"All of you!" Iliana said. She was holding out both hands to fend them off. "Just let me go! I want to go home!"
Winnie's face cleared a little. "Yeah, I'll bet you do. But, you see, that place is dangerous. We're going to take you somewhere safe-"
"You kidnapped me! Oh, God, I've been kidnapped. My parents aren't rich. What do you want?"
Winnie looked at Keller for help.
Keller was watching their prize Wild Power
grimly. She was getting a bad feeling about this girl.
'It's nothing like that." She kept her voice quiet and level, trying to cut through the hysteria. "You-don't you even talk to me!" Iliana waved a hand at Keller desperately. "I saw. You changed. You were a monster! There was blood all over- you killed that man." She buried her face in her hands and began to sob.
"No, she didn't." Winnie tried to put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "And anyway, he attacked me first."
"He did not. He didn't touch you." The words were muffled and jerky.
"He didn't touch me, no, but-" Winnie broke off, looking puzzled. She tried again. "Not with his hands, but-"
In the front seat, Nissa shook her head slightly, amused. "Boss-"
Tm way ahead of you," Keller said grimly. This was going to be difficult. Iliana didn't even know that the dragon was the bad guy. All she had seen was a boy trying to talk with her, a girl inexplicably flying against a wall, and a panther that attacked unprovoked.
Keller's head hurt.
"I want to go home," Iliana repeated. All at once, with surprising speed, she lunged for the door handle. It took Keller's animal reflexes to block her, and the movement sent another pang through her injured shoulder.
Strangely, as it happened, pain seemed to flicker
across Galen's face. He reached out and gently pulled Iliana back.
"Please don't," he said. "I know this is all really strange, but you've got it backwards. That guy who was talking to you-he was going to kill you. And Keller saved you. Now they want to take you somewhere safe and explain everything."
Diana raised her head and looked at him. She looked for a long time. Finally, she said, still almost whispering, "You're all right. I can tell."
Can she? Keller wondered. Does she see something in his eyes? Or does she just see that he's a handsome blond guy with long lashes? "So you'll go with her?" Galen asked. Iliana gulped, sniffed, and finally nodded. "Only if you go, too. And only for a little while. After that, I want to go home."
Winfrith's face cleared-at least slightly. Keller stopped guarding the door, but she wasn't happy. "Straight to the safe house, Boss?" Nissa asked, swinging the car back toward the freeway.
Keller nodded grimly. She glanced at Galen. "You win." She didn't have to say the rest. The girl would only go if he went. Which made him a member of the team. For the present.
He smiled, very faintly. There was nothing smug in it, but Keller looked again.
Nothing was going the way she'd planned. And Winnie might still have faith in her Witch Child, but Keller's doubts had crystallized. We are all, she thought, in very big trouble. And there was a dragon that might start looking for them at any minute. How fast did dragons recover, anyway? Big trouble, Keller thought.
The safe house was a nondescript brick bungalow. Circle Daybreak owned it, and nobody in the Night World knew about it.
That was the theory, anyway. The truth was that no place was safe. As soon as they had hidden the limo in an ivy-covered carport in back and Keller had made a phone call to Circle Daybreak headquarters, she told Winnie to set up wards around the house.
"They won't be all that strong," Winnie said. "But they'll warn us if something tries to get in." She bustled around, doing witch things to the doors and windows.
Nissa stopped Keller on her own trip of inspection. "We'd better look at your arm."
"It's all right."
"You can barely move it."
Til manage. Go look at Winnie; she hit that wall pretty hard."
"Winnie's okay; I already checked her. And, Keller, just because you're the team leader doesn't mean you have to be invulnerable. It's all right to accept help sometimes."
"We don't have time to waste on me!" Keller went back to the living room.
She'd left Iliana in the care of Galen. She hadn't actually told him that, but she'd left them alone together, and now she found he'd gotten a root beer from the refrigerator and some tissues from the bathroom. Diana was sitting huddled on the couch, holding the drink and blotting her eyes. She jumped at every noise.
"Okay, now I'm going to try to explain," Keller said, pulling up an ottoman. Winnie and Nissa quietly took seats behind her. "I guess the first thing I should tell you about is the Night World. You don't know what that is, do you?"
Iliana shook her head.
"Most humans don't. It's an organization, the biggest underground organization in the world. It's made up of vampires and shapeshifters and witches-well, not witches now. Only a few of the darkest witches from Circle Midnight are still part of it. The rest of them have seceded."
"Vampires..." Iliana whispered.
"like Nissa," Keller said. Nissa smiled, a rare full smile that showed sharp teeth. "And Winnie is a witch. And you saw what I am. But we're all part of Circle Daybreak, which is an organization for everybody who wants to try to live together in peace."
"Most of the Night People hate humans," Winnie said. "Their only laws are that you can't tell humans about the Night World and that you can't fall in love with them."
"But even humans can join Circle Daybreak," Keller said.
"And that's why you want me?" Iliana looked bewildered.
"Well, not exactly." Keller ran a hand over her forehead. "Look, the main thing you need to know about Circle Daybreak is what it's trying to do right
now. What it's trying to keep from happening." Keller paused, but there was no easy way to say it "The end of the world."
"The end of the world?"
Keller didn't smile, didn't blink, just waited it out while Iliana sputtered, gasped, and looked at Galen for some kind of sanity. When she finally ran down, Keller went on.