His driver. Like he’d hired her.

All the heat went out of the lukewarm water. Daria shivered and shut it off.

Tagen thought the girls E’Var had taken were working with him. It was possible. Likely, even. She’d forgotten what they called it when victims of violent abductions started empathizing with their captors. Stockhand’s symptom, or something like that. And E’Var was an alien. Daria knew only too well that nothing was more important than getting okayness back when there was an alien in the room.

Daria toweled herself dry with the doormat-sized scouring pad the hotel provided, and then went back into the bedroom, savoring the feeling of clean for as long as she could. She hadn’t brought extra clothes on this trip and she hadn’t been terribly consistent about rinsing them out at night. She supposed, considering what she was out here trying to do, it didn’t really matter how she smelled, but it bothered her. Tagen looked like he’d magically stepped out of a recruiting poster. She didn’t know how the hell he did that. His uniform was spotless, the creases sharp, and his hair was pulled back into his severe ponytail without even the benefit of a comb. He was getting stubbly again. That was vindicating at least.

She heard Tagen sigh as she pulled her shirt on, and she tossed him a glance, her nose wrinkling even as her brows raised inquiringly.

“Shame to the world that demands you to cover,” he said.

She felt herself blushing and turned away to look for her underwear. “You really need to meet more Earth girls.”

“I have. A great many.” His hand came into the field of her vision, offering her panties, but he drew them back when she reached to take them. Tagen moved behind her and knelt, holding them for her to step into.

She wasn’t sure whether she felt more pampered by this act or merely ridiculous. She disguised her awkwardness by saying, “I’ve been dressing myself since I was six, actually.”

“A terrible loss to the males of Earth.” The thick pads of his fingers slid up along the outer edges of her panty, bringing a delicious shiver up her thighs to her spine and out through the rest of her. His lips pressed lightly to the very small of her back, and then he stood away. “I think I would never let you dress yourself if I thought I could get away with such a command. Of course, I would never let you dress at all…”

His teasing tone faltered on the last word. His eyes cut sharply away and he did not continue. She didn’t reply. They stood inches apart and worlds away and did not touch.

“So,” Daria said at last. It was a singularly woebegone sound. She cleared her throat and tried again, forcing brightness into her voice. “So I had a thought.”

“Did you?” He moved away where she could see him. His hands were clasped behind his back and his shoulders were squared. She couldn’t see his face and she was glad for it. His voice was impersonal enough. “Tell me.”

“I figure, either he’s still heading west looking for a place to hunt, or he’s all done and making for his ship, in which case, he’ll still be going west. So my thought is, we go west until we either hear where he hit, find him at a hotel, or come to I-5 ourselves.”

“I see.” He still wasn’t facing her.

“And…” Daria sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed, staring glumly at the floor. “And if we get all the way down to Highway 20 without hearing anything, then, Tagen…I think maybe…”

“I had best leave,” he finished for her. And then he did turn around.

She had been braced to see that soldier’s indifference with which he had armored himself against her earlier on this trip. Instead, he let her see his sorrow plainly, and it struck her briefly speechless. That he could hurt that much and still be so calm and objective…the thought came to her disjointedly that he had to be one hell of a soldier.

“And you are correct, of course,” he continued quietly. “Protocol would demand nothing less and my orders are explicit. All the same, I find myself reluctant to obey them.”

She offered him a crooked smile. “Isn’t there an ancient Jotan cure for that?”

The pain in his eyes sharpened, but he had an answering smile for her. “No,” he said. “On that, even the ancients are silent.” He looked around the room, and then went to collect Grendel from the bed beside her.

Time to go. Daria finished dressing in heartsick silence.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe there’d be a huge murder spree down in California this morning with all of E’Var’s trademarks. Another motel, maybe. An RV park, anything. A huge bunch of bodies would just be such a great thing to hear about today.

Oh, she was so going to Hell.

*

“County fair,” Sue-Eye said.

Kane raised himself up from his half-sleep and looked at her curiously. She could be a frustratingly chatty little beast, but she wasn’t really in the habit of blurting.

She was looking out the window, her eyes tracking a colored marker-board tacked to a tree as it neared, and then passed behind them. Her gaze shifted to him, hesitating, gauging his receptiveness. He didn’t give her any kind of encouragement, but he must have seemed amicable to her because she said, “We should check it out.”

“Are you kidding?” Raven demanded. “You want to stop and ride the Ferris wheel?”

Neither of them were making any sense.

Sue-Eye glanced at Kane. “Good hunting,” she said.

Some disquiet ghost from the back of Kane’s mind slipped through him, cold and thin as space itself. He tried to chase down its source and could think only of a dark room, the thump of engines, and the sound of his father’s voice. Just the sound, not the words.

“Big crowds,” Sue-Eye went on. “Lots of noise. Tents everywhere. Security’s pretty slim. The Dog Pack used to work fairs all the time, rolling for wallets and stuff.”

“People don’t go to the fair by themselves,” Raven argued. “It’s broad daylight, there’s no cover of any kind—”

“There’s plenty of cover. There’s woods all around, it’s just a matter of dragging folks off behind a booth, and then into the trees. I’m telling you, I’ve done it before. Easy hunt.”

Kane’s claws flexed slowly on the lid of his pack. Nine empty vials. Could he fill that in one hunt? He had filled ten at the motel-hunt, but then there had been darkness and isolation and sleeping humans. This was full day all around them and from the sound of it, Sue-Eye was talking about many, many humans.

“Raven,” he said. “What’s the danger?”

She scowled, but it wasn’t a look she was directing at him. “It’s just stupid to kill a bunch of people right out in the open and think no one’s going to notice,” she said. “People practically expect to get their pockets picked at a fair. Dying is different. It’s not like rolling for wallets.”

“No, it’s better,” Sue-Eye said calmly. “Since they won’t be getting up after a few minutes to start looking for a cop.”

“And people aren’t just going to be in a big crowd, they’re going to be families in a big crowd, which means they’re going to be looking out for each other. They’ll notice if Cousin Bob goes missing.”

“People may go to the fair as families, but they almost always split up after they get there,” Sue-Eye countered. “They split up, they lose track of time…it’s totally natural.”

“I have purple hair!” Raven shot back angrily. “We can’t go around killing people in some backwater boondock! They’re going to be staring right at us the whole damn time!”

“Bullshit,” was Sue-Eye’s blunt reply. “There’s nothing more normal than some out-of-towners taking in a county fair on a hot day, especially one just off the highway on a boring stretch of road.”

“Hot day,” Raven interrupted. “We’ll be there half an hour and he’ll go into Heat. No one is going to overlook that.”