Chapter 1

I was at the diner when I got my first real look at an Observer. I’d seen them on television—news clips about first contact, press conferences after the landing, the rare interview—but nothing could have prepared me for being twenty feet away from a genuine alien.

It was a Friday night, just before closing. Business was slow at the Silver Spoon, so I’d decided to close the kitchen early and wait on the remaining tables myself. Only a handful of customers still lingered over pie and coffee. I was behind the counter, pleading with and cursing the ancient cash register, trying anything to get it to spit out the night’s total. But nothing seemed to work.

The bell on the door jingled, and everyone looked up to see Sheriff Brigham and Deputy Dewey coming in, and a man, hands cuffed in front, being pulled along between them.

At first, I don’t think anyone paid the prisoner any notice-at least, not more than they normally would. The diner was on the way to the station, and Sheriff Brigham, who seemed to have little self-control in any area, had difficulty passing up fresh pie even if it meant bringing “company” along. I’d given up trying to reason with him. So, after making sure it wasn’t someone they knew, everyone went back to their sweet potato pie.

I didn’t go back to my reluctant register, though. Instead, I watched as the sheriff’s party selected a booth. There was something not quite right about the prisoner, something odd but familiar.

As if sensing my thoughts, the prisoner lifted his head, bringing his glance up from the floor to look in my direction. I caught a flash of silver in his eyes and a chill spread through me. He was one of them, an Observer.

Instantly my chest tightened up and I started to wheeze. It was the same reaction I had whenever I watched the Observers on television, read about them in the papers or saw them in my dreams.

It wasn’t anything easy to see, like horns or tentacles, that pegged him as an alien. The Observers look too much like us for that. Actually, they look almost exactly like us, except for the silvery eyes and the fact that they tend to be too tall and too fast to be mistaken for human. Some people consider them better looking. But in my mind, their precise good looks, every feature defined and centered, rob them of whatever similarity they have to us and leave them looking as cold and beautiful as an army of marble statues.

This one, for example, stood at least three or four inches taller than Dewey’s six feet, but it was the rest of him that drew stares, some of open admiration, others of surprise and fear. He had a long, straight nose, a strong jaw that any male soap star would have killed for and a mouth with a full, touchable lower lip. His dark hair was a bit too long, almost reaching his strange eyes, which he kept averted to the ground. His light gray t-shirt contrasted sharply with his darker skin—their natural coloring is like a deep summer tan for most of us, something to do with their natural climate being much warmer than ours. And when Dewey pulled on the handcuffs to encourage him along, the prisoner’s honed biceps strained the sleeves of his shirt, making his reluctance clear.

What was an alien doing here? And more importantly, why had the sheriff brought him into the diner? While I didn’t know the answer to the first question, as I watched everyone’s stares swing round from the Observer to me, I had a sneaking suspicion about the second.

Things have been quiet for a while, so let’s see what happens when we bring the town crazy in close proximity to what she fears most. That should be fun. I could almost hear Sheriff Brigham thinking it, his big red face grinning at me.

Cold sweat prickled my forehead. It felt like that moment just before an attack of the flu, only I knew it wasn’t something as simple this time. My first impulse was to run and hide in the kitchen until the sheriff and Dewey left and took that Observer with them. But I knew they wouldn’t let me off that easily. They wouldn’t leave, not without a show. But I’d be damned if I’d let them control me, push my button to get me to dance, or scream in this case.

I wiped my hands down the front of the apron covering my jeans and tried to slow my breathing by counting between inhales and exhales. Then I grabbed the coffee pot and walked out from behind the counter toward their booth. As I filled empty coffee cups at the few tables along the way, I tried to think about the best way to handle this. It wasn’t like I could threaten to call the cops on the sheriff for bringing an Observer in here. Plus, I’d known Sheriff Brigham all my life—he didn’t respond well to threats.

So, that left me with what? Pretending everything was normal. Sure. No problem, I’d been doing that for the last two years, just not very well. I hadn’t gotten a full night’s rest since the Observers landed. The same dream—a female Observer shoving me into darkness to suffocate—pulled me out of sleep and sometimes onto the front lawn, leaving me gasping for air every single night. In the beginning, I’d tried to keep the dreams to myself. But that’s not easy when you’re found outside repeatedly, flopping around in front of the neighbors like a dying fish trying to get back to water. A shrink told me that it was post-traumatic stress, a delayed reaction to my parents’ death, triggered for some reason by the arrival of the Observers. Whatever. I didn’t have enough money for that kind of therapy. So, after a while my nightly battle, and my daily dread of it, had just become a way of life, like someone with OCD counting steps or a superstitious person avoiding sidewalk cracks.

But now, faced with the real thing instead a figment of my apparently broken mind, pretending to be normal would be more of a stretch. This time—I tightened my sweaty grip on the coffee pot—I’d deserve an Oscar if I could pull it off. I approached their table, mentally counting to three between each inhale and exhale.

“Hey, Zara. How’s Scott? Baby brother doing all right as the big man on campus?” Sheriff Brigham asked.

I started to answer, fine, but I made the mistake of first stealing a look at the Observer sitting across the table next to Deputy Dewey. He, the alien, I mean, was staring at me, making no attempt now to hide his silver and brown eyes. His body trembled as he watched me, and blood, red just like ours, trickled from a gash under his left eye. He didn’t look like cold marble now.

My false calm snapped. “Get him out of here.”

Sheriff Brigham grinned. “What’s the matter? You don’t like our new tourist?” He leaned a little farther out toward me. “I thought maybe you’d want to talk to him. You know, ask him his plans for taking over the world.” He sniggered.

I would have shut my eyes in humiliation, but I didn’t want to risk losing track of that Observer. I’d once confessed to the sheriff, after one of my more traumatic late night outdoor episodes, that I thought my dream might have meaning. That it was trying to tell me something bad was going to happen. He’d pretended to take me seriously at the time, but then by the next morning, not only was I the laughingstock of town, I also had an order from Doc Heresford to drive to Midland to see a psychiatrist.

Heat swept through my face, leaving a fiery embarrassment behind. “I said, get him out of here.”

People started shifting in their seats, turning to get a better look at what was going on.

“Now, you just relax there, Zara. We have it under control. This loiterer,” Sheriff Brigham paused to grin at Dewey, “ain’t going to cause any problem in here.”

“You picked him up for loitering?” For a moment, disbelief overtook my fear and humiliation.

Sheriff Brigham sat up straight and adjusted his gun belt, the way he did whenever he felt people were questioning his authority. “He was hiding in the alley across the street by the old movie theater. God knows what he would have done next, if Mrs. Sutton hadn’t called and reported him.” Mrs. Sutton ran the boutique next door to the diner. As the owner of a boutique in a former mining town, she always had time to mind everyone else’s business as well as her own.

So, they’d arrested him for being an alien and then beat him up to further prove their point. This place was going to be flooded with Observers if the Council, their ruling body, or our government ever got wind of this. The Lockwood Treaty gave Observers diplomatic immunity, similar to that given to human foreign diplomats. Not that the sheriff would care, even if he knew. To him, Observers were less than human, nothing to be feared and certainly not worth respecting.

“Fine, whatever. Take him in, then.” My heart still thumped in my chest like a rabbit trying to fight its way out of a cage. Behind me, I could hear chairs shifting on the floor and people whispering. I wasn’t sure if people would greet this first alien in our little town with cameras or shotguns, I’d just rather it didn’t happen anywhere near me.

“Get us some pie and coffee, Zara, and we’ll be on our way.” The sheriff’s face grew darker red with every word, and I knew he wasn’t going to back down.

I looked to Dewey for help. He’d remained silent during this entire conversation, and now that I was calling on him, he shifted in his seat uneasily and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

Damn it, Dewey, I thought. He and I had gone out on one date, a couple years back. He’d cornered me in the front seat of his pickup. In response, I’d opened the door and helped him out to the parking lot with my foot. Later, he’d apologized profusely, and I’d promised never to tell anyone. But it seemed that gratitude would only get me so far. I was on my own for this one. I stepped forward, turned the coffee cups upright on the table and sloshed coffee into them.

“Now, a couple slices of your sweet potato pie, and we’ll be set here,” Sheriff Brigham said. But he was frowning now, staring at the Observer across the table. I couldn’t figure out why until I looked down and realized that, without thinking, I’d filled the coffee cup for the alien as well.

Too bad. I wasn’t going to take it away. The fact that I’d reached that close to begin with was enough to send a shiver through me. As I watched, the Observer lifted his hands from beneath the table, the silver of his handcuffs glinting in the light, and wrapped them around the cup, like he was trying to warm them.

I automatically looked to his face again, my pulse still pounding in my ears, but he was no longer watching me. Instead, he was staring out through the big picture window into the dark parking lot. I followed his gaze, but all I could see were our reflections. My face, a pale globe in the night, with red hair spilling out of an already sloppy ponytail. His eyes—silver points of light as they reflected the florescent overheads in the diner—the dried blood on his cheek, and the gash below his eye, which seemed smaller somehow.

“Pie, Zara?” The sheriff broke into my trance, startling me into looking at him. Now, he was frowning at me, like I’d done something wrong. More likely, it was simply that he was mad that I’d cheated him out his entertainment.

An idea struck. I pulled myself together enough to give them a smile, a bright and overly sweet one. My little brother Scott could have told the sheriff that meant trouble.

“Sheriff, I’d love to help you out with that, but you know I can’t serve food here with a health code violation like this. Human would be bad enough, but Observer blood? The CDC would be on me like a raccoon on spoiled meat.” My mention of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made Brigham go pale.

In the heat of the chase, our good sheriff had apparently forgotten Observer blood was still classified as a no-no. Actually, Observer anything, in terms of bodily fluid, was still considered potentially hazardous, even though it’d been more than two years since the landing and the CDC’s original campaign to warn the public. They said exposure to that kind of stuff could give us diseases the Observers were immune to but we weren’t—kind of like the whole smallpox thing with the Indians. I’d read up on it, just like everything else I could find on the Observers, but never given it much thought, considering I’d planned to stay as far away from the Observers as possible. But this could work for me now.

I turned on my heel and left, knowing the sheriff would be less likely to pull his tail between his legs with me standing there. A line had formed at the register, three or four customers eager to get out, whether to gain some distance from here or to spread the gossip, I didn’t know.

When I finished ringing up their bills and avoiding all their questions, I looked up and found Brigham gone. Unfortunately, he’d left Dewey and the Observer behind.

I stalked out from behind the counter. “Where’s Sheriff Brigham? Why are you still here?” Anger brought me closer to their table than I’d been before.

Dewey looked miserable, like he was on the verge of tears. He kept rubbing his right fist with a napkin in his left hand. “I don’t know. He told me to wait here. He said he got a call out to the Baker place, but I didn’t even hear it on the radio.”

I tried hard not to roll my eyes and failed. Yeah, the Baker place had its troubles—Mr. Baker beating Mrs. Baker most of the time—but I had a feeling Sheriff Brigham was instead on the other side of town, paying a late night visit to Doc Heresford. Now, I could have been kind and told Dewey that he probably wasn’t in any danger unless he’d broken open his own skin while punching the Observer. But no. He was still here and the alien with him.

I leaned forward, laying my hand flat on the table, my fear forgotten in my desperate need to get them both out of here. Besides, nothing had happened. And like that idiot girl in a horror movie who finds an innocent explanation for the ominous sound she’s been hearing, with every second that went by I became more confident that nothing would happen. But I still wanted that alien out of here.

“Now listen, Dewey, you and I are friends, right?” I asked in a soft voice.

He nodded, his left hand scrubbing his right even harder.

“I didn’t want to say anything in front of Sheriff Brigham, but I think maybe you should head on over to Doc Heresford’s place, get him to check you out. After you drop…him off, of course.”

Dewey’s eyes went wide with fear, revealing the whites, and I almost felt bad for him. Almost.

“You think I should? You think I might have…” he lowered his voice, “caught something?”

No. But it sure would be an interesting conversation when he bumped into Brigham over there instead of at the Baker place ten miles away. “I think it’s better to be safe than sorry,” I said. Then I straightened up and turned to go.

A hand closed around my wrist, stopping me mid-step. I swiveled around, mouth open to ask Dewey what the hell he was doing, when I realized it was the Observer holding me in place. Dewey looked on, frozen in surprise, his napkin still pressed to his skin.

My chest seized up, and the world dropped away. All I could see was the Observer’s face and his hand on my arm. I tried to scream, but I had no air. My knees began to give out, but he would not release me.

“Go now. Go through the back door and to your vehicle,” the Observer said. His voice was taut with an urgency that would have chilled me if every goosebump I owned wasn’t already standing at attention.

“Help.” I tried to shout, but I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs. His grip tightened on me, his hand warm and firm, not the cool, slightly reptilian texture I’d always imagined for no other reason than it was creepy, just like them.

“Leave now,” he insisted. The pressure in my chest increased like someone was standing on my lungs. I fumbled into my jeans pocket with my free hand, searching for my inhaler, all the while trying to pull free from the Observer. But I couldn’t concentrate on getting away until I could breathe again. Of course, it didn’t occur to me then that I wouldn’t be able to breathe normally until I got away.

“Let go of her, you….you fobber,” Dewey said in a shaking voice. Fobber was a slur that had cropped up almost immediately after the landing. Obber was short for Observer. You can guess what the F stood for.

“I don’t…know what…you’re talking about,” I said to the Observer between gasps for air. “Now let …me go.”

“If you don’t leave, you will die,” the Observer said.

Things went downhill from there. Dewey managed to drop his napkin, get his gun from the holster and point it at the Observer. The Observer pulled on my arm, bringing me only inches from his face. Behind me, the few customers that remained were moving to get a better look and whispering with that little edge of excitement that terror brings.

“Dewey…put that…gun away. I…don’t want…to get shot.” I finally managed to free my inhaler and bring it to my mouth. I almost bumped the Observer’s face with it as I set it between my teeth and inhaled two quick puffs. He watched with a slight frown creasing his brow. The cut below his eye was now gone, only a faint pinkness and dried flakes of blood indicated where it once had been.

As soon as the medicinal mist floated past my tongue, the pressure in my chest eased. I knew it was as much psychological as anything, Doc Heresford had told me that, but as long as it worked, I didn’t care how.

“Let go of me,” I managed to say in a sufficiently loud voice. I was shaking from head to toe, but I didn’t want to scream. Dewey might jump at the noise and kill us both.

The Observer blinked, and the silver in his eyes retreated, leaving the brown unobstructed for a second. I was fascinated, drawn like a snake to a charmer, despite myself and the situation. “Please go. Now,” he said. Then he released me suddenly, almost toppling me onto the table.

I threw myself backward, stumbling into some chairs. Scrambling to my feet, I ignored the shouts and gasps from all those watching and ran to the counter to call the sheriff. Potential infection or not, Sheriff Brigham better damned well get back over here and clean up the mess he made by bringing an…

That’s when I heard the first and only scream. I turned my head in time to see Dewey’s mouth hanging open, and the Observer, hands free from the cuffs, flying through the air toward me. I didn’t have time to scream before he thudded into me, driving me to the ground and tearing the phone off the counter.

And then the world around me exploded with a bright flash of light and the sound of shattering glass.

Chapter 2

The Observer’s weight covered me, pressing my face into the faded linoleum floor. His arm protected my eyes from all but the brightest flashes of light. Even still, I struggled beneath him to get free. With him on top of me and the greasy smoke seeping into my nose, my already laboring lungs were forced to work harder, reminding me of the suffocation I suffered nightly.

“Get off of me,” I said. My voice was no louder than a whisper. It was all I could manage between coughing fits.

But after a long moment, the weight on me shifted, then disappeared. I immediately shoved away, scooting far from him, cutting my hands and knees on the shards of glass and dinner plates littering the floor. I sat there for a second, cradling my now stinging hands, trying to catch my breath.

He reached for me, but I moved farther back. “Stay away,” I said, still choking on the smoke.

He paused, then he slowly moved his hand toward me, palm flat and facing up, offering something.

I squinted through the haze to see what it was. Small, white…my inhaler. My hand immediately went to my jeans pocket only to find it empty. I snatched it from his hand and promptly used it. I was only supposed to use it in emergencies, but I think this qualified.

After a wary glance in his direction, I got to my feet. Other than the minor cuts on my hands and knees and a few bruises from hitting the floor, I seemed to be unharmed. But I couldn’t say the same for the diner.

My eyes watering and stinging from the acrid air, I looked out upon total and utter ruin. Through the smoke, I could barely make out where the front wall of the diner had been. Window blinds now dangled by one end in the far corner, and flames gnawed on part of the eastern wall. The front booths were tossed and tumbled like mobile homes after a tornado, and the tables and chairs had been blown backward into the counter. Behind me, sparks still danced where glass from the front windows had speared the lemonade machine and the soda fountain.

“Damnit,” I whispered. Six years of my life, of my plans, gone in just seconds. Some days I’d hated that diner with a passion, but I’d worked it as hard as I could, knowing that success would mean a good selling price and freedom. But now…

Frustration swelled inside me as I pictured the half-finished course schedule for Richards Community College sitting on my dining room table at home, just waiting for my return. I’d been debating between taking another psychology class or finishing off my gen eds. Now it didn’t matter.

Couldn’t anything ever go my way? I wiped at the tears starting down my cheeks. It was just part-time at a community college, and it had taken me six years to get to this point. To find the right people to cover while I was gone, to rearrange everything so I’d have time to do the homework…to work up the courage to go back to school after so long. And now I’d probably have to wait six more years. Time enough to restore the building, to hire new people to replace the ones who would quit, to build the business again. At the thought of starting over, despair crushed in on me. I wanted to run home and hide, curl into a ball and let the world pass me by.

“God,” I whispered, “why do you hate me?” I knew that wasn’t true. Or, at least, I was pretty sure it wasn’t. I hadn’t exactly been to church in awhile, but I didn’t think that basic tenet had changed. Yet some days, it sure seemed like someone was out to get me, make me crack, break my spirit, suck my soul right out.

And just then, when I probably would have put my head down on what was left of the counter and bawled my eyes out, I started to hear sounds, people moving, crying, trying to get out from under the debris. Guilt stabbed through me. I’d been so hung up on me that, for a moment, I’d forgotten there might be people out there far less fortunate than me. I started to move out from behind the counter.

“Don’t,” the Observer said, startling me. Though I never would have believed it possible, I’d actually forgotten he was there.

I turned back to stare at him, this alien, who had most likely saved my life by first trying to warn me and then pushing me to the ground. “There are people out there who need help.” I started to walk away again.

His hand closed around my wrist, jerking me to a stop and pulling me around to face him. In the next instant, a shock, like touching the metal end of an electric plug still in the wall, ran through me. Then, the strangest sensation took over. I could feel his hand still clamped around my wrist, fingers pressing into my skin, but I could also feel someone’s wrist in my hand, a pulse beating quickly beneath smooth skin and small bones lying defenseless in my grasp. But I wasn’t touching anything.

I tried to pull free, but I couldn’t move. A buzzing began in my ears, growing louder until it filled my head. White specks danced and skittered across my field of vision until my sight was no better than the worst television reception. I panicked, tried to wrench myself backward, but nothing happened. I was trapped in my own body.

Then, through diminishing patches of clear vision, I saw the Observer take a deep breath, his face tightening in concentration like he was preparing to lift something heavy. Then his fingers opened slowly, as though against some great resistance, releasing my wrist. I fell backward, and his hand snapped forward again, snagging the collar on my shirt, his quick action the only thing that kept me from landing on my back in the debris. The weird in-someone-else’s-body feeling disappeared. The buzzing faded, and my vision returned. Now, I could see the Observer staring at me and hear the sounds of sirens approaching.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

“I didn’t do anything. Now, let go of me,” I said, my voice trembling. I didn’t want to be afraid of him. I wanted to kick him out of what remained of the diner.

He stared at me. “We must go.”

“What?” It was my turn to stare at him.

But he didn’t respond, just started dragging me off toward the kitchen and, I’m guessing, the back door.

I dug my heels in, but that only slowed him down a little. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I don’t know you. And you’re…one of them.” This was as close to my nightmare as I hoped to ever be. I started to reach for his hand on my collar but stopped just before touching him, remembering what had happened when he’d touched me only moments ago. I tried twisting away from him, but his grip remained firm.

He paused and turned to look back at me, the silver in his eyes reflecting the dancing flames on the wall behind us. “If he finds he has not succeeded with this attempt, he will only try another way.”

That stopped me mid-struggle. “What? Who? What are you talking about?”

“You are a threat to him, so he hired a human to kill you. The human detonated the charge meant to take your life—his mission was clear: eliminate you by whatever means necessary.” He paused, eyes shifting to a point over my head, seeming to pull information from some other source. “The human sent here carries a picture of you in his coat, showing you as you are now, in clothes related to your occupation.”

Jeans and a polo shirt? I thought in a bizarre moment of abstraction. That’s what I was wearing, what I wore most days, but it wasn’t like a nurse’s uniform or anything.

“He studied it often—he couldn’t afford to make a mistake, not with an alien pulling the strings.” His last words made no sense. He was an alien—why would he be referring to his own kind that way?

My heart thudded hard and fast. Nuttier than a fruitcake this one. Why did the crazy one have to show up near me? I didn’t need him. I was crazy enough for the both of us. “Look, the sheriff must have hit you harder than I thought. I am the owner of whatever is left of the Silver Spoon Diner. The only threat around here is maybe getting Salmonella from Lucy’s coleslaw.” I stopped talking and looked at him to see if my words were having any effect. But he wasn’t even looking at me. He was staring at where the picture window used to be.

I wasn’t sure he’d heard me until he said, “There isn’t time to explain now. Your sheriff is coming and—”

That was all I needed to hear. I pulled forward hard and twisted at the same time, hearing a seam somewhere in my shirt give, but then I was free. The Observer reached for me, his hand closing on empty air an inch or so above my wrist. I stumbled back from him and ran like hell for the gaping hole in my front wall.

“Over here, Sheriff Brigham,” I shouted. I tripped over the debris, but I managed to stay on my feet and keep moving. I didn’t look back to see if the Observer was following. I didn’t want to know. I thought it might freeze me in place and leave me vulnerable, like a rabbit seeing the shadow of an owl overhead. That Observer was not going to kidnap me, not if I could help it, that was for damned sure. My nerves couldn’t take it. I dreamed about aliens, I didn’t get abducted by them. Though, hey, maybe that would explain a lot.

“Zara? That you in there?” With the sheriff’s words, the glow of a flashlight appeared only feet away from what used to be the diner’s door.

“Yeah, I’m here.” I looked back to see how the Observer was taking the impending arrival of “my” sheriff, but he was gone.

Thank God. The mother ship must have been calling.

Chapter 3

“You okay over there, Zara?” Deputy Mike Packer’s words pulled me from my thoughts.

I’d just spent the last four hours at the Sheriff’s Office drinking scorched coffee and answering the same questions over and over again.

No, I didn’t see anyone outside the diner.

Yes, the Observer spoke to me. He said the explosion was meant for me.

No, I don’t know what he meant by that.

But I hadn’t told the sheriff about that strange moment between the Observer and me. I didn’t need him thinking I was crazier than he previously thought. But remembering that feeling of helplessness at the Observer’s hands made me shiver again.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I gave Mike a weak smile.

He nodded, never taking his eyes off the road. I’d known Mike Packer since grade school, though he was a couple of years younger than me. He was always intense and over-thinking everything, whether it was to have mashed potatoes instead of corn or how to get women to like him. Like right now, he was driving as if he expected an attack from all sides by an armored convey of some kind. Though given what had happened at the diner earlier tonight, maybe I couldn’t blame him.

“You really think that Observer blew up the diner? Killed Dewey and Mr. Johnson?” He asked me as he turned onto my street. Of the seven people in the diner at the time of the explosion, Deputy Dewey Blakemore and Earl Johnson, a trucker, had been the only casualties, which was both amazing and devastating at the same time. Amazing that more weren’t killed, devastating in that no one should have died tonight at all, not like that.

“I don’t know. But,” I added begrudgingly, “like I told the sheriff, if you’re blowing up a building, I’d think the last place you’d want to be is inside it.” And why save me? Just me? Why save anyone at all? Why not just shout that the place was going to blow up and make everyone run away? The sheriff had been making fun of me when he mentioned the Observer making plans to take over the world, but freakier things have happened. I couldn’t connect what had happened tonight with any grander scheme beyond death and destruction on a relatively small scale, but who knows? I shook my head to clear it of all the questions I would never get answers to.

Mike gave a thoughtful “huh” in response, then went on. “But don’t you think—”

I struggled to hang on to my last bit of patience like a drowning man wrestling with a slippery life raft. “Mike, I don’t know what to think, okay? All I want to do now is go home and try to not worry about any of this for a few minutes.” I yanked out my inhaler and sucked in another puff.

“All right, Zara. I get it. Jeez, you don’t have to take my head off.” He slouched in his seat a little, his broad-brimmed hat tipping forward.

When he pulled into my driveway, I jerked my door open before the car even reached a complete stop. “Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you on…” I stopped myself. I wouldn’t see Mike on Sunday because there was no longer a diner for him to have breakfast in while he eyed the church-going women. “I’ll see you.” I tried to make it sound like that was what I’d intended to say all along.

“Yeah, I’ll see you, Zara,” he responded. I slammed the door shut, then trudged toward my front door. No diner meant no Sunday scoping time for Mike, but it meant bigger problems for me.

I paused for a second, staring up at the dark, ranch-style house in front of me. Besides the diner, the house was the only thing of value my parents had left my brother and me, but it was still being paid for. So, no diner meant no money for the mortgage or Scott’s tuition. We had insurance, but the payout wouldn’t be enough to keep us going for the next three years while Scott finished school.

Thinking of Scott, my stomach twisted. I’d have to call him to tell him what had happened. And then he’d freak out and want to come home from college. It had been hard enough getting him to go out of state in the first place. After our parents died in a car accident, he’d become almost paranoid about my safety. And my alien dream thing over the last couple of years hadn’t helped.

I sighed. Yeah, I’d have to call him, but maybe I could wait a few days until the insurance company came by and I got an estimate for repairs…

I am never going to get out of here, I thought. I kept moving toward the front door, but it suddenly felt like my legs were two large tree stumps instead, and I was getting too weary to lift them. I wanted to quit, walk away. But that wasn’t an option. I had no options. Unless I became willing to take up that Observer on his kidnap offer. Ha. I almost needed my inhaler again, just thinking about it.

“Hey, Zara.” Mike’s voice called out as I reached the front steps. “I’ll wait until you get inside and turn on the lights, okay?”

Irritation flashed through me. I didn’t need Mike keeping an eye on me. I wasn’t a child. And it wasn’t as if I’d handed the crazy Observer my address. But in a town this size and this gossipy, I guessed my house wouldn’t be that hard to find. And considering all that had happened tonight, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing for Mike to hang around for a couple extra minutes.

Biting back my temptation to shout for him to go ahead and go, I nodded to Mike and turned back around to climb the steps. I didn’t have my keys—they were buried in the diner rubble somewhere–so I had to stand on my tiptoes to search for the extra key behind the porch light housing. My fingers located the familiar shape and got it down without dropping it. The key felt warm, almost hot, like the light had just been on.

I frowned up at the dark porch light. Usually I left it on when I knew I’d be closing the diner. The light bulb must have blown. I let myself in, then locked the door behind me. You can never be too careful, especially after a night like this.

I got about two steps into the house before I realized something was wrong. The floor beneath me crunched. I looked down, unable to see anything in the dark. I hadn’t spilled anything this morning, had I? I took another step and fumbled for the light switch just inside the living room.

The light snapped on, Mike’s engine revved, and I stared in disbelief. My house had been destroyed. In the living room, the couch was turned on its side, and the cushions were skinned like strange square-shaped animals, the white fluffy innards spread throughout the room. The bookcases were emptied. Books and my mother’s porcelain collectibles lay scattered throughout the room. All the magazine and newspaper articles on the Observers that I’d collected and hidden in shoeboxes behind the bookcases were shredded and strewn in little confetti bits everywhere. My videotapes with news clips of the landing and every alien feature story I could find were torn out of their plastic cases and strung through the room like a giant plastic spider’s web. And shards of glass from the little side window beside the door sparkled on the floor around my feet. In the darkness outside, I’d missed the fist-sized hole in the pane.

“No.” I started to back out of the room on wobbly legs. If I could get to Mike before he pulled away…

A hand clamped over my mouth and pulled me back against something solid and warm.

Oh, God, the crazy Observer from the diner. I got over my fear of touching him long enough to tug at the hand over my mouth, but to no avail. I tried to scream, but only a muffled sound emerged, and the hand tightened. This was way worse than anything I’d ever cooked up in my unconscious.

“I apologize for the crudeness of my methods. But it is important that your law enforcement officials attribute your death to human causes—in this particular case, a burglary gone awry. Your thief became quite distraught when he found nothing of value. He decided to vandalize the premises, and you walked in at just the wrong moment.” The voice didn’t sound like the one from the diner. This guy sounded cultured, elegant, and not the least bit disturbed about discussing my death. And the little bit of his sleeve I could see appeared to be part of a suit coat. The alien at the diner had been wearing a short sleeved t-shirt.

“Ah, yes, Caelan. It is unfortunate he interfered. Because of him, I was forced to end the life of an otherwise agreeable human, who could no longer be trusted after failing on his mission,” the stranger said with a sigh. “So, now I’m here instead of tucked away in some little restaurant drinking a mediocre Chablis. One would have thought that being so technologically immature you would have spent this time improving something.”

I’m going to die. He’s going to kill me. My throat immediately closed in panic. I tried to look back over my shoulder to see what my captor looked like, in case I managed to survive. Or, in case I got to come back and haunt somebody. But he held my head firmly. I caught a glimpse of a jaw and that was it, not that I would have recognized him if I’d seen more. I’d heard enough from him to know that.

“In a way, your death is truly tragic, Ms. Mitchell.”

I started at the sound of my name. He knew who I was. This wasn’t some bizarre case of mistaken identity. He really was after me. I yanked harder at his hand, tried to step back on his foot, and jab an elbow in his gut. But the hand stayed firm, his foot wasn’t there when I stepped down, and his free hand captured my elbow before it landed a blow. Desperation flooded through me, making my knees shake. I could hear the panicked wheeze of my own breathing, air being forced too quickly through my nose instead of my mouth. But even if I could have reached my inhaler, I doubted he’d be kind enough to let me use it before he killed me. I shifted in every direction, muscles burning with the strain, searching for that second of weakness that would set me free.

“Given more time, I would have enjoyed finding out if what she told me was true,” he said in a voice that indicated no exertion of effort.

By then, I wasn’t paying much attention to what he said. All my focus was on getting free. In a moment his other hand would come up on the opposite side of my head, and with a simple twist, it would be over.

“You look exactly as she said you would,” he whispered next to my ear. My stomach lurched, and I gagged.

He pulled back a little. “You aren’t going to vomit, are you, Ms. Mitchell?” He sounded annoyed.

I gagged again, and he loosened his grip around my mouth a little, which was just enough for me to get my teeth over one of his fingers. I clamped down until blood flowed, filling my mouth with a bitter, metallic taste.

He didn’t scream, but he shoved me away with such force that I thought I heard something crack in my ribs when I landed. Fire spread through my chest when I tried to breathe. But at least he wasn’t holding onto me anymore. You’ve got another thirty seconds to think of something, I told myself.

He came to loom over me, and I got my first good look at him. I guessed that this just might be the mysterious “him” the crazy Observer had referred to.

I blinked back tears from the searing pain in my chest. I couldn’t believe that first alien had been sane and beyond that, he’d been right.

This new alien, for there was no question he was anything else, wore a gray, three-piece suit with a white dress shirt. His eyes were silver only, no human color beneath. His hair was also silver, but his face didn’t appear to be lined or wrinkled from where I was lying and you couldn’t have paid me to go in for a closer look.

Holding my side, I started to scoot back into the living room, feeling what remained of my breakables bite into my hand and crunch under my feet. He followed, then stopped short, staring at something over my head. I didn’t bother looking around to see what had caught his attention. Instead, I kept moving back toward the kitchen door. There was a phone in the kitchen and if he stayed spaced out long enough…

I bumped into what felt like a pair of legs. I looked up. The Observer from the diner-Caelan was evidently his name, not that we’d had time for proper introductions-stood above me. He didn’t look well. His face shone with sweat, and he seemed unsteady on his feet, wavering back and forth as he stood there. The black leather coat he now wore over his gray t-shirt accentuated the startling pallor of his skin, so different from when I’d first seen him.

Caelan reached down and lifted me up by the collar of my shirt. A hysterical giggle escaped from me when I realized I was actually relieved to see him. I had a split second to wonder how things had gotten so messed up in the last five minutes of my life.

“Leave her. She is nothing to you.” The silver-haired Observer’s voice took on a hardened edge, losing that refined charm I’d heard earlier.

“We both know that is not true, Nevan. She is the one we’ve been looking for, as you are aware, or you would not be here,” Caelan said.

The one what? I wondered.

“It does not matter. She can do nothing for you now.” Nevan pulled a gun from inside his suit coat.

I’d seen guns before—this was Texas, after all. But none had ever seemed so large as the one pointing at me. I tried to take a step back, but Caelan held me firmly in place.

“You can try to shoot her, but I will stop you. And you cannot rid yourself of both of us. Once you turn your attention to me, she will escape,” Caelan said. He tilted his head in the direction of the front door. “And even now her deputy is reconsidering his course of action. He is wondering about her safety, thinking it might be best if he returned and offered to stay. She’s a little nuts, but not half-bad looking. And that knight in shining armor crap might buy me some points. Plus, she’s not getting any younger.”

I craned my head around to stare at Caelan. His tone had remained calm and even throughout, like he was pointing out the pros and cons of chemical fertilizers, but his last words were Mike’s. It sounded exactly like how Mike rationalized everything, sucking the slightest bit of impulse out of his every move and killing his chances of success with every woman he ever met. And not getting any younger? I was only 26, for crying out loud. Though, it seemed I might not have to worry about getting any older.

I faced Nevan again to see the effect of Caelan’s words. If Caelan wasn’t telling the truth, he was a spectacular liar. Apparently, Nevan agreed. He tucked his gun back into his suit coat.

“I can bleed her dry before her deputy even reaches the front door,” Nevan said. I heard a car door slam outside. Caelan had told the truth. Mike, or somebody, was here.

“Yes, but it won’t look human, will it?” Caelan said.

Their conversation left me light-headed. I took another hit from my inhaler then stuffed it back into my pocket. Damn thing was going to be empty if I didn’t stop having emergencies. “Look, do I get a say in this? I don’t know either one of you, so I’m pretty sure I haven’t done anything to make you mad. I suggest you both get out of here before I scream and send Mike running in to shoot anyone who’s not me.” There, that sounded good, considering my voice was trembling, and I didn’t know if I could draw a deep enough breath to scream.

I waited, but neither of them so much as twitched in reaction to my words. I could hear Mike whistling as he approached the front door. I didn’t want to get him in the middle of this, but I didn’t see any other way. I opened my mouth, but before any noise could escape, something I couldn’t see ripped me from Caelan’s grasp and sent me spinning into a wall. I hit face first, the white plaster suddenly covered with dancing spots of light.

When I opened my eyes again, I was on the floor, and Caelan’s face—two of them, actually—hung above me. I blinked, and his faces reconstituted into one solid image. “Nevan has gone through the kitchen exit. We must leave as well. When you did not answer your deputy’s ring at the door, he called for help. He is now contemplating entering this house without waiting for their arrival.”

I lifted a hand to touch my head, making sure it was still in one piece. It was, but in bad condition, if the throbbing was any sign. When I concentrated, I could hear banging outside of my head that must have been Mike knocking on the front door.

“We need to leave, now,” Caelan repeated. He reached down, his hand wrapped in one of my kitchen towels, and tried to grab my arm.

I pulled away from him. “Don’t touch me,” I said, remembering what had happened the last time.

“The towel will prevent the reaction from skin to skin contact.” He capturing my flailing wrist and hoisted me to my feet.

The reaction. He was talking about that moment of weirdness, the out of body thing that had happened at the diner. In all my reading and rumor collecting, I’d never heard of such a thing. “You mean, that’s supposed to happen? Whenever you touch us…humans, I mean.” I stared up at him as I pulled off a loose strand of videotape that had wrapped itself around my waist.

“No,” he said, without further explanation. He looked back over his shoulder toward the front door, as if expecting someone to appear. “We must go.” He started to pull me toward the kitchen and the back door.

“Wait.” I dug my heels in, sliding on debris. I yanked my arm away from Caelan, wincing when my wrist popped and the burning in my ribs flared. “Why should I trust you? I don’t know you. You haven’t said what this is about or where you’re trying to take me.” And he was one of them. One of the silver-eyed monsters that had visited me nightly for about 730 bad days.

“It is your choice. But in a few seconds, your deputy will access this house. He will find you in this mess, and he will keep you here to explain. If you tell him and the others the truth, they may believe you, but the best they can do to protect you is only human. And that will not be enough against Nevan.” His eyes bore into mine, the silver in them fluctuating every time he blinked. The urgency in his voice was almost palpable.

Choose between Nevan or Caelan. Well, this was new. Generally my “lesser of two evils” decisions only involved whether to have my cheesecake plain or with chocolate drizzled on top. Or, whether to take a Xanax to help me relax or rely on the good old-fashioned remedy of an anti-histamine followed by a big glass of wine.

“There’s more going on here, isn’t there?” An odd twist of excitement pushed my fear to one side. “Something bigger than this supposed research mission you guys are on.”

“It seems that way.”

I stared at him for a second, the blood pounding in my ears the same way it had my freshman year in high school, when I auditioned for the one of the leads in Arsenic and Old Lace on a dare. Needless to say, I didn’t get the part, but it took almost two hours after my reading for the adrenaline to die down.

“If I go with you, will you tell me everything?” The words slipped out before I had too much time to think about them. It seemed a little like taking my life into my own hands or worse, putting it in his. But the chance to find out the truth about my dreams and the truth about the Observers seemed worth it. The chance to be normal again might be within my reach. And besides if he had any inclination of harming me, he would have just let me die one of these times, right?

He watched me closely, his head tilted slightly to one side as if he were evaluating me somehow. “I will tell you all that I know,” he said. Only later would I realize he’d worded his response this way for a reason.

“All right.” I let him lead me to the back door, feeling like I was caught in one of my own dreams. “One last question.”

He paused, his hand above the doorknob.

“Why do you care what happens to me?” I asked.

“Your survival may be the key to my own. And I wish to survive. Do you?” The sound of the front door crashing open punctuated his question.

“Well, when you put it that way,” I muttered. Then I followed him out the door.