I waited patiently for someone to answer the phone. This was a far cry from when I'd waited on Jenna to answer the phone, and I was just a little eager to hear the voice on the other end of the line. There was a pitter-patter of anxious little feet and a sliding sound as the child connected to those feet ducked under the overhang of the bar.

"Hybiscuss!" called Jenna as she wandered through the room. "Chrys, have you seen Hybiscuss."

"Haven't seen 'im," I answered honestly.

"Cho! Speak to the almighty you lowly mortal!" said the voice on the other end.

"Michelle!" I said warmly. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jenna blanch and she left the room as fast as she could. I can't really blame her for that, Michelle is a contract killer and on her last job she was supposed kill Jenna. Obviously we worked something out where she didn't have to kill either of us. "Hey, I need some help."

"Can I blow something up?" she asked eagerly.

"Maybe," I said. "I need a little poisonous something."

"Poison for what?" Michelle was another person who knew I was a chameleon, but she'd known that when she went to kill Jenna.

"Something that can change shape at will," I said.

"What, like a chameleon? Why?"

"Because they've done something stupid and that seems to be a common theme," I said. "Subtlety is not an issue here, so you can make it as flashy as you want."

"Really?" she squealed. "I'll send it to the usual place then! With instructions!"

"You already have something made, don't you?" I asked.

"Yup! See you in an hour!" There was a click as she hung up from her end.

"I don't even want to know why you happen to have something like that on hand," I told the receiver. I sighed and hung up, then watched as Hybiscuss peeked his head out from under the bar. "It's safe to come out now," I told him. "I'm the only one in the room."

"She's insane!" he burst out as he came out. Somehow Jenna had managed to wrestle him into a pink polka dot dress.

"She's pregnant," I said helping him out. "I don't think there's much of a difference."

After he was out of the dress he stared at the floor for a long time. Then he looked at me. "Why is there blood in the fridge?" he asked me. It was easy to see that he was afraid of what the answer would be.

I bent down to where I was on eye level with the boy. I don't know what idiot came up with the idea that a person couldn't look you in the eyes and lie at the same time, but a lot of people believed it. "I have a rare medical condition." True enough, there were only ten other people who had the same thing. Oh, wait, only eight. Two of them were dead. I took a gamble with the kid; he was after all a child and children will believe just about anything if you put the right spin on it and make it sound viable. "It's called vapirism."

"Vampirism?" he asked doubtfully.

Smart kid. He doesn't seem to accept anything for face value, and I can't help but admire him for that. He's definately smarter than I was at his age. "That's just what some idiot called it." That idiot being me, of course. I pulled my mouth to the side so that he could see my teeth. "Look, no fangs. See, my body has this thing where it can't produce certain enzymes that it needs, and those enzymes are only found in blood. So, in order to keep getting those enzymes, I have to drink blood."

"Won't your digestive juices break down the enzymes?" he asked.

I could tell that the two of us were going to get along just fine. "Actually," I confessed, "I'm not sure how it works. I just know that I get really sick if I don't drink my daily amount of blood, and I was told it was an enzyme thing." I shrugged. "Sometimes I'm really thick." It's true, sometimes I am really thick. If I hadn't been I would have noticed exactly what was so intriguing about the way I was being interrogated.

"But that guy, he gives you pills for that," said Hybiscuss frowning.

I couldn't help but admire how smart this kid was. "Not exactly. These pills," I pulled out the bottle I always carried with me in case I was suddenly called on a case without warning, "slow my metabolism so that I don't have to drink as much."

"You must have a pretty fast metabolism."

You don't know the half of it. "Well," I said pocketing the bottle, "it's a symptom of the disorder."

Violet came into the barroom then and smiled at Hybiscuss. "I signed you up for school," she told the boy, "and you start tomorrow. Go pick out something to wear." He grinned and dashed up the stairs.

"What a smart kid," I said. She whirled to face me in shock. "I'm surprised he still needs to go to school." I took a long measuring look at her face. "But he doesn't, does he? Not for book learning." I smiled at her surprise. "Well, book learning isn't the only thing people learn in school. Where's he enrolled?"

"Tamio Middle," she said softly.

"That's a--" I was interrupted by a shriek from upstairs and without hesitation both Violet and I dashed up the stairs and burst into Jenna's room. There was a man perched on the window sill and Jenna was struggling to pick up a piece of furniture. "Jeez Adam," I said running my hand through my hair. "Can't you use the door like everyone else?" I watched as he calmly entered through the window and closed it behind him.

Adam is another chameleon like me. Experiment number 93, to be precise. He also happens to be mine and Jenna's childhood friend, because he went to the same middle school as the two of us did. Now he grinned at me. "Since when are we 'like everyone else'?" he asked. His eyes focused on Violet behind me and his grin turned into a gentle smile. "Hello Violet. How's Hybiscuss?"

"Fine," squeaked Violet clutching her hands to her chest again.

"I'm glad to hear it." He turned to me. "Chrys, Chrys, I need help."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jenna flinch and I couldn't blame her. "The last time you said that we all almost got killed. Tell me it's not that bad."

He walked over to the bed and sat down. "I don't know."

"You don't know," I repeated. Then I was silent for a moment waiting for him to speak up, and when he didn't I continued. "And what are you doing here anyway? Last I heard you were up in St. Louis!" Adam is a phantom thief who goes by the name of Morpho. I know it's not very imaginative, but then neither is Adam, and you've got to admit that as a chameleon he's uiniquely--qualified--for the job.

"It--it's bad Chrys," he said. "They've made a new net, just for me. Especially for me, and it will work."

I can see where that would worry him a little bit. Part of it would be because being a chameleon automatically gives us an edge when it comes to escaping traps and such. The other part of it would be knowing that you're one of nine surviving shape-changing chameleons and someone makes a net designed for your particular genetics. I sighed. "What do you need?"

"A place to crash," he said. "That's all."

"That's never all!" I said. I was tempted to kick him out, but then it was Adam. Then I sighed again and looked at my two housemates. "What do you think?" I asked them. I wasn't about to invite someone into the house without consulting them.

Jenna had stopped her struggle with the furniture and had her hands on her hips while she glared at him. "Well," she said after a moment. "It is Adam."

That's pretty much where I was with it. I looked behind me at a slightly relaxed Violet. "And you?" I asked gently.

"I could use help in the bar," she said softly. "And it would be nice if Hybiscuss had--" She stopped, uncertain of how to procede without encouraging Hormonocane Jenna.

"A positive male influence?" I supplied tactfully. I was pretty sure that she was going to finish that sentence with "someone sane". Perfectly true on all counts, and she nodded gratefully.

"All right," I said, "it looks like you're allowed to stay here. But nothing, and I repeat nothing. like what got them interested in the nets in the first place, you got that?" I looked at my watch and cringed. "Time to go."




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Michelle is a petite blonde who looks small, innocent, and stupid. In truth, she is none of these things. She can drop bodybuilders with those delicate, perfectly manicured hands, and she has a bizarre desire to blow stuff up. I'm not exactly sure why she loves explosions so much, but I do know what I'm not going to push the issue and ask her. She smiled at me holding one of those delicate backpacks that was in the shape of a rabbit. "Hi Chrys!" she beamed at me.

"Hey Michelle," I said. "Sorry I'm late."

"No problem," she said. She opened her little bag and pulled out something that looked like a plastic dagger that had a hypodermic needle in the center of the blade. "This is what you need."

"What is it?" I asked slightly fearful. I wasn't entirely sure that I wanted to know, but I needed to know in case I had to use it.

"It's really cool," she said. "I made it myself. You know how your body changes shape, right?" A little hard for me to not notice, so I just nodded. "This stuff makes it instable, and it'll dissolve the bonds between the cells. Isn't that exciting?"

I can only imagine what her childhood was like. "It sure is," I said wondering once again why I kept in contact with this freaky woman. "But it will work, right?"

She nodded. "Without a doubt. But my fee for this is," she reached into her bag and pulled out a headband, "you have to wear this!"

"It's a camera band, isn't it?" I asked taking it from her and tying it around my head.

"Yes, I want to see what exactly it does, so I can make it better next time!"

"Michelle?"

"Yes?"

"I'm surprised that you don't work for the military." Like the military I knew, she was constantly looking for bigger and better ways to make things go "boom". She just laughed happily and walked away. I shook my head. "I don't even want to know," I said to the world in general. Then I turned to go back home, and that's when a car pulled up to the curb and 17 got out.

"It's time," she said.




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"You sure this is the place?" I asked as we sat in the chilling car outiside of the morgue.

"There's no doubt about it," said 17. "This is the next in the pattern."

"Kinda odd though," I said. "Having a pattern that obvious." The ninety's were not, as a general rule, known for being stupid. If there was a pattern that meant that the chameleon in question wanted to be caught, and that was disturbing because the ninety's never wanted caught. It went right back to why the B class chameleons were killed, their bonders knew too much about chameleons to be allowed to live, by their standards.

"76," said 17 breaking me out of my contemplation.

"What?" I asked not taking my eye off the door to the place.

"My cell phone," she said with an odd expression handing the slim, gray thing to me, "it's your sister."

"Jenna?" I asked concerned.

"Chrys," said Jenna with an odd tone to her voice that I couldn't quite place. "Chrys, a guy came by looking for you."

"Well, I just happen to be on a case right now," I said wondering why she'd bother me with something like that. As a general rule I didn't overlap cases, well, that is if they didn't naturally overlap like the thing with the jewel.

"You don't understand. A guy came by looking for you." There was a moment of silence before she added, "And he scared Violet."

I rolled my eyes. "Everyone scares Violet," I said. "I'm not sure why you hired her." Not that I was going to contradict the decision mind you.

"Because you go out on cases and I hate men at the moment," she reminded me. "Never mind, I'll just have to wait until you get home to explain it." With that she hung up and I handed the phone back to 17.

"Is it important?"

"I don't know," I said frowning. Jenna was a lot of things, but she never bothered me with trivialities, and if it wasn't something she felt safe talking about on the phone it was something very dangerous indeed. Suddenly I realized that 17 had said something. "What?" I asked looking at her.

"I was just wondering, how do you survive without killing people to drink blood?"

"A local dairyfarmer owes me. I worked a case solving the mystery of his dissapearing cattle and the bleeding of his cows is part of his payment," I said absently as I tried to figure out what was going to happen next. There was something completely wrong about this whole setup, and I wasn't entirely sure what it was. It was digging at me and I needed to find out what it was quickly.

"Was a chameleon taking them?"

"Nothing so dramatic. His neighbor and competitor was stealing them." Suddenly it occurred to me. "Out of the car," I said opening my door.

"What?"

"Now!" I jumped out of the car and 17 followed my lead, and not a moment too soon. The car blew up just as soon as we were clear of it and looked over to see a chameleon standing not too far away. It was in the form of an old man which almost disguised the gray, sweating body, but not quite.

"76," he wheezed. Suddenly he laughed maniacally and I wondered what was wrong with him. That wasn't normal laughter, it was hysterical. "You're going to kill me 76," he said. Tears began to roll down his cheeks. "Please. Kill me."

"What?" I asked. It was something that had never occurred before. In all my years of stopping chameleons from hurting each other I had never had one beg me to kill it before.

A shape rose up behind it. It looked like some sort of enormous spider. It had four long arms attached to the thin, almost wraithlike body of a child. "Bad puppet," it said as one of the long arms curled around the chameleon's waist.

It looked me in the eye. "Please," it begged as tears rolled down its cheeks.

My hand went to the dagger in my jacket pocket. I didn't know if it would kill the thing behind the chameleon, but I knew it would kill the chameleon. On the other hand, I didn't want to kill the chameleon. It may sound strange, but despite everything the chameleons were sort of like family to me, and I wanted to protect them. Then there was that thing behind it, the thing that it clearly wanted to escape from and believed that death was the only way out. Which was worse; killing a member of my extended family, or letting it be tortured by another experiment? The conclusion was foregone. I pulled the dagger out of my pocket and threw it at the chameleon.

For one long moment it looked as if the poison wasn't going to take effect. Then suddenly his body--dissolved. It turned into a mass of clear, red, pink, and blue liquid that ran out from under the thing's long arms. The thing that had held the chameleon captive looked at me and I felt the blood drain from my face. This thing was worse than any chameleon had ever been, than any chameleon could ever be, and it was there, right there, staring at me. It looked like a child with long black arms that were segmented in something that looked like black metal plates. "You broke my toy," it said in a petulant tone.

Suddenly my mind felt like it was going to rip apart and I clutched it as memories were dredged up from my past; memories that were best either forgotten or left alone.

* * *

I sat under a tree sobbing as what I'd been told my whole life suddenly made sense. A shadow blocked the sunlight where I was sitting and a boy bent down towards me. "Why are you crying?" he asked.

"I--I--d--don't want--to hu--rt any--one," I sobbed into my arms.

There was a gentle touch on my head. "Then don't. If you don't want to hurt anyone, you don't have to." He chuckled. "You can figure out a way not to hurt people, because you're smart."

* * *

I watched as 98's modified arm slashed through the man assigned to me and sliced him lengthwise. A spray of blood hit me directly in the face and a drop dripped down towards my mouth where I automatically lapped it up. "Feh," I said in disgust, "even his blood is rancid." I looked at the chameleon who was slowly regaining a human shape and said, "You better get out of here before they come."

It knew exactly what I meant, and nodded. "Will you be all right? Can you fool them?"

"Of course I can," I said scornfully. I am a chameleon."

* * *

"We're concerned that you're using Jenna as a substitute for your dead master," said the military psychologist as he examined me. He knew that a chameleon was out of his depth, and he knew that I knew it, so he didn't waste time trying to act like he was smarter than I was.

I thought about the looks I'd seen on the faces of other B class chameleons when they talked to, and about their masters. Then I thought of how I dealt with Jenna, and how the two of us interacted. It was true that I was protective of her, but that wasn't because I thought of her as a replacement for the man that had been murdered, or for what he was supposed to have been. "It's not the same thing," I assured the man. "She's just--my sister."

* * *

I pushed Jenna down as a bullet whizzed over our heads to dig into the tree that was directly in front of us. "Run!" I told her as I whirled around to deal with the man chasing us. I knew that I didn't have the strength or the desire to kill the man, but I could slow him down long enough to give Jenna time to escape.

I didn't have to. At that moment a large winged creature that was actually a chameleon dropped to claw the man's eyes out. As Jenna and I stood watching stunned the thing's beak slipped neatly into an eye-socket and scrambled the man's brains before it allowed the man to collapse. It landed on the ground in front of us and slowly changed as Jenna crept towards me and grabbed my shirt. The chameleon changed to a form that I knew, and I knew well. "You seem to get into a lot of trouble, 76," it told me.

"Why?" I asked unable to keep the confusion, and the tremor out of my voice. "What would make you help us? It would have been easier to let us die!"

"Why didn't you kill me?" it asked in turn. "You could have, you should have, but you didn't. When it came down to dying or killing, you chose to die. Why?"

* * *

"Jenna, Jenna!" called Jenna's friend Suzy as she sidled around me to get to her. The girl was afraid of me for some reason that I didn't understand; it wasn't as thought I'd ever done anything that came close to hurting anyone after all. "Have you met the new guy yet! He's dreamy!"

I spared a look across the classroom at the "new guy", and I almost gave away the game. There, surrounded by a group of girls, was none other than 93 itself. It caught me looking at it and raised a finger to its lips while it winked. I nodded and went back to looking at my book. If it wanted to play human, I wasn't about to stop it.

* * *

"Chrys!" yelled a voice as a body slammed into me. Overhead a tentacled arm just missed stabbing through my head and I gasped as I was slammed to the ground. I was partially cushioned though by the person who'd knocked me out of the way.

The thing in front of us laughed as the person who'd saved me clutched me tighter. "You're so much fun!" it said happily as it clapped it's hands together. "I'll play with you again!"

There was a loud roar between my ears and my consciousness ebbed away.




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The first thing I noticed when I came to myself was the horrible smell of antisptic. It is the tradmark of all hospitals, and what I despise the most. The second was that unmistakable drip of liquid as it was forced into my body through a hole in my arm that had been placed there by a needle. The third thing, and the one that convinced me that it was time to get up, were the voices just outside the room.

"I can't believe that almost happened," said a very familiar voice. It was familiar because it happened to belong to that military guy who managed to show up every time I got in a fight with a chameleon!

"I'm more interested in how she managed to survive," said another familiar voice. This one happened to belong to that man that the military guy looked to for advice.

I opened my eyes and sat up. To my surprise I was not being given a blood drip, but clear fluids. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not, but I was a little sidetracked by the three men and the one C class chameleon that were standing outside of my door. "Please," I said with false amiability. "Come in and let me join the discussion. I'd rather not have to shout my questions across the hall." That subtle threat, like nothing else could have, got them into my hospital room and the door closed against intruders. "So tell me," I said mildly as I seethed, "how is it that you neglected to mention I might be going up against something else you created?"

"What I don't understand," 17 said looking at the men, "is how they managed to fool the chrysallis cameras."

"Don't tell me you haven't figured that out yet," I said. Suddenly I was the focus of attention. Earlier when they came into the hospital room they were only halfway paying attention to me, but I guess that they get threatened exposure a lot. Now though, I had struck a chord and they were completely focused on every little word I had to say. "This new thing--whatever it is--can get inside people's heads. The chrsyallis has many things going for it, but the primary one is this: it can't be hacked into because it's in a person's head. The only way to get around that is to get into the head which is exactly what that--thing--does." I lost my mild demeanor and I glared at them. "What possessed you?" I demanded. "The chameleons were such a large success you thought you'd do something bigger? Better? And then, oh, and then it got a mind like a child! What is that thing?"

"It's a chimera," said the third man, the one I didn't recognize. "I'm sorry, it never occurred to us that it had escaped again."

"A chimera?" asked 17 going pale.

I was a little quicker on the uptake and I siezed on the important word in that sentence. "Again?" I asked.

"As you've noticed, the chimera we created is a powerful psychic, and can reach into people's minds."

"Really?" I asked as the images of my recalls flashed through my brain. "I hadn't noticed!"

He ignored me, but then I'd thought he might. "Believe it or not, the chimera was actually created before the chameleons," he told us.

"Sir!" said the man that the military guy looked up to.

"No," said the first man waving him away with a hand. "It's important that they know this." I watched through cold eyes, but 17 seemed genuinely shocked. Then again, she hadn't been there when scientists coldly ordered two genetically altered children to fight to the death, as I had. " We created the chimera in order to spy on foreign dignataries without violating any peace treaties. After all, who pays attention to a child? The chimera didn't have to blend in with the people around it, because it could simply make them not see it. However, this ability also allowed it to escape unnoticed, and that is where we ran into --dificulties."

"What kind of difficulties?" asked 17 horrified.

I remembered the look on the thing's face as the chaemeleon in its arms dissolved, and that horrible feeling as it ripped my memories from me. "It's insane," I said.

The man winced, but the military guy answered. "No one took into account what would happen to such a psychically sensitive being out among a crowded city of people," he told us. "It became mentally damaged, unfit for any kind of military use, and dangerous for humans to be around."

"And so you created the chameleons," I prompted.

"Not that that plan worked any better," snapped the military guy.

17 cringed, but I held my peace. I was the reason why the chameleon project hadn't succeeded, and we all knew it. Well, I don't know if 17 knew it, but the rest of us did. I simply waited for what was to come next. One thing I've noticed is that if you sit with someone who's started to spill their guts on something and you say nothing, the rest of it will come out. All you need is to give it a little time.

"When the chameleon project went under we lost the funding to keep the chimera under control. We've been doing the best we could--"

I smiled with genuine humor. "You mean by tricking two innocent chameleons into doing your dirty work for you?" I asked.

"We had no idea that it was--" started the man that was under the one explaining this to us.

"Don't give me that crap!" I told him.

"And what would you know?" asked the military guy. "You're the outcast, the freak."

"The failure, suicidal, homocidal, and unmotivated," I finished the rant for him. It was easy, I get it a lot. "Tell me something new or shut up, because I'm talking right now." I waited a moment as he stared at me in gap-jawed amazement. "You knew exactly what was going on. You knew that a chameleon was involved because only a chameleon can deal with all those different types of regular cameras, and only your chimera could deal with the chrysalises. That's why you sprung for the chrysalises in the first place, you needed to be sure of what you were dealing with. Then you tried to trick me into killing it, when I had absolutely no idea what 'it' was."

"Speaking of which," said the man in charge of the little trio, "where did you get that poison you used on 100?"

I looked him in the eye. "Ask no questions," I said reciting my favorite saying, "hear no lies." I pulled the IV out of my arm and altered the skin, muscle, and veins around it to heal the wound. It was a practical application of the morphin ability, and I used it often. After that I looked at them. "A little rude, isn't it?" I asked. "To be here when a lady is changing?"

For a moment Military Guy looked like he was going to start yelling, but the guy beside him stopped him with a gesture. The two of them left the room leaving 17 and I with the newest guy. He sighed as he looked at me. "They won't say it, but I will. You have worked on over a hundred cases since you got your PI license, and at least five of them have been with A class chameleons. In all that time, with all that effort, you have never taken a life, or allowed a life to be taken if you could avoid it at all. Until now."

"You created a monster that gets inside people's heads," I told him. "For some reason that I bet you know it decided to use a chameleon as a toy. It is insane, it has the emotional development of a child, and it doesn't like chameleons."

"So why did you kill the chameleon?" pressed the man.

"It wanted to die," I told him. "I wanted to save it, but--" I looked away as I remembered my cool calculations on whether or not the poison in pocket would work against the monster that was holding the chameleon in question. "I wasn't sure if the poison I had would work against the  chimera, but I knew it would work against the chameleon." That was a decision that was going to haunt me for the rest of my life, and I knew it. I have made many such decisions, and I live with each and every one tearing at the edges of my soul day and night. One more would hardly be noticed.

"I see," said the man. He strode forward and grabbed my chin in his hands. "You," he told me, "are just like your mother." Before I could react to that statement he retreated from the room closing the door.

It was impossible that he was talking about my adoptive mother. She was more like Jenna.  In fact, Jenna was exactly like her, personality speaking. Fortunately for her though, she inherited her father's looks. "Bastard," I whispered angrily to the room.

"76?" asked 17. "What did--he mean by that?"

"Hell if I know," I said standing up. "Hey, where'd they put my clothes? I want to go home." She picked them up off a chair and handed them to me. "Thanks," I said as I began to get dressed.

"It was in your mind, wasn't it?" she asked me.

"Yeah," I said.

"Are you going to be all right?"

I wiped some sweat off my brow. It wasn't good, I was going to need some blood soon, and it was going to be bad if I didn't get it soon. "I'm fine," I said.

"But you're pale, and sweating--"

"This is normal for me after any amount of exertion."

"I see." She was quiet for a moment. "Was it very bad; having that thing in your mind, I mean."

"Imagine someone taking a rake through your mind and pulling up memories that you shoved to the back for your own protection. It's not pleasant and I pity the poor chameleon who had to endure it for so long." I paused for a moment as a memory, or the ghost of a memory flooded me. "Hey, there at the end, was there--" I was slightly horrified that I couldn't finish the sentence. "Never mind," I said. "It was probably just a trick of my mind." After all, why would he have come looking for me? It wouldn't make any sense and I was a little embarrased that I thought he might. I finished by tying my shoes and then opened the door where the man was waiting.

He smiled at me, this man who said I was just like my mother. "I thought you'd appreciate a ride home," he said warmly.

"I see," I said narrowing my eyes. It was obvious that this man wanted to talk to me for some reason, but at the same time I wasn't sure that I wanted to talk to him. "And do you know where I live?"

"Twin Sisters' Clover Bar, isn't it?" he asked mildly. "I've been there a few times when I'm off duty, but you must not have been there to see me. Your sister Jenna sure is cute though. I hear she's having a baby."

I didn't have much of a choice. There was this man who knew all about my sister and our bar, and I was about to go into shock. A chameleon in shock is a very dangerous creature, because it will attack anything with blood that's near it. Any more exercise on my part and I would have gone into shock, so I accepted the ride.

"You seem to be doing very well for yourself, 76," he said mildly as his driver manuevered through the city streets. I didn't say anything and he chuckled. "Yes. So tell me, why would you accept my invitation to drive you home?"

"You already know where it is," I told him. "And you know who I am, who my family is, and I'm about to go into shock. I sort of have this thing about hurting people, in case you haven't noticed."

"I see," he said. "And the mention of your mother, your real mother, had nothing to do with this?"

"What?" I asked him startled. Why would someone bring that up now, of all times?

"Because you see," he said, "she's very anxious to see you, and to know that you're safe. I'm sure it'll break her little heart that you aren't interested in learning about her." The car pulled up to the back door of the bar, the one that faced the alley and I wondered just how much those people knew about me.

"Good bye," I said getting out of the car and heading in. Once I passed the threshold, however, there wasn't much else I could do and slid to the floor wondering if anyone was still awake. Someone held a milk bottle of blood in front of my face and I took it. "Thanks," I said opening it and downing the blood in three swift gulps. Then I screwed the cap back on and looked at Hybiscuss standing there.

"Wow," he said. "You look a lot better."

"I feel better," I admitted. "And why aren't you in bed? It's a school night isn't it?" I did some mental calculations and came up with Wednesday as the day of the week.

"It's Saturday," Hybiscuss said. "You've been gone a while, and everyone's worried."

"I'd be worried too," I confessed, "but I don't have the energy right now." At that I held the cool glass bottle to my forhead and wondered just what had happened to me in that time that I'd been unconcious.

It never occurred to me to wonder who my real mother was.