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"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 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 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 26

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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. I was focused only 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 27

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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.

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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 as large as the one pointing at me. I tried to take a step back, but Caelan held me firmly in place.

"You cannot rid yourself of both of us. You can try to shoot her, but I will stop you. 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. 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 29

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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, 30

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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 seven hundred and thirty 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. 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."

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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. 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. 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.

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Chapter 4

The Observers landed on Earth two years ago. No one knows their real name or even what planet they're from. They've refused to tell us in order to keep our society as untainted by their influence as possible. In fact, if they'd had their way, we never would have known about them at all, but a close call with few dozen nuclear warheads changed all that.

A little over two years ago, a couple of neighboring third world countries, without money to feed or shelter their people, somehow scraped up enough cash to purchase a slew of nuclear missiles, which they promptly pointed at one another. Between them, they had enough power to destroy themselves and contaminate the environment for the rest of us. Everyone knew about it, of course. The United States got involved in the peace talks, so it became the top news story for a couple of weeks, until some rock star got married, I think. I guess nobody realized how serious it really was. Yeah, it was death on a stick, but at that time somebody was always threatening to do something deadly–blow up a building, release biotoxins in the streets, or hold the President hostage. You learned to deal with it. Either you accepted that you couldn't control the crazies in the world and went on about your life, or you found a comfy closet to live in and never leave.

So when the news broke about the nuclear standoff, nothing really seemed to change. Everyone I knew kept paying their bills, dieting and having babies. After all, hundreds had threatened mass destruction, and no one had gone through with it yet. But then again, I guess it only takes once.

One Thursday evening in March, right before the dinner rush, I was at the diner. The television behind the counter blared, 33

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though, as usual, you couldn't hear it over the noise. I was busy mediating a squabble between Lucy, my cook, and Ramon, my one and only busboy. With their bickering over who should empty the dishwasher, I didn't notice the lull until it stretched into a deathly silence. I looked up to find everyone else staring at the television. Peter Jennings appeared on screen, looking unprepared and disheveled, and in the background of the news studio, people were crying and shouting. And then he told us nuclear missiles had been launched, and retaliation was expected in the next few minutes.

No one made a sound, transfixed by the talking heads on the screen. Then one of my waitresses, Rosa, who was almost six months pregnant, began to weep. The only thing I could think was that I should have had more canned goods. Odd, the things that run through your mind when you hear death knocking. About three minutes later, when people were still discussing whether to run or hide, the television went to static. Everyone froze. I remember wondering if they'd been wrong about the destination of that missile and it had hit the United States instead. But then the picture cleared, revealing a woman. Silvery white hair curled over her shoulders, but her face appeared smooth and young with sharply defined features. Her eyes were almost colorless, the irises just a shade more silver than white, glowing in contrast to her dark skin. Definitely not human. And at the sight of her, my knees began to shake.