Startling, dark eyes caught the throng of reporters off guard as the pearly-white limousine came to a stop in front of the theater, and its willowy occupant looked out of its window.

The place was packed with screaming fans and reporters, standing behind ropes and barriers. Light bulbs flashed and TV cameras rolled as the chauffeur opened the door and a tall man, clad smartly in black, stepped out. The crowd went wild and closed in.

Her head giddy with delight, Marie Laveau took a deep breath as the British actor, Orlando Bloom, forged his way through the throng towards them with a genuinely friendly and excited smile plastered onto his angular and aristocratic face.

It must be nice, she thought, to be a star. Someone exciting and important. When she saw the actor walked onto the red carpet and towards the cheering crowd of fans – she being one of them – she knew she would remember this night for as long as she lived.

In a flash, she raised the banner she made herself, heavily adorned with cutout pictures of Orlando Bloom from various magazines, completed with a big, red heart in the center that said ‘I Love U’ in gold-colored ink.

Her cashmere wrap fell onto her face. Irritated, Marie brushed it off. She had pre-order a dark purple gown that came with a set of gloves and the ivory-colored wrap that she wore now. She wanted to look spectacular when she met the actor. Irresistible would work too.

"Orli!" Marie bounced up and down buoyantly as she screamed out the actor’s nickname, hoping to seize his attention. "Orli! Over here! Over–- whoa, hey!" she yelled when a group of middle-aged hipster girls jostled her, almost causing her to stumble. Damn, she thought, I should have worn my sneakers instead of these high-heels.

She whirled around to face her half-cousin. "Zoe!" she yelled through the cacophony of the crowd. "Can’t you make yourself useful and just, you know, orb these people to Tahiti or something? Instead of just standing there like a simpleton, I mean."

Unlike Marie, Zoe Matthews was dressed in a casual cardigan and a pair of denim jeans. She was simply too vexed to party, and had no idea how Marie could. She didn’t even know what in the world possessed her in the first place to make her agreeing into accompanying Marie. She didn’t even like the British actor, as handsome as he may be.

Zoe planted her hand on her hips and leveled Marie with a livid gaze. "I don’t understand how you can still party like that after all that’s been going on."

Marie ignored her sullen tone. "B-b-but oh my God! Zoe, this is so exciting! I’ve never been to a movie premiere before!"

"Yes, me too, but do you see me jumping around like an idiot?" Zoe spread her hands at her sides, trying to rein in her mounting frustration. She was met with a couple of choleric looks from some nearby fans that had heard her biting remark. Zoe purposefully disregarded them and after a great deal of opposition, she finally managed to pull Marie away to a corner where they were out of earshot.

"What are you doing!?" Marie scowled, seething.

Zoe wanted to break down. "Marie, I know all this is exciting and delirious, b-but is it really okay to have so much fun when Zane is somewhere out there being a Vengeance Demon and killing innocent people?"

Marie’s green eyes glazed with despondence and her cheeks colored with embarrassment. "I know," she said softly, "but it’s like as if we can do much about it."

"Still…" Zoe started, but stopped when someone touched her arm. She turned around, expecting at best one of the security guards coming to tell them off, at worse a demon hell-bent on killing them and crashing the movie premiere.

A man stood in front of her, dressed in black. Oh man, this is so what I do not need right now, she thought as he flashed her a boyish grin.

Marie gawked, enraptured. She began to fluster. "Omigosh, uh, Mr. Bloom, nice to meet you."

The actor chuckled good-naturedly, his dark brown eyes sparkling. "Please," he insisted in a distinctive European accent, "just call me Orlando, or Orly, if you don’t mind."

Marie nodded, tittering, suddenly feeling self-conscious. "Of-of c-course. Could you, you know, um, s-sign this for me?" she stammered, extending the ridiculously large banner towards him. She had thought that it looked pretty good back at the Manor, but now after hauling it all the way upstate for several hours, the banner looked infantile and inadequate.

She peered up shyly at the actor, expecting him to burst out laughing in the not-so-good sense.

Instead, he gave her a charming and toothy smile. "Sure," he quipped, then gleefully accepted the banner and propped it against a wall. He fished out a marker from his front pocket, uncapped it, and scrawled some handwriting onto it. "What’s your name?" he inquired.

"M-Marie."

His handwriting looked like a doctor’s, preposterously cursive yet elegant.

Orlando turned his warm mocha eyes away from the banner when he finished autographing it. Lips pursing in abashment, he handed it back to Marie and laughed. "I think I spelt your name wrongly."

Giddily, Marie accepted it. She was starting to ease up a little. She couldn’t believe that this was happening. The one person that she's been completely obsessed with for the past few years was standing in front of her now - in the flesh! I hope all this excitement doesn’t go to my head, she thought. Wouldn’t want to act like a complete klutz in front of an international heartthrob.

Marie cleared her throat, regained her composure, and stared hard at his writing. She tried hard to stifle a laugh, but it escaped anyway when she choked on it.

Orlando had signed her name as ‘Mary’.

"It’s okay," she laughed, consciously aware that a group of teenage girls were clearly not happy with the amount of attention she was getting. Squaring her shoulders, Marie swallowed hard. "Would you mind giving me a kiss?"

There. She had said it. Oh my god, she thought. Now that I have, I wish I hadn’t! Of all the nerve, Marie! Behind her, Zoe groaned and slapped her hand against her forehead.

A slow grin crossed the man’s handsome face. "Not a problem," he whispered huskily, then cradled her cheek with his palm and brushed his thumb over her lips, making them tingle.

Then his mouth covered hers.

Marie closed her eyes, feeling as though she was being swept through time. Her body grew hot. She’d never experienced a kiss this passionate or so completely consuming. Desperate to imprint the sensation to her forever, Marie rose up on her toes, pressing her body against Orlando’s. She could feel him deepening the kiss, and hear his heart beat. It felt as though all her senses had left her, and there was nothing beyond the kiss.

The kiss grew deeper – and then it changed! Marie gasped as a vision the force of a tsunami bludgeoned her. She couldn’t find a grip, so she allowed herself to fall. A ragged sound of fabric being torn apart was heard as grisly images poured into her mind.

Marie hit the ground as the vision ended. The shrill cry of the little girl still rang in her ears. She vaguely felt Zoe trying to support her and lift her up as her eyes slowly refocused, and her breathing evened.

The theater became silent. But it wasn’t because of her sudden hubbub. Zoe and Marie looked up, and saw that cameras had stopped flashing, and people stood with eyes and mouths wide, hands reaching out. Orlando’s eyes were closed against the blinding flash of a camera.

Time had stopped.

Zack emerged from the frozen crowd, taking care not to bump into them as he wove his way through. "I knew I’d find you here!" he announced crossly as he approached a groggy Marie.

"How?" she asked, rubbing her temple.

Zack gave her a skeptical look. He rummaged through the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a piece of paper. "The next time you try sneaking out of the manor, don’t leave a note saying ‘Be back soon. Went to premiere’."

Marie took the rumpled paper from him and stared at it. It wasn’t her handwriting. Slowly and deliberately, she turned to Zoe. "Care to explain this?"

"I left it. Felt that it was the right thing to do," Zoe simply quipped.

Marie could practically feel the air rush out of her nose like a dragon breathing fire. Her dark eyes narrowed to slits. "You," she seethed. "You are in big trouble."

"And you are in even bigger trouble." Zack grabbed her arm and pulled her away before she could do some serious damage. "How many times have I told you? It’s not safe to go out unless we fix Zane and bring him back!"

Marie felt a chill swirl around her legs. She glanced down and let out a mortified cry.

Her skirt was gone!

She glared at the pool of purple silk on the ground – all that remained of the skirt of her beautiful gown. The cloth was trapped underneath Orlando’s feet. It must have ripped off when she had fallen. She squeezed her eyes shut as tears threatened to fall, and silently followed Zack and Zoe, gingerly weaving her way through the crowd.

A magical night ending with a disappearing act.

Seconds later they’d left the scene, the sounds of the crowd were heard again. Time was no longer frozen.

Orlando Bloom spun around, a bewildered look on his face. Where did that girl go? They had been kissing, and it had been a great kiss, until she’d gasped and suddenly tore away.

And before he knew it, she was gone! Just like that.

Perplexed, Orlando rose onto his toes and scanned the sea of heads before him, trying to catch a glimpse of the girl. He couldn’t see her anywhere.

"What’s going on?" he mumbled to himself. He tried to shrug off the weirdness of the situation and was just about to enter the theater when the sound of a child crying reached his ears.

He whirled around, and saw a little girl standing among the front of the crowd, looking lost. Her round face was red and dirty from crying and her chubby arms clung desperately onto a Winnie-the-Pooh plushy.

He saw the pain in her eyes and his heart went all out for her.

Quickly making his way towards her, Orlando knelt down and touched the girl gently on her arm. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"I-I can’t f-f-find my mommy!" The little girl coughed out.

"It’s okay," Orlando patted the girl softly on her head. "I’ll help you find her." With that, he took her little hand in his, and started walking around, asking the crowd and trying to locate the girl’s mother.

"What kind of mother would leave her daughter unwatched at a movie premiere?" he muttered. "What did she even bring her daughter along in the first place? This is no place for young children."

Inwardly, he became increasingly irritated, as the parent still remained at large. And on top of that, news reporters and cameramen were following his tail wherever he went. Normally, he would have been relatively fine with it. But with the little crying girl at hand, it all seemed a bit too insensitive to him.

Hands grabbed at him as he walked past. Microphones were shoved into his face. One fan even screamed out that she wanted to have his baby. Orlando’s mouth curled in disgust.

His temples started to throb painfully. His vision started to blur and the little girl cried even louder. It seemed to him as though all his energy had been channeled into his sense of hearing, and all he could hear was the tremendous amount of noise around him, drowning and suffocating him. His head was killing him.

The girl wailed.

"Enough!" Orlando exploded, reaching his limit. He jostled the cameramen away and shoved the girl roughly onto the ground. Before he realized it, he held his arms before him and a blast of red light emerged from his palms.

The light enveloped the girl, trapping her in some sort of giant water bubble. She writhed and shrieked out in anguish, then collapsed onto the ground, unconscious.

Orlando let go. The pain in his head was starting to fade away.

All at once, people around him started to scream and gasp in astonishment. They stared at him, terrified. As he tried to regain his bearings, his co-star, Sean Bean, appeared from the crowd and knelt by the unconscious child, checking for a sign of a pulse. He turned to Orlando. "Orly, what did you do?" he asked in a slightly accusing tone.

He shook his head, trying to comprehend what had just happened. "I don’t know. I didn’t do anything."

"The hell you didn’t! We saw you!" Someone shouted huffily. "He’s a mutant!"

A sea of angry faces swarmed before him. They began to chant. "Mutant! Mutant! Mutant!" It grew louder and angrier by the second.

Screaming fans that were screaming his name out in adoration a few moments ago were now backing away in fear and apprehension.

Orlando looked like he'd just been shot. His body stood frozen, rooted to the spot. He looked like a lost and frightened puppy. His eyes were wide open with terror, darting from side to side, and his lips parted as small breaths came out in a rapid array of panic.

Without thinking, he started running, disappearing into a throng of fans that stretched down the street. His agent, Fiona Masters, who had not witnessed the scene, called out after him, but he just kept running.

His legs pumped and his heart pounded. I can’t believe this, he thought as he ran past curious passerby with tears streaking down his face. I can’t believe that this is happening. I don’t even know what is happening. This is absolute shit. A magical night ending with a disappearing act. What am I gonna do?

He made his way into a secluded park and then, when he felt like he could run no further, Orlando’s tired legs gave way and collapsed upon his own weight.