Brett hesitated an instant, giving each girl on Keller's team the appraising look. Then he shrugged and flashed a smile. "Hey, no problem. Bring them all. Your friends are our friends."
"That wasn't what I was trying to tell you," Keller said when they were away from Brett. Iliana was rubbing her arm with an aggrieved expression. "Then what? I thought it would be fun for you to go." "What do you mean, 'then what'? You're going to the Solstice Ceremony that night, so you shouldn't have promised him." "I am not going to the Solstice Ceremony that night, because I'm not the one you're looking for." It wasn't the time to argue. Keller kept her moving down the hall. Keller wasn't happy. Her nerves were all prickling, and she felt like a cat with its fur standing on end. Very soon, Iliana wasn't happy, either. 'I always eat lunch in the cafeteria!" "Not today," Keller said, knowing she sounded as brusque and tired as she felt. "We can't risk it You've got to be in a room, alone, someplace where we can control access to you." "The music room," Winnie said helpfully. "I saw it on the map and asked a girl about it in English
class. It's open during lunch, and there's only one door."
"I don't want to-"
"You don't have a choice!"
Iliana sulked in the music room. The problem was that she wasn't very good at sulking, and you could only tell she was doing it because when she offered her cookies to Nissa, she only insisted once. Keller paced nervously in the hallway in front of the door. She could hear Winnie and Galen inside talking. Even Galen's voice sounded white-faced and strained.
Something's wrong... I've had a bad feeling ever since we got to this school... and it isn't any easier having him around.
Part of her was worried that he might take this opportunity to come and try to talk to her. And part of her, a very deep inside part, was furious because he wasn't doing it.
Goddess! I've got to get my mind clear. Every second that I'm not in control of my emotions means an opportunity for them.
She was so absorbed in yelling at herself that she almost missed the girl walking past her. Keller was almost at the end of the hall, and she had to do a double-take to realize that somebody had just calmly slipped by.
"Hey, wait," she said to the girl's back. The girl was medium-sized and had hair the soft brown of oak leaves, slightly longer than shoulder-length. She was walking fast She didn't stop. "Wait! I'm talking to you, girl! That door is off limits."
The girl didn't turn, didn't even pause. She was almost at the door to the music room. "Stop right there! Or you're going to get hurt!"
Not even a hesitation in the girl's step. She turned into the door. A thousand red alerts went off in Keller's head.
Chapter 9
Keller reacted instantly and instinctively.
She changed.
She did it on the leap this time. Rushing the process along, pushing it from behind. She wanted to be entirely a panther by the time she landed on the girl's back.
But some things can't be rushed. She felt herself begin to liquefy and flow... formlessness... pleasure... the utter freedom of not being bound to any single physical shape. Then reformation, a stretching of all her cells as they reached to become something different, to unfurl like butterfly wings into a new kind of body.
Her jumpsuit misted into the fur that ran along her body, up and down from the stomach in front, straight down from the nape of her neck in back. Her ears surged and then firmed up, thin-skinned, rounded, and twitching already. From the base of her spine, her tail sprang free, its slightly clubbed end whipping eagerly.
That was how she landed.
She knocked the girl cleanly over, and they both went rolling on the floor. When they stopped, Keller was crouching on the girl's stomach.
She didn't want to kill the girl. She needed to find some things out first. What kind of Night Person the girl was, and who'd sent her.
The only problem was that now, as she knelt with her hands gripping the girl's arms, staring into dark blue eyes under soft brown- bangs, she couldn't sense anything of the Night World in the girl's life energy.
Shapeshifters were the uncontested best at that. They could tell a human from a Night Person nine times out of ten. And this girl wasn't even in the "maybe" range. She was giving off purely human signals.
Not to mention screaming. Her mouth was wide open, and so were her eyes, and so were her pupils. Her skin had gone blue-white like someone about to faint. She looked utterly bewildered and horrified, and she wasn't making a move to fight back.
Keller's heart sank.
But if the girl was human and harmless, why hadn't she listened when Keller had shouted at her? "Boss, we have to shut her up." It was Winnie, yelling above the girl's throaty screams. As usual, Nissa didn't say a word, but she was the one who shut the music room door. By then, Keller had recovered enough to put a hand over the girl's mouth. The screaming stopped.
Then she looked at the others.
They were staring at her. Wide-eyed. Keller felt like a kitten with its paw in the canary cage. Here she was, sitting on this human girl's midriff, in her half-and-half form. Her ears and tail were a panther's, and she was clothed from her snug boots to her shoulders in fur. It fit her like a black velvet jumpsuit, a sleeveless one that left her arms and neck bare. The hair on her head was still a human's and swirled around her to touch the floor on every side.
Her face was human, too, except for the pupils of her eyes, which were narrow ovals, reacting to every change of light and shadow. And her teeth. Her canines had become delicately pointed, giving her just the slightest hint of fangs.
She blinked at Galen, not sure what she saw in his expression. He was definitely staring at her, and there was some strong emotion pulling his face taut and making that white line around his mouth.
Horror? Disgust? He was a shapeshifter himself-or he would be if he could ever make up his mind. He'd seen her in panther form. Why should he be shocked at this?
The answer flashed back at Keller from some deep part of her brain. Only because I'm a monster this way. Panthers are part of nature and can't be blamed for what they do. I'm a savage thing that doesn't manage to be either an animal or a person.
And I'm dangerous in this form. Neither half of me is really in control.
Someone who's never changed could never understand that.