I was starting to wonder if anyone in this damn country respected the fire ban.

  The flames crackled and burst in vibrant warm hues, the weaker twigs combusting while the logs roasted. The crickets managed to be louder than Hunter's speaker playing Tame Impala, which was impressive. While the others sat close around the fire pit on chairs, Tori sat on the floor a foot further back, and I sat on the steps of the back porch a few metres away. With my jacket nearly setting me on fire the last time I saw a campfire, I wasn't taking my chances anymore. Especially with my body currently throwing a fit. Spending over a month deprived of human blood - even just fresh blood - had weakened me more than I'd thought. I couldn't feel the difference until now, as my body digested the blood from the rave-goers. It felt like I'd taken crack. I couldn't tell whether I was gonna pass out or go the rest of the week without sleep.

  "God, Mrs G pisses me off," Carly groaned, taking a sip of her beer, "She gave me a detention for being 10 minutes late the other day. I was with the nurse! I had a note and everything!"

  "I thought she was on maternity leave?" Malachi smirked.

  "No, that was last year... and the year before that."

  "How's that work?"

  "Mate, she's like 35, she's probably been teaching for so long that she's earned an overdose of sick leave or something." Carly sighed.

  "Yesterday she called my mum because I wore coloured socks." Hunter chuckled, cracking open a Smirnoff can.

  "At least you guys have younger teachers. Mine are all elderly guys." London groaned. "You'd think with age comes knowledge, but we spend almost every class watching YouTube videos on the tv."

  "You know who I miss?" Malachi grinned. "Miss MacDonald. She used to tutor me at lunch."

  "Is that the only thing you remember about her, Kai?" Carly smirked and raised a brow.

  "Oh, nah, she was nice and stuff, too." he scoffed back unconvincingly.

  "I... Am I allowed to say I thought she was a lesbian?" Hunter murmured.

  "I thought that, too!" London jumped in. "I was so upset when I found out she had a husband."

  "What? Why?" Hunter chuckled.

  London frowned. "I don't know! I felt deceived."

  "Do you have a parasocial relationship with your other teachers, too?" Malachi sat back in his chair with his grin widening.

  Talk about something else. Anything else. Please.

  I rested my head in my hands, my elbows on my knees. The last thing I needed was more reminders. I didn't want to think about my friends, or school, or how they were all together every day doing their final year of high school without me and Tori. They'd all go to school formal together. They'd sit through every exam and then complain to each other. They'd eat lunch together. They'd graduate together.

  While Tori and I would stay here. Alone. Legally registered as missing persons. Struggling to wake up each day. Barely alive. Imprisoned in this damn house - which I could only live in because I'd accidentally mind controlled the owner years ago. Until recently, the only person who knew where I was, was my dad, and I only told him because he's on the other side of the world and can never come find me.

  It was one thing when I died, and had to come to terms with never living the same life as my friends again. It was another when I had to take Victoria and bail us out of school to go MIA. And it was all my fault - everything was. I couldn't yell at anyone, couldn't hurt anyone, couldn't kill anyone, nothing would take the pain away. All of it was my fault. Part of me wanted my friends to leave again. Part of me wanted to run away again. But damnit, a tiny fraction of me was glad to not be alone anymore. They were good people, and they stuck with me through every shitty thing. Fuck, they still helped me out now no matter how much I refused it, or threatened them.

  "Want some?"

  I looked up right away, startled from being pulled out of my thoughts. Malachi stood before me, reaching out a beer to me. I sighed.

  "It won't do anything. You know that." I hugged my knees. "My metabolism'll burn right past it."

  "Yeah, I know," he shrugged, "I meant for the normalcy."

  He sat down on the steps beside me and placed the beer between us in case I changed my mind. He mirrored my knee-hugging and turned his attention back to the fire before us. While he continued the conversation with the others, I found myself studying him.

  He didn't look alright.

  The bags under his eyes were dark and didn't plan on leaving any time soon. His locs had grown longer than he usually liked, long enough for him to have tied them up. He'd stopped shaving. Kai used to somewhat brag about his clothes, their price tags and brands, but here he was in a Kmart hoodie and sweatpants. I wanted to ask about it. I wanted to force a therapy session out of him. But it wasn't hard to guess that him having two of his closest friends disappear and be presumed dead would've been the trigger.

  "How ya feeling?" he turned to me, always too empathetic for his own good.

  I blinked back to life and exhaled, fidgeting with the edge of my sleeve.

  "Like I took dog meds or something." I shrugged. "My brain's on steroids. I'm thinking about everything I don't want to."

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  He nodded.

  "Plan on killing any of us?"

  I barked a laugh.

  "No, not particularly. Maybe myself if I have to."

  "Only if necessary, thanks." he smiled to himself, though somewhat concerned, and took a sip from his own beer.

  A tense silence fell between us as the others chatted. I glanced over to Tori, who was sitting on her knees and poking the dirt with a stick like last time.

  "So why'd you kill her?"

  "What?" I snapped my head back around to stare Malachi down, my pulse running cold.

  He shrugged, completely unfazed, or at least pretending to be.

  "I know you said it was an accident, I'm not tryna back you into a corner or anything." he continued. "But I feel like there's a reason you never said why you did it."

  I just... stared at him.

  "What, were you arguing?" he began, unsurprised by my silence. "Did you have a fight and snap? Did you drink from her and go too far? Like, what's...? What's the deal?"

  My eyes blinked slowly as I took in the fact I was even being asked this. I shook my head and looked ahead again.

  "I don't wanna ta-"

  "I know you don't want to. That's why I'm asking." he muttered. "You're usually pretty blunt about these things."

  I winced.

  "... please don't make me think about it."

  "Zach."

  I sighed.

  "Fine. It... was kind of all of the above, I guess." I gripped my hands together tightly, trying to speak without actually thinking about it. "I tried to drink from her, we argued, it became a fight, and I snapped."

  "You're leaving out a lot there, man."

  "Mm? Probably."

  "I won't tell the others." Malachi put a hand on my shoulder, his eyes meeting mine firmly. "I want to know so that you don't do it again."

  Fuck my life.

  "... we fucked."

  "What?"

  "Well, we... tried to."

  "What?!"

  Here we go.

  "You know what I'm like with intimacy, even a kiss puts me in murder mode." I brushed a hand through my hair. "But Tori was patient. She would've spent the rest of her life a celibate if I were to ask her to. That's the problem, I didn't want her to."

  I picked up the beer beside me.

  "I wanted to make her happy, just once. I told her it was fine. It... God, I never should've tried."

  "How did you..?"

  "I couldn't handle it." I shrugged. "I got overwhelmed and I tried to hurt her. Really tried to hurt her. She stopped me and we got into a fight about it. I wasn't calming down. At some point I blacked out, and then there she was, bleeding out in my arms."

  Malachi was dead silent. He gulped the information down and fought the urge to tremble. A deep sigh left his throat as he pushed down his reinforced fear of me.

  "You're still not telling me everything."

  I shot him a glare. "Be glad I'm telling you anything!"

  "Jesus." He rubbed his temples. "I... don't even know what to say to that."

  Before I could respond, a blood-curdling scream echoed throughout the neighbourhood. Everyone flinched at the sound, while I stood right up and took off in its direction on autopilot.

  "Hey! HEY!" London ran after me and grabbed me.

  I snarled at her.

  "You've had enough today." she glared.

  I clenched my jaw and glanced over to the others, who were all staring at me in fear. I fucking hated their expressions.

  "Fine." I relented, letting my heart rate slow back down. "Sorry. I'm on edge."

  The scream came again, and Hunter and Kai marched past me, no questions asked. They headed past the gate, around to the street.

  "Stay here with them." Hunter told the twins, gesturing to Tori and me.

  I bit my lip at the idea of not going with them. I could faintly smell blood not far from here, which was probably from whoever was screaming. The fire and the music were too loud for me to hope to pick up any talking or arguing from the scene from here.

  "They'll be fine." London held me tighter.

  A third scream sounded, only for it to be harshly silenced, and the smell of blood doubled.

  "Watch Victoria." I tore London's hands off of me a little harsher than intended and bolted after the guys. I could hear her yelling after me, but I knew she'd do the same if she knew what was happening across the street.

  The guys didn't say a word. They didn't yell out. They didn't run. They crossed the street and headed through the park, marching right up to the scene. Up ahead, a guy double my age was knelt over an unconscious woman, tightly gripping a butcher knife that had been wedged between the girl's ribs. Hunter sped up and launched himself at him.

  The two rolled for a moment before Hunter managed to pin the guy down and start pummelling the ever-loving shit out of him. Malachi ran to the victim and assessed her injuries, not hesitating to call an ambulance. I lingered back on the road, not finding the strength to come any closer. I wanted to help, but I also wanted to drain the girl and maul the guy, so I stuck to spectating for the time being.

  Hunter looked more feral than me right now. Every punch carried with it every burst of anger he'd ever bottled, it seemed. The attacker managed to throw him off of him, and scrambled to his feet in an attempt to run for it. Hunter pounced after him. He grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him to the ground.

  Jesus Christ. This is why I'm scared of footy players.

  I could hear the girl's breaths weakening rapidly, her heart pounding, her blood gushing out. Malachi tried to stay calm while he talked to the operator on his phone, but even he was wary of what Hunter and the other guy were up to.

  The attacker pulled out a second knife and attempted to slice open Hunter's neck. He dodged just barely, his neck receiving a serrated flesh wound in the process.

  Fuck it.

  I went to run, but my feet felt too light, and an intense swing of adrenaline hit me. Every muscle in my body woke up. Before I knew it, I'd already sped to the scene. Realising just in time to not crash into a tree, I wrapped a hand around the attacker's neck and threw him. I hadn't had the time to control my force, so the guy went flying before collapsing near the end of the park.

  "Oh, fuck!" I hissed in regret, holding my hands to my chest. "... I-I swear I didn't mean to go that hard."

  Hunter stared at me, wide-eyed. He subconsciously felt for his cut with his fingers, my close proximity triggering his anxiety. Thankfully, though the cut stung, it wasn't deep enough to be dangerous.

  "I told you to stay with the girls!" He barked at me.

  I took a moment to make sure I wouldn't be sent zooming again if I moved my feet, then cautiously walked over to him.

  "You could've died."

  "I had him!"

  "What if you hadn't dodged, Hunter?"

  "You really think this is a safe environment for you right now? You're still adjusting to having your strength back, you're still intoxicated by blood, and you haven't been in the best mental place lately."

  "I'm fine!" I crossed my arms way too fast and punched my forearms in the process. "Let me heal you-"

  "Fuck no!" he cringed, stepping back and hiding the wound under his palm. "You think I'll let you use your freaky powers on me with what happened with Tori?"

  Oh boy, did that make it hard to stay controlled.

  "A little help?!" Malachi huffed, trying to stop the woman from bleeding out, which only resulted in blood spreading all over them both.

  I shuddered at the sight, but marched over regardless.

  "Can I heal her?" I grumbled, kneeling beside Kai.

  "There's an ambulance on the way" he muttered back, which wasn't a no.

  "Dude, the ambulances here are useless, they take an hour to arrive." I scoffed. "Look, I'm calm! I'm present! I'm not gonna eat her and I'm not gonna turn her. I'll just close the wound."

  "Then what do we tell the paramedics who're expecting to find a stab victim, jackass?" Hunter came back over.

  "It's that or she bleeds out, jackass." I mocked.

  He didn't respond. I looked to Kai again for confirmation. He sighed and hung his head, his hands trembling and covered in blood.

  "Just... Can you make it stop bleeding without getting rid of the wound? That's all I want, I just want the blood to stop."

  I nodded, but deep down I was shitting bricks. I'd never tried to control the severity of my healing, especially not on others. It was usually all or nothing.