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was adamant that my life was her responsibility. 
    Zandra had taught me the story of how Centaurs came to be; Katherine just filled in the pieces Zandra had left out.  Because of Lila's love for Rupert, the goddess Athena gave Katherine’s family magic to help protect all of their offspring, and now, at least a thousand years later, Katherine assigned herself to me.  The magic she possessed wasn’t like what the Centaurides could do.  She couldn’t move objects, read minds, or see the future, but she could make others see what she wanted them to see.
    Having her protection had come in handy in South Dakota.  I was grateful that she had decided to accompany me, but I worried what would happen to her if things went badly at the Centaur Council.  Humans weren’t supposed to know about Centaurs.  Katherine knew because she was a Lapith, but that made things even worse – Lapiths were Centaurs’ natural enemy.  Did the Centaur Council even know that Lapiths weren’t extinct?  When we met in South Dakota, Brent said he thought there weren’t any left.
    Ben and Bart refused to go into hiding if the rest of our family was going to meet the Centaur Council.  So we were “Centaurs, party of fourteen,” walking through a South African airport. 
    A small voice brought me back to the present.  “Look, Mommy, they’re on television.  I want to be on the television, too!”
    A small child with blonde ringlets framing her face was pointing her little finger directly at Drake and me.  I looked up at the T.V. just to our left to see our photographs staring back at me from the television screen.  Panic gripped me.  The broadcast was in English, . . .“they are wanted for murder and are believed to be in the local area.  If you see them, you’re asked to call the number on the screen.  Do not approach them and use extreme caution.” 
    I stood staring at the screen when Katherine came up and took my hand.  Her eyes were squinted shut.  I knew what she was trying to do; she was trying to disguise my appearance just like she had done with the highway patrolman and Jessica in South Dakota.  She had somehow changed the way Jessica looked to him and convinced him that Jessica was not sitting in the backseat of the car. Katherine began mumbling, “Asian tourists, Asian tourists,. . . “ 
    It must have worked because the mother looked at the screen, then to our group and back to the television.  “Where?” she asked the little girl.  The little girl looked confused staring directly at me.  She must have been too young to verbalize her confusion because she said nothing else and began skipping down the hallway when her mother took her hand.
    Once the mother and daughter were out of ear-shot, I asked Katherine, “How long can you do it?”
    “Not long, I'm just doing you and Drake, but I may have to do all of us. We need to get out of here.”
    When we were in South Dakota, Katherine had disguised Jessica for less than five minutes, and she became exhausted.  I could only imagine how much of a drain this would be on her.  Without a moment to lose, I said, “Okay, everybody, we need to pick up the pace.”
     
    *****
     
    South Africa was not at all what I had expected.  When we emerged from the airport, the sky was a brilliant blue.  White clouds hugged the sky but did nothing to try to filter the sun.  The rays from the sun were hard to describe; although bright, they didn’t blare down on us the way they had in Cancun.  The sun’s rays felt less like a laser burning our skin and more like a warm blanket softly wrapped around us.
    The Centaur Council meeting was scheduled for tomorrow in Centauride.  After I wasn’t able to find it on a map, Will told me it was a very small district inside the city of Centurion.  We wanted to be close to Centurion, but didn’t want to stay there for fear of being spotted.  We chose a resort that was known to be a popular destination year round, in a hope to