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stupid, that in the glaring light of day this would be a rain parched field in the middle of a bunch of boring automotive repair shops, or tractor barns, or something similar.
    But now . . . she sensed an elusive quality to the air, the starlight, the dancing fireflies, and the fragrance of unknown blossoms. There was a sense of promise, almost of magic.
    She walked until she became aware that she stood in the center of the swarm. The fireflies danced around her, weaving, darting, signaling. What stories unfolded around her, unknown by her blunted human senses?
    A breeze swirled across the grasses, rustling through the trees and whispering through the grass. Quite suddenly the fireflies all blinked out, except for a tiny wink here and there.
    The air felt different. Smelled different . . . a bit like burning leaves. Or hot metal? It was too faint to define for sure, though the hairs on the back of her neck tightened. She was suddenly aware that she was alone in a place she couldn’t really see, and it was very late.
    She gripped the key tightly in one hand, her cell in the other and started marching back. Because no houses were in sight, she tipped her chin up, filled her lungs, and began to sing.
     
    * * *
     
    How, JP thought, as he drove home, could Mick have possibly considered Jan a Persian cat, much less a bulldog? If she were a shifter, she would be a finch, or a hummingbird: small, quick, gracefully round in shape, beautiful in plumage. Or a lark, which had the most beautiful voice. A nightingale?
    He got home and shed his clothing, then stood in the courtyard outside his rooms, shaded by trees, and breathed deeply. He had to focus.
    He shifted to his phoenix form, and took off into the sky, opening himself to the mental plane.
    The LaFleur shifters tended to inherit the golden phoenix, the smallest of all the many types of dragon. As a phoenix he could sense wrongness in the earth, the water, and the growing things in it. He could also sense living things on the mental plane, though as no more than twinkling lights. He had to know someone before he could identify those lights.
    The fact that his awareness zoomed straight to Jan’s sun-bright aura was not a good sign. He had to forget that attraction. It was merely physical, and as such dangerously distracting. He didn’t know her . Didn’t know if he could trust her.
    Worse, she seemed to be heading out alone, in the dark—straight toward the border of LaFleur property.
    Meeting someone?
    He veered, flying swiftly over the quiet town. Here and there lights winked out as people settled down to sleep. He was halfway over the north end when he sensed a roil on the mental plane, straight ahead. In the same direction that Jan walked.
    He snapped his wings out, flying hard. He felt the wakening of his fire dragon beneath his golden phoenix, and shut him down hard. Letting his dragon free could only be a desperate measure of last resort, dangerous to everyone.
    Most of all to him.
    He widened his awareness.
    In the time it took for his wings to flap twice he imagined a horrible scenario: whoever had ordered the Albert boy to be beaten cynically sending exactly the sort of woman JP would want, to winnow her way into . . .
    No. No. No.
    He’d been taught all his life to think ahead, to peer beneath the surface of words and actions for hidden motivations. But speculation was never truth until it was proved. It was too easy to tip over into paranoia.
    On the third beat he felt it when the roiling darkness sensed him. It seemed to rear up, then zap! It vanished like smoke.
    Another sort of dragon shifter was out there, something very big, very powerful, and very dangerous.
    He flung his wings out and banked hard, looking down at Jan, who had stopped below, one arm nervously clutching something that glinted like brass, the other hand plunged into her pocket. His sharp night vision made out the familiar square of a cell phone. His phoenix’s sight was far sharper than his