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every time she caught the afternoon sun glinting off the bronze spire out of the corner of her eye. It didn’t help her confidence. She knew the fifth graders sensed her jitters. But they behaved, except for the scrabbling sound.
    She’d debated profs three times her age, done presentations for two hundred of her peers, and guest lectured as a grad student, but facing nineteen ten-year-olds wracked her to her last nerve. Thank God for Pippa’s lesson plans.
    “Class, a simile is a comparison using...” Her voice trailed off. She’d written “Black as a” and couldn’t finish because of the writing already there. Beautiful chalk calligraphy.
    Nosce te ipsum . Pippa’s last words to her students. Know thyself . But Sadie knew herself already. It was Pippa’s killer she wanted to know.
    She picked up the brush to wipe it off. Her heart clenched in her chest. She steeled herself to erase Pippa’s handwriting and truly make this classroom her own. She felt her eye twitch.
    The noise again. She whipped around in time to see the cute boy with blond curls faking innocent by turning his eyes to the ceiling. She almost laughed. He’d start whistling soon.
    She put down the chalk brush, grateful to have a reason to leave Pippa’s handwriting on the board, and walked between the desks.
    “Are you unwrapping candy back here?” she asked the boy.
    “No, ma’am.”
    She winced at the “ma’am.” Since she was a young-looking twenty-eight, 'ma’am' had only recently started happening to her.
    The scrabbling noise again. She gave the boy the patented Aunt Pippa stare that had once made Sadie confess to eating the last three cookies. He tried to melt into his chair.
    “What’s in your backpack, Nikkos?”
    A bang on the door snatched Sadie’s attention. The width of dark shoulders silhouetted through the frosted glass left no doubt as to who besieged her classroom. She eyed the bank of windows. Only three stories up, she thought. I could make it.
    Sadie’s arch nemesis burst in without invitation, a walking storm. His dark trousers and dress shirt clung to muscles more befitting a thunder god than a chemistry teacher. And she didn’t mistake those gray eyes for a silver lining.
    The kids looked up at him, awe-struck, like he was Indiana Jones, Wayne Gretzky, and Spider-Man rolled into one.
    She clenched her jaw, ready for battle.
    “New student,” he said, which seemed like an odd declaration of war.
    Then a little black head popped around his thighs. She recognized the girl from the principal’s office yesterday. The cautious, black-eyed stare went straight to her heart. She remembered Gray’s frown. Who knew what torments he’d inflicted on her? Sadie wanted to whisk her away from the bastard.
    “Carmina, Meez Strange,” she said, with a Slavic lilt, when asked her name. Sadie cringed. The Dracula accent wasn’t going to make her life easier. Even wearing the same blazer as the rest of the class, she managed to stick out.
    “It’s my first day, too, Carmina,” she told the girl, doing her best to ignore Gray’s solid glare. “Please go sit in front of...” What was the gray-eyed kid’s name again? Sadie recognized him as the football player who had scowled at her the day before.
    Gray-eyed? Sadie’s eye almost started twitching, even before she snatched a glance at the seating chart. “Sterling.”
    Sterling Gray .
    Well, shit. Gray looked down his Roman nose at her.
    “Thank you for bringing Carmina, Mr. Gray.” Get the hell out of my classroom, Mr. Gray .
    “My pleasure, Miss Strange.” Any chance to check up on you, Miss Strange .
    “Well, we appreciate it. Thanks for coming.” I notice you haven’t left yet. There’s the door. Use it.
    “Perhaps I’ll just sit in on your class for a while. I find English fascinating,” he said. “And I have a free period at this time every day.” You want me to leave? Ha. Do you think it’s a coincidence I have a free period when Sterling is in