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trembling, and I didn't know if I could draw a deep enough breath to scream.
    I waited, but neither of them so much as twitched in reaction to my words. I could hear Mike whistling as he approached the front door. I didn't want to get him in the middle of this, but I didn't see any other way. I opened my mouth, but before any noise could escape, something I couldn't see ripped me from Caelan's grasp and sent me spinning into a wall. I hit face first, the white plaster suddenly covered with dancing spots of light. When I opened my eyes again, I was on the floor, and Caelan's face–two of them, actually–hung above me. I blinked, and his faces reconstituted into one solid image. "Nevan has gone through the kitchen exit. We must leave as well. When you did not answer your deputy's ring at the door, he called for help. He is now contemplating entering this house without waiting for their arrival."
    I lifted a hand to touch my head, making sure it was still in one piece. It was, but in bad condition, if the throbbing was any sign. When I concentrated, I could hear banging outside of my head that must have been Mike knocking on the front door.
    "We need to leave, now," Caelan repeated. He reached down, his hand wrapped in one of my kitchen towels, and tried to grab my arm.
    I pulled away from him. "Don't touch me," I said, remembering what had happened the last time.
    "The towel will prevent the reaction from skin to skin contact." He capturing my flailing wrist and hoisted me to my feet. The reaction. He was talking about that moment of weirdness, 30
    Stacey Klemstein
    the out of body thing that had happened at the diner. In all my reading and rumor collecting, I'd never heard of such a thing. "You mean, that's supposed to happen? Whenever you touch us...humans, I mean." I stared up at him as I pulled off a loose strand of videotape that had wrapped itself around my waist.
    "No," he said, without further explanation. He looked back over his shoulder toward the front door, as if expecting someone to appear. "We must go." He started to pull me toward the kitchen and the back door.
    "Wait." I dug my heels in, sliding on debris. I yanked my arm away from Caelan, wincing when my wrist popped and the burning in my ribs flared. "Why should I trust you? I don't know you. You haven't said what this is about or where you're trying to take me." And he was one of them . One of the silver-eyed monsters that had visited me nightly for about seven hundred and thirty bad days.
    "It is your choice. But in a few seconds, your deputy will access this house. He will find you in this mess, and he will keep you here to explain. If you tell him and the others the truth, they may believe you, but the best they can do to protect you is only human. That will not be enough against Nevan." His eyes bore into mine, the silver in them fluctuating every time he blinked. The urgency in his voice was almost palpable. Choose between Nevan or Caelan. Well, this was new. Generally my "lesser of two evils" decisions only involved whether to have my cheesecake plain or with chocolate drizzled on top. Or, whether to take a Xanax to help me relax or rely on the good old-fashioned remedy of an anti-histamine followed by a big glass of wine.
    "There's more going on here, isn't there?" An odd twist of excitement pushed my fear to one side. "Something bigger than this supposed research mission you guys are on."
    "It seems that way."
    31
    The Silver Spoon

    I stared at him for a second, the blood pounding in my ears the same way it had my freshman year in high school, when I auditioned for the one of the leads in Arsenic and Old Lace on a dare. Needless to say, I didn't get the part, but it took almost two hours after my reading for the adrenaline to die down.
    "If I go with you, will you tell me everything?" The words slipped out before I had too much time to think about them. It seemed a little like taking my life into my own hands or worse, putting it in his. But the