A huge quivering stillness seemed to hang over the desert. Thea's heart was beating so hard that it shook her body. What was happening?
"It's like you're part of everything out here," he said in that wise, childlike voice. "You belong to it. And there's so much peace...."
"No," Thea said. There was no peace at all in her. She was terrified. She didn't know what was going on, but she knew she had to get away.
"Don't go," he said, when she shifted. He had the stricken expression of a heartbroken puppy.
And then... he reached for her. Not roughly. His fingers didn't close on her wrist. They just brushed the back of her hand, sliding away when she jerked.
But it didn't matter. That light touch had raised all the hairs on Thea's forearm. And when she looked back into the gray-flecked green eyes, she knew he'd felt it, too.
A sort of piercing sweetness, a dizzying exhilaration. And-a connection. As if something deeper than words was being communicated.
I know you. I see what you see....
Almost without knowing what she was doing, Thea raised her hand. Fingertips slightly outspread, as if she were going to touch a mirror or a ghost. He brought his hand up, too. They were staring at each other.
And then, just before then- fingers made contact, Thea felt a jolt of panic like ice water.
What was she doing? Had she lost her mind?
Suddenly everything was clear-too clear. Her future stretched out before her, every detail sharp. Death for breaking Night World law. Herself centered in the Inner Circle, trying to explain that she hadn't meant to betray their secrets, that she hadn't meant to... to get close to a human. That it was all a mistake, just a moment of stupidity because she'd wanted to heal him. And them bringing the Cup of Death anyway.
The vision was so clear it seemed like a prophecy. Thea jumped up as if the ground had lurched underneath her, and she did the only thing she could think of to do.
She said scathingly, "Are you nuts? Or is your brain just overheated or something?"
He got the stricken look again.
He's a human. One of them, Thea reminded herself. She put even more scorn in her voice. "I'm part of everything; I did something to your leg... yeah, sure. I bet you believe in Santa Claus, too."
Now he looked shocked-and uncertain. Thea went for the coup de gras. "Or were you just trying to put the moves on me?"
"Huh? No," he said. He blinked and looked around. The desert was the ordinary desert, gray-green and parched and flat. Then he looked at his leg. He blinked again, as if getting a fresh grip on reality. "I... look, I'm sorry if I upset you. I don't know what's wrong with me."
Suddenly he gave a sheepish smile. "Maybe I'm kind of weird from being scared. I guess I'm not as brave as I thought."
Relief trickled through Thea. He was buying it. Thank Isis that humans were stupider than chickens.
"And I wasn't trying to move in on you. I just-" He broke off. "You know, I don't even know your name."
"Thea Harman."
"I'm Eric Ross. You're new here, aren't you?"
"Yes." Stop talking and go, she ordered herself.
"If I can show you around or anything... I mean, I would like to see you again...."
"No," Thea said flatly. She would have liked to have kept it to that monosyllable, but she wanted to crush this new idea of his completely. "I don't want to see you," she said, too rattled to think of any more subtle way to put it.
And then she turned and walked away. What else was there to do? She certainly couldn't talk to him anymore. Even if she would always wonder why he'd been crazy enough to care about the snake, she couldn't ask. From now on she had to stay as far away from him as possible.
She hurried back to the school-and realized immediately that she was late. The parking lot was quiet. Nobody was walking outside the adobe buildings.
On my first day, too, Thea thought. Her backpack was on the ground where she'd dropped it, a notebook lying beside it on the asphalt. She grabbed them both and all but ran to the office.
It was only in physics class, after she'd handed her admission slip to the teacher and walked past rows of curious eyes to an empty seat in the back, that she realized the notebook wasn't hers.
It fell open to a page that had Introduction to Flat-worms scribbled in sloping, spiky blue ink. Below were some pictures labeled Class Turbellaria and Class Trematoda. The worms were beautifully drawn, with their nervous systems and reproductive organs shaded in different colors of highlighter, but the artist had also given them big goofy smiling faces. Grotesque but lovable in a cross-eyed way. Thea turned the page and saw another drawing, the Life Cycle of the Pork Tapeworm.
Yum.
She leafed back to the beginning of the notebook. Eric Ross, Honors Zoology I.
She shut the book.
Now how was she going to get it back to him?
Part of her mind worried about this through physics and her next class, computer applications. Part of it did what it always did at a new school, or any new gathering of humans: it watched and cataloged, keeping alert for danger, figuring out how to fit in. And part of it simply said, I didn't know they had a zoology class here.
The one question she didn't want to ask herself was what had happened out there in the desert? Whenever the thought came up, she pushed it away brusquely. It must have had something to do with her senses being too open after merging with the snake.
Anyway, it hadn't meant anything. It had been a weird one-time fluke.
In the main hallway at break, Blaise came rushing up, quick as a lioness despite the high heels.
"How's it going?" Thea said, as Blaise drew her into a temporarily deserted classroom.