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was closest to my age, met me at the airport, and spent the most time with me.
    I’d grown very close to Beau in the short time we’d spent together in South Dakota.  His absence left a hole in me.  Having Brent here was like having a small piece of home.  Home.  What was that, anyway?  All those years I’d grown up with just Mom.  After her death, I was lucky enough to learn about the rest of my family: Will, Beau, Bart, Ben, Bruce, Brent, even Gretchen.  Given everything that had happened since finding them – I wondered just how lucky I was.
    The last couple months had felt like a runaway roller coaster .  I had just barely gotten to know my brothers when Zandra yanked me away from everyone and held me hostage.  Phineas helped Drake and me escape Zandra’s house, and Will helped us get to Ireland.  It took us a week to find my great-uncle Zethus, only to find out that the whole trip was for nothing because he didn’t have Hercules’ arrow, and he sent us empty-handed to South Dakota.  I got kidnapped a second time – strangely enough by Phineas, the one who had helped me escape Zandra.  I was able to free myself only to come back and to find Drake was a Centaur.  For added fun, the father of gods, Zeus, reiterated a millenniums’ old death decree on my family.
    The odds had been stacked against me from the moment I made that first phone call to Will.  I needed a break – to catch my breath.  Brent was waving his hand in front of the windshield where I sat, “Hello, earth to Cami.”  It worked – he’d popped me out of my own little pity party.  A night out with Brent could be just what I needed.  I reached for the door handle and froze.
    Across the street, the door to the little bar where Katherine had told us to meet her opened.  Light flooded out from the bar illuminating his face.  He was on the sidewalk holding the door handle. I couldn’t help myself.  I would know that face anywhere.  Scrambling to open the door, I yanked the handle hard and threw all my weight at the door when I screamed, “Daniel!”
    He stopped and looked behind him , but we were a block away, and he didn’t see me.  He must have decided he’d been hearing things because he went inside the bar, allowing the door to shut behind him.  Brent was in mid-sentence, but I didn’t care.  I jumped out of the truck, sprinted the block to the bar, threw open the door and searched the faces in the smoky room.  His back was to me, but I recognized his silhouette immediately.
    Creeping up behind him, I wrapped my arms around him and buried my head against his shoulder blades.  The words were out before I even gave a thought to them, “I worried I’d never see you again.”
    His body turned stiff under my touch.  Daniel didn’t move, but his voice questioned, “Cami?  Cami?!”  I squeezed him tighter from behind.  Daniel whipped around and drew me in a tight bear hug.  When I was ready to beg for air, he lifted me up off the floor then brought me back hard into his chest.  I might as well have been a rag doll.  It was Daniel.  He was here.  In the middle of this frozen tundra, he had appeared just when I needed him the most.
    My Centauride senses kicked in as the hair s on my arms stood on end.  There was a Centaur here. . . wait, not a Centaur . . . a Centauride.
    Behind the bar stood the tallest Centauride I’d ever seen.  She might have been an Amazon – she was well over six feet tall.  Her hair was platinum blonde – the color you can only get from a box.  Her make-up was meticulously applied with dark smoky blues on her eyes and a rich red on her lips.
    Every Centauride I’d met had a conservative, almost demure look about them – this Centauride looked nothing like the Centaurides I’d seen before.  She had a “celebrity-look” about her as if she were on loan from Hollywood.
    Brent was oblivious to the tall blonde Centauride behind the bar ; he was too focused on the man with his