Hey, Morgead!" the voice was shouting even as the door went slamming and crashing open, sticking
every few inches because it was old and warped and didn't fit the frame anymore.
Jez had jerked around at the first noise. The connection between her and Morgead was disrupted,
although she could feel faint echoes of the silver thread, like a guitar string vibrating after it was strummed.
"Hey, Morgead-"
"Hey, you still asleep-?" Several laughing, raucous people were crowding into the room. But the yelling
stopped abruptly as they caught sight of Jez.
There was a gasp, and then silence.
Jez stood up to face them. She couldn't afford to feel tired anymore; every muscle was lightly tensed,
every sense alert
She knew the danger she was in.
Just like Morgead, they were the flotsam and jetsam of the San Francisco streets. The orphans, the ones
who lived with indifferent relatives, the ones nobody in the Night World really wanted. The forgotten
ones.
Her gang.
They were out of school and ready to rumble.
Jez had always thought, from the day she and Morgead began picking these kids up, that the Night
World was making a mistake in treating them like garbage. They might be young; they might not have
families, but they had power. Every one of them had the strength to be a formidable opponent.
And right now they were looking at her like a group of wolves looking at dinner. If they all decided to go
for her at once, she would be in trouble. Somebody would end up getting killed.
She faced them squarely, outwardly calm, as a quiet voice finally broke the silence.
"It's really you, Jez."
And then another voice, from beside Jez. "Yeah, she came back," Morgead said carelessly. "She joined
the gang again."
Jez shot him the briefest of sideways glances. She hadn't expected him to help. He returned the look
with an unreadable expression.
". . . she came back?" somebody said blankly.
Jez felt a twinge of amused sympathy. "That's right," she said, keeping her face grave. "I had to go away
for a while, and I can't tell you where, but
now I'm back. I just fought my way back in-and I beat Morgead for the leadership." She figured she
might as well get it all over with at once. She had no idea how they were going to react to the idea of her
as leader.
There was another long moment of silence, and then a whoop. A sound that resembled a war cry. At the
same instant there was a violent rush toward Jez-four people all throwing themselves at her. For a
heartbeat she stood frozen, ready to fend off a four-fold attack.
Then arms wrapped around her waist.
"Jez! I missed you!"
Someone slapped her on the back almost hard enough to knock her down. "You bad girl! You beat him
again?"
People were trying to hug her and punch her and pat her all at once. Jez had to struggle not to show she
was overwhelmed. She hadn't expected this of them.
"It's good to see you guys again," she said. Her voice was very slightly unsteady. And it was the truth.
Raven Mandril said, "You scared us when you disappeared, you know." Raven was the tall, willowy one
with the marble-pale skin. Her black hair was short in back and long in front, falling over one eye and
obscuring it. The other eye, midnight blue, gleamed at Jez.
Jez allowed herself to gleam back, just a bit. She had always liked Raven, who was the most mature of
the group. "Sorry, girl."
"I wasn't scared." That was Thistle, still hugging Jez's waist. Thistle Galena was the delicate one who had
stopped her aging when she reached ten. She was as old as the others, but tiny and almost weightless.
She had feathery blond hair, amethyst eyes, and little glistening white teeth. Her specialty was playing the
lost child and then attacking any humans who tried to help her.
"You're never scared," Jez told her, squeezing back.
"She means she knew you were all right, wherever you were. I did, too," Pierce Holt said. Pierce was
the slender, cold boy, the one with the aristocratic face and the artist's hands. He had dark blond hair and
deep-set eyes and he seemed to carry his own windchill factor with him. But just now he was looking at
Jez with cool approval.
"I'm glad somebody thought so," Jez said, with a glance at Morgead, who just looked condescending.
"Yeah, well, some people were going crazy. They thought you were dead," Valerian Stillman put in,
following Jez's look. Val was the big, heroic one, with deep russet hair, gray-flecked eyes, and the build
of a linebacker. He was usually either laughing or yelling with impatience. "Morgead had us scouring the
streets for you from Daly City to the Golden Gate Bridge-"
"Because I was hoping a few of you would fall off," Morgead said without emotion. "But I had no such
luck. Now shut up, Val. We don't have time for all this class-reunion stuff. We've got something
important to do."
Thistle's face lit up as she stepped back from Jez. "You mean a hunt?"
"He means the Wild Power," Raven said. Her one visible eye was fixed on Jez. "He's told you already,
hasn't he?"
"I didn't need to tell her," Morgead said. "She already knew. She came back because Hunter Red-fern
wants to make a deal with us. The Wild Power for a place with him after the millennium."
He got a reaction-the one Jez knew he expected. Thistle squeaked with pleasure, Raven laughed
huskily, Pierce gave one of his cold smiles, and Val roared.
"He knows we've got the real thing! He doesn't wanna mess with us!" he shouted.
"That's right, Val; I'm sure he's quaking in his boots," Morgead said. He glanced at Jez and rolled his
eyes.
Jez couldn't help but grin. This really was like old times: she and Morgead trading secret looks about
Val. There was a strange warmth sweeping through her-not the scary tingling heat she'd experienced with
Morgead alone, but something simpler. A feeling of being with people who liked her and knew her. A
feeling of belonging.
She never felt that at her human school. She'd seen things that would drive her human classmates insane
even to imagine. None of them had any idea of what the real world was like-or what Jez was like, for
that matter.
But now she was surrounded by people who understood her. And it felt so good that it was alarming.
She hadn't expected this, that she would slip back into the gang like a hand in a glove. Or that something
inside her would look around and sigh and say, "We're home."
Because I am not home, she told herself sternly. These are not my people. They don't really know me,
either....
But they don't have to, the little sigh returned. You don't ever need to tell them you're human. There's no
reason for them to find out.
Jez shoved the thought away, scrunched down hard on the sighing part of her mind. And hoped it would
stay scrunched. She tried to focus on what the others were saying.
Thistle was talking to Morgead, showing all her small teeth as she smiled. "So if you've got the terms
settled, does that mean we get to do it now? We get to pick the little girl up?"
"Today? Yeah, I guess we could." Morgead looked at Jez. "We know her name and everything. It's
Iona Skelton, and she's living just a couple buildings down from where the fire was. Thistle made friends
with her earlier this week."
Jez was startled, although she kept her expression relaxed. She hadn't expected things to move this fast.
But it might all work out for the best, she realized, her mind turning over possibilities quickly. If she could
snatch the kid and take her back to Hugh, this whole masquerade could be over by tomorrow. She might
even live through it.
"Don't get too excited," she warned Thistle, combing some bits of grass out of the smaller girl's silk-floss
hair. "Hunter wants the Wild Power alive and unharmed. He's got plans for her."
"Plus, before we take her, we've got to test her," Morgead said.
Jez controlled an urge to swallow, went on combing Thistle's hair with her fingers. "What do you mean,
test her?"
Td think that would be obvious. We can't take the chance of sending Hunter a dud. We have to make
sure she is the Wild Power."
Jez raised an eyebrow. "I thought you were sure," she said, but of course she knew Morgead was right.
She herself would have insisted Hugh find a way to test the little girl before doing anything else with her.
The problem was that Morgead's testing was likely to be ... unpleasant.
"I'm sure, but I still want to test her!" Morgead snapped. "Do you have a problem with that?"
"Only if it's dangerous. For us, I mean. After all, she's got some kind of power beyond imagining, right?"
"And she's in elementary school. I hardly think she's gonna be able to take on six vampires."
The others were looking back and forth between Morgead and Jez like fans at a tennis match.
"It's just as if she never left," Raven said dryly, and Val bellowed laughter while Thistle giggled.
"They always sound so-married," Pierce observed, with just a tinge of spite to his cold voice.
Jez glared at them, aware that Morgead was doing the same. "I wouldn't marry him if every other guy on
earth was dead," she informed Pierce.
"If it were a choice between her and a human, I'd pick the human," Morgead put in nastily.
Everyone laughed at that. Even Jez.
The sun glittered on the water at the Marina. On Jez's left was a wide strip of green grass, where people
were flying huge and colorful kites, complicated ones with dozens of rainbow tails. On the sidewalk
people were Rollerblading and jogging and walking dogs. Everybody was wearing summer clothing;
everybody was happy.
It was different on the other side of the street.
Everything changed over there. A line of pinky-brown concrete stood like a wall to mark the difference.
There was a high school and then rows of a housing project, all the buildings identically square, flat, and
ugly. And on the next street beyond them, there was nobody walking at all.
Jez let Morgead take the lead on his motorcycle as he headed for those buildings. She always found this
place depressing.