Moonshadow by J.D. Gregory

little girl who wanders around where she’s not wanted and is amazed by pretty things. There is not a plane of existence in which you would ever be wanted in this study. Now, will you please leave?” He was beginning to lose his composure.
    She’d definitely had enough of such pompous arrogance and began walking towards the door. Something caught her eye, however, and she stopped abruptly. She turned around to glare at him.
    “I might be wrong, but in this case here you have a cup that is clearly a Minoan Labrys Chalice mixed in with a bunch of Egyptian pottery—it’s the crescent moon shapes and flowery spirals that give it away.”
    Astonishment filled Darien’s face as his eyes quickly darted to the case of ancient ceramics and then returned to meet Diana’s smug grin. “But what do I know? My area of expertise is pretty shiny things.”
    “How—” Darien began, but Diana didn’t give him the courtesy of a retort before she turned and walked out of the room. When she reached the top of the stairs she heard a door slam behind her. Diana smiled with a sense of victory and silently thanked her Grandma Lily for giving her one of Foxwell Flinders’ books on the ancient Minoans the Christmas before she passed away.
    On the ground floor once again, Diana scanned the area for Lani. She’d had about enough of the Shepherds’ house and the party within it. She spotted her roommate on the makeshift dance floor, grooving to the music with Andrew. She was resigned not to ruin Lani’s evening, so she decided to leave on her own.
    Passing through the front yard, fuming with anger, she heard a guy’s voice call to her from behind—it was Eric.
    “Diana, hey—” he began but stopped when he saw the look of anger on her face. “What happened? You look like someone just punched your dog.”
    Oh, it was worse than that. “That guy— ugh ! I have never been treated—he is such an ass-hat! People act like that? Did that really happen?” When she reached her anger threshold, Diana’s sentences usually became short, vulgar, and incoherent. Her dad called her the Tasmanian Devil. Luckily, she had kept it mostly clean. She shouldn’t embarrass herself in front of a guy she had only known for two days.
    She stopped and took a deep breath. Anger combined with social awkwardness was never fun.
    Eric smirked and snatched the bottle from her hand by the neck. “Have a little too much?” He added an arched brow to his smirk once he realized the bottle was full. “Apparently not enough. How about we go inside and I procure you a drink you might actually enjoy. Then you can tell me all about it.”
    Though Diana wanted nothing more than to storm off in anger back to her dorm room, she decided to take Eric up on his offer. “I’d like that.”
    After a warm smile and a quick nod, Eric guided Diana by the hand through the large mass of humanity writhing in the house’s living room and into the kitchen area, where a few kegs had been set up. Quite the beer line had formed of people waiting to fill their plastic cups.
    “Over here,” Eric said once he found a kitchen island displaying a wide array of liquors and spirits, along with fruit juices and other items for making mixed drinks. “What do you like? I know how to make pretty much anything—my mom was a bit of a drunk.”
    “Um…” Diana didn’t really know any mixed drinks—her parents only drank beer—so she went with the first one to pop into her head. “Sex on the beach?”
    Eric smirked. “I figured you’d like something like that.”
    Diana didn’t quite know what to make of his comment.
    Eric went to work on the drink and it looked easy enough. He put ice in a shaker, poured in some vodka, pineapple and cranberry juices, and then gave it a nice shake. When finished, he poured the contents into a tall glass that he grabbed from under the counter; he looked like a pro.
    Eric handed Diana the drink and she took a sip; it was quite delicious.
    “Wow,