"Sin!"

 

I gasp as I'm hit from behind. A wave of lust hits me as slender arms wrap around me. I turn and glare at Janie, shoving down the lust. Janie's a succubus but I'm gay and she is a girl. Her ridiculously bad control of her powers when touching people is not something that should control me.

 

I kiss her on the cheek and disentangle myself as calmly as possible, laughing and teasing, trying to make sure she doesn't know why. She's a little sensitive about her control.

 

She pouts at my teasing and crosses her arms below her breasts. "Shush." She shakes her head, silver curls flying. "Anyway, moving away from my control issues, how goes being able to go to and from the demonic realm without demons coming with you?"

 

I flush. Does she have to bring that up all the damn time? "Point taken. Bitch," I mutter.

 

She smiles widely at me and grabs my arm. "Anyway, Sin-"

 

"Sinjin." Sin makes me sound evil. Or licentious. Which I'm not.

 

"Fine, St. John."

 

I groan. "There is no winning with you."

 

"You're not English. It should be St. John. And no, there is not, Sin."

 

Bitch. I try to scowl at her, but end up smiling. All the flush of my initial arousal is gone. I'm good at blocking ainmhain faerie's magic as long as I get a little warning. And that actually makes me a lot more cheerful.

 

She grins and begins to sway across campus, dragging me with her with an arm on my forearm. Both of us ignore the stares she gets. She may be half demon, but her mother was a succubus and she inherited her mother's looks and powers, with the exception of the tricolored eyes most ainmhain faeries had.

 

"You know some of them are staring at you," Janie remarks conversationally.

 

I roll my eyes. "Yeah, because I have fucking weird eyes." And because you're hanging off my arm and they're memorizing my face to punch later, I add mentally.

 

Janie sniggers. "Your eyes aren't any weirder than anyone else's here. You're sexy."

 

Well, the former is true at least. My eyes are normal shaped, maybe a little slanted, but easily human in shape. But my irises are too big and they're pink. They have black sunbursts on the inside, making my pupils look wonky. But pink. And worse, they're from my demonic mother. What kind of demon has pink eyes? I mean, really.

 

But as wierd as my eyes are, they really don't stand out that much here. I mean, from a distance, they look almost human. Janie and I attend a school in Border Town, the town in the In Between. The In Between is the land between the worlds. It connects the faerie hills to the demonic realms to the human Earth, etc.. I think once upon a time, all the dimensions were separate, but no one really knows. History doesn't really go back that far, that's just the theory I believe in. Like the Big Bang theory. The point is, the only place one can transverse from one world to another without a large expenditure of magic for a portal is Border Town.

 

And because this is the meeting point for the worlds, this is generally where half-breeds end up. There's nowhere else for most of us to go. Janie was found on the steps of a fire station in the human world as a baby and adopted. The human world won't really accept Janie as their own though- her dad tossed her out of the house at the first sign that her powers were awakening- and she has no interest in living with the fae.

Blooded fae are assholes. Pure blooded anything are assholes. I'm the product of a demon and faerie, same as Janie, both of which are especially awful breeds. Lucky for me, I was abandoned in Border Town as a baby and I was picked up by a naga-human hybrid, so I act pretty normal.

 

But anyway, no one wants a mutt with unpredictable powers living with them. So half-breeds ended up taking over Border Town and making it our home. I know it's expanded- literally, the land mass has- as more people have moved in. It's pretty cool actually.

 

But there are just not that many half breeds. Interbreeding species is pretty difficult. Pregnancies are rare and stable, healthy infants even rarer. I was sick a lot of the time as kid and I'm told every time I go to the doctor that I'm lucky to be alive. Fae and demons are a very incompatible pair. Me and Janie are two of four recorded births and the only two that survived. And at the same damn time too.

I shrug myself out of my thoughts. "Whatevs," I mutter at Janie. "They want to kill me because I'm accompanying you."

 

"Crazy little emo boy with your crazy insecurity."

 

"I'm not insecure!"

 

She pokes my stomach. "Fatty."

 

I bristle. "Don't poke my squish!"

 

She snorts. "You have no squish."

 

I pinch at my stomach. I get fat between my fingers. "No! It moves!" Totally joking by the way. I have a hot body, thank you very much. Well, I'm frickin' gangly but I'm obscenely tall so it works out.

 

She giggles. "Anyway sweetie, do you want to go to the party tonight?"

 

I brighten considerably. "Lonnie's?"

 

She grins and nods. "Yeah, Silanos's."

 

"Lonnie. He prefers a nickname. I prefer my full name- pronounced properly. Get it right!"

 

She laughs at me. Bitch. Oh well, I suppose her complete lack of respect for me is why we're friends. People who respect me tend to do it out of fear of my demonic blood. So Janie's actually pretty legit.

 

"Hey, can I dress you up?" she asks, excited.

 

"No." And she's not changing my mind.

 

"Famous last words."

 

An hour later, I'm right and she's wrong. I'm still in my loose, comfy black jeans that are so ripped and torn and worn that they're actually more patches and skin than denim and not in the leather pants Janie stole from the slutty goth kid who lives in the dorm next to hers.

 

She pouts at me. "Are you sure?"

 

"Yeah, and we have to do," I point out. "Lonnie made us promise we'd be on time. Or close to it."

 

Janie sighs and tosses a leather coat over her corset-style minidress. "Fine." She pauses in her closet door, looking over her shoes. "Will you be my date tonight until I find Nozomi? I don't want to get hit on all night."

 

I snort. Her logic astounds me. "Dress more like a hobo."

 

She glares at me. "I like looking nice, numb nuts." Her voice softens considerably, becoming a little unsure. "Besides, I can feed without intercourse when lust is directed at me."

 

Well now I feel like a bastard. I always forget that little fact because she's just a slut most of the times, but she shouldn't have to have sex every day to live, should she? That's just cruel. Ainaheim faeries are kind of fucked over as a race.

 

"Yeah, sure."

 

She beams at me, bouncing back instantly and pulls out the highest heels she owns. "Fabulous."

I sigh and lean against the door, wishing she would go faster.

 

Finally, her shoes are all laced up and she stands, taking a moment to find her balance before stalking over to me, hips swinging in exaggerated arcs to help her balance.

 

I offer her my arm, and unsurprisingly, with the heels she's a couple inches taller than me.

 

We go through the halls, only having to go up one story to get to Lonnie's room. Dorms definitely have their advantages. Dorms with RAs who don't care what we do despite the fact that most of us are underage as high school students have even greater advantages.

 

I knock on the door and it swings open instantly, but it's not Lonnie who answered. His dorm room is already packed.

 

I grin and start weaving through the people, Janie keeping a death grip on my waist. It looks like Lonnie's worries that no one would show up were unfounded.

 

Lonnie is in the kitchen, pouring a bottle of vodka into a cooler. He grins at us when he catches sight of us. He gives me a brief hug and kiss on the cheek and Janie a hug. "Jungle juice," he says, waving at the cooler as he swigs that last of the bottle of vodka. "It's good tonight. Someone brought un-watered faerie wine."

 

I brighten considerably and grab one of the obscenely brightly colored plastic glasses and fill it as loud music starts up. I nearly spit out the first swig. It burns in my mouth and down my throat. This shit is strong. I make a face and chug the rest as Janie pours her own. She then takes mine and refills it. Heh. She knows me so well. Not that I'm an alcoholic or anything, but when I drink I want to get drunk and I'm not even a little human so that takes a lot of alcohol. Faeries have exceptionally high alcohol tolerance, and demons' are even higher.

 

Janie leans in and yells in my ear over the pounding music. "I see Nozomi. Check you later?"

 

I nod and watch her until she meets up with the tiny pixie-human girl. Nozomi already looks a little drunk.

 

I look around for my other friends once she's gone, but don't see anyone I know except for Lonnie who's playing beer pong with about three other guys.

 

One guy in the corner catches my eyes with his and I glance around the room. He grins and starts weaving through the room. Ooh, my lucky day. I vaguely recognize him; he's probably been in one of my classes at some point. Then I catch sight of the hair under his baseball cap as he turns a little to edge past people. It's short and fluorescent pink. Oh, I remember this guy. He's part elf and has the best sense of humor ever. He was always yelling stuff out in class, treating lectures like a Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight showing.

The hair was a bet, the year he had class with me. I don't think he's stopped dyeing it since.

 

"Hey," he yells as he makes it over.

 

I wave in greeting. I don't have that loud of a voice; I sort of fail at yelling over music.

 

"Didn't we have a class together?"

 

Now that I've placed him, I remember. "Transforming 202 in- uh, eighth grade," I yell.

 

He makes a 'what' face and leans in, putting his ear near my mouth. I resist the urge to bite the fleshy tip. I repeat what I yelled and he grins. "Oh yeah. You were the weird kid who would yell Rocky Horror quotes."

 

"You started it," I point out.

 

He grins and nods. "I totally did. I'm Mario."

 

Oh yeah. I remember now. Heh, he always reminded me of the video game.

 

"Sinjin," I yell back, holding out my hand.

 

He shakes it and then doesn't let go, eyes lingering as well. I smirk cheerfully at him, reading the invitation in his blue eyes easily. "I haven't gotten my party on yet!"

 

He grins and drops my hand. "Fine. Wanna dance?"

 

Ooh, that I can say yes to sober.

 

I take his arm and follow him onto the dance floor.