She shook her head. "He's not. I'm certain of it. I've never met him." I'd figured she just wanted to avoid all associations with being a Strigoi. "You're sure? He wasn't just some casual acquaintance?"

She shot me a wry look. "Strigoi don't have casual acquaintances with humans. They have them for dinner. That guy shouldn't have known who I was."

"He was human? Not dhampir?" I couldn't tell the difference, but Moroi could.

"Definitely."

Sonya had stopped again and was glancing back at the guy's retreating figure. I followed her gaze. "There must be some reason he recognized you. He seems pretty harmless." That got me another smile. "Come now, Sydney. I figured you'd been around us long enough to know."

"Know what?"

"Nothing's ever as harmless as it seems."

Chapter 4

SONYA DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING about the mysterious encounter to the rest of the gang at Adrian's, so I respected her silence. Everyone else was too preoccupied with dinner and the experiments to notice much else. And once they conducted the second wave of experiments, even I grew too distracted to give much thought to the guy on the street.

Sonya had said she wanted to see how Eddie and Dimitri responded to direct spirit. This was accomplished by her and Adrian focusing their magic at the dhampirs one at a time.

"It's sort of like what we'd do if we were trying to heal them or make something grow," Sonya explained to me. "Don't worry - this isn't going to make them supersized or anything.

It's more like we're coating them with spirit magic. If Dimitri's got some lasting mark from when he was healed, I'd imagine it would react with our magic." She and Adrian coordinated their timing and did Eddie first. Initially, there was nothing to see - just the two spirit users staring at Eddie. He looked uncomfortable under the scrutiny.

Then, I saw a silvery shimmer run over his body. I stepped back, amazed - and unnerved - at seeing a physical manifestation of spirit. They repeated the process on Dimitri, with the same results. Apparently, on an unseen level, things were the same too. There was nothing notable about Dimitri's response. All of them took this in stride as part of the scientific process, but seeing that magic actually embrace the two men had creeped me out.

As Eddie and I drove back to Amberwood that night, I found myself sitting as far away from him as I could in the car, as though residual magic might leak over and touch me. He chatted with me in our usual, friendly way, and I had to work hard to hide my feelings. Doing so made me feel guilty. This was Eddie, after all. My friend. The magic, even if it could've hurt me, was long since gone.

A good night of sleep went a long ways to shake both my anxiety and guilt, leaving the magic a distant memory when I woke and prepared for classes the next day. Even though being at Amberwood was an assignment, I'd kind of come to love the elite school. I'd been homeschooled before this, and while my dad had certainly taught tough curriculum, he'd never gone beyond what he felt was necessary. Here, even if I surpassed what my classes were learning, there were plenty of teachers ready to encourage me to push farther. I hadn't been allowed to go to college, but this was a nice substitute.

Before I could get on to it, I had to chaperone a training session with Eddie and Angeline.

Even though he might want to avoid her, he wouldn't - not with Jill's safety on the line. Angeline was part of Jill's defense. I settled down in the grass with a cup of coffee, still wondering if he wasn't just imagining Angeline's interest. I'd recently acquired a one-cup coffee maker for my dorm room, and while it couldn't compare to a coffee shop, it had gotten me through a number of rough mornings. A yawn smothered my greeting as Jill sat down beside me.

"Eddie never trains me anymore," she said wistfully, as we watched the spectacle. Eddie was trying to patiently explain to Angeline that headbutting, while suitable in a bar brawl, was not always the best tactic with Strigoi.

"I'm sure he will if he gets more time," I said, though I wasn't sure at all. Now that he could admit his feelings for Jill to himself, he was nervous about touching her too much. That, and a chivalrous part of him didn't want Jill risking herself anyway. It was ironic because Jill's fierceness in wanting to learn self-defense (rare in a Moroi) was what had attracted him to her.

"Angeline was recruited as protection. He's got to make sure she can handle it."

"I know. I just feel like everyone's trying to coddle me." She frowned. "In PE, Micah won't let me do anything. After I had all that trouble starting out, he's now paranoid I'll hurt myself. I keep telling him I'm fine, that it was just the sun... but well, he keeps jumping in. It's sweet...

but it drives me crazy sometimes."

"I've noticed it," I admitted. I was in the same PE class. "I don't think that's why Eddie won't train you, though. He knows you can do it. He's proud that you can... he just thinks that if he's doing his job, you shouldn't have to learn. Kind of weird logic."

"No, I get it." Her earlier dismay shifted to approval as she turned back to the training session.

"He's so dedicated... and, well, good at what he does."

"The knee's an easy way to disable someone," Eddie told Angeline. "Especially if you're caught without a weapon and have to - "

"When are you going to teach me to stake or decapitate?" she interrupted, hands on her hips. "All the time, it's hit here, dodge this, blah, blah, blah. I need to practice killing Strigoi."

"No, you don't." Eddie was the picture of patience and back in the determined, ready mode I knew so well. "You're not here to kill Strigoi. Maybe we can practice that at a later time, but right now, your priority is keeping mortal assassins away from Jill. That takes precedence over anything else, even our lives." He glanced over at Jill for emphasis, and there was a flash of admiration in his eyes as he looked at her.

"Seems like decapitation would kill Moroi just the same," Angeline grumbled. "And besides, you did have a Strigoi problem last month."

Jill shifted uneasily beside me, and even Eddie paused. It was true - he had had to kill two Strigoi recently, back when Adrian's apartment had been Keith's. Lee Donahue had led the Strigoi to us. He was a Moroi who'd once been Strigoi. After he was returned to his natural state, Lee had wanted desperately to become a Strigoi again. He was the reason we'd learned that those restored by spirit seemed to have some Strigoi resistance. The two Strigoi he'd called to help him had tried to convert him but ended up killing him instead - a better fate than being undead, in my opinion.