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I see Claire at school again on Monday, but we’ve both agreed to not be seen together in public. She made sure to emphasise that it wasn’t just to make things look normal but because she had a reputation to uphold as well. Only Claire Dunmore could be save my life and still be a bitch about it. Hunter is nothing if not consoling, offering me a shoulder to cry on, which I can’t determine if it’s out of empathy or for the physical closeness that would offer. We’ve decided that our next date we’ll stay home, neither of us wanting to go out late at night after what happened to Anna. Part of me wants to tell Hunter what really happened, seeing as his ex-girlfriend and my best friend’s mother know more than he does, but I have to convince myself that it’s safer this way.

I spend Wednesday afternoon throwing up after I ate some bad chicken, and on Thursday, Hunter and Rose are bombarding me with messages, asking if I’m okay, while I lay in bed with a bucket resting on my stomach. Hunter offers to come over with some chicken soup, but the last thing I want right now is anything chicken flavoured, so he changes it to pumpkin soup, and if it weren’t for me looking like absolute crap, and the likely chance that I would throw it up, I would probably say yes. Anna brings me home some pills to stop the vomiting, but I still don’t feel like eating anything. Since our date, Hunter has learned a few new things to cook, most recently, soups, and he’s nothing if not eager to get me to taste them.

When I go back to school on Friday, I’m met by Rose’s “You’re not having much luck, are you?” The fact is, even with the food poisoning and Anna’s bite and my mother’s vague warning, the scariest thing for me was still seeing Sefira. She’s in my nightmares now, walking casually past without saying or doing anything, and then she looks at me and I stare her straight on, but there’s no way of telling if she’s happy to see me or here to kill me, except the knowledge that she can’t feel happy. Whenever I have dreams of my mother picking me up out of my crib, the blurriness of her face has been replaced by a blank white slate, and all I can see under that blonde hair is Sefira and I start to scream, and I try to run because that’s all I know.

Hunter comes over on Sunday, bringing over an offering of homemade pumpkin soup, blueberry muffins and a chick flick, or in this case, Marley & Me, which I’d honestly consider more of a tearjerker than a chick flick. It makes me feel better knowing that Hunter isn’t overly concerned about his reputation like some of the other guys I’ve met. While we sit out in the lounge room, for no reason whatsoever, I pick up the marker on the coffee table and I start drawing little love hearts on his arm. At first he hesitates, asking what I’m doing, but as soon as he sees what I drew he rolls up the rest of his sleeve and I cover it with scribbles and little sketches. In the middle of it all is the Galloway sword, sitting proudly upon his muscular bicep. He smirks a little when I put the marker down, asks if I’m done, and when I nod, he nudges my chin up and kisses me, more fiery than the last one, sending the butterflies in my stomach fluttering up into my head. I don’t want to pull away, but we both do, slowly and warily, both wishing we hadn’t.

Almost instantaneously afterwards, my phone rings and it’s Claire. I know that if Claire’s ringing me it must be something important, but I have no idea what to do with Hunter in the room. I can’t ignore him, but I also can’t talk to Claire about magic stuff while he’s here. Claire Dunmore, with her flashy Mercedes and curly, blonde hair is more mysterious than I thought. She didn’t want to tell me too much without knowing what I knew first, and even then she only told me that she was a demon hunter. She’s no more powerful than the average mortal, but with her experience, she’s more useful than I could ever be. I send her to voicemail, instantly regretting it, but I put my phone back in my pocket, lying to Hunter and telling him it was just Rose. He smiles, then moves his arm over my shoulder while my head sinks into his chest. At least now, I have school holidays, so I can talk to Claire whenever I need to.

Hunter leaves around eight-thirty and as soon as he reverses out of the driveway, I call Claire, who’s whiny voice sounds more irritated than usual.

“It’s a bit late for this, Humphreys. I’m busy,” she says, “You know the construction site across from Town Hall?” “Yes,” I answer, even though I haven’t been past Town Hall in over three months.

“Meet me there at twelve tomorrow,” she commands and just before she hangs up I can hear that same scream of agony I heard the other day when she killed that vampire in front of me.

I shudder as I slip the phone back in my pocket and walk inside. I want to sit with Anna, but she has to be up at work at two a.m. so I’m left to sit out on the couch, reading my library book. It’s nice to still have something constant in my life after this past month and a half has been nothing but shocking revelations and news. I finish my book at just before half past midnight and tuck myself into bed, deciding to have a shower in the morning. Just before I close my eyes I can hear the ringing of Anna’s alarm to wake up, and I find it even easier to fall asleep. Unfortunately, I forgot to turn off my alarm for the holidays, so on the first Monday I wake up at seven a.m., so I wait up, watching three hours’ worth of foreign soap operas before Anna walks in, looking absolutely exhausted from work. I get up and make her a cup of coffee, as well as one for myself and we sit down at the dining table, while she recites complaints about her day.

I tell Anna I’m going to go see Rose – she doesn’t know about Claire yet, and Claire doesn’t want me telling anyone, but Town Hall is a lot further from my house than Rose’s, so I’m forced to commute there, stuck next to a large sweaty, forty-something man who smiles flirtatiously at me in between taking swigs of his beer. Words can’t describe how much I want to get out of here. As the bus pulls in to Town Hall, he forces me to squeeze out of my seat into the aisle after he refuses to get out of his seat and simply moves his legs slightly. If I didn’t already find him irritating before, I definitely would’ve found the inappropriate squeeze on my ass enough to make me wish Sefira would appear out of nowhere with an arrow just for him. I get out, glaring at him as I walk off, and he just smiles, taking another swig of his beer.

As I approach the construction site, I recognise Claire’s curly hair underneath a bright yellow hardhat, standing next to who I assume is her father, Phil Dunmore, possibly the only architect to actually come out of a school here. Claire notices me after a construction worker calls out, “Looks like there’s a friend here for you, Claire” and points right at me. She walks over, her rough work boots looking oddly flattering, with her black leather pants tucked inside them.

“Hope you slept well, Princess,” she taunts, and it feels strange because that’s exactly what I would have called her just over a week ago.

“What are we doing here?” I ask as she leads me into the empty carpark which has been recently built behind the construction site.

“You’re going to learn how to kill things,” she says, the smile on her lips looking freakishly sinister as she returns from the elevator engine room with a duffle bag full of weapons. She pulls out the first one, a crossbow with a wooden bow inside, and for some reason I comment.

“Is that even legal here?” I ask, and she smirks, lighting up a laser beam on the top which I can only assume is for accuracy. She walks over to the stairwell, taking the rest of her duffle bag with her, and as she opens the door I can hear the same bloodthirsty growl I’d heard the other day. My stomach drops when I see another one of these famished humans, more fitted to a grave than to be walking in front of me. “Clare,” I call over warily, not sure of what she wants me to do. The thing looks at me and smiles, flashing its fangs, beginning to stagger towards me. “Clare, what am I supposed to do?”

“Figure it out, Humphreys,” she answers, carelessly looking through her bag as if the weapons in there were more interesting than me. I step back until I’m as close to the edge of the carpark as I can get and I know I’ll have the sunlight to protect me. I hold the crossbow up like I’ve seen in movies, using the laser to guide it directly into the monster’s heart and I pull the trigger, clamping my eyes shut as I hear it scream out, being consumed by flames. I wait for it to go quiet, and as soon as it does, I can hear Claire clapping. Whether she’s taunting me or congratulating me, I can’t tell, but I know I’ll never trust her when she tries to take me into empty places again. I’m just glad I hung up on her yesterday so that my first experience wasn’t at night.

Claire doesn’t have any more hidden monsters in her cupboards, but she does show me how to use the rest of the weapons in the bag, demonstrating the correct stance for staking vampires and how to throw a hatchet without throwing it though, because all she had to aim for were concrete pillars. Claire might look and behave like a spoilt rich girl, but she is frighteningly scary, especially coming from someone who’s seen Sefira.