"It's too late," Wilkins said. "They can't help me."

"Clear!" someone shouted from what sounded like a thousand miles away.

"I don't know what to do," Isabel said.

"Stay with me," Wilkins asked desperately.

The darkness shuddered around Isabel.

"Nothing," someone said.

"We're going again. Clear!"

Another shudder passed through the darkness, and this time it claimed Leroy Wilkins, blotting him from Isabel's view in a heartbeat. She stood alone in the darkness and felt it pull at her. Then she tried to slip out of the dreamwalk and return to her body in Michael's house, tried to feel Michael's battered sofa against her body.

She couldn't. She was still stuck in the dreamwalk.

Suddenly a pool of blackness darker than anything Isabel had ever seen opened up near her. Irresistibly, like a moth drawn to a flame, she was pulled to it.

"Isabel Evans."

The voice sounded familiar, but Isabel couldn't place it. She tried to turn around, but the dark pool floating before her kept drawing her in.

A hand caught hers, pulling her back and around. As she turned, she saw River Dog standing before her.

"Come," River Dog said. "There is not much time."

Isabel found she was freed from the pull of the pool. "What about Leroy Wilkins?"

"His time in this place is done," River Dog said. "You can do nothing for him. He must make his peace in the next world, and we can only mourn him and pray for him."

Isabel fell into step with River Dog, amazed at the way the black shadows suddenly gave way to a moonlight-kissed desert landscape. Another step and she was running, feeling the sand crunch under her feet.

"Where are we going?" Isabel asked.

"I have found the spirits," River Dog answered. "And they have found me."

"How did you find me?" Isabel said. Getting into the dreamwalk she'd had with Wilkins wasn't possible. At least, she hadn't thought it was possible from everything she knew about her power. Then again she didn't totally understand everything she did. She just accepted that she could do it.

"I am on a vision quest, Isabel Evans," River Dog responded. Despite his age, he loped easily through the desert. A nocturnal desert cottontail exploded from the shadow of a cactus and hopped furiously along the moonlit landscape, escaping back into the night.

Isabel watched the small creature for a moment, feeling disoriented and no longer in control. However, from the time that she had joined River Dog, she could also feel the connection to her body in Michael's house again. She could be back there in a split second and she knew it.

"The animals can sense us," River Dog said. "It's not unheard of. In a vision quest a traveler of the People is closest to nature."

"The spirits aren't ghosts," Isabel said.

"No," River Dog agreed. "They are travelers not unlike you and your brother and your friend."

"From another place?"

"Yes." River Dog ran harder. "We must hurry. If they find that I am talking to you, they may prevent it."

"Why are they haunting your people?" Isabel asked. "Why are they haunting Roswell?"

"Now that they have awakened from their long sleep, they feel they must protect themselves. Come. We must hurry." River Dog picked up the pace, still holding on to her hand.

Only a few steps later, Isabel saw they were running for the edge of a cliff high above the desert floor. River Dog showed no intention of stopping.

"Cliff," Isabel warned.

"It doesn't matter," River Dog said, pulling her toward the edge.

Resisting the impulse to dig in her heels and stop, Isabel ran with River Dog. If worse came to worse, she could always end the dreamwalk and be safe back in Michael's house. Two more steps and she was suddenly out over a fifty-foot drop.

She fell.

But even as she tumbled earthward, a change came over her. She stared at her arms as feathers suddenly jutted out, and in the next instant her arms became wings.

"Come," River Dog said from beside her.

Isabel looked at him, finding that he had become an owl. She saw her own reflection in his great moons of eyes. She was an owl as well, and her fear was mixed with apprehension and childish glee that she would have never owned in front of Max or Michael.

Instinctively she stretched out her wings and caught the air. A couple of wing strokes and she climbed into the night sky, following River Dog.

"Come," River Dog cried, putting on speed in a burst of flapping wings.

Isabel followed as smoothly as though she'd been shifting shapes all her life.

17

"And you changed into a bird?"

Isabel stared at Michael. "An owl," she corrected him. She sat on his couch in his house, feeling a little lightheaded from all the exertion of doing the dreamwalking.

"Same difference," Michael said with a shrug.

"When you put it like that," Maria said, "the whole dreamwalk loses some of the coolness effect."

Michael looked at Maria. "Turning into a bird is cool?"

"Not just any bird," Isabel said again. "An owl. And yes, it was cool."

"Good for you," Michael said. "How does that help us?"

Isabel stood with Max's help. "River Dog showed me his cave. And where the… travelers… took him."

"They captured him?" Valenti asked.

"In a way," Isabel said. Her legs grew more steady. "His body is where he left it, but they have his mind. Actually they only think they have River Dog's mind. They don't know he was talking to me. Come on. I'll explain on the way."

Max rode shotgun in Valenti's SUV, staring into the lights of oncoming cars and feeling his eyes burn as if they were being microwaved. Anxiety thrummed within him.

Valenti drove a sedate five miles over the speed limit, handling the vehicle effortlessly. So far they'd passed two state police cars, a truck from the sheriff's department, and five Hummers filled with National Guardsmen. The radio and the scanner mounted under the dash continued to report poltergeist activity in and around Roswell. Law enforcement and military teams were responding.

"The area of effect is getting larger," Valenti commented.

Max nodded. Reports were coming in from the other side of Roswell now. At the rate of progression, the ghosts would be haunting other cities besides Roswell by morning.

"Is Isabel back with us yet?"

Turning, Max gazed into the backseat. Maria, Isabel, and Liz were sandwiched into the rear seat. Michael and Kyle sat hunkered on the rear deck.

Isabel sat between the two other girls. She was asleep, dreamwalking again, getting more information from River Dog that they would need to confront the travelers.

"No," Max answered. Before he could stop himself, he gazed out the window, looking for owls flying through the dark night sky. It was silly, he supposed. Maybe Isabel dreamed that she was an owl when she was with River Dog in the dreamwalk, but she didn't actually turn into one.

The car's greenish instrument lights painted Valenti's face in hard lines. "Do you believe she's really talking to River Dog? Or do you think those… things… the travelers are setting us up? Passing themselves off as River Dog to her?"

Max only thought about the question for a moment. "She's talking to River Dog. Isabel would know if she wasn't."

"I'm not so sure," Valenti said. "Today I saw the ghost of a woman I never thought I'd see again. Most people around here don't even remember her murder. If the travelers can find that out, maybe they do a pretty good River Dog imitation, too."

"No," Max said. "Isabel would know."

"We could be headed into a trap."

Max nodded. "We're headed into their stronghold. Trap or no trap, I don't think it gets any worse than that."

Valenti was silent for a moment. "The scary part is, you're probably right."