He moved, slowly, cautiously, around her. Her eyes stayed on him. It wasn't what he was expecting; her eyes. It seemed more like what most called a "hologram", that is, a trick of light and perception. Tilt it one way, and the appearance was one way. Tilt it just a little this way, and the image was another way. That way, and yet again, the image changed again. So it was with the eyes of Emelia Vance. From the initial angle he saw the eyes of a teenage girl at her first day in a new high school. It was must have been petrifing. As Ash could attest, kids could be mean, but teenagers could truly be dark. Though he couldn't personally testify to it, he knew from several sources that being a [i]girl[/i] and a teenager added whole new levels of evil and danger. 

The expectations. The competition. The savagery. 

At that angle, Emelia Vance looked almost scared. Like a new kid just hoping she didn't do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, wear the wrong thing. Just wanting to fit in. But as he began to move around her, the angle of the image of Emelia Vance shifted. The look in those eyes changed. Suddenly the very appearance of the girl before him seemed to change. She was no longer the nervous teen girl, she was resplendent in fearlessness. She didn't look as if she particularly cared that he, or anyone else, thought she might be doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing, wearing the wrong thing. Independent, willful, strong. The kind of sensation you simply did not ever perceive from an adolescent.

By the time he made his way, carefully, to the other side of Emelia Vance and moved closer to the study room door the appearance was yet different again. Not scared, not fearless. To him in that moment of space and time the only sense he read from the teenager before him now was...danger. The closer he got to her physically, the more profound the sense became, like a bad moon rising in the back of his mind. [i]This girl is dangerous.[/i] She could hurt him. She could hurt all of them. And there was precious little any of them could do stop her. Around her, one must be delicate, as if approaching a cornered predator. When his hand touched the handle of the study room door, he saw something that actually surprised him.

He saw her body tense. 

His voice lowered, softening and growing a bit sweet, like melted honey. "A new school, a new town...that has to be very overwhelming. Consider the view from the otherside, hmm? Washington is just big enough to not know everyone by name and face, but small enough to realize a new face in the crowd. New faces are welcome, new faces that arrive to town and help those locals out of bad jams..."

[i]Careful, Ashton.[/i] He heard his father's voice. The more he hinted, the more those teenage girl's eyes seemed to sharpen. Was he making a point she could see? Was he just weirding her out? Was he standing on proverbial rotten ice? "Such new faces can only be a [b]good[/b] thing, Ms. Vance."

"Emy. Ms. Vance was my mother."

It was so sudden a correction, he felt his eyes narrow in curiosity. His face must have reflected the sentiment. Hearing her tone, hearing her name, made him feel like he wasn't on quite the knife's edge. Normalized her, humanized her. He was only human, afterall. So was she, he wanted to tell her, even if that would taking a step too far right now. And a misstep right now was as dangerous as Emelia Vance was to a vampire in the dark of night. "Emy, I promise in this library you're in no danger."

The handle turned, the door [i]clicked[/i] open, and he pushed at it's hinges: Watcher and Slayer standing in the doorway. How much of the room's chat she caught he couldn't say, but all he caught was Dana the welcome committee. It seemed a poor choice, to him, personally. He never even noticed the sudden silence, he wasn't looking inside the room. Emelia Vance was looking inside the room, but he was looking at her. Her eyes darted to each face in the room, her breath quickened mirroring a quickening of pulse, of anxiety. As calm as she could her eyes slid back to his, and her voice reached out a tone that was quiet even to the man standing inches from her. "Sorry. Not the room I was looking for. New girl mistake." 

She turned on her heel as sharp and quick as a dancer, and was gone. Ash Pierce lingered, physically in place, and mentally too. For a few impossibly long beats the raw feeling of failure stung...but there was more to do with the moment. More that needed saying, and doing. Comfortable as a librarian in a library, he stepped into the room, and closed the door behind him. A tiny smile crossed his lips as he slid out the chair at the head of the study room table, and sat gently, crossing one leg over the other, resting his weight in the back of the chair, leaning his upper body just to the left, his left hand coming to his chin as he sat in thought.

In silence for a few new impossibly quiet beats. 

Finally his left hand removed his glasses, and his blue eyes flashed to each face in the room. That small smile greeting each face. "Well, you all had quite the night, didn't you?" He let the question hang only a moment before pressing on, speaking before any could properly respond. "I have been assisting this group in the past year. Small enough to escape serious notice or suspicious, but enough to have actually helped...after last night, I fear that game is done. Should any of us play at this any longer, one of you, maybe all of you," said like an academic summarizing field measurements it could not be unnoticed, "will die. That girl," his left hand pointed the arm of his glasses at the door, "did what I could not last night and saved all of you. We very sadly cannot yet assume that she will keep doing it. So I must level with all of you...and you must all level with me. Failure to do so on your parts, and I will not blame myself for your deaths. Because make no mistake, something in the supernatural calculus of Washington, Ohio, has changed for the worse."

A tiny, quick, sigh and the glasses were placed on the table before him. "I am Ash Pierce, a member of an ancient order dedicated to studying the supernatural and assisting girls like the one that saved you last night." His right hand rose and his open palm, turned up, waved just-so towards him a few times. [i]Come on, now,[/i] the act said,[i] bring your questions.[/i] "Let's have it out before one of those idiot Vice Principles decides they need to irritate me."