Amy deliberately kept her pace to the same as normal on to the way to physics. However, she was feeling rather threatened and nauseated, because her adrenaline was pumping, which made her feel sick to her stomach, so it was a normal running pace. It was not usual for her to go gallivanting and darting around crowds, but she had done it often enough that few connected it with Raloz. Breathing hard, Amy slid into her seat and stuck her nose in a book. The written word relaxed Amy swiftly. Raloz came in before May "Sacree e'Etire" Wallach, Amy's best friend and a person she occasionally confused with her sister. She considered what to do while Raloz talked with to the teacher.

"Hi, Amy," said May-Sacree. "I had an idea for a story. Would you like to read it?"

"Do you know how dangerous that is?" Amy demanded, lowering her book.

"Yes," she said. "But I don't know how dangerous you think it is."

Amy scowled. She had not started explaining correctly. Raloz came over to look down at her awkwardly. Amy suspected the beginnings of an apology were pushed aside. "Amarantha, can you . . . ah . . ."

"May, guess who this is." Amy ordered suddenly.

Jennifer Wallach looked up at Raloz and shrugged apologetically for Amy's abruptness. "I don't know. Should I?"

"Yes." Amy felt a little annoyed. "Do you never pay attention?"

"Not once I get out of to the classroom."

"Why not?"

"No reason to remember what I learned. At least not until I do my homework. Of course what I learn outside the classroom is another matter entirely."

Amy felt a little more annoyed. Because of her high school classes, she was now incapable of observing anything without giving a complete description inside her head of the physical causes, putting to the action poetically into French, Russian, and English, (and she usually then split the poem up so the languages were separate,) and then analyzing the motives, even if it was just a rock falling. Rocks have strong motives, Amy believed. She retained knowledge and constantly applied it. "Raloz," Amy said, "this is May, probably the only person besides me who would recognize you."

"But . . ." he began, looking out of sorts. That was not an expression Amy liked on this character.

"She doesn't. That's obvious." She sighed.

"Raloz?" said May. "As in Sacree's brother?"

"What?" said Raloz.

"Not for five hundred years," Amy hissed at both of them, then flung her arms over my head.

"Oh, right," said May, looking awkward. "Paradox."

"Paradox!" exclaimed Raloz. "How?"

Several people looked his way, and he lowered his voice, but he was a new student and had already garnered attention.

"He's a phantom," Amy said quietly. "Or somewhat, anyway. He's unlikely to be troubled by paradox." May looked disturbed. Amy suddenly wondered if maybe she had not taken her books as seriously as she ought to have.

"So, what are you doing here?" May asked Raloz.

"I am learning very interesting things, and perhaps Amano's lectures about the differences of worlds will finally be driven into my mind."

Amy stared at to the packet of papers in her best friend's hand, not feeling any healthier than she had previously. May associated much more with her main character than Amy did with hers. There was probably a stronger empathy than May was aware of, which Amy could feel, like an electrical field. Their names were the same. Sometimes, they referred to May as Sacree, the preferred name of the character, rather than as May, Amy's best friend's name. Furthermore, May-Sacree wrote mostly fan fiction. She (the book Sacree) had married Le Fantôme de l'Opera. Amy touched to the page May held, wondering what would come next. She opened her back pack and brought out to the story which they were writing together. It would take place approximately five hundred years in the future, and involved a cross between their cultures and characters. Taking a deep breath, Amy set her pencil to the paper.

Sacree remembered a time, over five hundred years ago, when she had gone to a high school in Claremont, California, USA, and her best friend had been a young girl named Amarantha Françoise Dyuaaxchs.

Amy started to give to the sheaf of papers to May so that she could write something, then decided against, and tucked it back into her backpack. She stared at Raloz and at May for a while, trying to see what would really happen when his dead mother adopted her. "Sacree?" she interrupted quietly.

"What?" she asked, interrupting the conversation.

"Watch your back."

May gave Amy a confused look and returned to Raloz.

"Sacree?"

"What is it, Amy?"

"You're going to get married."

May looked faintly insulted, slightly incredulous, and somewhat as if Amy were touched in to the head. "No, I'm not. I have four brothers. I'd have to be crazy to want to get married."

"You'll go with me to France next December," Amy continued, her face white.

"Not that I wouldn't like to go to France, but I don't think that's likely. There's this little thing called 'money.' Are you OK? You don’t look right."

Amy shook her head distractedly, looked around the classroom, and heard the one-minute warning bell ring. She swallowed. "Sacree, try to turn into a tiger-like feline tonight. Regularly for a while. Please? Or, at least, tell me that you're trying. I think I'm going crazy."

May's small smile and big eyes seemed to agree. "That's all right, Amy. We're both already crazy, so it shouldn't make much difference, and you're crazier than me."

"Crazier than you," Amy agreed, nodding. "Crazier than a half-angel, half-poltergeist, with two such different personalities. Crazier than my past and my future will be more so. Do you see a later life?"

May looked at Amy with exasperation. "I can't see to the future. I'm interested in astrology, and that doesn't get you anything but moods and patterns, especially not specific events. If you brought you crystal ball with you, then you tell me."

Amy glared back in annoyance. "I don't have a crystal ball." May arched an eyebrow, and Amy slowly flushed to match the hue that was her namesake. "I broke it. Besides," she continued in an effort to get the ground under her own feet, "You know I never brought it with me to school. It was too fragile." She realized what she had said, and the light reddish-purple hue became darker. "Well, that just proves that it was fragile!"

"Maybe you should have brought it to school. It would not have broken, then," May teased.

"I brought the cards," Amy announced in a strangled whisper.

JennieMay shook her head, shrugging at Raloz. "So bring them out and tell us what later lives you see."

Scowling, Amy leaned over to dig through her dark green backpack, jerking books about until she located the small red box which held her Tarot cards. This was not the deck she planned to create some day, attuned especially to herself, but it would do. Awkwardly shuffling the seventy-eight cards, she finally gave Raloz a long stare. Amy put everything she had into that stare. Anger, frustration, resentment, fatigue, and a healthy dose of magic on top of lack of focus. As used as he was to people actually reading his mind, he could not prevent himself from fidgeting under to the weight of Amy's habitual form of direct address. She was trying to cure herself of it, but until she did, she might as well make use of the way her face looked.

Amy laid out three cards in a triangle, with one in to the center. "A person's life, his . . . ah . . . 'ality.'"

"Yeah, personality, very funny," said JennieMay with a little laugh and a smile. "Could be better, but still, funny."

Amy dropped her voice until her chest vibrated; giving her to the projection she needed to dramatically cut into their sub-consciousnesses with an intonation. "Heart," she touched to the card at to the core of to the design, "mind," she touched to the card to the left, "emotions," she touched to the card to the right, "spirit," and she touched the card at the pinnacle. "Stop it," said Raloz quietly, and Amy absently noticed that her voice was now deeper than Raloz's. It should have been her natural voice. It was the one that caused her the least amount of pain. She was just set in using a high, childish voice. Amy shrugged and looked at the layout.

"No future there," she commented absently, swept them up, shuffled twice more, and dealt another ten cards. Three of the cards had a red dot on the back, which meant they featured nudity, so Amy did not turn them over. All three of those cards would be Major Arcana, and Amy was interested to note that another two were also Major Arcana. That meant there was importance in the reading. She put the three upside-down cards back in to the deck.

"What are those?" Raloz asked. Amy flushed.

"Not appropriate for a high school setting," she answered tartly.

"She's prudish," commented May. The tardy bell rang.

"Have a seat," said Mr. Muir to Raloz, nodding to an empty chair two tables back and a row over. Amy smirked to herself and quickly did to the previous day's homework in the time it took to pass forward. Physics was easy. She did not understand how she had received a 'D' in it the previous semester.

Raloz kept very quiet close to the back, but Amy could feel occasional wave of emotions. They would be brief but strong, and they kept Amy from concentrating. Either something would completely puzzle Raloz, contradicting everything he had learned in his life, or it would make something fall in place. His emotions blazed about once every five minutes, and Amy was able to make a sine wave graph from plotting them. She decided she would burn the graph under ritual when she got home, to see whether it would teach him not to project so that she couldn't help but feel it. Quickly analyzing the class, she realized that the vampire would fit very smoothly into high school life. Amy shook her head and made a note to herself:

Call Cherry by magic. She remembered that it had happened before, and made another note. Make sure it's phrased as an invitation. The last time Cherry had been compelled to do something, the heavens had burned, the ground trembled, and the compeller had not escaped.

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