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dead phone, and then I drove by your house, and your mom said you hadn’t come home yet. Strange." Kira assumed from his sarcastic tone that Luke was pissed, but the raised eyebrows and rage-filled stare really cinched it.

"Um…" Kira’s mind was racing. Nothing would sound convincing at this point. "I snuck in after they were sleeping and didn’t wake up until like four. You know, drinking…hangover…" Kira nodded, trying to sound convincing as she let the sentence trail off. Under the table, she pinched Luke, hoping he would connect it to conduit business, and let it go. He understood, and Kira sensed he had known it was conduit business all along, but wanted to make her squirm.

"Damn," Dave chimed in. "Sounds like Carter really got you wasted."

"Totally." Kira buried her face in her sandwich again and let Emma take up the conversation, telling stories about the parts of the party Kira had missed out on. Apparently a bunch of guys from the basketball team pantsed a cheerleader. Kira was actually disappointed she had missed it.

The lunch hour rolled to an end, and Luke grabbed Kira’s hand as everyone started flooding from the cafeteria.

"Come with me," he instructed, leading her against the crowd toward the back door. Kira let him pull her along.

Just as they reached the door, she took one last look across the empty tables and through the windows at Tristan. He was sitting up now, his white T-shirt a little rumpled from the breeze, and he returned her gaze. His eyes were pained, almost as though he had been waiting for her eyes all lunch hour and hated to be the afterthought Kira had as Luke took her away. She wished she could give him one quick peck on the lips, letting him know he had been in her thoughts all along, but she was shoved through the door instead.

Tristan’s eyes stayed with her as she and Luke snuck around the school grounds toward the parking lot. Kira knew she had to fess up and tell Luke everything. She just prayed he would be all right with it.

Easing into Luke’s car, Kira let him drive, okay with wherever he wanted to go to talk. She thought Luke had maybe expected it. He had to have known she had been keeping things from him, especially things about Tristan. It wasn’t fair to Luke, she realized, to be lying and going behind his back when he had given up everything to help her inherit her powers.

Luke pulled over next to a big empty playground, one slumbering until the town kids all got let out of school. He walked across the open field toward the jungle gym, and Kira followed. They sat on old swings that were covered in flakes of rust and squeaked in the breeze. Kira played with the woodchips at her feet, waiting for Luke to start.

"I’m not an idiot, you know."

"I know," Kira said softly.

"Ever since he saved you on the beach, I knew something was going on. I just, once you realized who you are, I never thought you’d be so stupid." Luke’s eyes bored into her head, daring her to challenge him, to say it was a lie. "I mean, he’s a vampire. We were made to kill them."

"Not all of us," Kira spoke and finally looked up from the ground. "You’re a Protector. You see the good in them."

"That’s what I’ve been taught, Kira, but we all know the truth. There is no good in them. A vampire can’t be saved."

"That’s not true." Kira's throat constricted. If Luke were right, there would be no hope for her and Tristan, not ever. She couldn’t let herself believe his words.

Luke moved his hand to hold hers on the swing. "It is. Listen to me and trust me, because I for one have never lied. Conduits have been alive for thousands of years and in all that time, not a single vampire has been saved. They are evil, Kira, and any Protectors who don’t believe it are just fooling themselves."

"Maybe you can’t understand this, but I swear Tristan is different."

Luke started laughing, a dark and hollow sound that turned into a sigh after a few moments. "If he’s so angelic, what did he tell you about Bethany? Remember my ex-girlfriend, the one I saw him eating?"

"He swore to me that he hasn’t had anything but bagged blood in decades. And I believe him. He said he was saving her, closing the wound after Jerome had bitten her." Kira shook her head, defiant against the charge. She knew Tristan.

"And you believe him? Just like that?" Luke released her hand, swinging away from her in his frustration.

"I do." She stood her ground. If Luke actually got to know Tristan, he would see it too. She knew he would.

"Kira, you just don’t understand. You don’t know enough. I’ve known people who went away to fight vampires and never came back. I’ve been part of a search party to rescue a Punisher from being held captive and tortured. The world is a much darker place than you realize. And I joke and I make fun because you have to be happy or you won’t survive, but there’s a different side of things you’re just too naïve to see."

"I’ve seen some things," Kira said, lifting her hand away from the chain and letting her palm face the sky. She brought a flame up, small and controlled, and let it dance along her fingers. Throwing a tiny ball of light up in the air, she caught it with her other hand and absorbed the fire back into her skin.

"I had a vision of my parents’ death. I relived it, and I think I know more about the world than you realize." Kira stretched her arm out and placed a palm on the fresh cut she had noticed on Luke’s bicep. She waited until the skin underneath closed shut, seamlessly melding together, then took her hand away.

He let out a breath she hadn’t realized he had been holding. Kira looked at him, at the freckles that spanned from cheek to cheek and the slightly crooked bend of his nose that was beautiful in its strangeness. Kira noticed the luminescent quality of his hair and finally the flaming irises they both shared, but she saw a difference for the first time. He always looked on with concern and fascination, but now sadness and maybe even defeat rimmed those eyes.

"What happened in your memory?" Luke asked.

"It was like you said about the conduit societies. I was a baby and I was playing around with my power, trying to control it and make my parents smile. But then we were jumped by vampires and they were killed while I hid under a bush, powerless to stop anything."

"I’m sorry," Luke said and reached for the hand Kira had let dangle beside her swing. She shrugged her shoulders, trying to act indifferent, as if the past was just that, in the past. But his hand was warm in hers, keeping her connected to real life, and she appreciated it. "How’d you remember? Or did you dream it?"

"It was Jerome and John actually," Kira said. She continued to hold onto his hand, which now seemed more like a lifeline, and then told him about what had happened. How John and Jerome had almost killed that girl, about Diana’s sudden appearance, and a little bit about her afternoon with Tristan and his history. Luke listened quietly—his morose frown slowly replaced by worried stress lines.

"I don’t like it," he finally said. "Revenge is the worst kind of evil."

"But Tristan said it would be fine, that Diana wouldn’t be able to do anything to make him go bad." Luke nodded absently, but Kira could tell his thoughts were wandering into ominous territory. "What? What is it you’re not telling me?"

"Nothing," Luke said, still half-aware.

"Come on," Kira said and jerked on his hand, almost pulling him from the swing, but at least gaining his attention.

"It’s just, Tristan might not have a choice. Conduit blood, it’s like a drug to vampires. It makes them go crazy."

"But he would never bite me," Kira said dubiously, flashing back to the moment in the gym when she had been cut and all of the fighting had ceased—even Tristan had been totally distracted by her blood, and, for a second, had become completely animalistic because of it. When Diana smeared some on his lips, he couldn’t resist taking a taste.

"Willingly, no. But, what if it’s not in his control?"

"How could they do that?" Kira twisted in her swing, coiling the chains and facing Luke. "I have my powers now. They can’t surprise me anymore. I’ll fry them."

"All I’m saying is that they have a plan, or at least the start of one. And it involves you, and Tristan eating you, and some factor we don’t see yet. This is serious, and we need to prepare somehow."

Kira sighed and turned slowly in a circle, winding the chain holding the swing a few more times. She lifted her feet off the ground to let her chair unravel, and spun around, bouncing from side to side, done with these dark conversations that seemed to be creeping further and further into her life. When the world was a blur of green grass, blue sky, and sunlight streaking past her eyes, unidentifiable except for the array of colors, she felt much more at peace, like a carefree child. All the worries seemed to slip away when there was nothing to focus on but the wind in her hair and the dizzying of her brain.

When the twirling stopped, Kira looked at Luke, who watched her with a slight smile finally showing on his features. She let her feet fall to the wood chips, took a few steps back to gain some leverage and then released, surging forward. Kira pumped her feet, using her arms for extra power, and propelled herself forward with every lean back and thrust of her legs.

Luke began to swing next to her, catching up to her height quickly with his longer legs. Their clothes fluttered in the breeze and Kira’s hair flew all around her. Her butt jumped off the seat as she started beating gravity’s pull, just for a moment, and Kira felt like a kid again, when she was so young that she thought she could swing high enough to flip over the bar and even gain wings, like a fairy.

Finally, the time came when Kira knew she couldn’t go any higher. She pulled her forearms and shins in, racing backward one more time, and then gravity shoved her forward. Leaning back, she stretched her feet out, and let go of the swing. The seat slid out from underneath her as she catapulted forward, flying through the air while her limbs flailed ungracefully, until the ground seemed to rise up and smack against her feet. She rolled forward, falling onto the grass beyond the wood chipped corral while dead leaves crunched into her hair.

Kira turned her head, watching Luke as he landed beside her with a thud and a somersault. Then they both started laughing.

"I haven’t done that in years," Kira said as she stared at the sky. She watched the clouds blow by, changing from marshmallow white to smoky ebony to brilliant gold as they passed in front of the sun.

"Me neither. I think I can wait another ten years before trying it again though. I can actually feel a massive bruise growing on my butt right now." Luke groaned and rolled over onto his stomach.

"Home?" Kira said, wondering if they had talked about Tristan enough, hoping Luke had all the answers he needed for the moment.

"Home," Luke said and slowly stood up. He leaned over Kira, grabbing the hand she offered, and pulled her from the ground’s clutches. She dusted the dirt and squashed leaves from her clothes, and followed him to the car.

The ride home was safe. They steered clear of vampire related topics and instead talked about their friends and the holidays. Every time Kira looked over at Luke, she knew he was only half-present. He was her guardian and her friend, and she knew he must be worried about her safety, but Kira couldn’t think of anything else she could do.

As they turned the corner onto her street, Luke slammed on the brakes and Kira’s head almost flew through the front windshield because she had tucked the strap of her seatbelt behind her back.

"Luke! What the hell?" She whipped around to berate him, but noticed the hard look in his eyes. Turning slowly, she followed his line of vision as it trailed right to the steps of her front porch where Tristan casually sat against the rail.

Kira’s pulse raced