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stacking them into a neat pile then tucking them into a file folder. “Tonight we’ll check it out after work.”
    “Sounds good.” Zander grabbed his coffee and downed the last of it before throwing the paper cup into the trash. “I’ve got a few things around here to take care of before I’m off to the museum for my guest lecture. I’ll see you around.”
    “I’ll see you there later. Maybe we’ll find the answers to the mysteries of the universe in the planetarium show.” Jude laughed. “It could happen, right?”
    Zander laughed too. It felt great to be investigating with his friend again. This time he knew it would be different. It had to be. “The answers could be anywhere.”

Chapter Four
     
     
    Maia woke to the sound of a door slamming and raised, excited voices in the hallway. Car horns honked from somewhere outside her window. She knew without looking that she hadn’t magically materialized back home through the night.
    She squeezed her eyes shut tight and dragged the extra pillow over her head, hoping to block out the noise. Maybe if she couldn’t hear the noise of the city, she could convince herself everything that happened the day before had been some kind of crazy dream. Maybe if she concentrated hard enough, when she opened her eyes, she’d be in her own house back on Pleiades with the waterfall cascading down the rocks beside her house. Even the thought of the waterfall was somewhat soothing.
    But not enough to make her feel normal again since she was on Earth, in a noisy hotel room, hiding in a lumpy bed with scratchy linens.
    She opened one eye and peeked out from under the pillow. To the side of the bed, she could see the bag she’d found in the park—the one that must have been the casualty of a really hideous fashion experiment gone wrong since no fashion designer would ever purposefully choose to combine zebra stripes and hot pink.
    This wasn’t a dream and she wasn’t going to wake up back home unless she found a way to get herself there. Even worse, she wouldn’t be able to get back home unless she dragged herself out of bed at some point.
    First things first, try calling home again. Maybe whatever problem they’d had last night would be fixed and then she could stay in bed until it was time for her return trip. She snaked a hand out and grabbed the phone, dialed the operator and put the phone to her ear.
    “Thank you for calling Galactic Communications, your connection to the universe and beyond. We are currently experiencing a problem—”
    Maia slammed the phone back down onto the bedside table. She didn’t need to hear the rest of the message. Obviously they hadn’t gotten the problem fixed yet, if a real problem even existed. It seemed more and more likely that maybe Zeus had blocked her call on purpose.
    Reluctantly, Maia crawled out from under the covers and padded across the floor to her bag where it still lay on the floor in a heap and rummaged around until she found the clothes Zeus had so thoughtfully packed for her.
    She held up a pair of super-short shorts— because he apparently thinks I want to dress like a hoochie while on Earth —and a t-shirt that looked the appropriate size to fit a supermodel. Gee, thanks. She might be a Greek goddess, but she still had curves and there was no way her curves were fitting into either of those items—at least not without bits seeping out in truly ungoddess-like ways.
    First priority—buy new, non-hoochie clothing.
    She pulled on her grass-stained dress from the day before, knowing it was infinitely more comfortable, and way cuter than the shorts and tank would ever be. She dumped the other clothes into the wastebasket, then quickly ran a brush through her hair and twisted it into a clip at the nape of her neck. She wouldn’t win any beauty contests today, but that was fine. Beauty was highly overrated.
    Leaving the hotel, she wandered down the street in search of shops. She’d been to the city a few times before,