Hello all you TDI and TDA fans out there! I hope your all having a good summer break! (I know I am!) Anyways, I have been reading some wonderful fan fiction lately and I've decided to give it a try! I hope you all like it! It's mainly a Courtney x Duncan story, there will be minor Bridgette x Geoff, Trent x Gwen and other pairings the further along with the story I get! I do NOT own TDI or TDA or any characters from the show, but I do own the story line. (It's actually a very fragmented version of the story line for my novel!) This first chapter is somewhat short and this story is currently rated M for language only, which will change in later chapters, to language and sex. ^_^ Please read and review! I am working on chapter two and it should be up sometime within the next 48hrs! Happy readings! ~Firefly~

Chapter One

On November 28th, 2008 I died. I remember the night of my death quiet vividly, after all I've only been dead for three months. That day I had been at my part time job at the Wal-Mart in Nixa. I was a cashier there and it had been a relatively good day. At least it was until around nine in the evening, that is when, excuse my language, the shit hit the fan. I was scanning the last of the woman's items. She was tall, had long black hair, she looked liked she had a little bit of Asian in her, but it was faint enough that I wasn't sure. Her eyes were a grayish black and it felt like she could see into my soul. She watched the prices like a hawk, I was happy when I finally scanned the last of her items.

"Your total is one hundred dollars and ten cents." I said politely.

"Okay." Her voice shocked me, instead of being harsh and demanding it was smooth and had a motherly tone to it.

She handed me a hundred dollar bill and a dime. I hit the cash button twice, and turned slightly to tear the receipt off the printer. When I turned back the woman was gone. I didn't make anything of it, some people just didn't want their receipt. I threw the receipt into the trash can, and went to place the money in its proper slots. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is when I noticed it. She'd handed me a twenty instead of a hundred like I thought. Shit. I had frozen with fear, you know the kind where you know, that you fucked up big time and there was no way out of it? Yeah, that's how I felt. The woman had been a con artist, an extremely good one at that. I swear the bill that she had handed me was a hundred, not a twenty, but there I was with a twenty in my hand. At that time, I thought that my dyslexia had somehow come into play. It was a stretch even for me. I know better now, it wasn't my dyslexia, the woman, she wasn't a human, but a vampire. She had used mind control on me, to make me think that I was holding a hundred and when she left the store her powers went with her. Confused? Yeah, I know, why exactly was a vampire buying groceries? I still haven't figured that one out, I suppose that I could just go ask Heather, now that I live in the same house as her, but honestly she still scares the hell out of me. Anyways, back to the night of my death. I was now faced with the difficult task of going up to my boss and telling him about my little encounter with the con artist. I was going to get fired. With a defeated sigh, I slammed my cash drawer closed, flipped off the light at my register and approached my boss, Frank. Frank was a pot bellied man, with a balding head and tiny round glasses, I often wondered if this was what Harry Potter was going to look like when he hit is mid forties.

"Hello Katelyn, how are you tonight?" He greeted me with his best professional smile, he was one of the last people to call me Katelyn. When I died, I was given a new name, Courtney. Don't get me wrong, I love my new name, it just sounds so odd, when I introduce myself as Courtney…I mean I had been called Katelyn for the last twenty-three years of my life, I'm still adjusting.

"Did you need something?" he asked politely, I took a deep breath and stared at my shoes, as I told him what happened. When I gathered the courage to look up, his face was a mixture of shock and regret. He took a deep breath and said, "Let's go to the back." I followed him, I must have gone into shock, because I don't really remember what happened next. I remember going into the manager's office and signing a paper, going to my locker, gathering my purse and walking out of the store. Once my feet hit the parking lot, I came back to my senses. It was around nine-thirty at night and the sun was gone. Gotta love those winter evenings, the sun doesn't even like the cold, once six o'clock hits, it hightails it to the other side of the world. I pulled my black pea coat tighter around me. Halfway to my car, I pulled my keys out and hit the unlock button, on my clicker. The inside light to my Ford Explorer came on. after opening the driver's door, I tossed my purse into the passenger seat and climbed in. The door came closed as I started the car. The tears didn't begin falling until I turned onto Main Street, my vision was blurred, I didn't care.

How could my day possibly get worse?