standing next to the window was a tall, dark-haired, pale-skinned man with one red eye and the other eye hidded by an eyepatch. It was this individual that he was talking to.

"She humiliated me and my family," the man said, as if he asked people to help him kill thirteen-year-olds every day. Maybe he did.

"But I can't hurt her. She isn't even in my country."

"She will be soon. I have seen to it that she will be in New York before three weeks have passed." He smiled. "Those foolish humans are sending her and her vampire friend to their deaths, and they don't even know it."