Eye of the Beholder

Chapter One

It all started with that damn website. If Caelan hadn’t found it, none of this would have happened.

Actually, that’s probably not true. I was caught between two worlds and living in neither—you can guess how well that was working. It was only a matter of time before everything boiled over. The website just happened to be the last bit of heat needed to send us all over the edge.

I was at the diner for the grand re-opening party on Sunday night. We’d been out of business for well over six months, and in order to jump start demand at the new and improved Silver Spoon, I’d decided to throw a party…with free food. It was amazing what people would forgive for a little cake and punch. Citizens of Silver Springs who would have happily spit on me yesterday were enjoying a second round of appetizers tonight. All hail the healing power of pigs in a blanket.

But despite the obvious success of the party, I couldn’t enjoy it. Just because people showed up for free food didn’t mean they’d come back when they had to pay. And unbeknownst to my brother Scott, I’d used our last bit of money to pay for the spread tonight. So while I dashed to and from the kitchen, dodging the carefully timed elbow or sudden appearance of a size 11 foot in my path—evidently free food didn’t make them that happy—my brain was pre-occupied with more mundane things. Like, how the hell was I going to keep my brother from finding out that we were more than a month late on the house mortgage? How could I hire people when I had no money? And my personal favorite, exactly how much did it cost to declare personal bankruptcy? It actually costs money to declare that you have no money—did you know that?

All of this was perhaps why I missed the signal. I was bussing a table in the far corner of the diner—my least favorite task. When I reached for the last coffee cup, it slipped away from my fingers. So caught up in my own thoughts and worries, I didn’t even pause before trying to grab it again. After all, wet hands, slick ceramic surface—no mystery there.

Until it shot away from my grasp in a zig zag pattern across the table, accelerating until it hurled itself over the edge, smashing into the ground with a much louder than normal crash. My heart jumped into my throat.

The party stopped for a second, everyone looking around for the source of the sudden noise.

I waved it off, plastering on a fake smile as best I could. “No problem. Just a little clumsy.”

From across the room, I heard Sheriff Brigham’s familiar snicker. “Probably thought it was one of them alien-possessed cups.”

Oh, yes, the trauma of my life was one never-ending source of amusement for Brigham. Always glad to help. Though, this time, he might have been closer to the truth than he ever dreamed.

My new powers tended to be a little out of control at times, but more often than not, they did what I wanted, just in excess. So, if I wanted the cup to be in my hand, it would have flung itself at me full-force, not run away. That meant someone else was here and, more likely than not, having a laugh at my expense. And now was so not the time.

As I set the gray plastic tub of dirty dishes on table and bent down to pick up the shattered ceramic remains, I caught sight of Mrs. Sutton’s pale face and wide-eyed stare.

“Did you see…that cup…it moved like it had a mind of its own. I never…” She raised a hand to the silk scarf at her throat, clearly unsettled by the whole unpleasant matter.

I rolled my eyes. Of course, this little incident would have to happen in front of the biggest gossip in town. Mrs. Sutton owned the women’s boutique next door. She must have come from a rich family because otherwise I didn’t see how she could stay in business in a town where the sales at Farm and Fleet determined the new look for the season. During the slow hours for her store, pretty much from nine until five every day, Mrs. Sutton liked to pass the time with her nose pressed against the front window of her shop and the phone imbedded in her ear.

I shrugged, pretending nonchalance. “Oh, you know, the table was wet and there was probably an air bubble or something trapped under the cup…” Despite the fact that the table was clearly bone-dry and the cup had been right-side up at the time.

Mrs. Sutton looked less than convinced.

“Excuse me,” I muttered. Standing up, I grabbed the tub of dirties and headed for the kitchen, cursing Namere under my breath. It had to be her. She’d probably flipped the locks on the back door in the kitchen to let herself in—being an alien-human hybrid with limited telekinesis did come in handy sometimes.

“Everything all right?” Scott looked up from re-filling punch cups as I passed. His black hair was ruffled from all the running around, trying to keep up with everyone’s demands, and on his cheeks, his olive skin held a deep ruddy color from the exertion.

“Oh, just dandy,” I said grimly. Or, it would be as soon as I got my hands on Namere. She knew better than this. Last time she’d slipped into town, we’d had a conversation about this very same thing.

Scott frowned, reaching up to shove his glasses back into place from where they’d drifted down his ski-slope nose. “Zara—”

I ignored him, plunging through the swinging door into the kitchen. I’d had the party catered—mainly because I’d barely talked Lucy, our cook, into coming back to work and I hadn’t wanted to push my luck. So no one should have been in here. Should being the operative word.

The kitchen, with the shutters drawn over the order window and the lights down to save money, appeared as silent and empty as before. But I knew better.

Dropping the plastic tub on the center island, I spun around the room, searching. “Namere, what the hell is wrong with you?” I said in a whisper as loud and angry as I could make it. “I’ve got an entire room full of people out there who saw that little trick of yours. How am I supposed to explain—”

Caelan emerged suddenly from the shadowy corner near the back door. “You would have preferred I enter through the front door to speak with you?”

I froze. Seeing him hit me the way it always did—like a fist in my stomach, taking my breath away. Tonight, he wore a short sleeved black t-shirt that revealed the thick curves of his biceps and faded jeans that looked soft to the touch. His dark hair seemed longer, almost brushing his collar now, but then again, he probably couldn’t come into town for a haircut. It didn’t matter. He looked good, as usual, but it was more than that.

He stirred up a craving in me, a desire I tried to keep buried most of the time. It wasn’t sexual. Well, not all of it. When he was around, my skin practically crawled with the need to touch him. To feel his arms around me, holding me tight against the warmth of his body. To hear him speak words of soothing and comfort and sense the rumbling of his voice in his chest beneath my cheek. To taste him and fill the empty spot inside me that I hadn’t even known existed until I met him.

But he’d made it quite clear on multiple occasions that his feelings weren’t quite the same. Oh, he loved me all right, and even found me attractive enough to sleep with…once. But for him Zara, the individual, was all mixed up in Zara, the prophesied leader, and he couldn’t separate “us” out. And since loving Zara, the individual, might jeopardize the life or judgment or something of Zara, the leader, he bowed out. Just turned his feelings right off and left me hanging with an open hole where my heart used to be.

I turned away from him, grabbing the tub of dishes and dragging them over to the dishwasher set under the counter on the other side of the kitchen…as far from him as possible and still in the same room. “What do you want?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him start toward me. I hastily yanked open the dishwasher and began slamming the dirty dishes into place on the wire racks. But the distraction did not help. I could still feel him approaching, like an invisible string tied us together, tightening as he came closer.

Keeping my eyes trained on my task, I didn’t look up until he held a small square of paper in front of my eyes. 8 ½ x 11 sheets of paper folded perfectly into fourths.

I straightened up and wiped my hands on my apron before snapping the square from his fingers, careful not to touch him or even look at him in the process. “What is this?”

“Just read it.”

I shook my head. “Tell me what it is, and then I’ll read it.” Oh, yes, welcome to my life. A constant battle of wills with everyone around me. That’s what happens when your life turns upside down and you don’t know who to trust.

He remained silent, and a quick sideways glance revealed his full mouth set in a firm line. He wasn’t budging.

“Fine,” I muttered, flipping the papers open. After all, it was just paper. What could it possibly say that would shock me now?

I skimmed the first page, a printout from a website, and immediately went still, a cold sweat breaking out over my face. Shit. “Did anyone else see this?” I asked.

“It is on display for the world to see.”

“No, I mean, did Asha—”

“Would I be speaking to you if she had?”

“Good point.”

I moved around him to lean against the island. My legs needed the support. The printout itself looked rather innocuous. Mostly print, not a lot of graphics, aside from the banner with the name of the organization, The Order of the True, across the top. But as they say, the devil is in the details. Or maybe it’s God. I couldn’t remember, but either way, it wasn’t looking good this time.

The page told a simple, abbreviated version of the events that occurred a few months ago. It started by describing Nevan, one of the Observer Council members, and his attempt on my life with the diner bomb. The story ended with a detailed re-telling of his death at my hands in a secret underground facility.

Problem was, I’d claimed ignorance as to Nevan’s fate and/or his whereabouts to the police, the FBI and anyone else who felt like asking. To do otherwise pretty much condemned me to life in prison, or worse, a mental institution. Even though I’d killed him, burned him alive with fire from my own hand, in self-defense, that explanation only worked if they believed Nevan was after me for some reason. And nobody would believe me if I told them the truth. Seriously, how many alien/human hybrids do you know? Maybe more than you think if there are others like me, ones who look completely human. And that was the part Nevan found threatening.

“At least this explains some of the mail I’ve been getting,” I muttered. The local Humanists hated me and went out of their way to prove it, but lately I’d been getting glowing letters of praise from a bunch of out of town branches of the extremist group, even cards commending my bravery and one flower delivery.

I’d thought it was a joke, proof positive that bigots actually do have a sense of humor. But apparently, the researchers for the website hadn’t dug deep enough to discover the truth about my questionable heritage. I couldn’t blame them. It made a much more inspiring story for their cause this way. Poor little human takes on the big evil alien and defeats him. It wouldn’t have had quite the same effect to paint it as alien versus alien.

“So, who talked?” As far as I knew, only the five of us—me, Caelan, Asha, Thane and Namere—were aware of what really happened that night. Nevan and his other team of hybrids—we called them drones because they seemed to be under some form of mind control—were dead. And Scott, who’d unfortunately been pulled into the mess by Nevan as a bargaining chip, had been unconscious for most of it and relied on my lies for the rest. “Asha?”

Caelan shook his head. “She wouldn’t do this.”

I raised my eyebrows. It was exactly the kind of thing she would do. She wouldn’t kill me. No, she couldn’t risk dividing her group over the issue. But making my life difficult? Oh, yeah, she’d enjoy that.

“She would not do this,” he insisted. “It places our lives in danger as well, and you know that she would die herself before taking that chance, particularly for petty revenge.”

“It doesn’t even mention you guys,” I pointed out.

“No,” he said. “But suppose a Humanist decides to greet you in person. He will arrive in this town and find that you are despised by his brethren here and rumored to have association with four Observers living outside of town. What would happen?”

I sighed. “He’d probably feel cheated, go back and get some of his buddies and it’s all ‘shotgun rally at my house.’”

“Asha did not do this,” he said.

“Someone did.”

“There is more,” he said gently. “You must see the second page.”

Great. How much more could there be? The first page already contained enough to put me away for twenty-five to life. To be honest, I was a little surprised I wasn’t finding this out from the comfort of my very own jail cell. If this story found its way to the right ears, particularly the big ones belonging to the government, I couldn’t imagine I’d be in the free world of non-communal showers for very long.

My chest locked up at just the idea of a 5’ by 5’ cell, and I started to wheeze. I shoved away from the island to pace slowly, measuring my breaths

Caelan came closer, stopping a few feet from where I was attempting to wear a tread in the new linoleum. “Are you all right?”

“Don’t…just don’t.” I wasn’t even quite sure what I was telling him not to do. Don’t talk to me, don’t pretend to care about me, don’t stand there and not touch me. But “don’t” would pretty much cover all of that, fortunately.

“Where is your inhaler?” The word still sounded foreign from him, like it left a strange taste in his mouth.

I dug it out of my pocket reluctantly. “I don’t have problems much anymore.” Now that the nightmares had stopped, I was getting better. But I couldn’t shake the occasional panic attack, particularly when it came to small spaces or even just thinking about them. Part and parcel of being hidden inside a drawer as a small child in a secret Observer research facility for God knows how long until my creator found a way to sneak me into the human population. Ah, yes, the ideal childhood.

I sucked in a puff from the inhaler and felt it kick in almost immediately, loosening up my chest. “So why did you bring me this?” I waved the papers in my hand at him, trying to distract myself. “Other than to torture me, I mean.”

Caelan waited until I paced by him and pulled the papers from my cold fingers. He removed the top sheet off and placed it beneath the second. “Here. This.” He leaned closer to me, holding out the papers.

I took them from him, noting that he, too, took care not to touch me. Though I felt certain he did it to prevent some kind of accidental connection between us, not because it hurt too much, which was my reason.

The top of the page said simply, More Observer Secrets: What They Don’t Want You To Know. Underneath the headline, they’d posted four, no, five color photos of the Observer tattoo. It wasn’t really a tattoo, more like some kind of identifying mark, grown into the skin at the small of their back. I’d only ever seen two up close before: Caelan’s, when I first met him and had to remove chunks of glass from the diner explosion from his back, and one belonging to a D462, a female drone Nevan summoned specifically for the purpose of showing me her mark. He felt it proved Caelan and the others were supposed to be like her, mindless and robotic, completely under his control. Those two marks had been identical, a blue green planet slowly being consumed by the reds and yellows of fire. Some kind of planetary-wide disaster…or victory, I supposed.

This tattoo looked different. No trace of the blue-green planet remained. It was simply a planet on fire, or perhaps a depiction of our sun or a star like it. Yellow, red and orange licks of flame leapt off the main body of the star or planet, making it an irregular circle. Even in these low-res photos, the colors appeared to be as bright and fresh as the ones I’d seen on Caelan’s skin.

“How did they get these pictures?” I asked. Observers, drones or Council members, typically weren’t running around shirtless and posing for pictures, and certainly not with people who wanted them dead or off the planet and didn’t care much which way it ended up. The logical answer was that the mark was a fake, added with the magic of Photoshop. But to fake it, the Humanists would have had to known about the mark and probably even seen one to create such a similar looking thing. I’d never even known such a thing existed until I saw it on Caelan, and I’d been the most avid collector of Observer facts and rumors.

Caelan lifted a shoulder. “I do not know. But look at her hair.”

I opened my mouth to object to his use of the feminine pronoun. Not a single photo was shot from the front or revealed a face. But then I took a closer look. In two of the photos, where the photographer had backed off a little to reveal the mark’s position on an otherwise smooth, unblemished back, the arms were clearly being held overhead, emphasizing the slim line of the waist and curve of the hips. A female form, definitely. But I still didn’t see her hair. All the photos were shot from the shoulders down.

He leaned his head closer to mine, lowering his finger over the photo in the far right hand corner. “This one,” he said.

I took a deep breath, struggling to concentrate on the photos in front of me instead of his mouth, inches

from mine. Even if I attempted to kiss him, he would just move away. It was that thought that cleared my head enough to allow me to focus.

The photo Caelan pointed to was the only other one that had been taken a couple feet away from the Observer. This time, the shoulders and the first few inches of neck made it into the shot. There. Something over the left shoulder. A whitish-blur. A reflection of some kind? The poor quality of the photos made it hard to tell. It looked almost like a white feather had drifted over her shoulder at the exact moment of the photo and…

“She has white hair.” Actually, in real life, her hair would probably have a translucent white and silver look to it, like Namere’s. The color wasn’t common among the drones, but all the Council members had hair like this. Suddenly the significance of all the clues came together for me.

My heart leapt, and a grin spread across my face. “You think this is her. The one we’ve been looking for,” I said.

Before he’d died, Nevan had ranted and raved about a mysterious female, one he blamed for ruining him. According to him, “she” was the one responsible for creating me, in some kind of competition against Nevan. She’d also freed Caelan, Asha, Thane and Namere from the mind-control that would have made them drones, though we had no idea why. We wanted to find her because she might be our only ally in the coming conflict. Well, assuming there’d be one. Nevan made it sound like the Observers had an elaborate plan for taking over the planet. That didn’t bode well for the humans or the rest of us.

Unfortunately, that was about the extent of information about “her.” We assumed she was the same one I’d seen in the nightmares/repressed memories that had tortured me for years. We suspected she’d at one point been a Council member, based on what Nevan had said, though none of the current female Council members matched my memory of her face. And believe me, I’d pored over the surveillance pictures Asha and the others had taken, looking for the faintest resemblance.

If these website photos were of her, then it was the first real proof we’d found that she wasn’t some figment of Nevan’s paranoid imagination.

“I believe it is her, yes,” Caelan said with a smile.

Our gazes met. With the silver protective layer in his eyes nearly gone, the soft human brown color of his eyes showed through. For a split second, I thought for sure my heart would stop beating. He was so close…the air I breathed held his familiar, warm scent and I could feel the heat of him like I was standing too close to a fire.

Unable to help myself, I moved just a micron closer and…

He looked away abruptly, taking a step back.

My face heated with embarrassment, and I moved around him, back toward the dishwasher, like that was what I’d intended to do all along. “So what does this mean?” I asked, stuffing the papers into the back pocket of my jeans.

“It explains why she is no longer among the Council,” he said. “If they’re holding her captive—”

I shook my head and loaded more glasses into the top rack of the washer. “How would a bunch of humans go about holding an Observer Council member against her will? That doesn’t make sense.” Council members are strong, their powers greater than any of the hybridized versions, let alone pure humans.

“It does not make sense,” he agreed. “That is why I want to go there.”

I turned to stare at him. “You want to go there? Visit the Humanists? Are you crazy?”

He said nothing, his brown and silver eyes watching me intently.

“In case you haven’t noticed, they’re not exactly rolling out the welcome mat for people like us.”

He frowned slightly, and I knew he was working through my welcome mat reference. I’d tried for awhile to eliminate stuff like that from the way I talked, but easier said than done.

“They might try to kill us…or at least have us arrested,” I said.

“Not if they do not know we are there.”

Have I mentioned what Caelan’s special ability is? Yeah, he can make people see what they expect to see, whether it’s an empty room or great-Aunt Mabel. He reads your mind and makes your thoughts a temporary reality. Setting things on fire or throwing chairs around the room is handy, but being able to alter someone’s perception of reality—that’s a whole other class of weaponry, in my opinion.

“That’s way too risky. Asha will never go for it.”

“I’m not asking Asha,” he said mildly, a gentle but inescapable reminder of who he thought should be in charge.

Unwilling to get into that argument again, I asked the easier question. “Just us?”

He nodded, a single up and down motion.

Before I could stop it, a much too happy smile appeared on my face.

“Zara,” he said with some hesitance. “That does not mean anything has changed.”

I nodded much too quickly and looked away. “I know that.” But I’d hoped, for the tiniest of seconds…

He continued, his earnestness showing through. “But perhaps when we find her, she can explain how we are meant to work together so that—”

“I can have sex again without worrying about killing someone?” I asked flatly.

In truth, I was being a little melodramatic. Nothing indicated that a human male would suffer the nearly fatal side effects that Caelan had after we’d…well, afterward. The irony, of course, being that I found myself hard-pressed, no pun intended, to even feel the remotest spark of attraction to someone completely of this Earth. Ain’t life grand?

But Caelan, not one for flinching from the truth, simply nodded again. “Yes.”

“Fabulous. So when does this little adventure of yours start?” I closed up the dishwasher with a thud and clatter of the contents on the rack rolling into place.

“Tonight. Now, if you are willing.”

I shook my head with a smile. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No.”

I stared at him. “I’ve got a diner full of people out there who are just waiting for me to put one foot wrong so they can comfortably run me out of town. Not to mention the fact that we open again tomorrow with pretty much only Scott and me on staff.”

He stiffened. “When do you suggest, then?”

“Where is this place?”

“They have an address in Midland for contributions to their cause. Humans are never far from their

money,” he said without venom, more as a statement of fact.

Okay, Midland was about four hours away. Four hours to get there, four hours to get back, plus a couple of hours to sit there and watch or get in and search the place…ten hours, at least. But the diner closed at 10:00 p.m. and opened at 6:00 a.m., not to mention all the clean-up and prep time.

“The diner closes after lunch on Sunday,” I said finally. “If I stick Scott on clean-up duty,” which meant I’d have to come up with some reasonable excuse why, but I’d worry about that later, “and we leave right away—”

“Sunday. That is a week from now,” he said with a frown.

“So?”

He stepped closer to me, urgency in his voice. “Zara, we cannot wait. If the Council members or your government discover this information is available—”

I shook my head. “There are tons of websites out there, all of them with their own theory about who I am and what actually happened that night.” It was kind of disturbing, actually. Enough so I’d stopped Googling myself. I’d become the Lindbergh baby of my century, except, of course, I was still alive…for now. “Nothing makes this website stand out anymore than the rest.”

“It is the truth. The others are not,” he said.

“Nobody knows that except us,” I pointed out. “But if we go there and we’re caught, it will only draw more attention to their theory. If we ignore it, they’ll treat it like all the others, a bunch of wild rumors.”

“The truth is recognizable even when it is presented in the midst of lies,” he said. “It is the only theory that accounts for everything, including the source for the burn on your arm. Someone will recognize it for what it is.”

“All the better to stay away,” I said. “Plausible deniability.”

He let air out slowly from his mouth, his version of an exasperated sigh, which wasn’t nearly as huffy as mine. “We have searched for months for anything to lead us to her. This is the first true possibility and you would ignore it?”

I gritted my teeth, trying not to grind off the enamel before I trusted myself to speak again. “I’m not ignoring it. I have other responsibilities. The diner, Scott’s tuition, two mortgages. Hell, even the credit card people are starting to call.” I raked my hands through my hair. “Unlike you, I don’t have proceeds from a multi-million dollar deal lying around.”

“I have offered to provide you with—”

“And how would I explain where the money came from, huh?” I demanded, resting my hands on my hips.

Caelan met my eyes, the silver in his gaze burning into me. “You are different than we are. Being raised among the humans has given you a better understanding of their culture and behavior. It is an advantage, except when you hide behind it.”

“I’m not—” I realized I was shouting and forced myself to bring it down a notch. “I’m not hiding. I just can’t drop everything and leave Scott—”

“This is not your life. You are not the relative he believes you to be, you are not the family he clings to. That is an illusion, a lie created to keep you safe until we could find you again. You are An’Ashi, and you belong with us, as our leader.”

I gave a bitter laugh. “I knew it was eventually going to come back around toward this.” I turned away from him, jabbing blindly at the dishwasher control panel until the machine started making noise.

“You have avoided participation in all our other efforts.”

“I hardly think you need me there while you skulk around behind trees and take some photos,” I pointed out. “Besides, Asha said my thoughts ‘announce my presence with a scream,’ whatever that means.”

“You do not visit our residence,” frustration colored his voice, “nor do you have any knowledge of the activities that take place in your absence—”

“Is there something going on?” I demanded. “Nobody said anything to me.” Asha was known to be slightly crazy. I’d forced her to swear she wouldn’t harm the others for their temporary loyalty to me. But how good was her word when no one was out there to enforce it? I felt a quick flash of guilt. Not that I could have made her. When someone’s willing to kill you and you’re not able to promise the same, it sort of unbalances the relationship.

“The others ask why, and I have no answer,” he said.

I threw my hands up in the air. “We’ve been over this. No one knows for sure if that vision you saw was for real or something she, whoever she is, planted in your head. And even if it was real, you said it showed me triumphing over Nevan. Okay, so I already did that. It didn’t even mention anything after that point, did it?”

“Why do you fight so hard against the truth?” he asked.

I advanced on him. “Because it isn’t truth. It’s a belief. And one belief can be just as true as another.”

“You believe Nevan over me,” he said. Nevan had once stated very clearly that we were all nothing more than tools, objects to be used at the Council’s convenience. So, there was no destiny for me as leader, no fate-willed order of events.

“No,” I said immediately. Well, not exactly. Nevan had tried to kill me—that tended to take points away from his trustworthiness in my book. But Caelan…oh, Caelan believed in me too much. If the prophecy had called for me to sprout wings and fly them all to the moon, he would have immediately started searching my back for random feathers. I couldn’t live up to that kind of expectation, nobody could.

“I do not expect you to be something you are not,” he said quietly. “Unlike others in your life.”

My shoulders slumped. “That’s not fair.”

He came closer, until I could see from the tips of his boots to his t-shirt without even looking up from the ground. “Why do you want so badly to be less than what you could be?”

“What, normal?”

“Human.”

Suddenly, I felt the warmth of his fingers beneath my chin and his thumb brushing along my cheek. I tried not to breathe, fearing even the slightest movement would scare him to the other side of the room again.

He tilted my chin up slowly, his gaze falling on my mouth. Without thinking, I wet my lips, and his breath caught in his throat.

“Do you think I find this pleasurable?” He inched closer to me, whispering the words against my cheekbone. “To be so close and yet unable to touch you the way I want? To know you find my presence painful?”

“No, I—”

He closed the distance between us, his mouth brushing over mine in the lightest kiss imaginable. And yet I found myself shaking, my hands clutching at the front of his t-shirt.

He backed away an inch or two, his breath racing. I could feel his heart pounding beneath my hand. Thus encouraged, I followed him, touching my mouth to his in the same light and gentle manner.

His hands grasped at my hips, and I could feel the tension in him as he struggled not to pull me closer. We were dancing on a razor-fine edge, and heaven help me, if that didn’t add to the rush.

I hadn’t kissed him in so long, not even when I discovered he was alive after three months of thinking he was dead. Denying this impulse only made our reaction to each other stronger. From this outwardly simple kiss, my ears were ringing, and I felt light-headed and dizzy. Logic and rationale had left the building.

“We need to stop,” he said against my mouth. “This is dangerous.”

But he didn’t move away, so I took the opportunity to taste his bottom lip with my tongue.

He groaned and pulled me closer, his hands grinding my hips against him. Then, he turned us and pressed my back against the island.

I wrapped my arms around his neck, my hands at the back of his head, pulling him closer.

“Inside your head,” he whispered, “it is only ‘mine, mine, mine.’”

“Uh huh. You…make me… incapable…full sentences.”

His mouth curved in a smile beneath mine until I reached between us, fumbling for the edge of his t-shirt to find bare skin and the top button of his jeans.

He sucked in a breath, and now I was the one smiling. “That’s what I thought,” I said against his mouth.

But then suddenly, he froze, his entire body going rigid and tense against mine. A half second later, I heard Scott’s voice getting louder. “…don’t know. I’m sure she’s here somewhere.”

Oh, crap. Without thinking, I pushed Caelan back from me. But he didn’t go far, just stood there, his mouth tight and a challenge in his eyes.

“Please,” I whispered. “If he sees you, he won’t understand.”

“Because you have lied to him.”

“I’m trying to protect him.” I risked a glance over my shoulder to the swinging door. “Please.”

His expression turned cold and impassive, all traces of the heat we’d experienced together gone. “You are protecting yourself as much as him,” he said flatly.

“Please,” I begged.

Scott’s hand thumped on the swinging door into the kitchen a second before he stepped inside. “Hey, you okay?”

I spun around to face Scott, keeping my eyes trained on him so as not to give Caelan away. “Yeah, I’m fine.” My voice sounded entirely too high-pitched, and I didn’t trust myself to move.

“What are you doing back here anyway?” he asked, a frown in his voice. “Why’s your face all red?”

Oh, Lord. “I was loading the dishwasher, and I just needed a minute to myself, if that’s all right with you.” I could hear the thick thread of tension in my voice and prayed he wouldn’t question me on it.

He held his hands up. “Okay, okay. Don’t take my head off.”

“I’ll be right out.”

“Bring more punch, okay?”

“Yeah, fine.”

Muttering to himself, Scott turned, his sneakers squeaking on the new floor. The door swung shut after him, muffling the noise of the party once more.

I waited for a beat to make sure he was really gone.

“Do you still think you are not hiding?” Caelan asked stiffly.

Sighing, I turned toward him. “It’s not that simple.”

“It can be, but you choose complications.” His words sounded clipped and formal. I’d hurt him by asking him to hide. “I’m leaving in an hour, if you should change your mind.”

I shook my head. “Caelan…”

But he didn’t respond, nor did he stop. He walked out the back door as silently as he’d entered. I wanted to go after him, but what could I say?

“Hey, Zara,” Scott called from the other side of the swinging door. “Can you bring the mushroom puffs, too? We’re out, and the natives are getting restless.”

I rolled my eyes. Sometimes life sucked.

Chapter Two

“Zara, where do you want the doughnuts?” Scott backed into the diner door, his arms wrapped around an enormous bakery box.

“Some in there.” I paused in setting the tables to point to the new glass display case on the counter. “The rest in the back.” At the party last night, I’d offered everyone a free doughnut if they came back to the diner for breakfast this morning. I was not ashamed to continue the bribe of free food, so long as it worked. But by the looks of that box, Scott and I would be plowing our way through longjohns, crullers, and Boston Creams for months if nobody showed up. At twenty to six, we had only minutes to go before we learned our fate. And Lucy, our cook, still had yet to arrive.

The door shut behind Scott, and the original bell, saved from the diner wreckage, clanked with the movement. The noise, not even that loud, shot sparks of pain through my head.

“You all right?” Scott set the box down on the counter and cut the string with his keys before looking over at me, his dark eyes and the curiosity in them magnified by his thick glasses. “You seem kind of, I don’t know, wrung out.”

“I didn’t sleep well,” I admitted. That was the truth, but he would jump to his own conclusions for the why of it. All night I kept imagining I could feel Caelan leaving, the connection between us made thinner by distance. In reality, our connection was tenuous at best. Any sense of him leaving came purely from my own mind, not his. So, I’d done my best to force thoughts of him from my mind and ended up with a blinding headache in the very wee hours of the morning. I’d gotten up and taken some of the pain meds I had leftover from the injury to my arm. They’d washed away the pain in a very pleasant haze for a few hours, but now the pills were wearing off.

“Listen, I’ve been thinking,” Scott said.

“That’s dangerous.”

He made a face at me. “Ha, ha. Will you let me finish?”

“Sure.” I set the salt and pepper shakers in the little wire holder and moved on to the next table.

Scott folded back the box lid, releasing a teeth-achingly sweet aroma that turned my stomach even from across the room. “I know money is tight. I could take a semester or two off and—”

“No,” I said flatly. “Absolutely not.”

He glared at me. “You don’t get to decide what I do.”

“Hmm,” I pretended to think about that. “Yeah, I do, at least while I’m paying the bills.” Metaphorically, at least. “Your education is too important.”

“I’m not saying I’d quit forever. Just a leave of—”

“Your tuition is already paid for this semester, Scotty,” I said quietly. Much to my shame, I’d actually checked into the possibility of a refund. We could get some of it back but not enough to make it worth it with all the penalties and fees.

“Oh.” He was quiet for a long moment. “It’s not good, is it? The money situation, I mean.”

A reassuring lie leapt to the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it back. “No.”

“Mrs. Sutton talked to me again last night. About selling.”

I rolled my eyes. “Great.” Mrs. Sutton had been complaining for years about how the grease and food smells drifted over to her boutique and made her merchandise “reek of rancid bacon.” Charming, right?

When the diner blew up and Mrs. Sutton discovered we were planning to rebuild, she sent her milkweed of a husband over to negotiate a deal. She wanted to buy the land where the diner once stood and put up, get this, a tea shoppe. And you just know it would have been spelled that way too, with the extra letters at the end. Hello, a tea shoppe in Silver Springs? It was nearly as ridiculous as the boutique they already owned.

In any case, their offer was pathetically low. No, thank you.

“I’m trying to help.” Scott pushed his glasses up farther on his nose. “You take too much on yourself. Especially after…after what happened.” That was as close as he came to mentioning the events that had occurred in Wisconsin all those months ago. Lacking any kind of reasonable explanation from me, he’d evidently elected to pretend it never happened. Which was probably easier than you’d think. The whole thing had been like some horrible scene from a surreal nightmare.

I’d done my best to give him no cause to question me, slipping away to visit Caelan and the others only when he wouldn’t notice my absence, which, unfortunately, wasn’t very often. Scott had to be aware of the four of them living outside of town—rumors had been flying around Silver Springs for months. But he’d never asked me about them. As far as he was concerned, everything was back to “normal.” Well, as normal as it had ever been.

“Thanks, Scotty. I appreciate that.” I checked my watch, and my stomach gave a nervous lurch. Eleven more minutes. “If you really want to help, you might want to start brushing up on your grill skills because if Lucy doesn’t show—”

“I’m here, I’m here.” Lucy burst in, her bulky form sending the door flying back and the bell clanking madly.

I flinched as the sound pulsed through my head. I was beginning to wish I’d never resurrected that thing.

“Sorry, car trouble,” she mumbled as she hurried past.

I sighed. Whatever. She was here. That was one problem solved, at least for now, and after we closed tonight, I’d head out to talk to Caelan. He’d be back by then, and I’d have a chance to clear things up between us. Now, if I could only shake this damn headache.

By the end of the lunch rush, my raging headache had only intensified. Every noise became an assault on my ears and the bright sunshine was like into pitchfork jammed into my eyes.

“Honey, you’re not looking so good,” Lucy clucked at me when I came to the window to pick up an order.

I nodded weakly and regretted even that small motion when my stomach rolled in response. Grabbing the two plates of the meatloaf special and loading them on my tray, I did my best to ignore the smell and the glistening gobs of ketchup wobbling at me.

I will not throw up. I will not throw up, I silently chanted the words to myself. God, what was wrong with me? The burn on my arm had been easier to deal with than this.

Suck it up, Zara. In another hour or so, I’d probably be able to run out to my car and close my eyes for a bit. Not that, mind you, I was complaining about the business. We were almost up to pre-bombing levels, though some of them were just curiosity-seekers, coming to stare.

Hefting the tray up, I turned to head out from behind the counter and nearly smacked into Scott, who was coming back with his own empty tray.

He jumped back. “Whoa.”

“Watch it,” I said through gritted teeth.

He opened his mouth to snap back at me, in typical brother-sister fashion, but then he stopped. “Are you okay?”

I blinked back tears. “I’m fine. Just a headache.” As if that covered the kind of pain I was in. Just a headache. It was like saying, oh, just an amputation without anesthesia.

“Let me take that for you.” He set his empty tray down and reached for the one in my hands.

“No,” I said quickly, not trusting myself to nod. “I’ve got it. Make sure Brigham and his little toadie get more coffee and another ‘free’ doughnut.” Brigham and his new deputy, Marcos Benedicio occupied the booth closest to the door.

Benedicio was the newest addition to the Sheriff’s Office. Brigham had recruited him from somewhere, Lubbock maybe, after Dewey died last year in the diner explosion. He was twenty-two, single, relatively handsome—if you liked that widow’s peak and searing eyes kind of thing and if you could get over the way his nose turned up at the end, giving you a way too intimate view of his nostrils. He was also much too eager to please the wrong people…like his boss. So, far the kid had stuffed down more than four doughnuts to keep up with Brigham. He was starting to look a little green around the gills, but I got the feeling if push came to shove, he’d stuff the things into his pocket rather than stop asking for them.

Normally, I would have fought them on such open abuse of the “free doughnut” concept, but today…today I didn’t have it in me. And Brigham knew it.

Scott nodded, wide-eyed. “Okay.”

“Thanks.” I stepped around him and headed out from behind the counter, focusing on Lewis and Claire Swenson, a trucking couple from Minneapolis, whose order I carried.

“Hey Zara,” Brigham called from across the room. “What’s it take to get a refill around here?” Then he banged his cup loudly on the table three times for good measure.

I gritted my teeth to keep from crying. Hurrying the last couple of steps to the Swenson table, I hastily deposited their plates and scooped up their empty iced tea glasses with an apologetic smile. They both stared up at me, and from the looks on their faces, I knew my pain was showing through. A thin layer of sweat covered my face and my back, and I could barely keep my eyes open. Blinking dimmed everything out, bringing such relief it was almost more than I could stand.

Looking over my shoulder, I found Scott behind the counter frantically starting another pot of coffee. He shot me an apologetic look. A glance toward the sheriff’s booth revealed Brigham lifting his cup again and opening his mouth again, preparing to sound forth on his displeasure once more.

“Sheriff Brigham…” I started, but I wasn’t quite fast enough.

He slammed the cup down once more, but worse than that, the sun caught on the face of his wristwatch.

The piercing light flashed directly in my eyes. Without thinking, I threw my hands up to cover my face. My tray fell, and the dirty glasses slammed into the floor, shattering and spraying glass everywhere. The explosion of sound tipped me over the edge, one I hadn’t even known I was walking, let alone teetering on the brink of.

The scene around me washed out. The people, the nauseating smell of the food, even the diner itself…vanished into blackness. I barely had time to realize that before I felt…the call. A sudden urgency pulling at me, demanding something. Like I was late and needed to hurry up to get somewhere, but I didn’t know why or where. It started at the bottom of my feet and radiated upward, all the way to my scalp. It felt like every cell in my body was straining to move forward, drawn by some mysterious magnetic force.

Then the images appeared.

A dirty-looking cinderblock building with a poor attempt at landscaping, two little dying trees and an enormous bed of wood chips near the front door. A pale and sweating priest with thinning hair wearing a brown cardigan over his black shirt and clerical collar. A woman, her forehead pinched and eyes angry, holding out long metal tube in front of her, like a weapon. Her t-shirt read, Go Mustangs. A quick glimpse of the stars, glowing in the night sky like white stones on a velvet jewelry display, before the darkness swelled and swallowed them whole.

Waves of anxiety suddenly poured over me. Something was wrong. It was not what I…he expected. Danger. Much more than he’d thought…

The vision ended with an audible pop, and I woke to find myself on the floor, my hands and knees damp with spilled tea and bleeding from the small bits of shattered glass. My headache was gone, like these images and feelings had been the cause of it all along.

I knew two things in that moment. Caelan was in trouble, and everyone in the diner was staring at me. The entire room had gone silent and still, like they’d all chosen to hold their breath at the exact same moment. It didn’t matter, though. Audience or not, I had to get out of here and get to Mosinee to talk to Asha.

“Zara, are you all right?” Scott knelt at my side. The pity and fear in his voice made me cringe. I couldn’t even look at him.

“I’m fine.” I straightened up, pushing myself back up on to my feet. “Just a little too much excitement,” I said in a slightly louder voice so everyone in the diner could hear me. “Please go back to your lunch. The coffee will be ready any second now.”

The noise level increased gradually, people slowly starting to eat and talk again. But it wasn’t enough to cover Sheriff Brigham’s prize comment.

“She’s probably gone and gotten herself knocked up by one of them aliens.” His words boomed into the relative quiet.

For the second time in less than a minute, the entire room froze, except for the clatter of someone’s silverware hitting the floor. Probably right along with their jaws. I did not kid myself about my reputation. People weren’t stupid. Observers suddenly appear on the outskirts of town just months after I claim to have been abducted by one of them? Not a coincidence. But for all the whispering and gossip I knew went on around me, few people had ever dared to speak to me directly about it and never in front of Scott. The only thing the residents of Silver Springs and I seemed to agree on anymore was that involving Scott in my chaos broke the rules. They were decent people, most of them, and they recognized Scott was the true victim here. And you don’t mess with victims. But Brigham always was the town shithead.

I turned around slowly to find the sheriff watching me with a mean little self-satisfied smile. My face hot with fury, I took a step toward him…and realized something was missing. The rush of power I normally felt when I lost control of my temper—the salt and pepper shakers should have been rattling on the tables by now—was utterly absent. That meant Caelan, my source for that power, was either too far away…or in some serious trouble. The kind that involved being unconscious or dead. Panic replaced my anger in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately, Scott’s reaction did not experience the same transformation. Always long on loyalty and perhaps a little short on common sense, he turned on the sheriff, stalking toward his booth. “You take that back.”

Brigham’s expression darkened at Scott’s fearlessness. “Now, boy, you want to think carefully about this.”

I glanced back over my shoulder at the door to the kitchen and freedom beyond it, but I couldn’t leave Scott in this mess. Brigham, his authority challenged like this in public and by someone so young…he’d have no problem hauling him in for disturbing the peace or some other bullshit cause.

Cursing softly under my breath, I moved toward them and pulled Scott back. “It’s fine. Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

All right, so that was probably the worst thing I could have said. Like throwing grease onto an already out of control fire. But I was more than a little distracted at the time and not thinking particularly clearly.

“If I don’t know anything, then how come I know all the bums and illegals suddenly cleared themselves out of a ghost town no one gives a rat’s ass about?” Brigham’s hands moved down to rest on his gun belt as if to reassure himself it was still there. “If I don’t know anything, then how come I know you trot yourself out there every time little brother’s back is turned?”

Oh, shit. I closed my eyes. Not good.

I opened my eyes to find Scott watching me with a hurt expression I knew would swiftly turn to anger. “Is that true? What the sheriff said?”

Oh, God, how to handle this…if I was created, not born after all, why couldn’t someone have included an instruction manual before dropping me off on Earth? The “Dealing with Fake Family Members” chapter would have really come in handy right about now.

With valuable minutes ticking away on some vital clock I could not see, I didn’t really have time to formulate a well-thought out response that would reassure Scott without lying too much. So, I took a much simpler approach.

“You believe him over me? Your own sister?” I flinched inwardly at the words, but I didn’t let it show on my face. I had to sell this. The best defense is a good offense, right?

Scott looked stunned. “I—”

I stalked toward the kitchen, hoping he would follow. That, at least, would give me the opportunity to make some of this conversation private. Otherwise, Sheriff Brigham would be right there to add more fuel to the fire.

Scott pushed open the door into the kitchen about five seconds after me, just as I’d hoped. He looked caught between confusion and outrage. “Zara, I didn’t—”

“You know that ever since the accident, Sheriff Brigham has done nothing but try to find a way to blame it on me.” Which, unfortunately, was squarely where the blame belonged, but I was trying to protect Scott. If he knew the truth of what happened that night in the diner a few months ago and the subsequent night in the Awakening Chamber, he’d be a threat to the Observer Council, like I was. But he would be defenseless and too stubborn to accept help from me or one of the others on our side. Scott would fall victim to some Observer’s need to prove him or herself a serious threat. A “now-you-know-I’m-serious” killing. I couldn’t let that happen. I’d promised to protect him and that I would do until it killed me.

“Brigham is just trying to make more trouble.” Very true, but not the truth. A fine distinction.

“But what about—”

“Listen, Scotty, please. I’m tired, my head is really hurting, and I need to go home and lie down for a bit.” Lie after lie after lie. I spun them off in quick succession, hoping speed made up for sincerity. “If you call Rosa, I’m sure she’ll come in early for a couple of hours.” I’d have to cover her shift later tonight in exchange, but it would be worth it.

He didn’t seem thoroughly convinced, but that was all the time I had for this particular matter. Handing him my apron and the keys to the cash register, I headed out the back door to the parking lot for my car.

I had to let Asha know what was going on. True, we pretty much hated each other with a burning passion, but she would know what to do. She was, after all, their leader. I couldn’t do this by myself. On my own, I had no power and no clue. Getting Caelan back safely was the most important thing right now. There was no time for a war of egos between Asha and me.

Chapter 3

It took an eternity to cover the twenty-five miles to Mosinee, even with Betsy’s accelerator pressed to the floor. The old and battered Ford Escort shook all over at this speed and rattled ominously every time I hit pothole. It was even worse once I turned off the paved road onto the dirt path that led to the ghost town, but I couldn’t slow down. Every second wasted might be the one that changed everything.

Mosinee rose up out of the dust at Betsy’s nose. With the afternoon sun behind the town, the disrepair and abandonment didn’t seem quite so obvious. The buildings, neatly lining the streets, stood as tidy black shadows on an eye-wateringly bright canvas. But as you drew closer, Mosinee’s fate became clear.

Most of the buildings still stood. Weathered, gray and splintery, they hunched over the street like old men huddling on the porch of a retirement home. A few, like the post office and, farther down the street, the bank, showed signs of a real attempt at an architectural style. They were made of crumbling brick, a few years away from becoming a pile of rubble. No matter what the building material, though, all the windows had been broken out and doors taken or left hanging open on most every building, creating an endless parade of facades that looked more like screaming faces.

A small town just south of Silver Springs, Mosinee had been completely abandoned when the water dried up about thirty years ago. But the exodus had started long before that, when the train line came to Silver Springs instead. The electricity had been turned out in the early eighties, and the streetlights had been broken out even before that. Until recently, only illegal aliens—the human variety—and homeless people had settled here. But Mosinee was now under new management. Asha, Caelan, Namere and Thane had bought the town and everything in it for a cool $60,000. Not that they went around advertising their ownership or anything. But the previous residents had moved out quickly as soon as they saw who, and what, had moved in.

I slowed down as soon as I reached the start of the main drag on the edge of town. No choice in that. The landscape changed out here on a daily basis, if not more frequently than that. A road that might have been clear the day before might now hold a small avalanche of bricks or the remains of the wooden church steeple that had finally given way to rot and time.

Driving as quickly as I dared, which wasn’t nearly fast enough, I made my way over to the old school. Asha and the others had selected the building as their new home. It had been one of the few structures with a mostly functioning roof and a water tank to gather rain. The town could no longer support its original population, but four Observers could live there pretty comfortably.

From the outside, the school looked as abandoned as any of the other buildings. Windows dark or boarded up. The front doors chained and padlocked. Tumbleweeds gathered in the corner created where the concrete stairs, leading to the front doors, attached to the building. Only if you got close enough would you see that someone had tacked black cloth on the inside of the windows to keep any light from shining out. The padlock on the door was one with a combination so anyone who knew the code–not me, thanks to one of Asha’s dictates–could get in. Even the tumbleweeds were staged, stacked three high to give it that extra deserted look. If someone managed to track them down to this far, Asha wanted to make sure their new home wouldn’t be immediately obvious. She’d succeeded as far as I was concerned.

I drove past the school, pulling to a stop around the corner from what had once been a general store. Another of Asha’s rules. A car in front of the school would only give away their position to anyone who might be watching. Yeah, I’d say they were paranoid except I’d learned the hard way on that one.

Shoving the car door open, I darted out, running around the corner and up the street toward the school. I reached the concrete steps leading up to the entrance in record time and pounded my fist on the double doors.

“It’s Zara. Let me in!” The wind whipped the words away from me, but it didn’t matter. If someone inside was tuned into human thoughts, they should have been able to sense mine, probably amplified by my worries, from the second I hit town. But that was a relatively big “if.” Out here with no one else around, how often did they bother to listen for humans?

I heard no responding murmur on the other side of the door, and the padlock didn’t move. Being able to unlock it out here while remaining inside the building was just one of their special skills. One they apparently did not care to share today.

I backed up a little to shout up at the boarded and blank windows. “Namere, it’s important. Let me in.” Asha and Thane might ignore me to amuse themselves, but not Namere. Of course, Asha could always forbid Namere from opening the door, and if I didn’t get a response, I’d have to assume that was the case. It couldn’t be that no one was home. Someone was always here to guard the place.

Five seconds went by, then ten, and everything remained as motionless and still as before. Fine. They wanted to play this the hard way? I could do that. I jumped back down the stairs and darted around the corner of the school, heading to the back where more of the windows were still intact. At least, until I got hold of them.

But before I even reached the halfway point, I heard the distinctive rattle of the chain sliding through the metal handles of the front doors. I immediately turned around and ran back the way I’d come.

Sure enough, the chain lay in a heap at the top of the stairs with the padlock nearby, and the left door was opening slowly toward me. Relieved, I bolted up the stairs and into the stuffy and dim interior of the school without another thought.

That’s key, really. That I went in without thinking, I mean. Shows my mind was a little too focused on saving Caelan’s life, albeit an admirable and necessary goal, instead of the ramifications of the current situation. Like how pissed Asha was going to be that Caelan had left again without her permission.

The second I stepped inside, an implacable force hurled me into the wall opposite the door and pinned me there. My head bounced twice against the old metal lockers built into the cinder blocks, and I tasted blood, probably thanks to my teeth taking a nice bite out of my tongue.

“You dare show yourself here?” Asha’s beautiful face, twisted with anger, filled my line of vision. Soft light from some nearby source gave a glow to her flawless skin and brought out the silver protective layer in her brown eyes.

I gurgled a non-committal response, the only thing I was capable of at the moment.

Namere appeared to one side behind Asha. Her silvery white hair gleamed in the light of the lantern she carried. That same glow also revealed the severe bruising on the left side of her face, a goose egg on her forehead and a swollen and bloodied lower lip–clearly, Asha had been busy today. “She knows Caelan is gone.”

“Yeah,” I said between gasps. “I figured.”

The invisible grasp of Asha’s power tightened around me and shook me until my teeth clattered together.

“What have you done with him?” Asha demanded.

I reached for my connection to Caelan automatically, seeking his power to protect myself, and remembered belatedly that I was on my own. Completely on my own.

“I didn’t…do…anything…with him. Stop it!” But with my arms and legs bound to my body by her power, there was very little I could do to enforce that command.

Asha stepped even closer, blocking out everything but her face. I could see the minute fluctuations of the silver layer in her eyes as it reacted to changes in light. “You lie,” she said.

Oh, enough already. I slammed my head forward, my forehead connecting with the bridge of her nose. The blow was off-center and, thanks to my awkward position, weaker than it should have been, but it worked.

Asha staggered backward, her hand clasped around her nose and blood squeezing from between her fingers. With her concentration disrupted momentarily, the power holding me in place vanished, and I dropped to the floor, landing solidly on my tail bone. Pain ricocheted up through my back, stealing my breath. Okay, maybe I should have thought that plan through a little more.

I rolled onto my side, wincing, and spoke before Asha could strike again. “Caelan left last night to go see some Humanists. He thought they might be holding her, the one we’ve been looking for. Then last night or maybe early this morning, I don’t know, he tried to send me a message. Something went wrong.”

Asha lowered her hand from her face, revealing the once again perfect line of her nose, an island in a sea of blood. They healed so damn quick. She lowered herself to look me in the eye. “Why did you not accompany him?”

Oh, be careful, Zara. A trickle of sweat slipped across my back. There were a hundred different answers to that question, none of them good. If she knew he’d come to me because he wanted me to lead…I clamped down on that thought as quickly as possible. But unfortunately, quick is sometimes not fast enough.

“You refused to accompany him because he wished to position you as leader,” she said suddenly.

Oh, crap. “Listen, none of that matters now,” I said quickly. “He’s in trouble. I saw it.” After receiving another arched eyebrow in response, I told her as much as I could about what I’d seen in my, for lack of a better word, vision.

Visions aren’t really my thing. I don’t think vision is even the right word. It’s more like a condensed form of telepathy. Caelan had used the limited connection between us to send what amounted to an explosion of emotion and a few images. Before they’d come to town, before I knew he was alive, the same thing had happened. I’d be cleaning the bathtub or something, and I’d get a very clear image of Asha or Thane in my head and then some deep lingering sadness that didn’t necessarily feel attributable to them. More like, the person feeling the sadness happened to be looking at Asha or Thane or Namere. For a long time, I’d thought it meant I was going crazy—not too surprising, considering. But it always felt like something from outside of me, rather than something my slightly broken brain had cooked up. Then, when Caelan had appeared alive and in town, the pieces of the puzzle fell together.

While he’d been recovering, he’d been unable to completely block the small connection between us. So, I’d gotten little pieces of things, bits of emotion and images he didn’t necessarily want me to see but couldn’t stop me from receiving. Now that he was all better, I hadn’t gotten them in months. Except for this one. I suspected from the sheer force of the emotion and the number of images, that he’d done it deliberately. It was, unlike the others, a signal for help.

“You are certain of this?” Asha asked, her face hard and expressionless.

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Enough to come out here and voluntarily have a conversation with you, I thought at her.

I sat up gingerly, waiting for another bolt of pain but finding only a dull throb. Bonus.

Namere shifted uneasily in the background, waiting, as was I, for Asha to throw something or someone into a nearby wall.

But instead Asha simply inclined her head forward at me, their version of a nod, and stood up. “Very well. We will make preparations.” She turned on heel and began to walk away, back the way she came.

Abruptly one of the shadows behind her broke free of the wall and moved into the light to follow her. Thane. The only other male on Asha’s team besides Caelan, Thane stood about six feet tall and almost half as broad through the shoulders. His dark, almost black hair, brushed his shoulders, a few strands of it escaping from behind his ears to hang in front of his pale blue eyes.

I didn’t trust Thane either. Asha’d once instructed him on the proper protocol for hiding my dead body. With me still in the room. Oh, yeah, these two were quite the pair. Nonetheless, help was help. At least, I hoped so.

I sagged back against the wall in relief. “She took that a lot better than I would have expected.” I paused, a startling new idea dawning. “Is she getting soft?”

Namere shook her head, a tiny urgent side to side movement. “Do not say such things where she might hear. Please, come with me. There is not much time.” She started up the hallway in the opposite direction from Asha. The entrance I’d used and the former principal’s office near it took up the corner joint in the L- shaped building. Asha’d disappeared down the dark long part of the “L.” Namere took off down the short arm of the “L,” limping slightly and without even checking to see if I followed her.

I got to my feet, wincing at the new aches and pains, and hurried after her. “I have to get back to the diner soon. Scott’s going to be looking for me. What’s this about?”

“She is choosing to interpret your refusal to accompany Caelan as allegiance to her.”

Riiiight. “Fine, whatever,” I muttered. “As long as she doesn’t try to punish him for it.”

Namere hesitated slightly, looking at me over her shoulder. “It is not as you believe.”

“Wait, what?” God save me from Observers and their cryptic messages.

Namere kept moving. “I have important things I must show you, but we have little time.”

That was the second time she mentioned running out of time. Believe me, I was all for them hurrying to save Caelan, but an instinct, the same one that flickered to life whenever Caelan tried to pull a fast one, told me something wasn’t right. Observers, in my experience, didn’t lie exactly…they just sort of left out the important parts.

I slowed and then stopped in the dim and stuffy hallway. “What’s going on, Namere?”

She stood still, but did not turn around to face me. “I will tell you but first we must—”

“Oh, no.” I shook my head. “I’ve heard this one before. ‘I’ll tell you everything you want to know except oops, I’ve conveniently left out the part that I don’t actually know anything and by the way, you’re an alien.’ Too late. Caelan’s already pulled that particular card on me.”

She didn’t respond.

I sighed. “It means Caelan once told me something similar and—”

“Our destination is not Caelan’s.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand. Our destination is not Caelan’s…you mean, you’re not going to end up in the same place as Caelan?” After several months of this, I was getting slightly better at interpreting the significant pauses and gaps in their information.

“That is correct.”

“Okay. So what’s the plan?” I lifted my shoulders in a shrug. “I’m not following here. Are you going somewhere first to find out where he’s been taken or—”

“We will not find out where he’s been taken at all.” She turned to look at me, her silver and gray eyes intent on mine as though she were trying to convey everything in a single look.

I gritted my teeth. “You do remember I’m not telepathic, right? I can’t get what you’re thinking just from the way you’re—” I stopped. Suddenly, it all clicked into place. “You’re not going after him.” Despite the heat, goosebumps rose on my skin.

Namere inclined her head forward, their version of a nod. “She has often said she will not risk the lives of all for the life of one.”

Which is why she’d refused to help Caelan find me in the first place, despite the fact that I would have died without his assistance and he might have died in the searching. Well, that and her ego. Nobody mattered more to Asha than Asha. Her word was law…or so she said.

“So she’s just going to leave him out there somewhere?” I demanded. “What was all that about making preparations?”

“We must leave this place and hide once more. Anything Caelan knew may now be used against us.”

“Knows,” I said.

She looked at me questioningly.

“Knows. You said knew, past tense. Like he’s dead,” I pointed out. “And you don’t know that. He wouldn’t talk, I know he wouldn’t.”

Namere shook her head. “It does not matter. To Asha, the threat is real.”

“He’s in trouble, I know it. I felt it.” I turned around and stalked back in the direction we’d come from. Confronting Asha again was not first on my list of favorite things to do, but if it was necessary…

“Zara, wait. I must speak with you further.” Namere followed on my heels, but I didn’t stop. “You must not mention this to Asha.”

“What, she’s not already aware of her own plan to leave a member of her team to die?” Technically, I hadn’t seen anything in the vision that indicated impending death, but I’d felt his fear…and his resolve, both of which frightened me. He’d known something bad was about to happen, but he’d refused to leave without the information he came for. I didn’t know if Caelan needed to be saved from the Humanists…or himself. Either way, we couldn’t leave him out there.

“Stop,” Namere said quietly from behind me.

I continued to ignore her. Then a wall of fire leapt up from the ground in front of me. I jumped back, the heat singing the small hairs on my arm. One of the risks of pissing off a fire carrier, I guess.

“Are you crazy?” I turned to glare at her, cradling my arm with the burn mark from Nevan’s hand against my chest. Since the night Nevan died, I’ve had a little bit of a problem with fire. It scares me in a way it never did before. Possibly because the abstract dangers of fire had turned into three-D, crispy skin and cooked meat-smelling realities right before my eyes.

“You are in danger now,” she said.

“If you keep setting things on fire, I’d have to say hell yes, I agree with you.” The floor wasn’t really on fire. That was the true gift of her ability. She produced the fire and controlled it. Right now, it hovered an inch or two above the ground, not burning or even touching the old tile floor. Still, if I reached out and tried to touch the wall of flame, it would burn me. The fire was real enough; it just didn’t obey the normal rules, thanks to Namere.

“If you confront Asha, she will not let you accompany us.”

I stared at her. “If I was able to go anywhere, I would have gone with Caelan last night.”

“But you will be alone. Defenseless without one of us nearby to connect with you and provide you power. If the Council were to choose this moment to attack…”

I’d be dead, or worse, locked in a cage somewhere. But still…I shook my head. “I can’t worry about that right now. Caelan needs help. We can’t leave him out there, Namere.” If you think about it, going there had been rather stupid, even with his superior abilities and telepathy. If his theory was correct, this particular group of haters was the only one who’d managed to get some pretty detailed intel on us, and they’d managed to capture and hold a Council member. Caelan was amazing, but not that amazing.

“You would not have to choose between your safety and his, if he’d listened to my orders,” Asha’s voice rang out on the other side of the fire, and I jumped. Namere immediately dropped the wall of fire to nothing. Asha stood there, and Thane, using his telekinetic powers to drag assorted suitcases and bags through the air, trailed behind her. Evidently she was serious about leaving right now.

I shook my head at Asha. “I’m going to put a bell on you,” I muttered.

Asha approached Namere. “Where does your loyalty lie?”

With an almost imperceptible glance toward me, which I knew was a mistake, Namere answered quickly,

“With you, of course.”

Asha leaned closer. “It does not seem it.”

I took my life in my hands and stepped in to intervene. “You’re going to get Caelan, right?” I hoped a change in subject might distract her and dissipate some of the rising tension.

Asha seemed amused. “No.”

Even though I knew her answer before she spoke, hearing it still threw me. “Why not? You can’t just leave him out there to—”

“I do whatever pleases me. You know this,” she said dismissively.

“So, it pleases you to leave a former lover to die. To have him think of you in his last moments and wonder why you didn’t come to help him.”

Her eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch, Asha’s version of surprise.

I swallowed hard. Their past was not something we’d ever discussed. I knew about it simply by virtue of a one-time connection to her mind, when I’d nearly killed her. Perhaps, though, because of that, this might not have been the best approach. Oh, well, too late now.

She stepped toward me, and I moved back involuntarily, even though I knew it wouldn’t help. The range in which she could successfully lash out at me far exceeded her arm-span. “If you are so wise, human, then tell me this. Why did he contact you in place of one of us?”

I hesitated, uncertain of how honest to be. “Probably because he knew you would be angry.”

She lifted a shoulder. “Yes, but if you are hoping for salvation from the hands of the enemy, who is more likely to be capable of such a thing?”

I frowned, unable to see where she was going this. “I don’t—”

“If you were in Caelan’s predicament, whom would you contact for assistance?” Asha asked impatiently.

Much as I hated to admit it, if I were Caelan, I would have used my one psychic call to contact Asha. She had a much better chance of pulling off a rescue. Although, knowing Asha, she’d likely let you suffer and die to punish you for not listening to her. So, maybe I would have picked me. Then again, maybe not. As Caelan, I’d probably know that there’d be a good chance of me, Zara, ending up dead and since Caelan believed I was necessary to lead some kind of…something, maybe I would have—

“Human, you think too much.” Irritation tightened Asha’s voice.

“You asked,” I snapped.

“You accuse me of manipulation, and yet you do not recognize the most egregious example of such.” She cocked her eyebrow at me and waited.

And she could just keep waiting because I had no idea what she was talking about.

After a long moment, Asha made an impatient noise. “It is difficult to believe you have survived this long, even on this planet.”

“Hey!”

“Listen closely. Caelan wanted you to accompany him on this mission. He felt it would validate your destiny as leader.” The scorn in her voice made it very clear what she thought of this idea. “He believes you are hiding from this destiny, to the detriment of all of us.”

She didn’t need to add the word “supposedly” at the end of that sentence. Her tone said it all.

“But you refused, as you have refused on all matters such as this in the last months. You left him little choice, forcing him toward drastic action to prove his beliefs,” Asha said with disgust.

“Wait, wait.” My brain needed time to catch up to what Asha evidently believed to be a forgone conclusion. “Are you saying he deliberately got himself captured so I’d have to come and get him because he knew you wouldn’t and he also knew I wouldn’t stand for that?”

“Yes,” she said.

I gaped at her. “Are you crazy? There’s no way he’d do that. Too many variables. Too many chances everything could go wrong and he’d end up—”

“Dead?” Asha snapped. “He has demonstrated a great willingness to die for this particular belief in the past, why do you question it now?”

My mouth worked for a moment with no sound coming out. “He couldn’t have,” I said weakly.

“He did,” Asha said. “We leave momentarily. If you are to join us, you must be ready.” She started to walk away.

I followed. “If all this is true, what you said about Caelan, why are you being so…nice to me?” The Asha I knew would have gladly fed me to the Observer Council in bite-sized pieces before helping me, particularly after Caelan had apparently chosen me over her again…in this new sick and twisted way.

She stopped and pivoted on her heel to face me. “It is not kindness, human,” she sneered. “That affords me nothing. Your abilities make you a weapon. Your lack of conviction means you can easily be turned. Under the control of a Council member, you could become a threat to us. If you choose to accompany us, the threat is contained. If you do not, then next we meet, you will be killed, accordingly.”

You’ll try, I thought at her. We both know how well that worked out last time.

But Asha didn’t so much as flinch.

“What about Caelan?” I asked.

“He made his choice long ago. Now he will suffer for it.”

“You’re willing to let him die?” I demanded.

She stepped closer, into my personal space, but I held my ground. “You may know his body, his touch,” she said, “but I know his mind far better than you ever will.”

Jealousy immediately reared its ugly head, and I locked my hands at my sides to keep from taking a swing at her.

“He shows you only what he wants you to see.” Her disdain for me colored her voice. “He creates his own reality and draws you into it. If rescued, he will only continue along that path. I cannot risk the lives of those who are loyal to me for one who is not.” She spun around and continued toward the back doors, Thane trailing after her like a glorified bell hop.

“But I can’t go after him.” Not now with the diner starting up again and certainly not by myself. Without one of them to connect with, my abilities were about as useful as a gun without bullets. And hello, going to the sheriff? So not an option.

Asha paused and looked back over her shoulder. “Then your choice is simple. You die here when the Council comes for you, as they surely will at some point. Or, you remain safe with us while it pleases me to have it so.”

In other words, she’d let me come with them for now, to keep an eye on me. But at any particular point she desired, she’d kick me out and that would be that.

I shook my head. “I can’t.”

Turning my back to Asha, never a wise move, I sought Namere in the dimness. “Namere,” I pleaded softly. She’d sided with Caelan and me once before.

“I understand your dilemma,” she said quietly. “But I fear I can do nothing to change it.”

“No, no. Look, if you come with me, I think we can do it.” I had no idea how I’d explain my absence to Scott, but I’d have to worry about that later. “I just need—”

“No.” She sounded sad but resolute.

If it’s because of Asha…I tried to send the thought at her.

“It is because of you,” she said. “I have given you my loyalty before, but you rewarded that loyalty with dismissal.”

“I had no choice. Nevan would have killed Scott if we hadn’t intervened. And we would have died there without Asha.” I knew that bargain would come back to haunt me. “But I did my best to guarantee your safety. I told her—”

“Yes, you made promises with words, but you did nothing to enforce them. How are you to know her treatment of me when you visit so rarely?” She didn’t sound angry as much as resigned and weary.

I flinched. I’d had no idea she’d been thinking any of this. She never mentioned any of this to me in my visits. I’d come here as often as I could without raising Scott’s suspicions. It was difficult with him living at home again and concerned about where I was every second of the day. “If I kept coming down here all the time, everyone would have known you were here. And they would never have left you alone to live in peace,” I said.

“You mean they would never have left you alone,” Asha pointed out from behind me.

“Shut up,” I said over my shoulder to her.

“No, human. This has gone on long enough. Namere has declined your offer of—”

“Because you’re standing right here.” Panic made me quite reckless.

“You believe her loyalties can be turned so easily?” Her boot heels clacking on the old linoleum floor,

Asha stalked back toward us. “In front of these witnesses, Namere, I give you freedom to leave without punishment, but if you do so, you may never return to my care. If I do not abide by this agreement made here, I will give up leadership of this group.”

Oh sure, she said that now. But really, who could make her give it up if, in fact, we determined she had broken her promise? Me and what army?

“What is your choice, Namere?” Asha asked.

“I remain loyal to you,” she said to Asha. She didn’t hesitate, but she didn’t sound really happy about it either.

“Because you know she’ll beat you within an inch of you life, no matter what she says right now, in front of witnesses,” I mocked Asha’s tone.

“No,” Namere said to me. “It is because you are not yet certain of your purpose in all of this and you will likely yet back away again. Then I will be left with no one…again. I cannot risk that.”

I stared at Namere. “You can’t be serious. She’s going to leave Caelan to die.”

“I am sorry for that,” she said softly. “But I have learned too well from the mistakes of my past. I will not suffer those lessons again.” She tilted her head to one side, her white blonde hair slipping over shoulder. “You and Caelan are similar in that respect. You do not hesitate to betray those who support you in an effort to further your cause. He has done this to you many times, has he not?”

“My brother’s life was in danger,” I said again, not that it would help.

“What makes his life any more important than Namere’s or Thane’s or mine?” Asha butted in.

“He’s…” What exactly could I say here? Scott and I probably shared less in common, both genetically and in recent experiences, than I did with all of them here.

“This is why you will never be leader,” Asha said in that condescending tone I despised. “Your feelings overrun your logic. You make decisions based on someone’s worth to you rather than their value as a whole. The one you call Scott is human and of no particular value. He offers nothing to you, no powers, no skills. Yet your risked your life and ours to save him.”

“People are more than what they can do for you,” I snapped.

“Yet some are clearly worth more than others,” Asha said, “even under your system of evaluation. You are not willing to make the difficult choices, the choices that may require you to treat everyone equally. You favor the ones you like and abandon the ones you do not like as well.”

I stared at her. Was that how they saw me? All I’d done was try to return to life as normal. Yeah, I’d expended a little…okay, a lot, of energy to keep Scott safe and in blissful ignorance of the truth, but I hadn’t abandoned anybody to do it. They didn’t need me for anything out here. Then my gaze fell once more on Namere and her bruised face. Asha had done it, but if I’d been here to intervene, as I’d promised I would be…

I shook my head. “You’re the one that did this. You hurt them and then you blame me for not being here to defend them against you? Just don’t hurt them.”

Asha raised an eyebrow. “I do what is necessary to protect all.”

“Yeah, because beating them into submission is working so well for you. Caelan keeps leaving on his own, and Thane and Namere switched sides as soon as another possibility was offered.” Of course, then I went and apparently fucked it up by saving my brother’s life and abandoning them to Asha. What was I supposed to do? I tried to take care of everyone and no one ended up being happy. Huh. Well, lesson learned.

Asha went perfectly still. “You Challenge me, human?”

“Wait, what?” I stared at her, startled by the abrupt shift in conversation.

Challenge was exactly what it sounded like—a big ol’ fight. In their group, anyone could challenge the current leader to win control.

As far as I knew, Asha’d only had one Challenger before. Me. I’d beaten her soundly, more because we were both unaware of the extent of my powers than any real skill on my part. I’d refused to kill her, though, which instead of winning me respect from the rest of them only seemed to make them worry about my potential weakness. This time, however, I would no longer have the advantage of surprise and I doubted that, if the opportunity arose again, I could afford to be merciful. I knew Asha wouldn’t.

“Do you Challenge me, human?” Asha asked again, her voice growing harsh with impatience. “Do you believe yourself to be the better leader?”

Once, I would have said yes. Hell, part of me still believed that, yeah, I could be the better leader. They’d been treated with such little decency, being a worse leader was practically impossible. But what came down to is I wasn’t willing to kill to prove it. She suffered no such qualms.

“Forget it,” I said harshly. “I’ll figure something out.”

“You fear me.” Asha’s face folded into self-satisfied smile.

“No,” Namere spoke up. She tilted her head to one side. “Zara fears herself more than she fears anyone else.”

Asha’s smile faded. Namere, intentionally or not, had just sucked the fun right out of this for her. “We leave now.” Asha pushed past me and strode down the hall toward the doors at the back of the school.

Namere and Thane remained nearby. I made one last ditch attempt. “I would do the same for either one of you. I wouldn’t leave you out there to die.”

“If that is true, then why did you leave us here alone?” Thane asked. “If you believe yourself to be the better leader, why did you leave us to her?”

I raked my hands through my hair. “You guys seemed fine. Nobody ever asked me to come out here.”

“You must be invited to take your place among us?” The sneer in Thane’s voice couldn’t be missed. In a way, I understood where he was coming from on that. Asha would never have waited to be invited, she would have forced her way in and changed things the way she thought best.

“Not everyone does it the same way,” I tried to explain. “Just because that’s not what Asha would have done doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

“A reluctant leader is worse than no leader at all,” Thane said. Then he moved past me to follow Asha, suitcases in tow.

“Thane.” I called after him, but he didn’t stop.

Namere stayed, waiting patiently, I was sure, to have her chance to dig at me.

“What?” I demanded rudely. “Haven’t you done enough already?”

“You are angry,” she said.

“Damn straight,” I shouted. “You’re supposed to be on my side, on Caelan’s side.”

“I did not realize we were battling against one another. If that is the case, then we have already lost to the Council,” Namere said.

I sighed, exasperated. “What are you talking about, lost? Asha doesn’t even want to fight. Not for Caelan, not for the humans, not even for the planet.”

Namere’s head jerked up suddenly as if pulled by an invisible hook on an invisible string. “Asha summons me. I must go.” She started and then hesitated. She grabbed my shoulders as if pulling me close for a hug.

I stiffened, surprised by this move on her part and not real happy to be hugged by someone whose name, right now, occupied one of the higher spots on my shit list.

“You will find the help you require in the underground chamber,” she said in my ear. Her fingers clutched at my shoulders, digging in like claws.

My hands automatically mimicked her motion, grabbing her shoulders to hold her in place until I could figure out what she was talking about. “The Awakening Chamber?” My stomach pitched sharply. The Awakening Chamber had been the site of our final battle with Nevan. Now it was nothing but a big giant hole in the ground…in Northern Wisconsin. A hell of a road trip.

“No,” Namere gave the tiniest shake of her head, “what you call the cellar. If Asha discovers what I have told you, she will kill us.”

“According to her, I’m dead anyway,” I said dryly.

She looked down the hallway toward where Asha presumably waited. “I must leave.” She hesitated and then turned to me. “I hope to see you again.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Me, too.”

She started to walk away.

“Namere,” I called after her. She turned to face me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that…I mean, I tried to do my best but I…there are too many things…”

She took pity on me and nodded. “Do not concern yourself. I understand. You are still uncertain of your place. Before you can assist anyone else, you must find certainty and comfort in who you are and what you are to do.”

“And if I don’t? Find that, I mean.”

The melodramatic part of me expected her to say, “Then we are all doomed.” But she didn’t. She simply lifted her shoulder and said, “You will. Either through one outcome or the other.”

Great. That didn’t sound ominous at all.