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blend in with the thousands of other international tourists.  Sun City was a popular destination, and we chose the Palace of the Lost City resort as our hideaway in plain sight.
    Bianca told me I’d love it and showed me pictures on her phone, but nothing prepared me for what I saw when we drove up to check in.  The palace, and there was really no other way to describe it, stuck up out of the dense vegetation; we could see it from miles away before we arrived.  The castle itself stood six stories tall, while large turquoise domes covered observatories at nearly every angle of the building.  Imagining this castle as a real fortress rather than as a tourist destination was easy.  It was easy to visualize guards positioned at each observatory to stave off an attack.
    Twelve life-sized elephant statues flanked either side of the driveway leading up to the resort’s main entrance.  Intimidating and elaborate, it gave me the sense that we were royalty, guarded by majestic beasts standing ready to charge anyone who would try to do us harm.  I knew it was built for tourists, but it was hard to ignore the feeling that we were really staying in a long forgotten city.  The resort did something I would never have dreamed possible – it made me feel protected.
    Will had gone into the hotel with Ben to check in and to gather room keys while the rest of us stayed tucked discreetly inside black Mercedes SUVs.  The two returned to pass out room keys and directed all of us to different entrances to the hotel.  Although there was strength in numbers, our plan was to blend in, and the less time we all spent together in the next twenty-four hours, the safer Will believed we would be.
    Drake and I walked directly to our room through a side entrance and up a staircase.  Our room was on the third floor, and our only suitcase was the oversized backpack we had picked up when we arrived in Cancun.  The rules normally reserved for Centaur and Centauride interaction were not applied to Katherine and Brent.  I wasn’t sure which one of them had spoken to Will ahead of time, but when he had come back to the group with room assignments, the two were given the same key. 
    Katherine and Brent would stay on the same floor as Drake and I were.  The two were told to wait in the SUV for five minutes after we left so the four of us would be less likely to attract attention.  She looked exhausted:  Katherine had masked Drake and me from the moment of our discovery in the airport until we got into the SUV.  Katherine had offered to keep us looking like Asian tourists until we got to our room, but we believed we could make it into our room without incident.  Drake and I purposely didn’t make eye contact with anyone on the way.  Having our photographs broadcast on the local television stations was a problem, so we were extra careful not to give anyone more than a cursory glance as we passed them in the hallways.
    After climbing the stairs, I opened the door to be surprised by an entire suite, large and meticulously decorated.  A living room greeted us when we walked in, complete with an overstuffed sofa, two Queen Anne chairs, and a dinette off to one side.  There were two doors:  one led into a small galley kitchen complete with a pre-stocked refrigerator and the second into a spacious bedroom.  An enormous bed covered with a pile of pillows greeted us as we stepped inside.  Just to the side of the bed was an entryway into a spa.  A two person circular jetted tub was tucked off beside a frosted picture window, and multiple shower heads adorned the walk-in shower.  Fuzzy white robes hung patiently waiting for us on the wall. 
    Art was tastefully arranged, nothing ornate, but prints of ocean scenes trimmed in gold frames hung on the walls.  The fabrics covering the oversized furniture felt luxurious and welcomed us.  A fresh basket of fruit waited patiently for us on a narrow table by the window.  I walked over to give the basket a