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worked evening jobs and schooled his son at home. Now they both knew the source of what Edward's doctors had thought a slight deformity; Edward had inherited his pointed ears from another race.
    * * *
    "Mom, I want to go shopping," Elizabeth Frasier pouted, her arms crossed angrily over her chest. "I haven't gotten new clothes in forever." She'd watched enviously as they'd passed shopping center after shopping center on their way through Dallas the day before. Now they were leaving all of it behind.
    "Lizzie, hush, this is hard enough for your mother as it is," Francis Frasier helped his daughter into a van. Mary Ellen Frasier attempted to control the shaking in her hands, but wasn't having much success. "Come on, hon, get in. We'll be all right," Francis did his best to calm his frightened wife. Elizabeth wasn't helping, whining about shopping when she should be worried for her safety. Francis sighed over the whole thing and climbed into the van after his wife and fifteen-year-old daughter.
    * * *
    Sixteen-year-old Keith Caldwell stared out the window as the van drove away from the huge mansion. A Denton, Texas, city limit sign blurred past as the vehicle drove northward toward Oklahoma. Keith thought of himself as practical and still had trouble believing what he'd been shown and told earlier. Another race? That had to be a trick of some sort. Leaning back in his seat, he convinced himself that he was part of an experiment—the government was testing the effects of stress on teens or something. That had to be it. His half-brother, Bryce, sat in the third row of seats in the van. Older by two years, Bryce had cast puzzled glances at Keith after they'd received the information earlier. Keith took one look at his parents' faces—Jeanine and Michael Caldwell appeared pale and worried. Leaning against the locked door of the van, Keith closed his eyes to sleep during the trip.
    * * *
    Macy Hill gripped both her parents' hands as they sat in the back of a van speeding toward Oklahoma. Of all six children, she'd been closest to capture—if the car full of drunken college students hadn't hit one of the men trying to take her, she'd be gone already. Her job at a pizza parlor in Athens, Georgia, kept her out late on weekends. One Saturday evening six months earlier, she'd been walking toward her car when the two had attempted to abduct her.
    Thinking at first that she was tired and failed to notice their approach, she now knew they might have used other means to come at her unawares. Four male college students in an ancient Buick had driven through the small parking lot and run one of the men down. Except they probably weren't men. Macy had rushed inside the pizzeria to phone the police and her parents.
    Although the police arrived quickly, there was no sign of either abductor at the scene. Only four college students and a dented car remained in the parking lot. Macy and her parents had been relocated immediately. Now, she sat in the back of a van between her mother Ramona and her father Rocky, both parents holding her hands and doing their best to comfort her. Macy felt alienated—from everything. Her world had just turned inside out and she was lost.
    * * *
    "Well, we've stocked the basics plus a few extras," Greta Rocklin stared at the last of six pantries. She, Denise DeLuca and Sharon O'Neill had gone shopping for the human families, buying what every family would need—flour, sugar, coffee—the things they always stocked in their homes. Pads of paper lay on kitchen counters for lists of other necessities. No computers were allowed in any of the temporary homes—Director Jennings had forbidden that type of communication, along with landlines and cell phones. There would be no contact with the outside world for nearly three months.
    "They should be here anytime," Denise checked her watch. "Mr. Winkler called Marcus and said they left four hours ago."
    "Are we supposed to invite them to dinner or what? There's spaghetti and