Prologue

At one time, he would never have thought this, but she was beautiful. She was still beautiful.

Amy Barksdale lay motionless under a thick comforter, her husband Joel Silverman by her side, both caught in the rhythms of sleep. Suddenly Amy broke the stillness with an almost child-like wail, as her head jerked to one side and her mouth contorted as if she were in terrible pain. Beside her Joel stiffened, his deep breath sputtering into a cough as he awoke. He turned to look at his wife.

"No, no, no!" she moaned. "Stop!"

Joel blinked hard to dispel the sleep from his eyes and pushed himself up on an elbow. That dream again, he thought, running a hand along her arm in a calm, steady manner borne of familiarity. No matter what we've done, even after all that counseling, she still comes back to that dream. She can't stop thinking about the baby.

Joel felt cold prickles on his neck and forehead. If only he hadn't left her that week to go to the Newark jazz festival. He had actually thought of declining, since there was no way he could enjoy himself if Amy were ill. But Amy had encouraged him to join the rest of his band on the trip, reminding him how rarely he got the opportunity. On his last day, he had tried phoning her, but kept getting sent to her voicemail. He tried pushing thoughts of worry out of his mind - Amy sometimes got so caught up in her activities, she would forget to turn on her cell phone and ignore the land phone.

His concern mounted later on, when he steered his car toward the apartment parking garage and found it blocked off with orange pylons and tape. Alongside it stood a crane, taking up one of the lanes of traffic. Joel pulled his car up to the curb and got out, joining several of his neighbors who were standing near the entrance, peering inside. Just beyond the tape, Joel could see crushed cars and shattered beams. His heart started pounding.

"What the hell happened?" he demanded.

Not one of the neighbors knew. It may have been an earthquake - they had felt some shaking a couple of days ago. Earthquakes were unheard of in their part of the country, so even a small one could wreak havoc on buildings not designed to withstand them. But then, why were their cars completely crushed, yet the apartments above intact? Why were the surrounding buildings unharmed, and where was the media? An earthquake that could cause this damage would be getting twenty-four hour news coverage.

One neighbor speculated that there might have been a bomb. Could one bomb do all that? thought Joel, and not take out the building above? None of his neighbors had an answer. Nor could any of them tell him when the bombing had occurred or if there had been casualties. Joel couldn't listen any more. He had to find Amy.

The apartments were safe to enter and the elevators functioned normally. Joel allowed himself a moment of hope that Amy would be waiting for him - until he opened their door and found Helen Morgendorffer.

From there, time seemed to stand still, as Helen took him gently by the shoulders and spoke a lot of soothing words that Joel could barely make out because his mind was spinning. "Baby"? "Hospital"? What baby? Amy was pregnant? Helen kept murmuring on - why couldn't she shut up for one minute and just tell him what had happened? Finally awareness broke through: Amy wasn't dead as he had feared, but comatose in the hospital. She had fallen and suffered heavy blood loss from a miscarriage.

Over the next week, Joel all but lived in the intensive care unit. He would sit by Amy's side and whisper in her ear about what a strong woman she was and all of the plans they had made together, all the while fighting tears and trying to swallow down the knot in his throat. Amy lay pale and motionless, an oxygen mask strapped over her face, an I.V. leaking fluids into her while a catheter leaked them out, a heart monitor beeping to show she was alive. Only the slight rise and fall of her chest indicated that she was there at all.

Meanwhile, the Morgendorffers remained uncomfortably close. Joel could understand their worry, but felt that there was something off about their presence, as if they were hiding something. He asked them about the damage in the garage, and in return got blank eyes, uneasy smiles, and assurances that they hadn't been there. He then probed them for information about Amy's fall. Where had it happened? How? His questions were met with more uneasy smiles, glances at one another, and stammers that "I didn't see it, I just heard it... it happened so fast... one minute she was just standing there." Not even Daria, Amy's favorite niece with the sharp and honest tongue, gave any meaningful information, though at least she spoke in her usual blunt manner.

Why were they at the hospital and not Amy's mother and other sister? Helen's smile trembled a little as she said quickly that they were aware of the situation, but hadn't yet made arrangements to fly up from Virginia. By then more than three days had passed since Amy's emergency surgery; how long could it take to buy plane tickets? Once Joel was sure that the Morgendorffers had left, he slipped out of the hospital building and called Rita Barksdale on Amy's cell phone. A few minutes of conversation convinced him that she had only learned of Amy's condition that day.

Why hadn't Helen contacted her family the day of the accident? He knew that the Barksdales had a stormy history, but Christ, to let it prevent Mrs. Barksdale from knowing her daughter's condition? That was worse than cold. That was...

Joel's uneasiness about the Morgendorffers deepened into outright mistrust after a talk with Amy's surgeon. Apparently Amy had arrived at the hospital with a large slash across her abdomen. What had she fallen on - an upturned butcher's knife? How in God's name could the Morgendorffers have missed that?

Unless they were trying to do something to her, and my arrival put a crimp in their plans, Joel thought. He didn't know them well enough to know what sort of people they were; Helen and her daughters had seemed decent enough when he met them a few weeks ago, but who knew what they were really like, deep down? Helen had claimed that she and her husband were separating, yet here they were, the happy couple. Why were they even in town? What did they want with Amy?

The day she awoke from her coma was one of the happiest of Joel's life. Amy looked at him with clear, bright eyes and her lips parted in a small smile.

"Joel..."

From there, her recovery was surprisingly rapid, owing much (Joel thought) to the Morgendorffers' departure. Amy would not talk about them, and seemed happier when they were gone, though the trauma of miscarriage had left her understandably subdued and vulnerable. Whereas before, Amy had valued her privacy so much that getting close had been a challenge, now she would beg Joel to go no more than a few miles away from her. Joel would have gone no more than one room away unless Amy had wished it, but he still could not help shaking his head at the change. At night, Amy couldn't fall asleep unless she were right against him, his arms closed around her like body armor. During the day, Joel could expect no fewer than five phone calls to his office, with Amy's edgy voice on the other end, asking if he were all right and when he would be home.

Then there were the nightmares, which caused to Amy scream and thrash in bed, as if trying to escape a hell world that her mind had created. Joel learned the hard way to soothe her awake, not pin her down or shake her, which would just make her more agitated. She would wake up sweating and sobbing, collapse in Joel's waiting arms, and fall asleep. In the morning, she would never remember what had happened.

Joel knew that this couldn't go on, as it was hurting Amy and their relationship. After much coaxing, he finally got her to agree to joint counseling. The first few sessions had little to show, but gradually Amy opened up about her pregnancy and how she felt it slipping away upon injury, and the horror she felt waking up and learning that not only was her fetus dead, but she could never have any more children.

Amy had a long, cleansing cry over the ordeal, and afterwards seemed markedly better. The nightmares stopped. Her energy level increased and her wry sense of humor re-emerged; she no longer dreaded going places alone, and therefore stopped calling Joel's office and even returned to her job. She was so much improved that Joel was unprepared for her marriage proposal.

"How about it?"

"You want to get married? Right now?"

"Why not?" asked Amy, an edge of amusement in her usual deadpan. "If there's one good thing this experience has taught me, it's that you have to live in the moment, because you never know what's around the bend."

Joel felt a sudden, mad urge to refuse. But why? he wondered. He and Amy had talked numerous times about getting married, with him always encouraging and her always reluctant. It had been the basis of an argument they had had while staying at a motel after visiting the Morgendorffers. Amy's last words before storming out of their room still rang in Joel's ears. Marriage isn't the end-all, be-all, Joel Silverman! And I'm not a cold bitch just because I realize that!

Now she wanted to get married right away. Yes, after they had made up, Amy sounded more receptive to the idea, but Joel had never expected her to propose. Of course he wanted to marry Amy, but her urgency bothered him.

"Let's just find a justice of the peace, or fly to Vegas, and get to it."

"No ceremony?" Joel asked, trying to apply the brakes. "You don't want to invite a few friends, or your mother, Rita, and Helen -"

"No."

Joel winced, not hearing a word so much as a sharp hissing sound. A sound packed with so much hatred that it threatened to explode upon touch.

"Mom and Rita don't know that I'm not talking to Helen," Amy continued in a milder tone. "If I invited them, the whole thing would be too damn awkward. Besides," she added, her brown eyes fixed squarely upon him, "I won't be married to them. I'll be married to you. Just you."

Again, it was on Joel's tongue to ask what Helen and her family had done to contribute to Amy's trauma. But he left it alone. She would tell him when she was ready, as she did with everything else. Yes, her proposal caught him a little off-guard, and yes, she wanted to move uncharacteristically fast. But no matter what, she was still his Amy and he loved her.

They said their vows in a small Vegas chapel, and Joel saw a look of peace spread across Amy's features. At that moment, he dared to believe that she was completely better.

Of course she isn't, you idiot. How could she be?

Joel now stared down at her wearily. He stroked Amy's arm, even though in her state, she felt it about as much as she would have felt a stray hair.

"NO! I don't want this! Leave me alone!"

She was more coherent than usual. Amy's dream utterings normally consisted of "No!" surrounded by nonsense words. Joel removed his hand from her arm, pulled himself up into a sitting position, and just looked at her.

For the first time, he wondered if there was a limit to his love. He wanted to be there for Amy, but little by little, she was wearing away at him. Joel was not ready to think of divorce, but something had to give, because their life together wasn't normal. She was hiding something from him, something important, and some day -

Amy awoke with a gasp. She jerked into an upright position, sweat gleaming on her neck and forehead. Joel held open his arms to receive her... but rather than sink into them as she always had, Amy pressed a hand to her clammy face. A look of horror overcame her, and she leapt out of bed and raced into the master bathroom. The walls shook with the force of the door slamming behind her.

Well this is unexpected, thought Joel, who was half inclined to roll over and go back to sleep.

In the darkness of the bathroom, Amy gazed at her reflection searchingly. Amy Barksdale stared back at her. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm okay, her mind's voice stuttered. It was a dream.

So what if I can see without my glasses? The surgeon said trauma can do weird things to you. Like people who hit their head and speak with accents from countries they've never heard of. Or people whose minds block out terrible memories. This is nothing. I'm fine.

Just then Amy gasped, feeling the room grow brighter, even though it was hours from dawn and she had not turned on any lights. She stared at herself in the mirror, and her legs started to tremble. Amy Barksdale stared back, with very bright eyes.

Very bright green eyes.

Amy bit her lip to fight off a scream. Around her, the room was as bright as if it were mid-day. No, it can't be true, she thought. Everything I've been able to see in my dreams... it can't be true.

She gritted her teeth, as her skin, her stomach, every part of her began to boil with rage. What did they do to me? What did those fuckers do to me?!

Chapter One

"Come on, Daria. Just a little shaking?"

"Nope."

"A tremor. Come on..."

Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane stood at the far edge of the Lawndale High football field, watching the football players deep into a pick-up game. Graduation was in a week and the football season a distant memory, yet the players ran and tackled as though they were in the thick of a playoff hunt. Kevin Thompson even wore those same stupid shoulder pads and a battered helmet with grass stuck in the face guard.

"Go long, Mack Daddy!" screamed Kevin, raising the football above his head.

"Kevin, we're ten yards from the end zone," said Mack MacKenzie, pointing to the nearby goal line.

"That's why they'll never see it coming! The element of surprise, bro!"

"What element of surprise? Where else am I going to go?"

"Umm, I don't know. Behind me?"

Mack slapped his forehead. "How the hell did we ever win the state championship twice?"

"Because the Lions rule, bro! Yeahhh!" Kevin wiggled his knees together in a frantic chicken dance and spiked the ball on the ground.

"Fumble!" cried Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie, who dove for the ball at once, knocking Kevin down in their frenzy. They soon formed a biting, kicking, punching pile, from which Mack kept his distance. Again, Jane turned to Daria.

"Wouldn't it be funny if Kevin were doing one of his stupid dances to honor the football gods and bam the gods answered back by shaking his feet right out from under him?"

"I doubt anything I created could induce greater stupidity than what's before us," said Daria. She shifted her eyes away from Jane and began walking purposefully away from the field, hoping that would cure Jane of her interest.

"Besides, who cares what they do? In a couple of weeks we'll never see most of them again anyway."

"Yeah," Jane noted, "Mack didn't even care enough to tell Kevin to stop calling him 'Mack Daddy.'" A big smile spread across her face. "Can you believe it's finally over?"

"Psst, Lane. Don't jinx it." To Daria, the year had felt oppressively long, as if each day had been two.

"We'll have the summer, and then you'll be off to Raft, and Mack will be going to Vance, and Jodie to Turner..."

"And you to BFAC," Daria reminded her friend pointedly.

Jane's shoulders slumped. "That's if I got in, the competition being so tight and all. If not, guess I'll have to go with Plan B. 'Do you want fries with that?'"

"Don't be stupid," Daria said fiercely. "Everyone knows that the best minimum wage jobs are in retail."

"Cashman's Junior 5 is looking for another sweater folder."

"And they'll have to keep looking, because you're getting into BFAC."

Jane tilted her head introspectively. "You know that for a fact?"

Daria felt chills on the back of her neck. "That you're a talented artist and original thinker? I've always known that. They'd be insane not to have you."

Jane flushed with warmth at the compliment, and Daria felt herself relax a little, though she could not entirely shake off her uneasiness over the way Jane had posed the question.

The topic of conversation turned to graduation, and what sort of dull speeches they would have to hear, stupid awards they might receive, who would moon, who would streak, and who would be the most popular graduate, with the most friends and family cheering in the bleachers. Daria felt relieved, hoping that her friend was so fixated on mundane details that she had forgotten about her request at the football game.

Of course she knew the truth. Jane had not forgotten. She could not forget.

And if she had, their first moment at the Morgendorffer home reminded her again, as they found Jake teaching Quinn to move objects with her mind. Quinn could already move them without thinking, but moving them consciously had always been her weakness. As Daria and Jane entered the kitchen, they found Jake and Quinn seated at the table, where Jake was staring deeply at a plastic cup doing slow somersaults in mid-air.

"Hey, cool!" Jane burst out.

The cup froze, then fell to table with a hollow clang before rolling off the edge. Quinn gasped as though a shot had been fired, while Jake turned to Daria and Jane with a big, unfazed smile.

"Hiya girls! How was school?"

"No cups floating around, but a few teachers looked like they wanted to do what you were doing to some of the students," Jane replied.

Daria and Quinn eyed each other warily: Jane's quip brought up memories that were still too fresh. "That's right!" said Jake brightly. "You only have one week left of high school! The teachers must be going nuts trying to keep you guys in line."

Leave it to my wonderful father to forget an approaching milestone in my life, thought Daria. But then, graduation from high school did not feel nearly as momentous as it had at the beginning of the year. She even found herself growing nostalgic for the rows of pearl pink lockers, the tedious curriculum, the rigid caste structure that governed each class of students, the predictability. College was a dark corner around which any terror could lurk. She would have dozens of new dorm mates to fool. Daria did not know how she would handle living away from home; she had requested a private room and was still waiting to learn if it had been approved. Even if it had been, she did not know if it would be enough to insulate her from the students on her floor. Or them from her.

Jake patted the seat next to him. "You guys want to sit and watch a lesson?"

Jane opened her mouth to speak, but Quinn was faster. "Gawd, Dad!" she shrieked. "I don't want them watching! Do you have any idea how embarrassing that would be? I just know Daria would try to mess me up."

Daria turned to Jane and smirked innocently, knowing that Quinn's outburst was really an attempt to limit her discomfort. She knew that Daria did not like talking to her best friend about her powers.

"Besides, why watch plastic cups when on Sick Sad World there's a woman who can float knives. Right into her husband's forehead." Daria gave Jane a nudge. "Let's go upstairs."

If Daria had thought a change of venue would put an end to the subject, she was quickly enlightened.

"Can we talk, here?" asked Jane, sinking onto the bed while Daria stood facing the television, fiddling with the channels.

"About?" Daria replied, her eyes not leaving the screen.

"About graduation. Moving on."

"Oh." Daria straightened up, though remained with her back to Jane.

"I just..." Jane lifted her hands in mid-gesture, then let them sink, as easy expression of her thoughts failed her. "I... we keep talking about it like it's the most normal thing in the world. But for you, it's not."

"So what?" asked Daria, now turning to face Jane, a scowl imprinting itself on her face.

"You really think that you can just go to Raft and study English like it's no big deal, like you're just another one of us?"

"I am 'just another one' of you." Daria felt the heat rising in her cheeks. Her heart pounded, but she strove to retain an outward look of calm.

Jane looked her right in the eye. "No you're not. And I'm sick of you pretending like you are."

Daria's insides churned. She was half-tempted to ask her friend to leave, but knew that doing so would only highlight the abnormality of the situation. Besides, this comment had been on Jane's tongue since she first learned Daria's secret. She might as well address it and get it out of the way.

Daria often wished that she had never told Jane about her powers. But to keep it from her best friend, the person who saw her most often outside of her family, would have been impossible. She had tried initially; upon returning from her aunt's city after facing the bounty hunter Phelps, Jane had wanted to know where she had gone. Daria tried to come up with the most plausible, yet controversial, excuse that would justify the entire family leaving without notice.

So she told Jane that they had taken Quinn to get an abortion.

"She couldn't get it here?" Jane had wanted to know, her brow knitting with skepticism.

"Of course: A popular girl in a small town gets an abortion. I'm sure that wouldn't attract unwanted interest or gossip in any way."

"Your whole family went?"

"Moral support. It wasn't easy for her."

"Even your dad?"

"It was less traumatic for him than staying home with his imagination."

"For an entire week?"

"Quinn needed time to recover, and Mom, Dad, and I needed time to relax. It's been years since we've had a family vacation longer than a weekend." The explanation sounded so plausible to her ears, Daria wished it were true.

"And you left the day Quinn's fashion pal just happened to be found dead in the girls' room."

Daria's mind whirled, leaving her hot and dizzy as she sought a common link to between two very different events. "She was having complications from a botched abortion and Stacy was trying to help her," she at last blurted out. "Maybe Stacy got too stressed and couldn't handle it. Jane, what are you accusing her of?"

The hardness that came over Daria's face told Jane that she was very close to being her ex friend. "I'm not, I'm just saying it looks a little weird to the outside world that she just took off. But you're my friend, and you never lie about the important stuff, so fuck the rest of the world. I'm just glad Quinn's okay." Jane lowered her eyes and asked in a hushed tone, "Who was the lucky male half of their partnership?"

"Um, Jamie. No," Daria said quickly, "it was a college guy."

She knew that Jane would never believe that Quinn had lowered herself to do it with one of her lapdogs. It had to be someone of high status.

"Wow, Quinn's sampling college before you are?"

"By the time I start freshman orientation, she'll have turned in her senior thesis."

Lying to Jane was like lying to herself. No matter how much Daria tried to smooth over the truth with convincing falsehoods, repress anything that would give herself away, part of her knew that something wasn't right and the truth needed to come out, no matter how painful it would be. And so did Jane.

One night over pizza and a Sick Sad World marathon, Jane had muted the television and told Daria what she was feeling: Daria had been acting withdrawn for weeks, and when they did talk she sounded cold and superficial. Had Jane done something to upset her? Daria felt prickles of guilt, and knew that she had to be honest, so she told her everything. Everything. The telepathy she had been aware of since childhood. Learning that her powers were much greater than she thought, and were extra-terrestrial in origin. The violent confrontation with Phelps that had left her aunt near death. Freezing time...

The one detail Daria did not mention was Quinn's hand Stacy's death. That was for Quinn to tell, when she chose to do so.

By the end, Jane was staring at Daria as though she had fallen asleep and the story were an extension of the Sick Sad World marathon. Yet to Daria's surprise, she soon accepted her explanation ("Well it was better than that lame abortion story") and was even encouraging. Sometimes too encouraging. Six months had passed since the confrontation with Phelps in the parking garage, and the events still clung to Daria. If she closed her eyes, she could see cars flying through the air, metal twisting as easily as a rubber band, her aunt screaming and clutching her bleeding stomach...

Aside from learning how to control her powers better, Daria wanted as little to do with them as possible. Jane didn't understand that. Jane kept nudging her to use them in the most ordinary circumstances, like manipulating a teacher's thoughts to make him let the students go home early, or like on the football field that day. Couldn't Jane understand how hard this was for her?

"That cynical persona of yours. It's a lie, Daria."

"What do you mean a lie?" Daria said in a loud tone. "This is who I am. I'm not faking anything!"

"Maybe not on purpose, but come on. Cynics are people who feel like they're helpless to change the world. You can change the world!"

"How? By making it worse?" Daria gritted her teeth and her eyes narrowed. Behind her the television signal flickered. "I can toss things, burn things, freeze them, tear them apart. These aren't good powers. They're powers that destroy!"

"Destructive powers can be good." Jane frowned with thought. "Think if you blew out the tires of some kidnapper's get-away car, or melted down weapons so there was no more war. Or froze the U.S. men's gymnastics team in mid-flex. Yowzuh!"

"Go ahead and make jokes."

"I'm not making jokes; I'm thinking with the glass half full, which is more than I could say for you."

"Oh yeah? How would you like it?" Daria's face now felt very hot, and she was vaguely aware of her hands shaking. Calm down. "Would you be so 'rah-rah' if these were your powers, and you had to be aware of them every single waking minute of your damn day, out of fear that you could kill someone if you let them get out of control?" Calm down, damn it!

"You know what? I would like it." Jane's blue eyes refused to leave Daria's face. "In fact, I would love it if I had so much power to change things. The vague, remote possibility that I could take a life wouldn't change that. You had some bad experiences, okay, but that's no reason to let your powers go to waste."

The ice blue of Jane's eyes penetrated Daria. She felt her rage dissipating, only to be replaced by the more paralyzing feeling of her veins filling with chilled water.

"But then, you knew I felt that way, didn't you?"

One other set of eyes had penetrated Daria this way, and they had been ice blue as well. She tilted her face away.

"Yes. I did."

"I'm just being honest, Daria. If you think it's so wrong, make me think something else," the blue eyes challenged her.

Daria kept her gaze averted, and Jane's face suddenly flushed with anger. "Hey!"

"You told me to make you think something else. I was just being honest."

"You can be a real bitch, you know that?" Jane reached for her backpack and stood up. "And you know what else your problem is?"

"That I still haven't picked out my stretchy-stretchy costume and an alias?" Daria shot back. "How about I'll be Sarcasmo and you can be my sidekick, Cheeky."

"It does sound oddly appealing." Jane's lips twitched with mirth. Then her face grew serious again. "No, it's that you're afraid of reality. You -"

"-use my super powers as an excuse to hide from the world," Daria took over. "Yet if they weren't there, I would be using something else. I have this great gift of analyzing what I see and stating it in neat, accurate sentences, yet rather than get out where people need it most, I use it as an excuse to hide in my room. I tell myself that the world is too corrupt and scary, and I let my gift founder."

Jane's eyes widened as she heard her thoughts echoed back to her almost word for word. Daria looked at her firmly, but her voice was soft. "Another reason I don't like to use my powers - the barrier between me and other people dissolves. The more I use them, the easier it is for me to feel my way through people's minds, so nothing's a secret to me anymore."

Daria swallowed hard and flexed her knees to dispel a sensation of weakness. "And when that happens, I stop being Daria, and you stop being Jane - two individuals. I'm not... I'm not ready to think that way yet."

The room was so still, one could hear a piece of paper flutter. Finally Jane took steps on unsteady legs toward the door.

"It's late - I'd better go," she muttered. "It was a mistake for me to bring this up now. Maybe later."

"Okay," Daria whispered. "Bye."

The door opened and shut hard, drowning out her words. Daria blinked tears out of her eyes and sat down on the bed. She hadn't wanted to let her demonstration go so far, but Jane gave her no choice. As she lay back and faced the ceiling, she tried to assess the mixture of fear and anger that her friend was feeling, wondering if it was so great that Jane would start to avoid her.

You'll always be different. They'll all abandon you in the end. Even your loved ones...

Daria's expression sank into a frown. She had always wanted isolation, yet what she felt now was the sensation of champagne corked in a bottle. Like she was being cut off, held back. Jane was right - this was no way to live. But it wasn't as though she had made this decision by herself. Others had forced it on her.

Aunt Amy, for one. Daria ran a hand over her eyes as she thought about her favorite aunt. They used to communicate every week, sometimes more than once a week; but ever since her near death, she had treated the Morgendorffers as thought they didn't exist. Daria's e-mails went unanswered and her letters were sent back. She finally managed to get her aunt on the phone after pretending to be from a credit card company. The cold deadness of her voice was a sound that Daria could not forget.

"Aunt Amy, it's Daria."

"Hang up the phone."

"Wait, I-"

"Hang up the phone, now. I don't want to talk to you."

"But your -"

Click.

Daria's hand had trembled as she listened to the dial tone drone on, until it turned into shrill, impatient beeping and an operator's recording. For days afterward, she tried to convince herself that her aunt was being controlled by her overprotective boyfriend, Joel, who had been openly suspicious of the Morgendorffers. But in her heart, she knew the truth: Amy was talking in her own voice, flashing the same hatred that she had shown upon learning that she was pregnant with a half-alien child. To Amy, Daria was no longer her wiser-than-her-years niece - she was a freak. Like DeMartino and Phelps, like Jake and Quinn. And like Helen by default, because only a freak would willingly procreate with an alien.

Daria balled her hands into fists. Sometimes she felt so angry with her aunt, she wished she could send a shock wave across the miles that separated them and make Amy really feel the grief she had caused. How could Amy lump her and Quinn with DeMartino and Phelps - they had saved her life! How could she be so closed-minded? How...

Then a small voice would remind her: If she acknowledges you, then what she experienced was real. Now that her alien fetus was dead, Amy could convince herself that everything was normal, even if that meant stuffing her sister's family into a drawer in a dark corner of her mind. Admit it: If you had the chance, you would do it, too.

Daria's eyes remained fixed on the ceiling, but they grew unfocused from prolonged use. She wished her aunt would acknowledge her once, just once, to let her know how she was doing. She just wanted to know that Amy was all right.

I hate you, Helen! This is your fault!

Amy tossed her clothes into a duffel bag, hardly caring whether they wrinkled or matched. Tears blinded her sight.

What had ever made her give a shit about her older sister? Why had she decided to brush off the years of fighting and cold-shouldering to give her another chance? If only she had never attended Erin's wedding - then she wouldn't have reunited with Helen or Daria. She would have never agreed to visit Helen's family for a weekend and bond with her sister enough to let her stay at her apartment when she and Jake were on the brink. There would have been no follow-up trip to Lawndale, resulting in that fateful night in the motel. Helen and her family would have never come to her when they were in trouble, and Amy wouldn't find herself now with sensations she couldn't explain.

She zipped her bag up tight and picked up a hastily scrawled letter that lay on the bed beside it. Should she leave it on Joel's bedside table, or someplace where he was more likely to see it right away? She didn't want him to get the wrong idea. She was leaving.

Amy blinked hard, and the tears spilled down her cheeks. Undaunted, she laid the letter on his pillow. Joel would come home from work that evening and go to their bedroom to check on her, thinking that she was sleeping off the illness she had claimed to have to avoid going to work. He would find the bed neatly made and a letter that read:

My Dear Joel,

I want you to know that you are the most important person in my life, and I love you. However, circumstances have come up that I must attend to, requiring that I go away for a few weeks, or possibly longer. I wish I could explain more, but I'm not sure you would understand. Just know that there's no one else - there's only you. When I am in a safe place, I will try to call you. I hope to come back again soon, and to explain everything to you someday.

Love, Amy

Amy knew that Joel would find the letter frustratingly vague, but it was the best she could do for now. She hauled the duffel bag onto her shoulder and surveyed the room. The wedding ring on her left hand brushed against the strap. Amy held the ring up close to her face, ran her thumb along its bumpy surface and watched it gleam in the afternoon light. Her face crumpled. Sobs escaping her throat, she fell heavily onto the bed and closed her hands over her face. She couldn't go through with this. She loved Joel. How could she just leave him?

Because until she knew what she had, Joel wasn't safe around her. More than anything, she wanted to protect him. She would rather he felt betrayed than suffer because she was afraid to let go.

Amy stood up, picked up the duffel bag, which had fallen to the floor, and straightened the wrinkles in the bedspread. She looked at the letter one last time, and turned to go out the door.

As Amy slipped into her red Spitfire, she thought that she would be leaving unwatched. She should have known better. Someone was always watching her.

If Amy had known who, she would never have left.

Chapter Two

Three hours, twenty-two minutes to Lawndale on a good day, with little traffic. Amy surveyed the roadway before her and took a deep breath. Before nightfall she would be at the Morgendorffers.

She had not called them to say she was coming; after months of silence, any explanation would have been too complicated. Besides, why did she owe them anything?

Amy bit her lip and tried to push her last conversation with Daria out of her mind. Her niece's shy, concerned voice had taken her by surprise, though somehow Amy had known she would be calling even before she picked up the phone. That deadpan, so like hers, sent a cold shock through her body. It was as if a little shadow, diminished by sunlight, were reminding her that it was still there, that it would always be touching her. Before her niece could utter more than a greeting, she killed the phone call.

Amy soon found that righteous anger could not blot out her regret, just as denial could not keep her from noticing the changes in her body. At first it was just her eyesight, but little by little, Amy began to feel physically different. Trauma from the "accident" could explain her fatigue during the day, but not what she saw at night.

She rubbed her drooping left eye as she tried to focus on the long stretch of highway. Why did she have to think of sleep? She couldn't even remember the last time she had enjoyed a full night's rest.

Amy blinked hard as her thoughts blurred into a stream. Three hours was starting to seem like a very long time, maybe too long. Maybe she should stop somewhere and get some coffee.

No. She remembered the last time she had made an unplanned stop. Keep moving.

Turn up the radio. Sing a song. Better yet, make one up.

Amy turned up the radio to ear-splitting volume, as The Clash's London Calling thundered through the speakers. She straightened up, letting the energy of the song pump into her, subconsciously singing a different title name.