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Something about that made me uneasy. It was the name of 90

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my diner, sure, but I couldn't figure out how that could be connected to any of this.

"Caelan, what's going on?" My voice sounded a little shakier than it should have. "Where is everyone?" He didn't answer me at first, still staring down at that spoon. Then he raised his eyes, cold and distant, to meet mine. Little patches of red and white colored his normally dark face. "I don't know where they are," he said. Then he half-walked, halfstumbled away. I followed him out of the kitchen and down the hall to find him in the lounge area, trying to place wood into the fireplace.

"Did Nevan find them?" I asked. Obviously, Caelan intended that we were going to stay here for a least a little while. But that wouldn't be safe if Nevan had...

"If Nevan had found them here and tried to take them, this building would be no longer standing. They would fight to the end against him, giving their lives before giving in to his will." He snapped a branch with a loud crack and tried to set it into place, but his fingers didn't seem to have the necessary dexterity. The branch kept slipping from them and rolling away. "They left this place of their own accord."

When he didn't elaborate, I stepped farther into the room and knelt beside him. When he continued to ignore me, I caught his hand in both of my own, though his fingers extended well beyond my palm. His whole hand was freezing. It was cold in here, probably just barely sixty, enough to keep the pipes from freezing. But it was so much warmer in here than it had been outside that I hadn't really noticed at first. Without thinking, I rubbed my hands over his to warm it.

A shudder racked his entire body, nearly pulling his hand from mine. I looked up to find him watching me, the color in his face alarmingly pallid. "What can I do to help?" I asked.

"Matches," he said from lips turning bluer by the second. I let 91

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go of his hand and stood up to search the rough-hewn mantel above us. Nothing there, other than a variety of stuffed dead animals on stands and plaques affixed to the wall. I dropped back to the floor again, and finally located a tall tube of fireplace matches that had been knocked over behind the pile of wood. I struck one of the matches and held it to the wood. It took several seconds before it caught, and then it started to grow, but only ever so slowly. Caelan was going to freeze to death, and I was going to be mighty cold before this fire got going enough to warm anyone.

"Stay here," I said. He was now huddled on the floor as close as possible to the tiny fire.

I left the lounge and headed up the stairs. I really hoped we were the only ones in here because I was going rummaging. At the top of the stairs, a hallway split right and left with doors hanging open along both sides. They were all guest rooms, as I'd guessed, but the beds were empty of covers. Finally, at the end of the hallway on the left side, I found a huge closet with linens packed tightly on every shelf. I grabbed an armload of sheets and blankets and dragged them down the stairs with me, trying not to trip and fall.

In the lounge, the fire had crept a bit higher, but Caelan now lay curled in a ball in front of it.

"Come on, sit up." I grabbed at his hand, flinching at the cool feel of his skin. I managed to get him sitting up long enough to wrap a couple blankets around him, before he curled up on his side again.

I was now sweating from the exertion of running up and down the stairs and trying to pull him up. If I could get him moving again...but no. I'd had trouble even getting him up from the floor into a sitting position.

I stepped back and sat on the dusty couch for a moment to catch my breath. The blankets around Caelan twitched every few 92

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seconds as his body shuddered from the cold. Now, we'd just have to wait until his body temperature caught up. I'd done all I could do for him. But as soon as I thought that, I knew it wasn't true. I'd seen the movies and read the books where when someone has hypothermia, you're supposed to strip all their clothes off and lay naked with them. Was there a more clichéd way to hook two people up? I don't think so. And sorry, but Caelan and I would both be dead from cold before I'd do that. But I could go sit next to him, lend him whatever body heat he could get from that position. I didn't think he was in danger of dying, at least not now, but it didn't seem right to sit here and watch him suffer, not when I might be able to help.

I pulled myself up off the couch and settled next to him on the floor. His eyes opened a crack, silver reflecting the dancing red and yellow flames, before closing again.

"Hey, you're not supposed to go to sleep," I said. At least that was how it worked for humans. "Talk to me." He mumbled something that I couldn't hear. I leaned closer and this time I heard him say, "About what?" I made a face that he probably couldn't see. There were tons of things I wanted to ask him, but none of which I wanted to hear his answers from the depths of a cold-induced delirium. "Okay, uh, tell me about your friends. The ones that used to live here." At first I thought he wouldn't answer, a sore subject maybe. But then just as I started to formulate another question, he spoke.

"There are three. Asha, Thane, and Namere." Okay, this was the tough part with their names. "Are they men, women? I mean, male or female?" They didn't use the terms men and women.

"Asha and Namere are female. Thane is male." I kicked my shoes off and stretched my feet out toward the fire. Four of them together, then. Most of the research teams I'd read about and seen on TV were made up of four members, just 93

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like this group, two male and two female.

An idea clicked in my brain. "Are you one of Nevan's research teams?" The Council members were in charge of the research mission as a whole but it was believed that each Council member headed up multiple individual teams of researchers. He didn't answer for a moment, and I thought he might have fallen asleep. Then he said, "It would seem that way, yes."

"What does that mean?"

"We have no memory of life before waking up here, so we have no memory of being assigned to him. And we are different than the others we have encountered, so it is difficult to know what our role was to have been."

"Different how?" I asked, surprised.

"Their behavior is controlled, not their own–"

"What?" I frowned at him even though he couldn't see me. He sighed. "You will have to see to understand." I shoved back irritation building in me. I hated this. I didn't understand anything, and he couldn't explain it. Apparently, he thought I was too stupid for words.

His blankets shifted, and I looked over to see Caelan rolled over and facing me. "It is not your intelligence, but your need to rationalize everything into answers that make sense. I don't have the answers for you, and you grow only more frustrated when I can only tell you what I know."

"Look, just forget it, okay?" I said, disgusted with him and myself. He was right to an extent, but I couldn't help that. It was one of my major drives to make sense of the world around me, especially when everything seemed so crazy and mixed up. That was one of the reasons I'd spent years collecting all that information about the Observers. To know them well enough meant that maybe I didn't have to be afraid any more.

"But you cannot always mold the truth into something more easily managed," he said quietly.

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He seemed to be feeling better so I scooted a little farther away from him, still staying close to the fire.

"So are you going to tell me what happened here that's got you so upset?" I poked another stick into the fire.

"When I left to find you, Asha warned me that if I ever tried to return, they would not be here."

"Why?"

"They could not risk Nevan following me and finding them." He paused, then continued. "You must understand that they too want to be free of Nevan and free of fearing him, but Asha, our leader, made a decision that we could not risk all of our lives to go against him. That instead we would remain in hiding until the research years are finished and then we would remain here on Earth after the others left."

I shivered, thinking of what might have happened to me if Caelan had abided by that decision. "But?" I prompted. He sighed, watching me with those serious brown and silver eyes. "But I have seen things that indicate all is not as it has been said to be, and that the research years might not end as expected." A big chill that had nothing to do with cold ran through me.

"You think they're here to stay."

He shrugged, one shoulder appearing out of the cocoon of blankets. "It is difficult to say what their intentions are, only that I know they have lied before to the humans."

"About what?"

"I will show you tomorrow before we leave." I frowned. "Where are we going?"

He hesitated before answering. "I'm not certain. I'd hoped..." He stopped himself, then said, "After you have seen what I have to show you, we will decide further how to carry on." He didn't say it, but the word "alone" hung out there in the silence.

"You hoped they'd stay anyway, wait for you," I said. 95

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He closed his eyes, hiding whatever emotion I might have seen there. "It was wiser that they did not. If I'd been taken by Nevan, they all might have been in danger." Suddenly, the message that they'd left him made sense. "You saw the Silver Spoon in your vision, didn't you? That's how you knew to find me."

"Yes," he said. "But it took me much time to understand the vision and find the correct location."

And they'd left that spoon sitting out to remind him of the choice he'd made. What a bunch of jerks.

I moved a little closer to him. "Caelan, I'm sorry."

"It is of no consequence now," he said. I thought of my parents, gone now forever, and my brother waiting, probably pacing by the phone. He'd never forgive me for this. "Losing someone is always of consequence." I blinked back the tears stinging my eyes and wrapped my arms around my knees, hugging them to myself.

His hand, now warm, closed over my arm, his thumb pressing gently on the underside of my elbow. "I am sorry for you as well, Zara." I looked over to find him propped up on one arm, his blankets falling open. "For the pain this has caused you. That was never my intent."

I nodded, giving him a watery smile. "No one ever intended anything in this whole mess." I half-laughed. "Except Nevan, of course. He intended me dead."

Caelan pushed himself up into a sitting position, the blankets now in a heap on the floor. Even then, he was taller than me.

"Still, I am sorry." His hand brushed the hair from my face a splitsecond before my tears rolled free. When I didn't object to his touch, he moved closer, shifting so that he held me against him, my back to his side. His arms pulled tight around me.

"I want to go home." Hot tears leaked from my eyes to drop 96

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off my chin. "I want everything to be normal again. I...I don't want this to be my life. All this danger and mystery. I just want to have a regular boring life, with two parents still alive to go nuts over grandchildren if I ever get to have them, to have a medicine cabinet full of aspirin instead of the latest in anti-anxiety and mood lifters. To sleep at night, all night, and to have a good dream for once."

My shoulders shook as I let forth this wave of self-pity, but I couldn't stop myself this time. I felt like I'd been holding it together for so long that when a crack appeared, I couldn't stop it all from shattering.

Caelan didn't say anything, just held me, his cheek resting lightly on the top of my head. After another few minutes, I straightened myself up a bit, wiping my face on a corner of a sheet. "I'm sorry." Embarrassment at my outburst started to take over. "I don't know–"

He shifted then, pulling slightly away from me so I could see his face. "Do not. As I said before, your strength is not strength alone. You continue even when you feel too weak, even when you are alone. That is a greater power than never faltering at all." He touched my face then, brushing away tears, and probably what remained of my mascara, from my cheeks.

"But I'm not exactly alone now, am I?" I tried to smile up at him. But the look in his eyes caught my breath. Warmth, concern. He cared about me.

His gaze still on me, he leaned a little closer. I watched him come but felt no urge to back away. Only the increased hammering of my heart, shaking my whole body. Before I realized that he truly intended to do what I only thought he might, his mouth brushed against mine. My breath caught in my throat, and liquid heat shot through me, all of it flowing south. He pulled away slightly, still watching me as if trying to determine my reaction. Good luck to him–I couldn't even figure it 97

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out. Fear, hope, and lust all tangled together in a messy heap inside me. All I knew for certain was that I wanted to feel that again, to tangle everything up even tighter.

Before I could think better of it, though I'm not sure I would have, I closed the distance between us, moving my mouth over his, feeling the warm of his breath against my cheek, the lines of his lips as mine crossed over them, and the stubble on his chin rough on my skin. Beneath my hands–I didn't even know when I'd moved them–I could feel his chest moving up and down, faster than normal.

I looked up to find him watching me, eyes wide, the brown in them swallowing the silver whole. I nuzzled in a little closer, nudging his lips with mine, encouraging, but not demanding. I wasn't entirely certain how far I wanted this to go, only that I needed to keep feeling that heat, the hungry flames low in my belly that craved to go higher.

Then his mouth opened beneath mine, and I was lost. His tongue swept along my lower lip, coaxing for entrance and I let him have it, pulling him closer to me, wrapping my arms around his neck, and shifting until we faced each other. Thoughts in my head all jumbled together. I could feel his hand slide down my back to my hip, urging me into him and somewhere inside my head, the realization that he was still kneeling but I was now sitting on him, facing him, my legs on either side of him, his hand holding me in place. Directly beneath me, I could feel him, hard and heated, pressing between my legs. And despite the lovely way that sensation fed the flames building within me, that might have been enough to stop me. Probably should have been enough. But just as the realization made it to a conscious level, one where I might have protested and backed away, his other hand slid up under my hair, and his tongue dipped in and out of my mouth, a motion I couldn't help but imitate with my hips. With the feel of him against the roll of my 98