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"Another?" He reached for the pitcher. I shook my head. "Not just yet."

"You ready to tell me now?

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I nodded. "Though, you're not going to believe me," I said with a half-laugh. "I'm not sure I can believe it all happened myself."

So, I told him the truth. Well, not quite. I told him that a group of Observers had saved me from a Council member, the aforementioned silver-haired male, who thought I was some threat to him and should be killed. I didn't mention the fact that, oops, Nevan had actually turned out to be right. I also left out the bit about me being a little more closely related to the Observers than I would have liked. Which meant I had to tweak the ending, too.

"So, he took Scott to get to me. The other Observers tried to help me rescue him, but it turned out to be an ambush. As you can see, I barely survived." I looked at Brickman steadily, waiting to see what part he would challenge.

"And the other Observers, the ones that helped you. What happened to them?"

I bit my lip, picturing Caelan lying on the floor. "I don't know." I looked down at my hands in my lap. "Some...some died saving me, I know."

"Is that who you were talking about earlier, the ones you had to find?" He leaned in closely.

I jerked my head up and glared at him. "I owe them my life and Scott's life too. I'd like to know that they're okay and to thank them."

He nodded. "And you have no idea who they are, which team they're from?"

I shook my head. "No."

He tapped his pencil on his notepad for a long second, until I had to resist the urge to tear both from his hands. Then he said,

"We found the place where you were attacked. Scott described it to us and we managed to locate it in the woods, about 35 miles north of here."

I nodded, heart thudding in my chest. Had they gotten to 239

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Asha, Thane, and Namere? Were they being held in a cell somewhere?

"There's nothing left but a big charred hole in the ground. No remains, human or otherwise, at least not yet." Thank you, Asha, I thought. If they'd found dead Observers, especially Nevan, I had the feeling we would have been having this conversation in military hospital. Our government didn't mess around any more with those committing violence against Observers. Though, maybe they'd have to rethink that.

"Anything else you'd like to add?" he asked. I shook my head.

"Any idea why this Nevan fellow would think you're a danger to him?"

I shrugged. Keeping my mouth shut as often as possible seemed like a very good idea right now.

Brickman took a deep breath, then said, "Okay then. We'll be in touch." He started to walk out. But my conscience balked, and I couldn't let it end there.

"Count them," I said.

He paused in the doorway and turned back around to face me.

"What?"

"Count the Observers here in this country. In all the countries."

"The Observers landed here with approximately two hundred researchers." He frowned. "Why?" I shook my head impatiently. "Listen to me. Just send out a bunch of your guys, or girls, or satellites or whatever you've got and try to count them."

"And again, I ask, why?" He stepped closer.

"You won't get an accurate count, but it won't matter. You'll see then."

"See what?"

I just looked up at him silently.

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"You know, I could make life very difficult for you. Keep you in questioning for who knows how long. Why don't you just tell me what you know?"

I rolled my eyes with a weary smile. "I don't know anything, Brickman. I just have a few ideas. I'm not even sure if they're right."

"Tell me," he demanded.

"Doesn't the 'I' stand for investigation, Agent Brickman?" I leaned back on the bed and pulled the covers around me again.

"You'll figure it out. And your conclusion will have far more weight than theories coming from a mentally-ill waitress from Texas."

He grimaced. I waited for him to leave.

He started to, then stopped, turning back to face me. "You are one interesting woman, Zara Mitchell."

"Thanks."

"No, I mean it." He consulted his notebook. "Doctors here say that your recovery is nothing short of miraculous. They've never seen anyone make such strides in this amount of time. In fact," he looked up at me, "they weren't predicting you being conscious and alert until later this week, if ever."

I swallowed hard. The power from Caelan must still have been circulating within me. "Lucky thing, I guess." I cleared my throat and pressed the call button next to my leg, out of sight from Agent Brickman.

"I guess." He shrugged, an action of forced carelessness.

"Course, we won't really know anything until the tests are back, will we?"

"Tests?" I pressed the call button again. Where were all the nurses in this hospital?

"Well, sure. We can't have you suffering any long-term effects from this. Besides, haven't you ever wanted to see your own DNA strands?"

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I froze.

He smiled. "We'll be seeing you then." He turned and headed out the door, nearly bumping into the nurse coming into my room. I fell back against the pillows, listening to her lecture him in the doorway for disturbing me. DNA. A little bit of curiosity tickled at me, but along with it, an almost overwhelming sense of doom. They wouldn't miss it. They couldn't. They would see that I wasn't quite who and what I was supposed to be and then the jig, as they say, would be up.

The nurse came in and fussed over me. I asked for a glass of water to explain my call to her. She gave it to me and then left me alone again.

Tears suddenly prickled my eyes. I didn't know what to do. I needed help. I needed Caelan.

The tears spilled over as I pictured his calm planning that got us out of trouble time and again, his unshaken demeanor even when his back had been full of shattered glass.

"This isn't fair," I whispered to God. "I never asked for any of this. Now you've taken it away again and I don't know what to do."

I wiped my eyes on the edge of my bed sheet, hoping for some kind of sign. But as usual, God or fate or destiny was silent just when you needed help the most. But maybe that was a sign in and of itself. For now, that was what I had to believe. 242

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Chapter 22

I went home after that. I didn't belong there anymore, but I didn't belong anywhere else either. Scott picked me up at the airport and drove me home, without a word the entire way. But that was okay. The crowd of reporters and rubberneckers that greeted us from our front lawn made up for the noise quotient. Eventually, some other story took my place on the front page above the fold, so the media left town like lions abandoning a three-day-old zebra carcass. Scott transferred to Richards Community College, where I had planned to enroll, despite my protests that he should finish in California. He still refused to talk to me, other than the once-a-day call between classes that he insisted on to make sure I was still there.

Nights were especially bad; I jumped at every sound in the house, seeing Nevan in every unexplained shadow. The dreams that I'd had before meeting Caelan hadn't returned, but the ones I had now were far worse, filled with screaming and the smell of cooking meat.

But the visions, for lack of a better word, were the worst. They didn't happen when I was sleeping, only when I was awake and concentrating on something else, like driving or cleaning. One minute, I was staring down at the bottom of my tub and the next, I was looking at Asha, Thane, or Namere. Sometimes I felt pain, not of the physical variety, but the kind that surrounded and squeezed your heart, like whenever I thought of Caelan, of his smile, of not being able to tell him goodbye.

The visions only lasted a few seconds at a time, and I didn't tell anyone about them, hoping they would go away and at the same time, clinging to every one of them because they somehow made me feel closer to Caelan, like he wasn't really gone and we 243

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were still somehow connected. I did my best to squash that fantasy every time it came up, if only to try to spare myself pain, but nothing I did could make it go away for long. Two months to the day that Caelan knocked me flat on the floor of the diner, I was standing at the job site where the new Silver Spoon was being built, better and probably greasier than ever. The insurance company had come through with a check–though there was still an open investigation into the explosion–and I'd hired Jorge Martinez, a former schoolmate from grade school on, as my contractor.

"Walls will be up next week, Zara." He pointed out where the lumber was already piled.

"Thanks, Jorge, I appreciate it." I smiled at him. He was one of the few in town who made an effort to treat me just as he had before. Some other people refused to look at me, or hurried their children past. Still others stared at the hand-shaped burn around my wrist and whispered. A few, including Sheriff Brigham, glared and spoke loudly about the evils of aliens whenever I walked by. It was all right, I could deal, as long as a few people, like Jorge, still tried. "Now, you're not screwing me on lumber, right? Charging me more than the cost?" It was, by now, an old joke between us. He laughed. "
Querida
, if I were screwing you, it wouldn't be on a stack of lumber." He winked at me, then walked back to his crew as the cell phone in my jeans pocket rang. I never went anywhere without that phone now, Scott insisted on it and even if he hadn't, I still would have done it.

I pulled the phone out and flipped it open. "Hello?"

"It's me. Just checking in on you." Scott's voice sounded tired and strained.

"I'm still here and alien-free. How about you? How are finals? I know you were up late last night." I tried to extend the conversation just as I did whenever we passed in the house, like two strangers in the same hotel.

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"I'm fine," he said shortly. "I have a night class tonight. So I'll call you at 7:00. Make sure your phone is on."

"Scott–" I started but the phone clicked in my ear and then went dead. "Damnit," I said, loud enough to draw attention from the work crew. I snapped the phone closed and turned away, striding for my car before I lost my temper. It would do no good to go screaming around here, I told myself, hurrying past Jorge's truck. Everyone already thinks you're a lunatic. But Scott just made me so angry...

Power flooded through me before I recognized the sensation. Equipment, bits of shingle, and floor tiles exploded from the back of Jorge's truck into the air. I screamed and threw my hands up even as I heard shouts of alarm from behind me. Heart thudding in my chest, I made myself lower my arms and pushed back against the power. The tools and debris from Jorge's truck dropped to the ground.

My knees gave out, and I crouched down, trying to catch my breath. The tender skin on my left arm stung from being stretched so quickly and without warning. Hurried footsteps crunched on the ground behind me, and Jorge, looking shaken and sounding out of breath, knelt beside me.

"Zara, you okay?"

I nodded automatically, my mind occupied with calculating the possibilities. I'd been angry before, even more than this, and that had never happened. He helped me to my feet.

"Did you see what happened?" he asked. I shook my head. It could have been another Observer, but no, I was in control. I dropped that stuff to the ground. That meant only one thing to me: Caelan.

I pulled free of Jorge's grasp and began searching, some part of me refusing to believe it was possible, and another part unable to dismiss it. My mouth was dry, and my heart was pounding again.

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"I think maybe you should go home, get some rest." Jorge rubbed his head uneasily as I walked past him, looking around, not sure where to start.

Somebody else saw them first.

"
¡Dios Mío!
" The shout came up from one of Jorge's crew and we both bolted in that direction.

And there, across the street from the diner, standing in front of the old movie theater, right next to the alley where Sheriff Brigham had arrested him, was Caelan. He appeared to be alive, whole, and reasonably healthy. I covered my mouth with my hand to stop the cry that hung in my throat. My knees went wobbly again, but this time, Jorge was not there to help. Then, to the right and left of Caelan, Asha, Thane, and Namere came out of the shadows of the movie theater overhang. In the bright light of the afternoon, their eyes glowed silver, making it impossible to miss what they were.

A burst of rapid Spanish and English erupted behind me. Car doors opened and slammed shut, and tires spewed gravel. Clearly, the publicity surrounding what had happened to me had made the residents of Silver Springs much more capable of identifying Observers than they had been before.

I kept my eyes on the sight across from me. I was afraid if I blinked they would all disappear, another of those bewildering visions.

Fortunately, there was no traffic across Main Street because I didn't even look when I crossed. I stopped on the sidewalk a few feet from Caelan and the others, afraid to go any closer. It took me two tries, but I finally forced the words out. "What are you doing here?" I wrapped my arms tight around myself in an effort to stop the trembling, so badly did I want to reach for Caelan, to touch him, to make sure he was real and really here. But it was Asha who answered me. "You are foolish, human, if you think this is over because Nevan is dead." 246

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I shook my head, forcing myself to concentrate on something other than Caelan. "He wouldn't tell me who she was, the one who freed you. Only that you were created, not born..." I hesitated, then added, "just like me."

"We could hear him," Namere said softly. "The drugs he put in the air were meant to keep us still, mentally and physically, but not unconscious. We know what he said." The drugs had kept Scott under, but evidently, the effect was not the same on their metabolism, which meant Nevan hadn't known that or he'd lied. Either way, they would have been trapped, awake, but unable to move when that fluid came rushing in over their faces and into their noses. I shuddered.