New York: Allie's War, Early Years

He was even Allie's type. She'd always gone for the dark ones.

She watched until he disappeared behind the adjoining wall of the next store front. She caught his stare at Allie, and it struck her that his eyes seemed to have almost no real color to them at all.

"Weird," she said, once he was gone.

"You say that like you're surprised," Jon said, annoyed.

Cass glanced at Allie, curious as to her silence, wondering how she had reacted to the man's departure.

Allie had always collected weirdos. While Cass personally thought her friend was gorgeous, she knew that wasn't the reason. Allie was fairly average by most accounts. While she had stunning...at times riveting eyes, really her face and figure were basically just okay. She didn't fall into the 'pretty girl' rubric in either dress, confidence or manner. Instead, she had a less-obvious quality that tended to be well-appreciated by the full moon crowd. In Jon's words, she was a freak magnet, and always had been. Mia Taylor, Allie's mother, once told Cass that Allie had been nearly abducted, or abducted for short periods of time, six times as a child.

After the second time, her parents gave her a whistle to wear around her neck. Her father had her carrying pepper spray by fourth grade...and once, when he didn't have anything else to give her, a knife. He taught all three of them-Jon, Cass and Allie-how to fire a gun before any of them got to high school, and even then, Cass suspected Allie's "issues" were at least part of the reason.

Her mother tried to get her to keep the GPS implant when she turned eighteen for the same reason, but Al wouldn't hear of it. She got the tattoo along with all of her friends, and got the implant removed.

In any case, stalkers came with the territory in being Allie's friend. Cass barely batted an eye anymore when a new one showed up.

This guy felt different somehow. Cass still hadn't decided if that was a good or a bad thing.

When she saw her friend, she forgot all this.

"Allie?" she said. "Hey. Are you okay?"

"Fine," she said, with no pause.

Her green eyes looked lighter than usual. They seemed almost transparent as they stared out the window, as if following the man somewhere in her mind still.

"Okay, robot girl," Jon joked. "Jesus. Do you need a new boyfriend that badly, Al, that you're looking at your stalkers like that?" He sounded exasperated, but not really angry. "...No wonder the guy's following you around. He probably thinks you have a thing for him."