by L. J. Smith
And, of course, a panther. Which happened to be walking on two feet at the moment, in the guise of a tall girl with a tense, wary expression and black hair that swirled witchlike around her.
And, of course, there was Iliana in the midst of them, looking like a ballet dancer who had blundered in from the Nutcracker Suite.
There was a silence as the two groups stared at each other.
Then the teacher snapped shut his book and advanced on them. Keller held herself ready. He had a neatly trimmed beard and a dangerous expression.
It was Iliana who took him on, though. She stepped forward before Keller could draw a breath to speak.
“Mr. Wanamaker! These are my cousins! Well—some of them are my cousins. They’re from…California. Hollywood! They’re here to…do research for…”
“We’re really just visiting,” Keller cut in.
“A new show about a high school. Not like that other show. It’s more of a reality-based—”
“It’s just a visit,” Keller said.
“But your dad is a famous producer,” Iliana said. She added in an undertone to Mr. Wanamaker, “You know, like that other producer.”
All eyes, including the teacher’s, fixed on Keller.
“Yes—that’s right,” Keller said, and smiled while clenching her teeth. “But we’re still just visiting.” She nudged Winnie with her elbow, but it wasn’t necessary. Winnie was already staring at the teacher, brainwashing him with witch power.
Mr. Wanamaker blinked. He weighed the book he was holding as if he were Hamlet holding Yorick’s skull. He looked at it, then he looked at Winnie and blinked again.
Then he shrugged and looked at the ceiling. “Okay. Whatever. Sit down. There are some chairs at the back. And I’m still marking you tardy.” But Keller noticed that as he returned to his desk, his posture was very erect.
She did the best she could to glare at Iliana without drawing any further attention to them. “A famous producer?” she whispered through her teeth.
“I don’t know. It was more interesting than just saying you’re friends.”
You don’t need life to get any more interesting, Bubble-brain, Keller thought, but she didn’t say anything.
She found one thing out that surprised her, though, and she found it out quickly. Her job was made harder by the fact that everyone at the school was in love with Iliana.
It was strange. Keller was used to getting attention from guys—and ignoring it. And Nissa and Winnie both were the type that had to beat them off with sticks. But here, although the guys looked at her and Nissa and Winnie, their eyes always seemed to return to Iliana.
At break, they crowded around her like bees around a flower. And not just guys, either. Girls, too. Everyone seemed to have something to say to her or just wanted to see her smile.
It was a bodyguard’s nightmare.
What do they see in her? Keller thought, frustrated almost beyond endurance as she tried to edge Iliana away from the crowd. I mean, aside from the obvious. But if all this is about her looks…
It wasn’t. It didn’t seem to be. They weren’t all hitting on her for dates.
“Hey, Iliana, my granddaddy loved that get well card you made.”
“Illie, are you going to tie the ribbons this year for the Christmas benefit bears? Nobody else can make those teeny-weeny bows.”
“Oh, Iliana, something awful! Bugsy had five puppies, and Mom says we can’t keep them. We’ve got to find them all homes.”
“Iliana, I need help—”
“Wait, Iliana, I have to ask you—”
Okay, but why come to her? Keller thought as she finally managed to detach the girl from her fan club and steer her into the hall. I mean, she can hardly be the best problem solver in this school, can she?
There was one guy who seemed to like Iliana for the obvious. Keller disliked him on sight. He was good-looking in a carefully manicured way, with deep chestnut hair, deep blue eyes, and very white teeth. He was wearing expensive clothes, and he smiled a lot, but only at Iliana.
“Brett,” Iliana said as he accosted them in the hall.
Brett Ashton-Hughes. One of the rich twins who were having the birthday party on Saturday night. Keller disliked him even more, especially when he gave her a coolly appreciative once-over before returning his attention to Iliana.
“Hey, blondie. You still coming Saturday?”
Iliana giggled. Keller stifled the urge to hit something.
“Of course, I’ll be there. I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Because, you know, it would kill Jaime if you didn’t come. We’re only inviting a few people, and we’ll have the whole west wing to ourselves. We can even dance in the ballroom.”
Iliana’s eyes went dreamy. “That sounds so romantic. I always wanted to dance in a real old-fashioned ballroom. I’ll feel just like Scarlett O’Hara.”
No, Keller thought. No, no, no. No way is she going there. She’s going to the Solstice Ceremony, where the shapeshifters and the witches are meeting, even if I have to drag her by the hair.
She caught Nissa’s eye and saw that Nissa was thinking the same. Galen and Winnie were simply watching Brett with troubled looks on their faces.
“Yeah, and I can be Brett Butler,” Brett was saying. “Plus, the indoor swimming pool will be heated. So if you get tired of being Scarlett, you can be a mermaid for a while.”
“It sounds wonderful! Tell Jaime I said so.”
Winnie bit her lip. Keller got a fresh grip on Iliana’s arm and started guiding her away.
“So it’s a promise, right?” Brett called after her.
Keller squeezed.
“Yes, but—oh.” Iliana managed to smile and wince at the same time, her arm limp in Keller’s grasp, “Oh, Brett, there’s one thing. I’ve got my cousin and her friends staying with me.”
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 oppo
rtunity 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.
Galen took a step toward her. His jaw was tense, but his gold-green eyes were fixed on hers, and his hand was slightly lifted. Keller wondered if it was the gesture of a hostage negotiator. He opened his mouth to say something.
And Iliana came to life, jumping up and running past him and shrieking at Keller all at once.
“What are you doing? That’s Jaime! What are you doing to her?”
“You know her?”
“That’s Jaime Ashton-Hughes! She’s Brett’s sister! And she’s one of my best friends! And you attacked her! Are you all right?”
It was all shrieked at approximately the same decibel level, but on the last sentence, Iliana looked down at Jaime.
Keller moved her palm from Jaime’s mouth. As it turned out, though, that didn’t seem to be necessary. Jaime raised her free hand and began to make swift, fluid gestures at Iliana with it.
Keller stared, and then her insides plummeted.
She let go of the girl’s other arm, and the gestures immediately became two-handed.
Oh. Oh…darn.
Keller could feel her ears flatten backward. She looked unhappily at Iliana.
“Sign language?”
“She’s got a hearing impairment!” Iliana glared at Keller, all the while making gestures back at Jaime. Her motions were awkward and stilted compared to Jaime’s, but she clearly had some idea what she was doing.
“I didn’t realize.”
“What difference does it make how well she can hear?” Iliana yelled. “She’s my friend! She’s president of the senior class! She’s chair for the Christmas Benefit bazaar! What did she do to you, ask you to buy a teddy bear?”
Keller sighed. Her tail was tucked up close to her body, almost between her legs, and her ears were flatter than ever. She climbed off Jaime, who immediately scooted backward and away from her, still talking rapidly with her hands to Iliana.
“The difference,” Keller said, “is that she didn’t stop when I told her to. I yelled at her, but…I didn’t realize. Look, just tell her I’m sorry, will you?”
“You tell her! Don’t talk about her as if she isn’t here. Jaime can lip-read just fine if you bother to face her.” Iliana turned to Jaime again. “I’m sorry. Please don’t be mad. This is terrible—and I don’t know how to explain. Can you breathe now?”
Jaime nodded slowly. Her dark blue eyes slid to Keller, then back to Iliana. She spoke in a hushed voice. Although it was flat in tone and some of the sounds were indistinct, it was actually rather pleasant. And the words were perfectly understandable.
“What…is it?” she asked Iliana. Meaning Keller.
But then, before Iliana could answer, Jaime caught herself. She bit her lip, looked at the floor for a moment, then braced herself and looked at Keller again. She was frightened, her body was shrinking, but this time her eyes met Keller’s directly.
“What…are you?”
Keller opened her mouth and shut it again.
A hand closed on her shoulder. It was warm, and it exerted brief pressure for an instant. Then it pulled away, maybe as if revolted because it was resting on fur.
“She’s a person,” Galen said, kneeling down beside Jaime. “She may look a little different right now, but she’s as much of a person as you are. And you have to believe that she didn’t mean to hurt you. She made a mistake. She thought you were an enemy, and she reacted.”
“An enemy?” There was something abou
t Galen. Jaime had relaxed almost as soon as he got down on her level. Now she was talking to him freely, her hands flying gracefully as she spoke aloud, emphasizing her words. Her face was pretty when it wasn’t blue with suffocation, Keller noticed. “What are you talking about? What kind of enemy? Who are you people? I haven’t seen you around school before.”
“She thought—well, she thought you were going to hurt Iliana. There are some people who are trying to do that.”
Jaime’s face changed. “Hurt Iliana? Who? They’d better not even try!”
Winnie had been twitching throughout this. Now she muttered, “Boss…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Keller said quietly. “Nissa’s going to have to blank her memory anyway.” It was too bad, in a way, because this girl’s reaction to the Night World was one of the most sensible Keller had ever seen. But it couldn’t be helped.
Keller didn’t look at Iliana as she spoke; she knew there was going to be an argument. But before it started, she had one final thing to say.
“Jaime?” She moved and got instant attention. “I’m sorry. Really. I’m sorry I frightened you. And I’m really sorry if I hurt you.” She stood up, not waiting to see if she was forgiven. What difference did it make? What was done was already done, and what was about to happen was inevitable. She didn’t expect to be forgiven, and she didn’t care.
That was what she told herself, anyway.
Iliana did argue. Keller tried not to let Jaime see much of it, because that would only make her more scared and miserable, and the end really was inescapable. Leaving her memory intact would be dangerous not only for Iliana but for Jaime herself.
“It’s death for a human to find out about the Night World,” Keller said flatly. “And it’s worse than death if the dragon and his friends think she’s got any information about the Wild Power. You don’t want to know what they’ll do to try and get it out of her, Iliana. I promise you don’t.”
And, finally, Iliana gave in, as Keller had known she would have to from the beginning. Nissa moved up behind Jaime like a whisper and a shadow and touched her on the side of her neck.
Although witches were the experts at brainwashing, at inserting new ideas and convictions, vampires were the best at wiping the slate clean. They didn’t use spells. It was something they were born with, the power to put their victim into a trance and smooth away hours or even days of memory. Jaime looked into Nissa’s silvery-brown eyes for maybe seventy seconds, and then her own blue eyes shut, and her body went limp. Galen caught her as she fell.
