Free Desert Guardian by Karen Duvall

the door behind her. The chill
she'd felt earlier was even stronger now. She crouched down to grab a few pages
from a stack of newspapers to help give the fire a blazing start.
    The
phone rang.
    "What
now, Sam?" she said to the air and trotted to the living room, her arms
still loaded with firewood. Whatever Sam had to say could surely have waited
until he got home. She dumped the wood on the hearth and snatched up the
cordless phone. "Hello?"
    There
were a few seconds of silence before she heard a gentle, "Hello, Kelly."
    A
woman's voice. Familiar, but she couldn't place it. "Who's this?"
    A
throaty chuckle answered, smooth and thick as honey. "My feelings are hurt
that you don't remember me, dear. You should, you know. Especially after the
relaxation techniques I taught you at the camp. They did wonders to relieve
your stress, didn't they?"
    "What
relaxation—?"
    "Breathe
in through your nose, out through your mouth. Think about your inner place of
solitude, where you feel warm and safe. Can you see it in your mind's eye?"
    The
seductive purr of the woman's voice made Kelly dizzy. "Valya? No. Wait..."
She closed her eyes and tiny white lights pulsed behind her lids. She wanted to
throw the phone down, but it stuck to her hand as if glued there.
    "Concentrate,
Kelly. The peace you feel is intoxicating. Give in to it. Warmth. Safety. A
sense of well-being pours through your body like water through a mountain
stream."
    Though
lulled into a state of near bliss, Kelly struggled to break through the fog.
Had she been hypnotized while at the camp? She didn't recall any blocks of time
unaccounted for but couldn't remember what she'd been doing while waiting for
her brother. The harder she tried to remember, the more evasive the memory.
Star Mother had messed with her mind, just as Sam had suspected.
    "I've
brought you a present," Valya said. "Open your eyes."
    She
didn't want to obey, but she couldn't stop herself. Blinking against the sudden
brightness of daylight, she spotted someone silhouetted against the window in
Sam's living room. As he stepped toward her, she made out the thin frame of a
young man with lanky brown hair that drifted over his bony shoulders. He wore a
white T-shirt emblazoned with the Cosmic
Crisis logo. The shirt was tucked into baggy jeans cut into ragged shorts,
one leg a couple of inches longer than the other and nearly reaching his knobby
knees. Deep-set eyes stared out from a narrow face, their color as blue as Jake's
but vacant and bloodshot, nothing like her brother's vibrant gaze that usually
hinted of a joke eager to be told or a funny story he wanted to share. This man
couldn't possibly be her chubby little brother.
    "Hi,
Kelly," he said, using Jake's familiar voice, yet the tone was more
masculine than she remembered. "I heard you wanted to see me."
    "Jake?"
The word came out on a breath, choked and hardly coherent, so she tried again. "Are
you okay?" Her voice felt thick in her throat. Could it be possible? Was
he really free?
    Jake's
lips tilted in the tiniest of smiles. She got a sense that smiling didn't come as
natural to him any more. "You look surprised to see me." He held out
his thin arms to her, just like he had when he was little and wanted a hug.
    She
dropped the phone and rushed into her brother's arms, her chest heaving with
sobs of relief at finally having him back. He smelled horrible, like his dirty
gym socks when she used to do his laundry, but she didn't mind. The smell made
him real.
    While
hugging him, she touched the pronounced vertebrae in his back, and his thin
ribs jutted into her chest. What had they done to him? Tears streaming down her
face, she stared up into his strangely empty eyes, their pupils contracted into
pinpoints. "Let's get you home."
    He
shook his head and stepped back, peeling away her hands that had clutched him
so fiercely. "I have a new family now. A wonderful, caring family that
loves me."
    She
shook her head. It was important she convince him how