Arla shrugged at Rayth’s response, adjusting her hold on the door flap. “You should smell the locker room after track practice. Besides. Aren’t—” she cast a quick glance through the opening. Though no one else stood nearby that she could see, she lowered her voice, all the same, “vampires supposed to have super-smell or something?”
	She watched him as he stepped toward her, doing her best to ignore the impulse to step away. She shrugged again at his dismissal of her perfume idea, pretending she knew what [i]Eau de Déchets[/i] meant outside of apparent context. “Hey, it worked for [i]Monster’s Inc.[/i]”
	She raised her brows at him as he passed, adding another epithet to her list.
	“Woof, woof, Count von Count,” she said, letting the flap fall back into place, refusing to let him have the last line of banter.
	She hurried to catch up to him, once more keeping herself between him and the party-goers.
	The music from the after party still drummed through the warm night’s air, but conversations had died down, as if a majority of the guests had left. Her brows furrowed. She had no idea what time it was, but it seemed a bit early to call it a night, even by normal standards. 
	Wondering how many people still remained, she started to turn her head toward the covered festivities. Rayth’s voice called her attention fully back to him before she could get any kind of good look.
	She ran her tongue over the back of her teeth, debating on how much to tell him. She’d practiced a cover story, down to a fake ‘hometown’ if she could get away with it. With a mental shrug, she decided the vague truth wouldn’t do any harm.
	“Sorta,” she began, matching her pace to his. She looked upward to him, even the boy towering over her. Though, that wasn’t exactly the hardest thing in the world to do. “Just outside Los Vegas.” She cocked her head slightly, curiosity replacing a majority the caution in her gaze. “What about you?”