Erza's POV - THURSDAY

The school week just got harder from the beginning. Not only did I have to worry about Jellal in school, I also had Natsu and Meredy too. Thanks to Gajeel and Juvia I was able to cut off any conversations Jellal would start because they would call me over to do something which was actually running away.

For instance; "Hey Erza!" Jellal called out to me on Tuesday afternoon, "Let's walk home together!"

Suddenly Juvia appeared by my side and linked arms with me. She barely said a word before she whisked me outside and speed walked back to the manor with me.

However on the Thursday walking to school, I was followed by two annoying bloodsuckers who didn't know the meaning of 'personal space' with no one to help me out.

"Erza? Oh Erza!" Natsu sang out either to annoy me, grab my attention or just for kicks. "We're in your class today!"

"No way, I thought that a bunch of jackasses joined my school. Hang on a sec." I stopped and turned to face them, then I clicked my fingers and feigned surprise. "Wow! You two are the jackasses who joined!"

"Your sarcasm really hurts," Natsu whined, rubbing his chest. "Right here," he pointed to his heart.

"Glad I could be of assistance."

Jellal wandered closer to me until we were almost touching, then his breath hit my cheek and I jumped to the other side of the pavement. He looked at me in alarm, whether he knew what he did or not, he didn't realise how it affected me.

Sure I found him and Natsu annoying to the core, but if I wasn't careful I would find myself slowly looking into Jellal's eyes almost willing to give in. Before I could do that, I would snap out of it and slap myself across the face.

"Is something the matter Scarlet?"

"I don't want to catch the idiot virus," I sputtered out, quickly turning on my heels and racing towards the school. Silently I cursed at myself as I tripped up over a fallen branch from one of the trees by the path. Whilst I was falling, I thought that one of the boys would catch me before I actually made contact with the ground.

As I predicted, I ended up not hitting the floor and instead found myself in Jellal's arms.

"Are you okay?" He asked, examining me for any injury.

"I'm fine." Across my cheeks I felt a blush begin to appear, so I wriggled out of his hold and re-adjusted myself, pulling my bag up my shoulder and continuing on forwards. I had to shake off this feeling that Jellal was winning.

Each night I knew that my resistance was getting weaker, I needed a push to help me get through the bet.

When we arrived at school, I made my way over to Lucy but found that a different group had decided to escort me to class. I sighed as Nastu and Jellal linked their arms with mine and manoeuvred my direction.

"Really?" I sighed.

"You've been ignoring us this morning Erza," Jellal said. "You've been asleep for eight hours and you expect us to be okay with the minimal contact?" He shook his head.

"The deal is that you can try whatever after seven at night until morning."

"When is morning though Erza?" Natsu added.

"What?"

"You never really specified when, really morning ends at midday which is twelve. So, I think that we still have some time to try and win." Jellal winked at me. Horror sunk into my chest as the realisation hit me.

I had to be on the defensive in school too.

"No this isn't fair! At school the bet can't exist, no one else can get caught up in this whole thing." I snapped. The boys looked at each other and shared a silent conversation. "Don't tell me that my argument is invalid because then you will both lose a couple of teeth." To exaggerate my point, I put my finger on my canine tooth and tapped it. Natsu gulped at the thought of losing one of his fangs.

"I have an idea." Jellal grinned. "We'll promise not to try anything at school, if one: we can agree that morning ends at midday at the weekend, and two..." He gestured to Juvia and Gajeel who had just entered the classroom. "Those two have to stay out of the bet. I never planned for a third party to join in."

"Same could go for you!" I counter attacked his suggestion. Jellal gave me a look of pure confusion when I said this.

"Pardon?"

"Meredy. We know that you're working together!"

"Meredy? No we're not..." Some sort of realisation hit him out of nowhere and his usually cocky grin turned into a grave frown. "So that's why she's here."

"What? What'd I miss?"

Jellal let go of me and faced Natsu. Both boys looked over to where Meredy would be standing when she arrived, at the front of the class.

"I didn't think anything bad of it, but now that you bring it up Scarlet..." Jellal began. "I have reason to believe that Meredy could be here for you."

"Great. I'm so happy." I dead panned.

"Aren't you scared?"

"Well, from all of the threats you two gave me when we first met and from everything I've learnt about you now... I'd say that she can't be as bad as you."

"No, no..." Jellal looked down and then turned to Natsu. "If she's here then you know who isn't too far behind."

"Who? Oh, oh no." Natsu's eyes widened as realisation hit him like a truck. "She's on her way."

"Who?" I asked, feeling left out of the conversation.

"Erza, we-," Jellal was cut off by the sound of approaching footsteps, he scrambled to his desk and opening his bag, he took out a notepad and started scribbling down notes about something. Natsu joined him and the two shared a silent conversation through the notes. I looked up to see what had disrupted Jellal and saw Meredy at the front of the class, leaning on the desk and smiling at everyone.

"Hello everyone. Today, I've decided to change things up a bit." She took out a marker pen and started writing on the whiteboard behind her. "We're going to have a discussion about some topics. I'll take suggestions too, it won't all be boring."

I wandered over to my desk and sat down, organising my things. I took out my work books and prepared to write down some notes for the discussion when I realised that I'd forgotten my contact lenses. Sure I didn't need them all the time, at the manor I never wore them since I didn't really need them but in school it was a different story. From where I was sat, the writing on the board looked like a blur to me, I would have asked to move if all of the seats by the front weren't already taken up.

Luckily for me, I always kept my spare glasses in my bag in case of emergencies like this. From the corner of my eye I caught Jellal looking at my glasses in confusion. Ignoring him, I propped my glasses on my nose and continued to write down some notes.

Meredy turned back and pointed to the word she'd written on the board. I stopped writing and dropped my pen on the paper. The boys were right in some sense, she wasn't here for a good reason.

The words on the board were "to claim", Meredy looked at the class expectantly. "So, we'll be discussing this today. I'll give a head start, it's a verb."

"What does this have to do with maths?" Gajeel asked, not bothering to raise his hand. As her answer, Meredy threw the whiteboard pen directly at his forehead. Gajeel fell backwards and yelled out as his chair fell back too.

"Uh Miss I'm pretty sure you can't do that to your students!" Levy cried out, whispering to Gajeel to see if he was okay.

"Miss McGarden, you may be able to help keep the ball rolling here." Meredy pointed to the board. "Anything about this word you'd like to add?"

"Well, to claim something is to take possession of it."

"Excellent! So what if someone was to claim something which was already claimed?"

Oh come on, you're being too obvious now. I understand why you're doing this. I groaned mentally.

"That's impossible, if it's already been claimed then it would be unable to claim unless the previous owner decided to pass it on or stopped taking responsibility for the object."

"Fantastic, so what should a person do if the object has already been claimed but they want it?"

"Well, the former owner would either have to give them the object or give it up I suppose. But Miss Meredy what does this have to do with anything?" Levy held up her maths book to act as a shield in case Meredy threw another pen at her.

"It's to help you all with word association and such, in exams you'll need to know what a writer could be trying to tell you from their word choice." Meredy explained although I could feel her words aiming right at me. "So then, does anyone know another synonym for 'claim'?"

"How about a new topic?" Jellal called out.

"Of course, why don't you choose it for us Mr Fernandez?" Meredy smiled and wiped her writing off of the board.

"Let's discuss 'privacy'." He said, crossing his arms. "And how we shouldn't invade other people's business."

Meredy's smile twitched and almost faltered for a brief moment before she grinned at him and wrote the word on the board. "Excellent choice! Now let's see what everyone else can say about this word..." Her eyes scanned the class before getting to me. "Miss Scarlet! Anything to add here?"

"Yeah, get the hell out of my school and go back to the rotten coffin you came from!"... Is what I would have said.  Instead I just shrugged and flipped through the pages of my notebook.

"Oh come on! Surely you must have some secrets, things you wish to keep private."

I looked up at her and glared. "As Jellal said, privacy means keeping secrets and you business to yourself. Therefore I don't see why I should have to share my opinions or 'secrets' with you." Once again her mouth twitched and a scowl flashed across her face for a second before she coughed and regained her composure.

"Very well then. I think we've all had enough of this little exercise. Everyone take out your maths textbooks and answer the questions on pages 112 through to 115. I'll be back in just a moment." With that Meredy left the room and closed the door behind her. Everyone took this opportunity to turn around and talk to their friends, I stood up and made my way towards the two people I despised the most in the room.

"What the hell was that about?" I asked them quietly as to not raise any attention to our conversation. "Could she make her goal any more obvious?"

"We're afraid it's not that simple Erza," Natsu said. "She's using weird psychology on you. Making you think that's the only thing she cares about."

"No but it literally is the only thing you all care about." I answered.

Jellal gave me a look and sighed. "Meredy is the right hand woman to one of the head vampires in Fiore, she acts like our boss when in reality she's not even second in command. Her boss- our boss I suppose- is set on taking your home for her own. Me and Natsu were going to take it from right beneath her as a way to create our own clan but then you came along." His explanation took a moment to sink in. "Meredy is just another pawn, but she's not someone you want to mess with."

"Who is your boss?" I asked.

"We shouldn't say." Natsu admitted.

"Tell me who your boss is or I swear I will kill you both with my pencil." To exaggerate my threat I held up my pencil and twirled it around my fingers.

"We can't Erza." Jellal looked at me and smiled. "So how about you stop asking us."

I glared back at him and said; "No."

He looked startled and repeated, "No?"

"You heard me. I said no."

Just as Jellal was about to speak again, Meredy burst through the classroom door holding a folder close to her chest. She smiled at everyone sweetly and sat down at her desk. "Well? Has anyone finished?"

***

The day seemed to drag on for years and when the final bell rang I couldn't have been happier to be going home. I walked back with Gajeel and Gray who was working on a science project with Gajeel and decided to visit the manor with him. Juvia had a water sprite meeting because her lake was slowly being poisoned by some of the rogue forest nymphs who didn't care for her area in the woods.

"How big is your manor?" Gray asked, stepping over a fallen log in the path leading up to the mansion. "I mean I've heard stories about a big house around here but jeez! What a trek."

"It's maybe a third of the school? Maybe a bit less than that, but it's still easy to get lost I can tell you that." I laughed.

When we arrived at the manor Gray was impressed, his jaw hit the floor on several occasions.

As we began to make our way inside all of our stomachs growled at the same time, this caused the boys to laugh and I offered to make us all some snacks. I raided what was left in the fridge and cupboard and made a mental note to go out shopping at the weekend. Luckily the vampire boys weren't back yet and so it left us three in peace and quiet.

We were munching down some popcorn just before everything went south. Gray brought up the 'substitute teacher' Meredy and expressed his thoughts about her.

"Something seems really familiar with her, she looks around our age too. Just doesn't feel right y'know?" As he took another handful of popcorn and shoved it into his mouth, Gajeel and I shared a look. "Anyway, we should probably get going now right Gajeel?"

"Yeah, well... We'll see you tomorrow Erza. Juvia should be around then okay?" I nodded and silently thanked Gajeel for not making it too obvious that I had them as my vampire protection.

When the boys went to open the door, there stood Meredy in clothing much different from her teacher uniform. She wore a long blue cape and a red dress which would be distracting to the weak minded. Her arm meant against the door frame and she smiled baring her fangs.

"Hello students."

Gajeel immediately placed himself between me and Meredy and held his arm out in front of Gray. "What do you want?"

"Is this any way to treat your teacher?" She smiled and looked at Gray. "Is it, Mr Fullbuster?"

Gray examined her face and his eyes seemed to focus in on one aspect in particular. "Ms Meredy."

"Please it's just Meredy." She cooed.

"If you don't mind me asking," Gray ignored her comment and instead continued on. "Why're you dressed like that?"

"Like this?" As Meredy looked down at her attire, Gray quickly knelt down and took something out from his trouser leg and leapt forwards grabbing Meredy in a headlock and holding her down close to the ground.

Gajeel and I just watched bewildered at the sight in front of us.

"What... the hell?" I managed to say before Gray looked up at us.

"Guys, this may sound insane but Meredy here... she's not human." Upon closer inspection, I managed to see that Gray was holding a silver knife to her neck. "It's okay if you don't believe me but Meredy is a vampire. Just trust me on this okay...? But... I've got to say... you're both acting really calm..."

Gajeel huffed and put his left hand in his pocket. "Yeah, we knew that." He pointed his thumb at me. "This one got herself involved in a deal with two of 'em."

Gray looked shocked at me. "Really?"

"Yeah... but what do you have with them?" I asked.

"Me? My dad and my mentor were vampire slayers. I'm one of the only few left now that I know of, these sons of-,"

"That's enough." A smooth voice called out in the evening breeze. I looked around outside and tried to locate the voice. "Release that girl now, Gray."

Gray's eyes widened as he too frantically looked around him. During his moment of surprise, Meredy broke free of his grip and moved backwards towards where the voice must have been coming from.

"No way... I thought you were dead..." Gray muttered out.

"I am, just not as dead as you'd like me to be." A tall slender woman appeared beside Meredy, her long dark hair reached just above her hips and her pale face wore an inviting but deadly smile. "I don't think we've been introduced Miss Scarlet. My name is Ultear, and I am the rightful owner of this land."

*****

WOO HOOOOOOO

I've been waiting to write that last bit for a while.

Okay! Here's the sitch;

I'm going on a school trip in 8 hours to Italy so I won't be updating/commenting/active/whatever for the next week so don't comment update because it's just annoying (but I love y'all)

I have mock exams (still important though) in 20 days and I'm freaking out so obviously "exams>Wattpad"

Thank you for the continuous support throughout this work! I hope you enjoyed this lil twist I've thrown in and that you keep reading!!

OHC xoxo