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are you talking about?"
    "Listen, please. Two years ago, we woke here, four of us, with no memory of our lives before. Nevan is the only one we have met who seems to know us from the past. But he will not speak to us of it." Caelan moved his feet to the floor. His movements were quicker than before but still not faster than human.
    "Wait a minute, wait a minute." I held up my hand to stem the flow of words from him. "You have no memories?" My heart landed with a sickening thud into my stomach. He'd lied to me.
    "Nevan refuses to reveal anything. But we continue to pursue him. He will eventually kill us to keep us silent." He pulled his jacket from the foot of the bed and slid it on, pain tightening his face.
    "If you don't remember anything, how can you possibly explain what's going on to me?" I crossed my arms over my chest, anger lifting my voice.
    "We need your help," he said. "The gift you have been given, to become one with our minds, will be enough." I stared at him for a second. "Screw you. You tricked me into 60
    Stacey Klemstein
    this. Why should I believe anything you say?" Vaguely aware that the sirens had stopped, I stormed past Caelan to the door, halfexpecting him to try to stop me. My fingers touched the doorknob.
    "Two hundred and twenty-two," he said. I turned back around. "What?"
    "That is the number of Observers believed to be present here on Earth, correct?" He started moving closer to me, the intensity in his face frightening.
    I swallowed hard. "Yeah, something like that."
    "I have seen more than twice that many myself in this province alone." He loomed over me now.
    Province? He must mean country, I decided. "Not possible." I shook my head. "We would know about. The government–"
    "How? Your government was never given a method to track or number us. None of the leaders on this world were given such a thing. Do you suppose that even if they attempted to determine the exact number that it would be allowed?"
    "How could you stop them?" I turned my head slightly to one side, away from his eyes. He stood far too close to me now, his warm, bare chest only inches from my face. And rather than triggering my claustrophobia, as I would have expected, his toonear presence activated something I hadn't felt in a long time–a warm tightness, low inside me. A jolt of old fashioned lust. Not good, Zara, I thought, panic dousing the sensation almost immediately.
    "I can demonstrate. I will tell you everything I know about us and show you more than you could have imagined." He pulled back from me a little to catch my gaze. "I may not know all that I once knew, but even still, I know more than you do now." His eyes on me no longer seemed frightening as much as simply too intense, hiding emotions the depths of which I couldn't begin to guess, nor did I want to.
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    The Silver Spoon

    I twisted sideways slightly, away from that stare, to look out the peephole. I winced at the responding twinge in my ribs.
    "They're out there, you know." Two police cars sat just barely inside the range of my fishbowl view.
    He reached around me for the doorknob. I skittered to one side and away from that closeness. That was too much.
    "Wait," I said. "What about the...what about your back?" I couldn't say "wound"–it sounded too gory and melodramatic.
    "It will have to be for now." But he was beginning to shiver again. He stared at the door, not bothering to look through the peephole. "One of your officials has gone inside the office. The others remain in their vehicles." And then, to my shock, he started to open the door.
    "They're going to see us before we get two feet from here." My heart pounded hard in my chest. Needless to say, he couldn't, and I wouldn't, fight them. I just hoped they weren't planning to shoot Caelan on sight.
    "I will handle it." He walked out before I could protest further.
    I held my breath and followed him outside, perhaps only five feet away from the nearest police cruiser. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for