“It’s always better safe than sorry.” Ezra nodded, as if that settled that. “I’m going to go look for the alarm manual, and I’ll get back to you when I have codes.”

“Alright.” Jack gave me a weird look, and he was as skeptical about Ezra’s intentions as I was.

“I don’t how you guys can just sit here!” Jane got to her feet after Ezra left the room.

“Jane, relax. Nothing’s gonna happen to you,” Milo tried to reassure her.

“No! I don’t mean that! It’s just so boring here!” She pulled at one of the bangle bracelets she had taken from me, and her eyes darted all around the room. “You just sit here all the time!”

“Jane, its four in the morning. What do you suggest we do?” Jack asked her honestly.

“And we don’t sit around here all the time,” Bobby said. “I went to school, Jack went out, Milo goes places too, I’m sure. But you’re not because you’re still not feeling well.”

“I’m feeling fine!” Jane stomped her foot and tried to take off the bracelets. “If it weren’t for these damn bracelets! They’re like handcuffs!”

“Jane! Just calm down and watch the movie,” I said. “We’ll go somewhere tomorrow night. Okay? But right now, it’s too late. So just relax.”

“Whatever.” She managed to get off the bracelets and chucked them to the other side of the room, startling Matilda into barking.

“Is everything alright in there?” Ezra shouted from his den at the end of the hall.

“Seriously. What’s going on?” I looked at Jack. “Is there like a carbon monoxide leak? Everybody is being a total freak today.”

“I am not being a freak!” Jane protested, then collapsed heavily back onto the chaise lounge. “I’m fine. Let’s just watch the movie. I wanna see what happens to this Sid guy.”

Before the credits started to roll, Jane fell asleep, but she twitched a lot in her sleep. It was actually super creepy. We all watched with mild fascination until Mae came out of the bathroom and yelled at us for just staring at her. She carried Jane up to Peter’s room, and Mae came down because Ezra enlisted her on his search for the missing alarm manual. It was the first time they’d really interacted in awhile, and she seemed to bare a grudge about the whole thing.

The rest of us watched movies for awhile longer, until Ezra tried to get us to search for a manual we’d never seen. We headed up to our respective rooms to avoid the whole thing.

“You know, Ezra’s in the den,” I said to Jack when we got to our room. He had already taken off his tee shirt in preparation to put on pajamas, but when he turned to look at me, I started slipping off my jeans in the most seductive way I could manage. “So you can’t really sleep there.”

“Here’s the funny thing.” Jack grinned as he walked over to me. He’d come into the room and gone straight to the closet to change, but I had other plans for the night, so I stayed next to the bed. “I’m not really all that tired anymore.”

“Really?” I took a step back, so my butt hit the bed. “You wouldn’t want to crawl into bed at all?”

“Oh, no, I definitely wanna crawl in bed,” Jack smiled wickedly. He took another step towards me, so he was right in front of me, and put his hands on my bare thighs. Slowly, he slid them up under my shirt and let them linger on my waist. “God, you’re beautiful.”

I looped my arms around his neck and stood on my tiptoes so I could kiss him. He kissed me deeply, cupping his hands on my butt and holding me to him. Gently, he pushed me back onto the bed. I wrapped my legs around him, pulling me closer to him. He pushed against me, and I moaned. His mouth trailed to my neck, and suddenly, I wanted it.

“Bite me,” I breathed, burying my fingers in his hair.

“What?” Jack stopped kissing me so he could look at me. He tried to play it cool, but his excitement was unmistakable. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” I looked up at him. Being bitten felt amazing, and he was in control enough where it wouldn’t be that dangerous. I’d be the weak one, but I’d just fed so I wouldn’t be ravenous.

“When was the last time you ate?”

“Jack!” I said. “Don’t break the romance with logic. I’m fine, okay?”

He bit his lip and looked down at me. He was making sure that I was completely okay with it, but he obviously wanted to do it. I could feel his hunger, hot and eager, flowing over me. His heart pounded heavily, and it was just above mine, so I could almost feel it. His eyes faded translucent, the way they did when he really wanted me. The more passionate he got, the lighter the color of his eyes.

When his lips pressed against my veins, I moaned involuntarily, and I arched my back, pushing closer to him.

“Alice!” Mae screamed and threw open the bedroom door.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!” Jack yelled incredulously and sat up, and I agreed. He turned to glare at her. “There’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing!”

“I don’t care about you,” Mae said. She looked stricken, so I sat up and pushed Jack back out of the way. “Jane is missing! I think something’s happened to her!”

- 30 -

In the panic over a possible Jane-napping, I didn’t think to put on pants and Jack didn’t put on a shirt, so we both got dirty looks from Milo. He’d rushed out of his room when he heard Mae screaming. I returned his dirty look since Bobby was shirtless and guilty looking.

We were all crowded inside Jane’s room, investigating her disappearance. Mae had tired of her pursuit of the alarm manual, so she had gone upstairs to bunk with Jane again, but when she’d come in the room, Jane was gone. That was all her evidence.

“Did somebody ransack the room or something?” Bobby asked, admiring the disheveled state of Peter’s room. Somehow, half of my wardrobe had migrated over here and had been strewn around everywhere.

“No, it always looks like this,” I said. I hadn’t seen her room lately, but this was her natural state of being.

“Not to sound like a dick,” Jack said, “but you just dragged us out of bed to show us Jane’s messy room? That’s not really an emergency, Mae.”

“She’s not here!” Mae gestured to the mess around her. “That’s the emergency.”