Damn Good Reasons **DISCONTINUED - SEE NEW VER!**

Chapter 20 - Once Bitten

I jumped the waist-high picket fence and crept up to Natalie's bedroom window. It was only a one-story cottage, and the windowsill was at my shoulder level. The window itself was one of those push-up ones; the type you always worried about sticking your head out of because there was a good chance it would slip down and decapitate you. The good thing was, those windows are huge and, when pushed up to the brink, they can easily fit a person through them.

I leaned over the flowerbed to avoid standing in it, slipped my fingertips into the crack where the window was open an inch and pushed it up a bit more.

"Cassie," Natalie whispered from above, quiet as a mouse. She pushed the window right up and drew the net curtains to one side.

"You're awake."

"I couldn't sleep."

With one foot on the brick exterior and two hands on the sill, I hoisted myself up and got my head through the window, belly on the ledge. Natalie helped get the rest of me through as quietly as we could manage, and I was soon in the small room I used to call my own.

"I don't know if this is such a good idea," she said. "Nathan's room is right there, and he's a light sleeper."

"OK... would you like to come out with me then?"

Her mouth dropped open a little. I don't think she was expecting that suggestion.

"We could talk in the car for a bit," I said. "Surely you can be gone an hour without them noticing. They're all asleep."

"Well..."

"Half an hour?"

She bit her lip in thought.

"Ten minutes?"

"If I get caught, I'll get the cane. And I'm not kidding."

"Natalie, you're eighteen years old. You're not a kid. If anyone ever tried to touch me with one of those, I'd tell them right where they could shove it. Now, are you coming with me or not?"

She gave me a nervous smile, and her shoulders fell with a conceding sigh. "I'll just dress."

She switched on her bedside lamp and draped it in a cloth to dampen the light. The furniture was arranged much the same as I used to have it – there was a bed against the wall on my left, a dresser along the wall on my right and the door in the far-right corner. There was a beautiful cross carved in wood above her bed, but no others that I could see. But what took my breath away was the paintings that were on every wall. They were mostly nature paintings – butterflies and bunnies running freely in the fields, and all in intricate detail. But the one that caught my eye the most was a landscape shot of a huge crevasse in a desert setting, and on one of the small cliffs stood a silhouette of what appeared to be a girl with the wind blowing through her hair.

"You're an artist," I whispered. I softly tiptoed to her work-in-progress on the small easel in the corner.

"I began sketching as soon as I was able to hold a pencil, and then a few years later I asked to paint. Fortunately for me, Mother agreed that it was a suitable recreational activity for a young woman to have."

"These are amazing."

"Thank you."

I arranged her pillows into the form of a body under the sheets – I didn't think it would fool anyone, but it was worth a shot. I looked to see that she had dressed in something similar to what she had worn the other day - a drab pinafore style dress that touched her ankles, with a long sleeve blouse underneath.

"All ready?" I asked, mocking a devious grin.

"Yes. I'm ready."

"I'll go first and guide you down." I threw two legs over the ledge, turned onto my belly and put one foot on the wall to push off and help me jump clear of the garden. "Just do what I did," I whispered up at her.