Keller ignored them all, running at top speed and leaping down the stairs, her heavy front paws hitting the carpeted floor first, then her back paws hitting almost on either side of them. Each spring propelled her into the next.
She burst into the game room.
For an instant, she stood still, taking in the scene. She wanted to make sure with her eyes that what her ears and her nose told her was true: Iliana wasn't here.
It was true. Winnie was missing, too, and Keller couldn't smell them anywhere.
Then someone spotted her, a full-grown panther, jet black, with glowing eyes and long teeth just showing as she panted gently, standing in the doorway with her tail lashing.
"Oh, my God!" The voice soared over the babble. "Look at that!"
Everyone looked.
Everyone froze for an instant.
Chaos erupted.
Girls were screaming. Boys were yelling. Plenty of boys were screaming, too. They saw her, and they fell over themselves, diving for the exits or for hiding places. They poured out of the room, dragging each other, sometimes trampling each other. Keller gave a loud, snarling yowl to help them on, and they scattered like chickens.
The only one Keller cared about was the Brett-dragon.
He turned and ran down a corridor. Luring her? He must be. Maybe he didn't realize she had found out yet Maybe he had some reason for continuing the charade.
She threw her head back and gave a snarl that resounded through the house. It wasn't just anger. It was calling Nissa and Galen. If they could hear her, they would understand and come running.
Then she took off after the dragon.
As she loped down the corridor, she changed again. This time, she couldn't just try to kill him; she needed to be able to talk. But she also needed her claws, so she changed to her half-and-half form, fur shriveling off her arms, body rearing up to run on booted feet, hair flying out behind her.
The dragon was almost at the end of the corridor when she jumped him.
She knocked him down and rolled him over, straddling him. She was braced to feel the agony of the dark power crackling through her, but it didn't come. She pinned his arms and showed her teeth and screamed in his face.
"Where is she? What did you do with her?"
The face looked back at her. It looked just like Brett, just like a human. It was sickly white, with rolling eyeballs and spittle at the corners of the mouth. The only answer she got was a moan of what sounded like terror.
"Tell me! Where is she?"
"-it's not my fault..."
"What?" She lifted his body and banged it down again. His head flopped on his neck like a dead fish. He looked like someone about to faint
Something was wrong.
"She's in the bedroom with my parents. They're all asleep-or something-"
His forehead. When she shook him, his hair flew around. It was uncharacteristically messy, but the forehead underneath was smooth.
"I couldn't help it He did something to my brain. I couldn't even think until a few minutes ago. I just did what he told me to do. I was like a robot! And you don't know what it was like, having him in the house the last three days, and feeling like a puppet,
and when he let go a few minutes ago, I thought I was going to be killed-"
The babbling went on, but Keller's mind had disengaged.
She had lots of thoughts all at once, like layers in a parfait.
Chalk up another ability for dragons: telepathic mind control. Of weak human subjects, anyway. Nissa was right* the Night World did know what had happened in the music room. The substitution was probably made right after that. They could have grabbed Jaime on her way back to class.
The car incident was designed to make us sympathetic and to lull our suspicions before they began. We thought of her as a victim.
The doctors at the hospital must have been controlled, too. They had to have been-they'd looked at Jaime's head.
Jaime's headaches have kept her at home for the past three days, so she never had to cross the wards.
Diana trusts Jaime implicitly and would go anywhere with her without a fight
Jaime wears bangs.
And on the last layer, rushing at her cold and sharp as crystal: Jaime is the dragon.
Jaime is the dragon.
A vast, silent calm seemed to have filled Keller. She felt as if there was too much space inside her head. Very slowly, she looked down at Brett again.
"Stop talking." It was almost a whisper, but his gabble stopped as if she'd turned off a faucet "Now. Who's in the bedroom with your parents? Your sister?"
He nodded, terrified. Tears spurted out of his eyes.
"Your real sister."
He nodded again.
They must have brought her in sometime, Keller thought. Certainly before we put the wards up and started checking cars, maybe even before the fake Jaime got back from the hospital.
Why they'd kept her alive was a mystery, but Keller didn't have time to worry about it "Brett," she said, still in a careful whisper, "what I want to know is where Iliana is. Do you know where she's been taken?"
He choked. '1 don't know. He didn't tell me anything, even when he was in my mind. But I noticed-4here were some people down in the cellar. I think they were making a tunnel."
A tunnel. Under the wards, of course. So we were made fools of twice.
She had to grit her teeth to keep from screaming. The floor plan of the house was a blur in her mind. She hauled Brett up by his shirt and said, "Where's the basement door? Show me!"
Ic-can't-"
"Move!"
He moved, staggering. She followed, pushing him along, until they got to a door and stairs.
Then he collapsed. "Down there. Don't ask me to go with you. I can't. I can't look at him again." He huddled, rocking himself.