Page 28

CHAPTER 28

It was Costa’s alarm that set Diana into a low-key churn of contagious anxiety, but when the living room plunged into blackness, her heart leaped into her throat. She heard Delgado exclaim.

The lights were only out for a few seconds before coming back up, not as many or as bright.

“What happened?” Diana asked anxiously.

“Power dip,” Brill said, patting her arm. “Don’t worry, hon. We’ve switched over to house power. There’s a battery bank, and a generator if it lasts too long. We get outages out here all the time.”

But Costa had gone swiftly to the window. “The main gate light’s out,” he said.

“It’s not on the battery backup, you know that, CeCe.”

Costa cursed under his breath. Diana joined him at the window. He was staring out into the ranch yard, but nothing could be seen, just their reflections and the living room behind them. “Turn those lights off!” he snapped over his shoulder.

After a startled moment, someone moved to obey. Most of the lights went off except for the ones in the kitchen. Now they could see the ranch yard, lying in the light of a sliver moon.

“What’s wrong?” Diana asked quietly.

Costa cursed again. “We’re cut off and I think we might be under siege. Aunt Brill,” he said, louder, “is anyone else up at Jenny’s with her and Jay?”

Brill shook her head. “Just the two of them. CeCe, what’s making you react like this? You’ve seen plenty of power outages.”

“What’s the matter is that we made some powerful people very mad, and powerful people have friends. Damn it, damn it.” Costa turned to look out the window again.

“Language, CeCe!”

“I don’t see anyone,” Diana said quietly. “And no lights on the road.”

“They might be coming in stealthy. No headlights. But someone cut the power and the phones, so they’re not too far away.” He took a breath. “And with just one road, that means we’re cut off. Go check the doors and make sure they’re locked and bolted,” he told Vic, “and get the rest of the aunts in here. We want everyone together. Molly, too.”

Vic nodded and went off at a near run. Costa locked the front door and shot a large deadbolt, which Diana hadn’t even noticed.

Costa beckoned Delgado to join them at the window. Farley started to follow her. “Oh, no you don’t,” Costa snapped, pointing at him. “You, stay there. In fact, go sit in that chair there, and stay where we can see you.”

“Are we in danger?” Farley asked. “Is someone coming?”

“You would know, wouldn’t you? Go sit there!”

Delgado joined the small group at the window. Aunt Brill had come near as well, but Diana supposed there was no point in excluding her from what seemed to have turned into a war council. The aunts were as involved in this as anyone else. Uncle Rodrigo seemed to have drifted back to sleep.

Costa noticed her too. “Aunt Brill, are there any guns in the house?”

“There’s the shotgun that Maura uses to keep the jackrabbits out of her garden. And your brother’s hunting rifle might still be in the basement, I think.”

“Get them,” Costa said grimly. Brill hesitated. “Now, please,” he said, and she went. Turning to Delgado, he asked, “Do you have a service weapon?”

“In my car,” Delgado said. “I didn’t want to bring it in the house with the kids.”

Costa sighed. “Mine’s also in my car, and my car isn’t here. So what we’ve got for defense are any weapons my relatives can scrounge up plus your sidearm.”

“I’ll go get it.”

“Not yet.” As he spoke, Costa began walking around, closing the blinds.

“You really think they’re here?” Diana asked. Her heart was racing.

“I do. I just don’t know how close or how many. We have to get in touch with the SCB somehow and get backup. Aunt Lo!” he said, as Vic herded the other two surprised aunts into the living room, Maura clutching a dish sponge and Lo with a large, empty casserole dish in her hands. “Is there anything we have other than the phone or computer for getting a signal out? A HAM radio? Anything?”

“Well ... er ...” Lo turned helplessly to Maura.

“There are the old CBs,” Maura said promptly. “We used to have them in the farm trucks before we got this newfangled wifi calling.”

“That’s right,” Costa said. “I forgot about that. Do you still have them in the house?”

“Er ... I don’t know.” Lo and Maura looked at each other. “I think they might be in Lo and Brill’s house,” Maura suggested.

“I’ve got a pair of field radios in my trunk,” Delgado said. “There’s not much range, but we might be able to get a trucker to pick us up.”

“I’ll go get—” Lo began, just as Delgado went on, “I can go out to my car and?—”

“No!” Costa said sharply. “No one leaves the house until we have a plan. Once you’re out there, you might be cut off, and we won’t be able to get in touch with you. We need to get someone up to Jenny and Jay’s to check on them, too.”

Delgado said quietly, “Who are Jenny and Jay?”

“My sister-in-law and her son. They’re in a house on the back of the property.”

Costa’s voice was grim. Knowing how protective he was of his brother’s widow and her son, Diana knew he must be going half out of his mind with the urge to have everyone where he could keep an eye on them.

In fact, the whole situation was a kind of nightmare scenario for him. Costa had devoted his life to looking after and protecting his family. Now danger had come for him, and there was only one of him and a whole group of them, split between different households.

But one thing was different from all of Costa’s worst-case imaginings, she knew.

“You’re not alone, Quinn,” she said aloud. “We’re here. Tell us where to go and what to do.”

Vic came back with a sleepy Molly and settled her on the couch, wrapping a blanket around her. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” he said quietly. “We’re just having a power outage, so we figured everyone should be together in the main room. Nothing to worry about.”

Costa looked around the room. Diana could see his quick gaze cataloguing the entire group, making sure everyone was accounted for: his agents, the aunts, the kids.

“Okay, we gotta do a few different things,” he said quietly. “We need to get someone up to Jenny and Jay’s to check on them and lock them down. We need to get a message out to the SCB. And we need to secure the kids and civilians, probably here, as it’s the best place.”

“What about moving everyone down to the cars?” Delgado asked. “We could just leave.”

“We could,” Costa said, “but we’d be targets. Especially on the road. All they’d have to do is create a blockade or disable our vehicles, and we’ll be sitting ducks.”

“I hear engines,” Molly said suddenly from the couch.

In the sudden silence that followed, Diana did too.

“So they’re coming,” Costa said. “Auntie—” He addressed it to the group generally. “Do we still have the big gate?”

“Oh, yes,” Aunt Lo said. “It hasn’t been closed in years, though.”

“We can at least force them to come overland. Uncle Roddy’s traps will be good for something after all.”

“Are they shifters or humans?” Aunt Lo said, and Costa turned in her direction.

“What?”

“The people that you believe are coming for us. Shifters or humans?”

“I’m not sure,” Costa said. “We know they have some shifters working with them.” His eyes narrowed. “But I doubt if it’s an all-shifter task force. Probably some or most of them will be human.”

Maura turned a look on the other aunts. “So they won’t know any animals running around aren’t normal animals.”

“If they know about the shifter underground fights, they know about shifters,” Vic pointed out.

“So?” Aunt Lo asked, her eyes bright. “Do they know the countryside, do they know what’s usual out here? Are they going to pay any attention to a wild pig or two, just running around?”

“What are you thinking?” Costa asked her.

“I think one of us should shift and head up to Jenny’s to make sure they’re all right.”

“All right, I’ll leave you to decide who’s going to do that. If you can safely get them down here, do that; otherwise hole up there. Someone else see if you can find those CBs.” The sound of engines was louder now; Diana sensed time was running out. “Vic, you’re in charge of household defense. Cat, get the gun and radios from your car.” He turned to Diana. “And you and I are going to close a gate. Vic, lock the door behind us.”

“What about me?” Farley asked.

Costa ground his teeth. “With us,” he decided. “I’m not leaving you here with them.”

They went out onto the porch. Diana could pick out distinct engine sounds now. “At least two or three vehicles,” she said aloud, but quietly. Delgado was already off the porch, barely visible in the dark.

“There,” Costa said. He pointed. Diana caught a brief glint of moonlight, far off down the road, reflecting off something in the dark. Costa was right, they weren’t using headlights.

“Where’s the gate?” Diana asked.

“Down here. Come on.”

They went swiftly off the porch and across the edge of the yard. Her eyes were adjusting to the moonlight. She couldn’t see the cars from here, but suspected they would be in sight soon enough.

Costa stopped at the pole that normally held a light to flood the yard. There was a high fence and a large metal gate. Together, he and Diana swung it shut with a screech of rusty hinges. A heavy old padlock dangled from the gate. Costa snapped it shut.

“Hope somebody still has a key, or we’ll have to cut that off,” he muttered.

The sound of engines was growing louder. Costa turned to Diana.

“There’s a reason I wanted you to come with me for this,” he said quietly. “We may or may not be able to raise anyone on the CBs; I don’t know if the signal will make it out of the canyon. So I want you to go for help. Shift and fly to a neighbor, see if you can find someone with a working phone. They’ve obviously cut the lines, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re also using some kind of jammer, like they did on the plane the other day.”

“I’m not going to leave you,” Diana retorted.

“The best thing anyone can do is get help from the SCB. And you can fly.”

“So can Farley. Send him.”

“I’ll go,” Farley offered. “I really do want to help you guys. I mean it this time.”

“I don’t trust you,” Costa snapped. “And I want her?—”

“Out of danger?” Diana interrupted. “Too bad.” She grabbed his hand. “We’re a team. And we don’t have time to spend arguing. We need to get moving.”

Costa sighed. He turned to Farley.

“Fine. From here, if you can get your wings to work, the fastest way is cross-country.” He pointed. “There are several houses along the road. Get to the nearest house, find a phone, tell the SCB what’s going on. And in particular, tell them to get Agent Azarias Caine out here. He can be here fastest.”

“Azarias Caine,” Farley repeated. “All right. I’m on it.”

He started stripping off his clothes. Costa grabbed his arm.

“Everyone I care about most in the world is here,” he said between his teeth. “If you betray us, you won’t be able to run far enough or fast enough to get away from me.”

Farley nodded without speaking. A moment later, his pale, naked body dropped to a crouch and vanished; the wolverine was nearly invisible in the dark. Diana sensed motion, and there was the sharp snap of his wings unfurling. It took some heavy flapping, but he got off the ground, and she saw him flying low across the rocky ground beside the road.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t get turned around,” Costa muttered. “That’s a last resort, but we won’t count on him.”

“Boss! Here!” Delgado arrived and pressed a walkie-talkie into his hand.

“Great. At least we have short-range communications. You got your gun?”

“Yeah,” Delgado said. “Do you want?—”

“No. I want you stationed here at the gate, in the shadows where they can’t see you. Darkness works both ways,” he added grimly. “It covers them, but it also covers us.”

Delgado nodded and fell back, just as the glint of moonlight on darkened headlights and a roar of engines announced the arrival of several vehicles on the other side of the gate.

“Stay with her,” Costa told Diana under his breath.

“What are you going to?—”

Costa interrupted in what she was coming to think of as his “leader of the SCB” voice. “I’ll talk to them.”

Diana’s urge to protest faded in the face of his obvious determination. Delgado was starting to make a protesting noise from the inky shadows alongside the gate.

“No buts. You’re my backup. Delgado, if they start shooting, you start shooting back. Just don’t shoot me.”

The vehicles, several large SUVs and a Hummer, had stopped outside the gate. All Diana could see was a dark mass, with doors gleam in the moonlight as they opened and a number of men climbed down. They all seemed to be dressed in dark clothes, and she saw the flash of reflections off weapons.

“This is private property,” Costa shouted. “Authorities have been called and are on their way. I don’t know if you were told this, but I’m the head of a federal law enforcement agency. Turn around and leave.”

Diana held her breath.

The headlights of the Hummer came on abruptly, and Costa was flooded with light. He squinted, putting a hand in front of his eyes. In the backwash of reflected light, Diana saw several men on lightweight black body armor move around the cars. All of them were armed, pointing their weapons at Costa.

“This doesn’t need to get violent,” one of them called. “We’re here for a few specific people, and that’s all we want. We’ll take them with us. If you’re Cesar Costa, you’re one of them.”

“If you take me, will you leave?” Costa called, and Diana’s heart leaped straight into her throat. There was no immediate answer, which was answer enough, and Costa snapped, “No deal, then. I’ll tell you what you’re going to do, which is turn around and leave immediately. Or you can stand out there all night until the SCB team I’ve called in gets here.”

“You’re cut off,” the spokesman sneered. “You couldn’t have called anyone.”

“If I don’t check in regularly, they’re under orders to send a team out.”

“Yeah, well, we have orders too, and our orders are to take you with us.”

“Orders from who?” Costa demanded.

“Surrender and come out here, Costa. We can take you in alive, but—” The guns aimed at him seemed to take on an ugly air of threat. “—we don’t have to.”

At that point, Diana became aware of a low rumbling, vibrating through her feet. She might have noticed it earlier, but it had been blotted out by the noise of the convoy of vehicles.

“What the hell?” someone said on the other side of the gate.

Diana turned to look.

There was something coming towards them through the parking area, some kind of big piece of heavy equipment. It wasn’t until it made a slow, graceful turn in front of the gate and stopped that she realized it was a bulldozer.

A big one.

It was now blocking the gate completely. The engine died away.

“That’ll slow them down!” Aunt Lo announced cheerfully from the driver’s seat. “Glad I could get the thing started, it?—”

“Get down from there!” Costa jumped up on the treads on the away-from-gunmen side to help her down. “Good thinking, now get back in the house.”

“Wait.” Lo caught at his hand. “We think there are more of them at the back of the ranch. Rod’s pretty sure one of his traps got sprung up there.”

Costa cursed. “Someone was supposed to go up to Jenny and Jay.”

“I was doing that,” Lo said, “but I saw the dozer first. Do you want me to?—”

“No! Diana!”

“Here!” Diana called from the dark.

“I need you to get up to the back of the ranch. Don’t do anything, don’t engage, just make sure that Jenny and my nephew are somewhere safe. Can you do it?”

“I will,” Diana said.

It took everything in her to turn her back on Costa and the situation at the gate. But he was right, she was less help here than she would be protecting the noncombatants. She took off running into the dark.

Away from the gate and the Hummer’s headlights, the night was like pitch. She had a vague idea of the layout of the ranch, having been here enough times to know that there was a dirt road that went up behind the barn and outbuildings to the second cluster of residences on the back of the ranch, currently occupied by Jenny and her son.

Diana glanced back once, but the lights at the gate washed out her night vision, so she looked away.

This would be easier if I shifted. She would definitely be faster as a roadrunner. However, she wasn’t sure she wanted to lose her human advantages, such as hands and height.

She spotted Jenny’s cabin by a light in the window, the sort of dim light that suggested a candle or emergency lamp. At the same time, she heard crashing nearby, off to the side of the road. Diana slowed her headlong run to a panting walk, pressing one hand to a stitch in her side.

She definitely should have shifted.

From somewhere in the darkness, there was a loud crunch and someone yelped, “Ow!” in a hoarse male voice.

Diana slowed further and began to furtively cast around for a weapon. A stick, anything. Costa had told her not to engage, but they were closer to Jenny’s cabin than she was.

“What is it with this place?” There were at least two of them; she could tell by the voices. “Was that a pit full of stakes back there? What kind of farm is this?”

“Stop getting distracted! We got a job to do here.”

They were almost to the cabin. Diana gave up on trying to find a stick or rock; it wouldn’t be much good against men with guns.

She’d have to fly, get to Jenny’s ahead of them, and get the door barred and Jenny and Jay in the attic or basement. It was the only thing she could think of to do.

With vague regret at losing yet more clothes, Diana tore off her shirt and jeans, and shifted as she went, spreading her wings as soon as she was clear of her clothes.

It was strangely difficult to get airborne. Something was wrong with her; she felt ungainly and weird. She ended up covering the distance to the cabin in a series of long, gliding hops. Everything was off kilter; nothing was where it ought to be. When she landed at the porch of the cabin with a thump, she found herself looking down at the steps, and she stood still for a moment in utter confusion.

Normally things around her got huge when she was a roadrunner. It was dark, that was true, but she definitely should not be able to look in the cabin window when she wasn’t perching on anything.

Oh, she thought. I think I know what that injection did to me now.

She couldn’t tell exactly how big she was, but she was much, much larger than a normal roadrunner. She thought from the sheer perspective of her height off the ground that she might be six or seven feet tall.

Just then two men came stumbling out of the dry brush alongside the cabin. Diana looked around. Her night vision wasn’t that much better as a roadrunner than a human, but with the light from the cabin window, she could see them vaguely, enough to tell that they both had body armor and guns.

They saw her too, and stopped.

“What the hell’s that?” one of them said.

“In this place, who knows?” said the other. From the voice, it was the one who had been complaining about the stake pit earlier. “Could be a big sculpture, maybe?”

“Could be a trap.”

Diana didn’t like the idea of moving while they had guns pointed at her, but she also didn’t want them to get close enough to start poking at her. She spread her wings, or tried to; they were much bigger than she was expecting, and one of them smashed into the porch railing.

Diana shrieked the scream of a furious roadrunner, but it came out much louder than it ever had before, almost deafening.

Both men yelled in abject shock and terror.

Diana sprang at them. Her reflexes were still roadrunner-swift, even at her new huge size. One of them snapped off a gunshot, but it went wildly astray, and then Diana landed on him with her entire body weight. She was still relatively light for her size, being a bird, but he was flattened.

Now that she had other people to compare herself to, she could tell she was even bigger than she’d assumed, with her head seven or eight feet off the ground. It turned out that a roadrunner’s spearlike beak, intimidating to lizards at its normal size but not to a human, was a formidable weapon on a roadrunner that was eight feet tall. She lunged at the other gunman, who shrieked as his gun was plucked out of his hands, and then screamed and simply fled when Diana started after him, stabbing forward with a beak that was a foot and a half long and sharp as a knife.

He fled off the road, and there was a sudden shriek and he disappeared.

That was definitely one of Uncle Roddy’s pit traps.

The other one was trying to pick himself up. Diana kicked him a couple of times, then shifted human again. There was a dizzying moment of perspective shift when she had to deal with not getting bigger, but getting smaller. Collecting her jangled equilibrium, she grabbed his gun and then padded swiftly, barefoot, toward the cabin porch.

The door opened, and she saw a woman in a long skirt framed in the dim light of the candlelit interior. The woman, presumably Jenny, had a shotgun in her hands. “Who’s out there?”

“Get inside!” Diana snapped. “Lock the door!”

She hurried in, and Jenny slammed the door, shot the deadbolt, and turned to look at her.

“I had to shift,” Diana explained. Now that she was standing in Jenny’s living room, she was acutely conscious that she was totally naked, with nothing on her except the gun in her hands. “The ranch is under siege.”

“Here.” Jenny reached for a robe thrown across the back of an armchair and handed it to her. “I thought I heard gunshots, but what do you mean, under siege? By whom?”

“Enemies of Quinn’s and mine, we’re pretty sure.” Diana pulled on the offered robe. “Uh ... I’m really sorry about showing up like this.”

Jenny smiled. “Don’t apologize. You’re family. What should I do?”

Diana stared at her briefly. In all this time, it had never really occurred to her that Costa’s family considered her one of them.

But of course they did. It had been evident all along. She was welcome at all their family gatherings. They always asked after her. None of them had thought twice about Diana turning up in the middle of the night with nowhere to go; they just offered her shelter and spare clothes.

She took a quick, shuddering breath. There definitely was no time to have a sudden epiphany and a breakdown.

“Most of them are down at the main gate, but others might be on their way up here,” she told Jenny. “The important thing, the thing I’m here to make sure, is that you and your son are safe. Do you have somewhere in the house that you can lock yourself in, like a basement or a bathroom?”

“There’s a storm cellar,” Jenny said. “Do you think that’s necessary?”

“Just in case. Do you think it’d hold someone off even if they were trying to get in?”

Jenny nodded. “It locks from the inside.”

“Okay. You two get in there, and I’ll make sure someone comes up to let you know when it’s all clear. Hopefully it won’t be too long.”

“What about you?” Jenny asked.

“I need to get back down there and help Quinn.” Diana started to hand Jenny the gun, which she knew she couldn’t carry as a roadrunner—and then realized that she very much could carry it as a roadrunner. In fact, she could probably carry the robe too.

This was going to take some getting used to.

“Is everyone else okay?” Jenny asked anxiously.

“For now, as far as I know. Go ahead and get yourself barricaded inside. There’s no need to alarm your son; just get both of you to safety.”

Jenny nodded. She hesitated, then put the shotgun over her shoulder and squeezed Diana’s arm. “Be careful, and take care of Quinn too. He looks out for everyone else, but he’s always needed someone watching his back.”

“He has someone now,” Diana said. “Lock the door behind me, and put the light out.”

She went out on the porch. Behind her, she heard the lock snick home. An instant later, the light in the window died. She glimpsed a flickering flashlight inside, which quickly disappeared.

Diana stood on the porch with the night wind fluttering the robe around her. She looked down the hill. There was only darkness down there now; the headlights had gone out. Suddenly she jumped at a distant chatter of gunfire.

The fighting had started.

But looking beyond the ranch—far beyond it—Diana saw headlights on the road, distant sparks in the dark.

Someone was on their way. Backup? Police? Or just a rancher returning to some distant spread in this rural back country.

Gunshots crashed again. There was no time to wait.

Diana jumped down to the ground, wincing as her bare feet hit the ground. She shifted, dropping the gun and shedding the robe. Then she picked up the gun in her beak and started down the hill, running with great long strides.

She had always loved running as a roadrunner, but this was amazing . She wasn’t sure if she was objectively that much faster than she had been at her smaller size, but it certainly felt like it. She felt like a racehorse.

By the time she reached the front gate, all hell was breaking loose.

It looked like the assault team had tried to go around the gate and the bulldozer blocking it. Now there were vehicles off in the sand—one of them was clearly stuck—and a lot of yelling from people encountering Roddy’s various traps.

She heard a loud, rumbling snort, halfway to a snarl, and saw Costa in boar form charging someone. Relief flowed through her.

Needing to see better, she leaped into the air and landed on the hood of one of the SUVs with a thump. The metal dented under her feet.

From here she could get a better look at the fighting going on around her. To her amazement, they did have reinforcements now. She saw a horse—Jessie—rearing and kicking someone, and another of the invaders was being chased by a crocodile. It was total chaos now, with people scattering, being attacked by animals, and running into traps whenever they left the road. Diana smelled blood and saw one guy down with what looked like a spear through his leg.

She spotted someone else lining up a shot on Costa. Diana leaped at him, stabbing him in the back with her beak and knocking him down where she could stomp on him a few times.

And then suddenly it was over, the noise and wild commotion dying away to groans and the sound of someone—that was definitely Caine’s voice—barking orders.

A light snapped on. Headlights were illuminating them again, but this time it was Delgado climbing down from the driver’s side of the SUV where she had just lit up the scene. Diana saw both of the interns—Fifi looked terrified as she held a gun on a prisoner up against the side of the Hummer, while Jessie was gleefully kneeing someone in the back while she cuffed him and read him his rights.

“Diana!” Costa shouted.

Diana started toward him without remembering what she currently looked like, until she realized she was looking down at him, and Costa was staring at her.

“Whoa!” someone said.

Diana cocked her head to the side, looking at Costa, who reached out a careful hand and touched the side of her beak. For an instant it seemed as if she had forgotten how to shift, and then she did it in a rush. The transformation was different when she was this big; rather than the world suddenly shrinking around her as she got much bigger, her change in perspective was negligible, except that Costa had his hand on her cheek and she was naked.

He seized her in his arms, and she clung to him, shaking.

Caine arrived out of seemingly nowhere, shrugging out of his dark suit jacket. He held it out, and Diana untangled from Costa’s embrace and put it on. It was big enough to hang over her hips and provide at least some semblance of coverage.

“Where is everyone else?” Costa asked. “Who’s here?”

“I brought all the available personnel I could get together on short notice, and we came in the fast way,” Caine said. “The sheriff’s department is coming by road, because they had a cruiser a lot closer than the SCB, so better get the shifters buttoned up. SCB backup will be here later tonight. Your, er, informant was very clear on the need for prompt action, and I can see why.”

Vic appeared, naked except for a borrowed jacket. So that had been the crocodile, Diana thought. “Sorry, boss, I know we were supposed to stay at the ranch house, but it looked like some help was needed.”

“Thanks,” Costa told him. “How’s everyone at the house?”

“Fine when I last saw them. One of your aunts is keeping watch over the kids with a shotgun, and another one is—uh, around here somewhere, in her shifted form. She seemed to be having a good time trampling people.”

Right, Diana thought, Costa’s whole family were boar shifters, and it seemed the females weren’t that much smaller than the males.

“Well, I’ll give him this—Farley came through for us,” Costa admitted. He looked at Diana. “Jenny and Jay?”

Diana grinned. “Just fine. They’re in the storm cellar.” Her whole body was thrumming with adrenaline, and she never thought she’d be this willing to admit that she didn’t really mind being injected with an experimental shifter drug if it did this to her.

“Everyone else is okay?” Costa asked, the question more or less generally directed to Vic and Caine.

“Everyone’s okay,” Vic confirmed.

Costa put an arm around Diana, and she leaned against him. “Okay, let’s get this mess cleaned up, send someone up to Jenny’s to give them the all-clear, and find out what on Earth just happened.”