“Trying to be nice, or just torturing you?” Lance asked in that dry way of his.
“I think he was trying to be helpful,” I replied. “That is, he could tell I was homesick, so he took me to a place where at least I could see home, even if I couldn’t go there.”
“Compassion from a Reptilian?” Raphael said then. “I find that difficult to believe.”
“Half Reptilian,” I pointed out. It took a good deal of effort to push the image of his face from my mind, to attempt to forget the torment and longing in his expression as he wrestled with his father’s impossible demands. I couldn’t think about that, because if I did, I’d start to wonder what would have happened if I’d let him kiss me then, take me in his arms.
Which was…no. Just no.
“He looks a lot more human than Reptilian,” Callista put in. “So maybe emotionally he’s more like a human. What do you think, Taryn?”
I thought that I really didn’t want to talk about Gideon at all. But if I was too obvious about trying to deflect the conversation, then that would probably invite even more questions. “It’s hard to say for sure,” I said carefully. “I mean, he was raised by Lir Shalan, so I’d say his outlook on the universe was more like that of a Reptilian.”
“Hmm,” Callista said. From the way she tilted her head and lifted an eyebrow, I could tell she didn’t exactly believe me. To my relief, though, she settled back in her chair and went quiet, which meant she intended to let it alone…for the moment, anyway.
“But what do we do now?” my mother asked. “They returned Taryn to us, but what if they change their minds?”
That exact fear had crossed my mind multiple times the night before as I lay wrapped in a blanket on Michael’s sofa. I couldn’t help worrying that a blare of sulfuric yellow light would surround me once again, and I’d be whisked back to the Eclipse.
It hadn’t happened, obviously. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t.
A brief silence fell.
“She could stay with us,” Kara offered. “Grace’s room is empty, and the creek will help to provide protection.”
“And so will I,” Lance said, the glint in his silver-gray eyes making it clear that he’d cheerfully blow a few holes in any Reptilians who might attempt to trespass.
I appreciated the offer, but I didn’t want to accept it. My mind and my heart were still too unsettled, and I knew that being in the casual tumult of their crowded household wouldn’t help me to heal. Clearing my throat, I said, “That’s very kind, but —
“But it’s probably best if Taryn goes to stay in the cottage,” Martin cut in, sending me a knowing look. He must have sensed my discomfort and stepped in to save me so I wouldn’t look ungrateful. “It sheltered Kirsten against a similar threat, and I think it’s the safest place for her now.”
Of course. The “cottage” had belonged to Michael Lightfoot, one of the original group of UFO hunters my mother had met when she came here to Sedona in pursuit of the agents who had kidnapped my father. Michael was killed during the confrontation with the aliens on that solstice night twenty-five years ago, but he’d left his house to Kara and Kirsten, since he’d had no children of his own. They’d renovated the place and brought it up to date, and it was used as a sort of guest house for visiting friends and relatives.
More importantly, though, the house sat within a hundred yards of Oak Creek. Call it whatever woo-woo you like, but the creek had mystical properties of its own, somehow seemed to carry much of Sedona’s power within it. While in the protective field generated by Oak Creek, you were effectively shielded from the Reptilians’ surveillance. They couldn’t invade your mind while you were there, and neither could they abduct you from your home.
It really was the perfect place for me to stay. I would be safe at the cottage. Safer than at the Rineharts’ home, because the cottage sat a good deal closer to the creek than their house did.
My parents knew it really was the most logical solution. Even so, my mother said, “And maybe one of us should stay with her — ”
“No,” I cut in. I didn’t know exactly why, since at first glance it would have made a lot of sense to have someone there to watch over me. But the creek could do that, and I knew I needed to be alone. “I’ll be fine. We all know the aliens can’t hurt me when I’m at the cottage.”
“But you’ll need to leave it sometime — ”
“Yes, but I promise I’ll only leave to go to work.” I paused then, realizing I’d been basically AWOL from my psychic gigs for almost two weeks. Luckily, I’d cut back on my hours at most places so I could concentrate on doing readings at Crystal Vision, which had always been my favorite venue. So I really only needed to make my excuses to one person. “That is, assuming I still have a job. What did you tell Leila?”
“We covered for you,” my father said. “We said you’d come down with strep and were highly contagious, and so you needed to stay home for a while. That was the first and best thing we could think of. And we figured we’d come up with another excuse once it became obvious that even the world’s worst case of strep throat wouldn’t have kept you out of work for that long.”
“Thanks,” I said, and I meant it. Working at the crystal shop where I gave readings could sometimes be tiring or even depressing, but Leila, the owner, was like the big sister I’d never had, and I hated the thought of letting her down by disappearing off the face of the planet without offering a single word of explanation. “So anyway, we know the Reptilians are all about stealth. They’re not going to beam me out of a store in the middle of uptown Sedona.”
“No, but what about when you’re driving to and from there?” my mother asked. “There are some awfully dark stretches of road in between.”
“I never really work into the evenings,” I replied. “The shop closes at six, and the days are getting longer now. I’ll be fine.”
My parents traded an eloquent glance. “Well….” my mother began.
“I think it’ll be okay,” my father said.
A long silence. No one else spoke, since this was clearly something that had to be hashed out between my parents and myself. Then at last my mother nodded. “I know the cottage is safe. And I guess I’ll just have to pray that being out in daylight and around crowds will be enough of a deterrent.”
“It will be fine,” I said. But that was just me talking. I didn’t have a premonition, or a feeling that nothing bad was going to happen.
Right then, I had to go on blind faith.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I packed up everything I thought I might need for a stay of indefinite duration and loaded it into my hand-me-down Honda. My parents insisted on driving over with me, even though it was still broad daylight and I should have been fine. They probably just wanted to be with me for as long as possible, and I couldn’t blame them. After all, until earlier that day, they’d been facing the very real fear of never seeing me again.
While I was packing, Kara and Lance had gone back to their place to fetch the keys to the cottage, along with the remote for the garage door. They’d already left again by the time I was ready, for which I was grateful. Of course I loved Kara and Lance — they were like the aunt and uncle I’d never had, since both my parents were only children — but right then, I wanted to be with my mother and father.
I pulled into the cramped one-car garage at the cottage, and my parents parked their SUV on the street. They got out and met me on the front walk.
“Ready?” my mother asked.
“Sure.” I didn’t know why I was hesitating; I’d been to the cottage many times before, although I’d never stayed there overnight.
Maybe it was simply that it all seemed so irrevocable. Yes, the cottage was a good solution to my current predicament…but was I going to end up having to stay here indefinitely?
I bit back a sigh and pulled the key Kara had given me from my jeans pocket. All of my stuff was still in the car, since I knew I’d have plenty of time to unpack later. Actually, I was loo
king forward to it, just because the activity would give me something to do.
Inside the house, everything looked neat and clean, groomed as a hotel room. I knew that Kara had someone come in to dust and scrub once a month, more if someone had actually stayed there. A faint scent of wood smoke lingered in the air, as if it had embedded itself in the paint and the wooden beams overhead.
“Well, everything looks fine,” my mother said, glancing around.
“Would you expect anything less of Kara?” my father asked, a laughing glint in his eyes.
“I suppose not.”
I set down my purse on a side table and wandered into the kitchen, then opened the refrigerator. It was empty except for a half-consumed flat of bottled water on the lower shelf. Good thing that my mother had loaded up a cooler for me before we left the house.
Both my parents followed me into the kitchen. I caught my mother giving the barren refrigerator a sideways glance before I shut the door.
“It’s fine,” I said. “You gave me more than I can eat in a week, especially since I grab lunch uptown when I’m working. And the grocery store isn’t that far away. I doubt the Reptilians are going to zap me out of the Safeway.”
“You’re right.” Something about her shoulders sagged, and suddenly she looked very tired. “I just hate the idea of leaving you here alone after everything that’s happened.”
Now that I was actually here, I was feeling a little weird about that, too. But I knew the creek had protected Kirsten once, and it would protect me now. I had to trust in it. Anyway, I’d survived almost two weeks on an alien ship. I should be able to handle being alone in the cottage, especially since my parents were only a five-minute drive away.
“I’ll text you right before I go to sleep,” I told her. “And I’ll text you when I get up, so you’ll know everything is okay.”
“And you’re going back to work tomorrow?” my father asked.
“Yes. I got in touch with Leila before I started packing and let her know that I was feeling well enough to come back to work.”
My mother actually appeared relieved by that piece of information. She was probably thinking that the chances of me having any problems with marauding aliens would be greatly reduced when I was in a shop uptown surrounded by tons of tourists.
“If you see or hear anything strange, you call us right away,” my father said. “I don’t care what time of day or night it is. Got it?”
“Aye, aye, captain,” I replied, lifting one hand to my brow in a mock-salute.
He looked far from amused, however. “I mean it, Taryn.”
“I know you do. But really — I’m going to be okay. I think it’ll be good for me to be here. I’m starting to feel better already.”
That last bit was possibly a teeny bit of prevarication. True, some part of me had relaxed somewhat, knowing that I was safe from alien incursions here. But the rest of my mind was jangling with too many worries — what might be happening to Gideon, the problem of the disappearing women and what in the world our little UFO group could do to stop it.
But it didn’t seem as if any of those troubles showed in my expression, because after giving me a long look, my father nodded slightly. And once he did so, my mother seemed to relax a little, too, although not enough that she was willing to let one particular matter go.
“I still think you should have stayed at the house for dinner at least,” she said.
“I know I’m better here,” I told her. “This way I can relax into being alone. It would have been harder if I’d come back here in the dark.”
There didn’t seem to be much she could say in reply to that, so she lifted her shoulders and turned toward my father. “Then I guess we’d better go, Paul.”
He looked resigned. “I suppose so. Lance said he was getting some new reports, so we might want to head up to their place and see if there’s any new information that might be helpful.”
That was my parents, always trying to save the world. Or at least trying to save their little corner of it. I gave them both a hug and saw them out, then shut the door and looked around at my new home.
It was cozy, with its rustic furniture and leather sofa and the Navajo rug on the floor. The fireplace looked inviting, too, although the day had really been too warm to even think about lighting a fire. Still, I might make one that night, if only to give me something to occupy a little time. The house had full internet, so I wouldn’t lack for entertainment.
Sunset was still several hours off. I knew what I needed to do then, while the sun was relatively high in the sky.
The little patio off the back door had been swept recently, although the outdoor furniture there still had its winter coverings on. There was a storage shed around the side of the house where I could put the coverings away, if I decided I wanted to sit outside and enjoy the unseasonably mild weather.
But that wasn’t my current destination. I crossed the patio and headed down the narrow path which wound through the trees, some of them just beginning to bud. Most of the cottonwoods had a thin film of fresh green along their branches, a sure sign that they’d be in full leaf in a few more weeks.
Through the trees I heard the sound of water chattering away, rushing over the worn stones of the stream bed. After covering a few more yards, I emerged into the open, then went down almost to the water’s edge.
It was rushing and lively, fed from the snow melt up in Flagstaff. I bent down and trailed my fingers in the waters of the creek, letting them flow over my hand. The water was bitterly cold, even on a sunny day such as this, but I didn’t mind. That water, and the positive energy behind it, was the greatest ally I had at the moment.
My phone, which I’d shoved in my pocket, buzzed. Sighing, I straightened up and wiped my damp fingers on my pant leg. Really, my parents had only been gone for ten minutes, tops. You’d think they could have lasted just a little while longer before checking in to make sure I hadn’t been kidnapped by aliens.
But the message showing on my home screen wasn’t from them. It had come from Callista and said, Coming over for pizza and drinks at six. We need to talk.
That was so like my friend. She didn’t bother to ask, but just steamed ahead as if she knew everything would fall into place neatly around her.
The sound of the water was loud enough that it probably would have interfered with any dictation I attempted. So I typed back, Cal, you know I don’t drink.
Much, was her prompt reply. And earlier this afternoon, you looked like someone seriously in need of a drink.
Well, I couldn’t argue with that. I’d always been take it or leave it when it came to alcohol, but if someone had stuck a margarita in my hand during the “interrogation” at my parents’ house, I would have wanted to name my firstborn after them.
Okay, you win. I’ll see you at six. What about Raphael?
He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself for one night.
As no doubt he could. I wondered if he would meet up with my parents for a council of war at Lance and Kara’s house. If new reports were coming in, that meant more information to dissect and discuss.
And while I knew I would need to pitch in with my own theories and insights soon enough, it did feel good to know that I could stay here tonight and hang out with Callista and pretend everything was going to be fine.
Actually, scratch that. I somehow doubted she was coming over just so we could watch TV and braid each other’s hair — if my mane of curls would even cooperate with such an activity.
No, she could tell I’d been holding back. Being Callista, she’d no doubt decided that it was her duty to find out exactly what I’d been omitting from the discussion.
Six o’clock. I looked down at the time stamp on my phone. I had a little more than an hour to figure out what I was going to tell her.
Or, more to the point, what I needed to avoid telling her.
She showed up right on time, a bottle of wine in her hand. “I know you don’t like red, and white seems
wimpy for pizza, so I compromised and got rosé.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said, moving out of the way so she could go on into the living room and set the bottle down on the coffee table. Since I’d known that was where we’d be eating, too, I’d already laid out place mats and napkins, plates and wine glasses, all available from the well-stocked kitchen. “The pizza should be here soon, too.”
“Girl pizza?”
“What else?”
Callista and I both shared an unholy love for Hawaiian-style pizza, a trait our families teased us about unmercifully and which the two of us indulged on a regular basis.
“Perfect,” she said. Spotting the corkscrew I’d put out on the table, she bent and retrieved it, then got to work on the wine bottle. “So,” she continued, as she started twisting the corkscrew in, “you know I want to hear everything.”
Just what I’d been dreading. I managed to say lightly, “Can it wait until after I’ve had a few sips?”
The cork came out with a satisfying pop. Callista poured a healthy amount into each glass and set down the bottle when she was done. I went over and picked up one of the wine glasses.
“Drink up,” she said. “Because I want to hear all the dirt.”
“There is no dirt,” I protested.
She raised an eyebrow at me and retrieved her own wine glass. “Maybe you’ve got your parents fooled, but I know you. There was something going on with you and that green-skinned hottie, wasn’t there?”
In desperation, I took a swallow of wine, then another. It was light and tart, not sweet at all. I wouldn’t say that it exactly gave me courage, but it did allow me to shrug and reply, “You think Gideon is a hottie?”
“For someone with green skin and red eyes, yes. But my opinion isn’t what matters here. So tell me all about it.”
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