"Why do we have to be isolated?" I ask, "We can keep our powers secret, live like normal people. Well, you can. I'm happy how I'm living. I propose... A penthouse."
Loooooong pause.
"What?" Zan asks.
"Well, I have a rucksack half full of bank notes, and I can get us to a snazzy hotel in Dorset. I'll need to show you around. Aaron will help, since he knows as much as I do about the place."
Aaron grunts.
"Okay..." John says, "but how did you get the money?"
"Um... Well, long story short, it involved a lot of shadows, a lot of force and a nearby Barclay's bank vault."
Everyone stares at me. I look down.
"Moving on," Deomi says, "how do we get there? Lewis?"
"No." Lewis says immediately.
"Right," I sigh, "everybody but Aaron grab on to me. Deomi, not there! Not now, at least. Okay." I close my eyes and think of the hotel.
"I feel tingly," Eyri says.
"Oh, don't mind that, it's just your body turning to smoke."
She looks terrified, but in a matter of seconds we drift over to the White House hotel in Charmouth.
-------------------------------------
"Well, that was successful!" I say, walking with everyone along a wide alleyway, having settled into the penthouse for a few hours and decided to show everyone around the town. We walk past a small hill with a large multi-building school on top to our right, and a road to our left. There are a bunch of school buses on the left just ahead of us, shrouding the pavement in darkness. Between the double deckers and the tall fence of the school, anything goes.
"Stay back," I warn the others. Lewis looks at me quizzically. "This school," I explain, "was the school I used to go to. Me and Aaron. That street, we used to call 'The Devil's Pavement'. In the fifteen minutes when the buses picked the kids up, a thuggish group of students picked a lot of them OFF. Drug dealers, thieves, straight-up murderers. Anything goes in that patch of pavement. Fifteen minutes of hell. They turn into animals at home time. It truly is survival of the fittest. I myself killed a couple in my time."
"Did the teachers do anything?" Zan asks.
"What could they do? They'd get murdered themselves if they intervened. Everyone just got used to it. The school couldn't afford the tons of funerals, so they just listed the dead people in assembly and said a little prayer every day."
The others look horrified as the slaughtering starts. I run towards the mess and start throwing shadows at the thugs. Twirling, twisting like a ballet dancer, dodging knives and bullets. Seconds later, I come out into the light of the sunset and walk back towards the others.
"That, my friends," I conclude, "is how things go at home time. Now let's never go here again." And we cautiously walk away.