Part One

Notes: Okay, I’ve rewritten this a few times, but I’ve never been REALLY happy with it. So with some new support from a few people, I’m gonna give it one last try. I suppose that’s all part of the job, the constant rewrites. *shrugs* Anyway, for the first part there isn’t much to warn (actually it depends on how far I go per part…), except that I’ve been reading a lot of Poppy Z. Brite and listening to heavy angst-dance mixes (Kit calls the Manic-Depressive Mix ^_^), so that might effect the story feel. I dunno… I hope the length of these things aren’t pushing people away from reading it?

God I talk a lot…o_o

---

“Surprised to see me?”

“Of course I am! You just disappeared ten years ago! What happened?”

“You know exactly what happened. And you know what needs to be done now.”

“But…is he really ready?”

“Not like we have much of a choice, Addie. The demons are starting to get rebellious again. We need a new Barrier protector.”

“Why can’t you do it again?”

“Because I have children now. And he’s old enough to start receiving his powers.”

“He doesn’t know, does he? Why you left and all…”

“He was much too young. But never mind that. I need you to start this for me. It’s too early in the game for me to be seen. I’m not ready yet. So here’s what’s happening…”

---

He was unsuspecting, turning a blind eye to his surroundings. He was unaware of what was to befall him.

And then he tripped over the cat.

“AHH!!” he howled, jumping in order to save the white ball of fur a proper squishing, instead managing to hit the baseboard of his bed. He sprawled onto it, wincing as his shin pushed painfully against the board.

“Dangit Meiko! I told you not to sit in the doorway!” he rubbed his injured shin, glaring like a hurt five year-old at the cat as if she understood his lecture. Nicholas sighed, realizing the futility of his actions. Turning his focus to what he originally came in his room to do, he squirmed under his bed and, after a few seconds of searching, extracted a suitcase from the depths. Setting it rather unceremoniously on the bed, he began to pull clothes out of his dresser, rolling them into little tubes as to conserve suitcase space.

At nineteen, Nicholas Blair was hardly following his life dream at the moment. Despite his intentions, he still lived at home with his father and older brother, wasn’t in college, and barely had a job. It wasn’t the life he’d imagined. His normal job, a children’s tutoring program at the community theater, didn’t run in the summer, leaving him unemployed for the better part of three months.

His father had managed to come through then, with a job offer as his personal assistant. His father worked at the town’s only museum, and was going this summer on a business trip to an old castle, in their family for centuries. Dr. Blair was trying to write a book on the exhibits he’d worked on, and thought the seclusion would help him work. There was a lot of reference to be done for the project, and he decided Nikki would be a good assistant for the job.

Nikki had never actually seen the castle, but he’d heard of it before. While the thought of wandering around an old castle sounded fun, being his father’s assistant did not. Still, it would supply him with some extra cash until work started back up, and allow him to get out of town for awhile.

Nikki hated the small town they lived in. His father loved it, and his brother Kit was too cool to care. They had lived in a larger, busier city when he was young. But after their mother had left for unknown reasons, his father thought it best to raise his boys in a quaint small town.

He hated the fact that everyone knew each other in this town. It was hard to do anything, knowing whoever was watching knew your parents and everything about your day-to-day life. It made people think they knew what was best for you, even if they hadn’t really the slightest clue. So it was a relief to him to go to a place where no one knew him, even if it was another small town.

It didn’t take him long to pack. He was always a believer in taking the least amount of whatever he needed. And the majority of his necessary things were already packed. His messenger bag hung on the doorknob. He took it everywhere, and it usually consisted of the same things, so it was always packed. He checked it anyway, just to be sure. Sketchbook, pencils and pens, CD player and his CD collection, a few graphic novels and paperback books, and other random things he picked up, thinking he might find some use for over the next three months.

Satisfied that he hadn’t forgot anything important, he ran a hand through his short red hair, surveying his room. He set everything up next to the door, his suitcase, messenger bag and the cat carrier he’d managed to pry out of his closet. Although he was the type to always forget something he needed on a trip, he couldn’t think of anything he missed.

Tomorrow was the day. The flight left early in the morning, and he was ready for it.

---

It was cold the next day, considering the warm weather they’d been having the previous few weeks. Attempting to unpack his jacket, Nikki managed to spill his entire suitcase. Meiko mewed either encouragement’s or curses from her place in the cat carrier as he tried to repack. He was still stuffing things back inside when Kit opened the door, leaning on the doorframe with his suitcase at his feet.

Kit was older than Nikki by three years, twenty-three and the perfect picture of a typical Goth. While his father thought the abrupt mood change had been his way of dealing with the loss of his mother, it actually had to do with the town. Kit specialized in doing things differently than everyone else, so in a town full of normal happy people, he’d play the depressed torn individual.

Nikki and Kit got along quite well for brothers. Verbal sparring aside, they never had many problems. There was no sibling rivalry; neither felt the need to compete with the other. Kit was taller than his younger sibling, with the same natural hair colour and blue eyes he and Nikki shared with their mother. While Nikki had dyed his a bright red, Kit dyed his green, the tips of it black.

“Packing at the last minute?” he smirked with a false condescending tone. He was wearing a dark green T-shirt with a x_x face on it and black jeans, under a long black trenchcoat and the normal heavy black work boots he wore. “Dad’ll throw a fit.”

Nikki laughed sheepishly, pausing momentarily to look at his brother. “I had to find my jacket.”

Kit shook his head good-naturedly. “Hopeless.”

The redhead stuffed the remainder of his things back in the suitcase, before pulling on his olive green denim jacket. “Who, me? Nah…”

The remainder of the trip was rather uneventful. Nikki hadn’t been on a plane since he was too young to remember clearly, so the flight proved to be minorly interesting. As did the drive from the airport to the castle. The airport was far enough from the town, let alone the castle, which stood past the small village-ish town by a few miles. There was a lot of pretty landscape on the way, but Nikki was really relieved when he saw the castle come into view.

Nikki had expected it to be big. He hadn’t realized just how big it would be. There had to be at least seven or eight stories, and lord-knows-how-many rooms. It was your standard grey-brick monstrosity, crumbling in places but for the most part, stable. There was what once might have been a protective stone wall lining the outer grounds of the castle, which was in much worse condition than the building itself. It was basically gone, with a line of bricks about as tall as Nikki standing as a pitiful reminder of what it once had been.

His father pulled the rental car up to the small house next to the castle. In the castle’s glory days, this had been the servant’s quarters. Now, Nikki supposed, it was the caretaker’s property. His father told him about the current caretaker, a single mother businesswoman, who had her oldest children care for the property while she went about her life. Nikki didn’t think that was very fair, but didn’t say anything.

She was there to greet them, a short no-nonsense woman with cropped brown hair and a pink suit. Nikki had seen her type before. The kind of person that was nice to you if you were either her senior, or she thought she could get something from you. There were a lot of people like that where he lived. And he hated it. Definitely the type of person that would make her kids take care of her responsibility.

“Hi! So nice to meet you Dr. Blair!” she smiled warmly, shaking his father’s hand. She led them inside, motioning them to sit on the couch. The house looked meticulously clean, despite the fact that his father told him the woman had six children. Nikki found that odd.

“I’m so glad that someone finally decided to stay here. It’s a beautiful place, really. We’ve had to renovate some of the property, but the majority of it is still the original construction.”

Nikki wondered just how much of the renovation she actually did herself. He sighed internally, hoping he wouldn’t have to have too much contact with this woman during the summer.

She turned to him. “You’re awfully quiet, aren’t you?” she smiled, speaking as if he were four instead of nineteen. “I’m Ms. Merlow.”

“Nicholas,” he returned, “I’m just anxious to see the castle, is all.”

She nodded. “Well, you can go on ahead if you want. I still need to talk business with your father. Christian’s in there already, doing some last minute preparation for your arrival.”

Grateful for an escape route, he thanked Ms. Merlow and all but ran outside. Adjusting the strap of his messenger bag on his shoulder, he looked up at the castle. It was almost enough to give a person vertigo, staring straight up that far. There was a balcony along the side of a higher-up window, probably from workers during the renovation.

He caught someone staring back at him from one of the windows. At first this startled him, but he figured it was probably one of Ms. Merlow’s children. A girl about sixteen, with long orange hair looked down at him curiously. Their eyes met and she gasped, moving quickly from the window. Nikki stared at the empty window for a few seconds, before shrugging and walking to the car. He picked up Meiko’s cat carrier and went inside. At the front door, he let the cat out, letting her run around.

Past the foyer was a large room, which Ms. Merlow had decided to use as a living room. It was decorated in modernity, with a magenta couch and chair facing a small television and a few endtables. Then there was a hall dividing two ways, one towards a huge dining room, the other to a grandiose stairway leading to the upstairs hallway.

Nikki was looking up, gaze captured by a crystal chandelier. He didn’t notice the pile of pillows coming toward him until they were on top of each other. Everything fell to the floor, pillows, people and messenger bag.

Nikki looked at the pile of pillows on the ground beside him and at the person who had been carrying them. A boy with long purple hair, shoved into a claw clip stared back at him, just as shocked as he was.

“Sorry,” Nikki stood up, offering a hand to help the other boy up.

“That’s okay,” he grinned, taking the hand. The two picked up the stack of pillows he’d been carrying.

“I’m Nicholas. I suppose you’re one of Ms. Merlow’s kids?” he picked up his messenger bag.

“Yeah,” he nodded, “I’m Chrissy. Christian.”

He was wearing a school uniform, a white shirt under a grey vest and dark blue pants. Nikki took half the stack of the pillows, so the boy could at least see where he was going. Chrissy started up the stairs, with Nikki in tow.

“So you take care of this place?”

“Saw through my mom’s ‘us’ speech, huh?” Chrissy smiled, looking back at him.

“I know the type. Must be fun to wander around a place like this all the time.”

They stopped in the first hallway on the floor, lined with doors on either side. Chrissy opened the doors one by one, revealing them to be bedrooms. After tossing a pillow on each bed, he shut the door and moved on. “It is if you like that sort of thing. I happen to find it all interesting. It’s really good for hiding.”

Nikki nodded his agreement. “So is that what’s happening now?”

Chrissy stopped curiously. “What do you mean?”

“Are you hiding from that girl?”

The purple-haired boy tilted his head. “What girl?”

“The redheaded girl I saw in the window upstairs. She looked about your age…how old are you anyway?”

“Seventeen.”

“Maybe a little younger. She was looking at me through one of the windows up there. When she saw me watching her, she ran off. I thought maybe it was your sister or something.”

Chrissy frowned. “I’ve only got one sister, and she’s only nine, not to mention still at school. I’m the only one here right now, so I dunno who you saw.”

“That’s weird,” Nikki adjusted his messenger bag again, looking around nervously. He knew these old castles were home to plenty of ghosts, but he honestly wasn’t expecting to see one so quickly. It was usually a more gradual thing…

“You think it’s a ghost?” Chrissy asked, grabbing Nikki’s stack of pillows and continuing the task.

“I was considering it,” he replied truthfully. “Is it haunted?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never seen anything myself, but I think all these places are in one way or another, y’know?” he shut the door of the last room after putting the pillow on the bed. He turned to the new boy. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Please don’t say exorcism…”

He laughed. “I have no idea how that works. But I wanna show you something I think you’ll like.”

Chrissy grabbed Nikki’s arm by the wrist and pulled him down the stairs again. Past the dining room and the kitchen, into what he assumed was the pantry. There was a small elevator there, which he allowed himself to be dragged into.

“When they renovated, they put this in here so they wouldn’t have to walk up all those stairs. And we need the top floor.”

It was a construction elevator, not meant to look fancy, just to get you to the next floor. It moved slowly, and the trip took about five minutes to reach the top floor. The floor consisted of one large room, which was empty, and a heavy wooden door. Chrissy pushed the door open with some effort, and motioned Nikki to follow him.

The door led to the roof of the castle. Nikki looked around with awe as Chrissy smiled. “Isn’t it great? I like to come up here at night. It’s so pretty watching the stars from here.”

“It’s amazing! I’ll bet you know every room in this place…”

Chrissy leaned close to him, whispering conspiratorially. “Not to mention a whole lot of secret passages.”

Nikki grinned, looking over the edge of the stone roof. Kit and his father were walking out with Ms. Merlow, still talking. “Here comes my dad and your mom.”

Chrissy frowned. “We’d better get back down there then. She’s got to go to work soon, so I’ve gotta go watch the kids.”

“Oh,” he looked a bit crestfallen. “Do you think you can stay here later? You could give me a late-night tour of the place.”

Chrissy’s face brightened. “That’s a great idea! I’ll ask her about it.”

The two took the elevator back down and ran back into the living room, just at the other three were walking in.

“Christian, this is Dr. Blair and his sons.”

He smiled, giving them a small wave. Then he turned to his mother. “Hey mom, can I come back here tonight after you get home? I wanna help them look around and get acquainted with the place.”

She smiled. “That sounds like a wonderful idea. I’ll try to get home as early as I can.”

---

Chrissy came back later that evening, while Nikki was cleaning up the kitchen after dinner. “Heya.”

Nikki looked up from the sink. “That took longer than I thought.”

He laughed, leaning his arms on the counter next to Nikki. “Coming home early for her means before morning.”

Nikki flicked a bit of soapy water at him. “Well, at least you showed up. I’m almost done here, and then we can get started.”

Upstairs, Chrissy set his things in the room Nikki had chosen. Dr. Blair had the first room, Nikki the middle, and Kit had the last. After everything was set up, the two went up the stairs to the next floor.

They went through the floors like that, one at a time, looking at each room before moving on to the next. When they finally reached the roof, it was late. Chrissy was right, the stars were beautiful out there. That was one of the few things Nikki appreciated about small towns. You could always see the night sky better.

“It’s getting late,” Chrissy said with a slight yawn.

Nikki looked at him, a bit disappointed. “But we haven’t even gotten to the secret passages…” he stifled a yawn of his own.

Chrissy laughed. “I can see if I can stay tomorrow too. It’ll be Saturday.”

The redhead smiled. “That’s be awesome,” he yawned again. “So it’s bedtime?”

The younger boy nodded, moving toward the door. He stopped suddenly, leaning against the door with his arms crossed.

Nikki tilted his head curiously.

“You know what…?”

“What?”

A small dash of pink stretched across his face. “I’m glad you guys decided to come here.”

Nikki grinned, blushing a little as well. “Me too.”

The two went back downstairs, using the elevator this time. Once they were back in the room, they got ready for bed, Nikki up in the room’s large bed and Chrissy in a fluffy pile of blankets.

The taller boy looked at the arrangement. “You know, there’s a lot of rooms you can sleep in if you want.”

the green-eyed boy shook his head. “That’s fine. I wanna stay with you.” He blinked in confusion, seeing the look of relief on Nikki’s face. “I take it you want me to stay too?”

He smiled sheepishly, rubbing a hand behind his head. “To tell the truth I’m a little nervous about this place. For one, it’s a new atmosphere, plus the girl I saw today…”

Chrissy dismissed him with a wave of a hand, snuggling deep into the blankets. “I understand. Maybe if my mom lets me stay tomorrow night, we can start looking for this mystery girl of yours.”

“You think that’s a good idea?” While the thought made him nervous, it sounded pretty exciting.

He shrugged. “I’m up for it if you are.”

Nikki played with the hem of his blanket distractedly. “It sounds good. I do like the supernatural stuff.”

Chrissy grinned. “Me too. But I never really wanted to do it by myself. Otherwise I’d have checked this place by now.”

The redhead nodded his agreement. “I know what you mean. I wouldn’t do it without you anyway.”

“So it’s partners or nothing?”

This caused the other boy to laugh. “Deal!”

---

Chrissy woke up later that night, hearing the door open. He was a light sleeper, and even if he wasn’t, the door was heavy and creaked rather loudly. He didn’t move, figuring it as Nikki going to the bathroom or something.

When the door shut, he sat up, yawning. He surveyed the room, before deciding he needed another pillow. He stood up groggily and made his way to the bed. In his tired state, he didn’t even notice the lump in the bed until he pulled back the covers.

Nikki was there, still asleep. With the covers gone, he curled into a ball, looking vulnerable and a lot younger than he really was. Chrissy was confused. He knew he heard the door open and close. Could It have been someone else?

He heard the door creak again, this time behind him. He froze, sitting straight up, unable to turn around. From the door came a small gasping SOUND, feminine and surprised. Then the door closed once more.

There were no women here…no one could have made that sound unless…Nikki did say he saw a girl…

He found he couldn’t move. Suddenly the floor seemed too far away. The most he could do was lay where he was, on the far side of Nikki’s bed, and replace the covers over them both.

---

Nikki was the second to wake up that evening, closer to morning. He was jolted awake by something warm brushing past him. Curious, he opened an eye, finding a spot of purple, blurred by sleep. He blinked a few times to clear his vision, sitting up.

Chrissy had crawled in the bed sometime during the night. This didn’t really bother him; it was probably too cold on the floor anyway. He started to lay back down when a movement near his dresser caught his eye.

His eyes darted across the room, trying to make out the culprit. After a few moments to adjust to the darkness, his eyes widened. Standing at his dresser, her back to them, was the same girl he’d seen before entering the castle. His messenger bag was sitting on top of the dresser, and she was currently going through it.

Her long orange hair went down to the small of her back, hiding most of her body. She had a pink ribbon in her hair, which matched her sweater. She wore a black skirt and thigh-high black boots. There were two white-blue blurs near her shoulders, but he couldn’t make out what they were. They looked a bit like wings…

“Hello?” he squeaked, his voice almost refusing to cooperate.

The girl turned quickly, defensively, and stared at him with shock. She winced, as if in pain, and then disappeared, leaving Nikki staring at his things scattered on the dresser.

He didn’t go back to sleep that night.

---

Chrissy woke up the next morning still wrapped up in the bed. He opened his eyes slowly, looking at the form next to him. Nikki was awake already, sitting up in the bed with his knees drawn up. His sketchbook lay on them, and he was drawing almost frantically.

Chrissy cleared his throat before speaking. “Morning.”

The redhead looked tired, turning to face him. “I…saw her again last night.”

The green-eyed boy was taken aback for a moment, remembering last night’s incident. “I heard her. She was trying to get in here and ran out when she saw me awake.”

“She was at my dresser, looking through my stuff. She disappeared when I talked to her. I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I started drawing,” he held up his sketchbook for him to see. A picture of a teenage girl looked back at him, eyes a mixture of shock and hurt. “That’s what she looked like.”

“I wonder if she just came to us, or if your dad or brother saw anything?”

“We should ask. But look at this.” He held out a pendant. It was a small metal circle hanging from a simple chain. The pendant was full of weird symbols, unlike anything Chrissy had seen before, arranged in smaller circles.

“What is that?”

Nikki shrugged. “I found it on the dresser when I got up to get my book. It’s not mine, and it wasn’t there last night. I think she left it.”

Chrissy stared at it. “Do you think she did it on purpose?”

“I dunno,” he put the necklace around his neck. “We should find her and ask. If she didn’t, she’ll probably want it back.”

The two went down for breakfast, finding Kit walking out of the kitchen, bowl of cereal in hand.

“You guys stay up all night or something? You look like you never went to sleep.”

“Trouble adjusting to a new place,” Nikki dismissed it. “Did anything seem weird to you last night?”

Kit shook his head, spoon dangling from his mouth. “Nope. I slept fine.”

He continued walking into the living room. Nikki and Chrissy went into the kitchen for their own breakfast.

“Okay,” Nikki said between bites. “Apparently this ghost wants to talk to us. But not Kit. I don’t think it wants my dad either. Dad hates supernatural. Says it doesn’t exist. So it’s up to you and me to get to the bottom of this.”

Chrissy nodded. “Maybe she left the necklace so we’d try and find her.”

“That’s possible. What we need to do now is figure out where to find her so she won’t disappear.”

“Well, you’ve seen most of the place, help me think of somewhere she might be connected to.”

Nikki ran a hand through his hair. “The only place I can think of with some significance is the roof.”

The purple-haired boy bit his bottom lip thoughtfully. “Yeah, me too. So we’ll start there. Do you think she’s one of those ‘night only’ ghosts, or can we do this earlier?”

“No clue. Let’s check later.”

---

That evening came very slow to the boys. Chrissy’s mother had agreed to let him stay again, provided he come home early the next morning. After dinner, they started moving blankets and things upstairs to the roof, planning to stake it out.

Once they were sure they had everything they needed, they made their way to the kitchen to pick up some snacks to keep them awake. Carrying their snacks, they decided to take the long way up on the stairs, looking down the corridors as they passed. There was no electricity in this part of the castle, having been spared from the renovation. Nikki went first, holding a small candleholder from the dining room, and Chrissy following, carrying the plate of snacks.

They reached the fifth floor, right before the rooftop stairs, when a small noise stopped them. A voice, soft and depressed.

“He looks just like her. She didn’t tell me that…”

With a look of confirmation at Chrissy, Nikki stepped away from the stairs, down the hall instead. Chrissy followed behind, peering over the taller boy’s shoulder, a hand gripping his sweater there anxiously.

Halfway down the corridor, they came upon the figure Nikki had seen twice so far. Her voice definitely matched the one Chrissy heard last night as well. Nikki noted that the things on her shoulders were, in fact, small wings. They both stood frozen for a few moments, watching her.

She was looking out of one of the windows, leaning on the sill. She didn’t notice them there, staring rather forlornly out at the sky.

Finally Nikki found his voice, even if it was almost nonexistent. “excuse me…”

She turned to them sharply, surprised. She took a step back, as if to run away.

“Wait!” Nikki pleaded, stepping closer. Chrissy, still hanging onto his shoulder, went with him.

The girl paused, regarding them carefully.

“We’re not going to hurt you or anything. We just wanna talk to you. Okay?”

She sighed, looking down. “I’m sorry.”

Chrissy spoke up this time. “What for?”

She walked towards them, slowly. “I was supposed to talk to you, but when I saw you outside, you looked just like her…I panicked.”

“Who?” Nikki, despite his initial fear, found himself unafraid of her. She seemed more like a lost kid than a ghost.

“Your mother.”

Whatever he’d been expecting, that hadn’t been it. “My…mother? You knew her?”

“Knew? What’s with the past tense?”

Now it was Nikki’s turn to look down. “I don’t know what happened to her. I hope she’s somewhere happy, but for all I know…” he couldn’t finish.

By now she reached them, standing mere inches from the redhead with her hands clasped in front of her. “Aww, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. she told me this might happen. Um, Nicholas?”

He looked at her. “You know my name?”

She put a hand on his other shoulder, as Chrissy stepped out a bit from behind him. “I suppose I should explain this to you before you get traumatized. It’s gonna take awhile, so you two might wanna head on up to the roof and get comfy.”

“Are you gonna come back?” Chrissy asked.

She nodded. “I’ll meet you up there.”

She disappeared again, and the two raced up the rooftop stairs as fast as they could without spilling their candles and snacks.

As she had promised, she was waiting for them on the rooftop. She was sitting among the blankets they set up. The boys joined her there, waiting for her story.

“For starters, my name is Adelaide. I know you’ve never seen me, Chrissy, but I’ve been here quite awhile.”

“How do you know my mom?” Nikki asked, a bit impatient.

“We used to work together,” she replied with a wistful smile. “It all has to do with the necklace I left you.”

“So you wanted me to wear it?”

Adelaide nodded. “I’ve met with your mother, and she told me to give it to you. She wants you to know that she’ll see you soon.”

“What’s it for?” Chrissy asked, turning his gaze to the pendant around his friend’s neck.

“That’s where the long story comes in. That necklace has powers in it, believe it or not. It’s very important. Way before history even records, demons and humans used to interact regularly. But the demons began to take advantage of the humans, so it was decided that the walls between the human and demon planes would be closed. The planes were sealed and the magic to unseal them was collected in the Barrier, witch is the necklace.”

Nikki stared at her, blinking and not speaking. It was Chrissy who finally broke the silence. “Are you serious?”

Adelaide nodded. “completely. But there’s more. When the gates were sealed, a lot of the demons still on this side were trapped. So they tried to get the Barrier, and open the planes once again. So the Barrier needed a protector. At the time, your mother worked for the Agency, who was in charge of the whole project. She was chosen to carry the Barrier.”

“But, if that was so long ago…” Nikki started.

She interrupted him. “That’s an even longer story, and I promise I’ll explain that later. But back to the Barrier. Your mother kept it a long time, even after she ran away from the Agency. Then she had children. The problem with that was, once her child was old enough to gain his powers, Emi could no longer keep the Barrier. So now she wants to give it to you.”

“But…why me? Kit’s older…”

Adelaide shook her head. “I can’t explain that one. Only Emi knows why she chose you over him. Once she’s ready, she’ll be here, and she can tell you herself.”

“This is surreal…” Nikki put a hand to his head.

Chrissy, who was sitting next to him, nodded slowly. “So, what is he supposed to do?”

“Wow, he’s as clueless as his mother,” a voice came from behind them, sarcastic and definitely male.

Adelaide narrowed her eyes. “Teng…”

---

Notes: God, I think that’s the longest thing I’ve written for one part in my life! o_o this is the official first part, not just a blurb in process. So what do you all think? Anything you think needs to beh changed? Keru-san, feel free to beta again if you’d like. It’s always appreciated. ^_^