Disclaimer: I don't own any of Kelley Armstrong's stories or books or characters.

My butt was getting sore from sitting on the ground for so long. The day was nice and the shade from the tree I was leaning against was a relief from the heat of the sun. Tori and Simon were sweating bullets as they sparred. Even Kit wasn't his usual immaculate self; sweat stains were spreading on his chest and under his arms.

I hadn't finished my math last night, thanks to Tori, but I was doing the last problems while I waited for Simon and Tori to be done with their lesson. Normally, I would be sparring with them, but Aunt Lauren had insisted I finish my math first. I hadn't complained, knowing I should have finished it last night, but I had been distracted. Derek and I had left just after Tori and I had made our deal. He had wanted to go out and try to Change.

He was getting better, I think. The Change still looked horribly painful, but we were thinking that was how it was going to be from now on. Last night, he'd had more trouble than usual and couldn't change for nearly 45 minutes. I had been talking, chattering the entire time and was running out of subjects to babble about when it finally began. And then it seemed to go on forever. He couldn't Change fast enough and by the time he was finally a wolf, he collapsed from exhaustion. That happened sometimes and it worried me. I had tried to convince him that when he couldn't Change right away, he shouldn't try so hard. It looked like it nearly killed him.

He'd collapsed and fallen asleep, not even able to open his eyes before his breathing deepened. I'd waited for ten minutes before going back to the house, and then watched tv for an hour. I should have done my homework then, but I was too preoccupied. I waited through two episodes of that Seventies Show before I heard him howl. I was up and out the door in seconds, racing through the forest in our backyard.

We hadn't played for long, only doing a few rounds of hide and seek before Derek nudged me to go inside. He hadn't been wolf for very long and it was too soon for him to try Changing back, so I went inside alone and Derek slept outside, still in wolf form. Aunt Lauren refused to let him in the house while he was a wolf. That was one of the things that had really pissed me off, but there was no arguing with her. She just couldn't understand that Derek was the same in any form, and if he hadn't attacked and killed us all yet, he probably wasn't going to at all.

I had woken up this morning and gone downstairs to see him already showered and eating a huge pile of pancakes. I sat by him and he shoveled two pancakes off the top of his pile and onto my plate. I thanked him with a peck on the cheek, at which Tori made a gagging sound and Derek flipped her off. Everything was normal.

Derek hadn't seemed overly tired, despite his bad Change last night and even went down to work-out in the basement and was still there as I watched Simon kick Tori's legs out from under her. Kit didn't look like he'd be getting around to having me spar anytime soon so I went back inside to talk to Derek. His attitude about going to college had bothered me yesterday and the Change last night probably didn't help his confidence any. I also wanted to see if he'd talk to me about any of the other things he'd been worried about. I knew that meeting his family had been confusing. The Cains had kidnapped him and then he'd escaped with a threat from his cousin to never comeback or to contact them. Derek hadn't wanted stay with them or ever go back, but the fact that the option was gone was unsettling.

The Cains were the only werewolves he might have been able to ask for information from. Now, there wasn't anyone who could answer his questions. Sure, he could go out and track down a werewolf, look for some kind of sign in the papers, but any werewolf who showed up in the papers obviously wasn't going to be friendly or very bright. I couldn't even do that, look in the papers, for a necromancer. Aunt Lauren hardly knew anything and was no help. Kit had had that contact for Derek, but he was considered unreliable now. Tori didn't have anyone to help her train. The only one with a teacher was Simon because Kit was a sorcerer.

I wanted to talk to Derek and see what his thoughts on this were.

The sound of metal clinking against metal rang up the stairwell as I descended into the basement. "Derek?" I called.

A grunt and then a louder clink of metal answered me. I turned at the bottom of the stairs to see Derek sitting up from a bench, sweat covering him. "Yeah?" he said as I walked closer.

I handed him a towel that had been sitting next to his water bottle at the foot of the stairs. "Hey." I surveyed the room. It looked like he was on the last part of his routine. A punching bag lay on the floor, the seams split slightly. All the other assorted weights and exercise stuff was neatly tucked away. All that was out were the weights for the bench press and Derek had just started to do his reps.

I looked quizzically at him, putting a hand on my waist. "Aren't you the least bit tired?" After last night, I thought he'd be sleeping all day. I should have known better than to expect any weakness from a werewolf.

He shook his head, then stopped and shrugged. "I slept through the night, after you went inside. I wasn't tired until about ten minutes ago. I upped the weights on the bench press. I'm starting to get a little winded." He smiled and I could see he didn't seem to be breathing at all hard. I snorted and rolled my eyes as his grin widened.

He lay back down and began his reps again and I sat down a few feet from the bench on the spare chair he'd brought down after the third time I'd sat on the floor while he worked out. I usually came down and did some kind of homework or writing while he exercised. I did my own exercising, but there was no way I could go as long as Derek did. Sometimes, I just watched him, like I was now.

I waited a while before speaking. "I wanted to ask you something." I received a grunt in response.

"Is that brochure of the college you really want to go to?" I tried to sound casual, but he stopped mid-lift. It looked really uncomfortable, but he just held the bar there, half way between his chest and the full extension of his arms. His arms started to shake before he answered.

"Yes."

I nodded and he continued his reps, his body slightly tenser than before.

"Are you going to talk to Kit?"

This time he didn't stop midway, but put the bar back in the holder and sat up. He wiped his forehead with the towel I tossed again to him. He stared at me for awhile and I stared back, trying to figure out what was going on in his head.

"Not yet."

I blinked. "When?" I crossed my arms over my chest, a clear indication that his answer hadn't pleased me, but I wasn't going to outright fight with him about it.

He sighed and lay back down. "I don't know."

I decided that if he wasn't going to look at me while we had this conversation, he didn't want to discuss it and I should take my cue to change the subject. I sighed and switched to one of the other topics I'd come down here to talk with him about.

"Last night, Tori and I made a deal to help each other find information." Derek grunted, signaling me to continue. "I know you're going to tell me that I shouldn't trust Tori because she'll probably just use me to find out more information for her. That she won't really help me find necromancer information and instead we'll both just be looking for stuff about witches. But I think it's worth a shot. If it looks like she's duping me, then I'll just call her out. We made a deal."

Derek nodded and let out a sharp burst of air as the bar came closer to his chest. His shirt was sticking to him, drenched in sweat, and his hair hung in clumps. Wisps were pasted to his forehead and the sides on his face and neck. But his eyes were bright and his breathing even. I couldn't help smiling as I thought about how he was mine. I wasn't normally a possessive person, but I couldn't help it when it came to Derek.

"I wanted to ask you another thing." I waited for the grunt. "I think we need more help than just research. I know we tried the whole mentor thing at the safehouse with Andrew, but that was different. I think we should ask Kit to see if he can find someone to help you, me, and Tori. What do you think?"

I didn't have time to wonder very long. Derek didn't stop moving while he answered. "He's been looking for a reliable source since he found us at the Edison Group Headquarters. He's never been able to find anyone besides Thomas who knows much about werewolves, but he's heard some rumors lately. Dad's been trying to find a werewolf 'mentor,'" he gave the word a mocking twist to it that just barely evaded being insulting and ended up being amused. "A 'mentor' for me for months. So far, no dice. Same goes for a witch and necromancer for you. I think part of it is he's not willing to trust the rumors he's heard, and part is he's wary about trusting anyone besides himself and Lauren around us modified experiments." He said all of this while still lifting the weights. I looked down at my scrawny arms. Derek had me lifting weights four days a week and he claimed I was improving, but so far I didn't think it made much of a difference.

I was disappointed that Kit hadn't found anyone and my shoulders slumped. "What should we do, then? I need to talk to a necromancer, Derek. If Diane comes back…" Which was the other thing I was worried about. "Derek, what if she does something the next time she comes back? Something worse than making me fall into a hole in an air vent. What if she kills one of us?" My voice was soft and the last barely a whisper.

He was up and had his hands on my shoulders in an instant. "Don't think like that Chloe." I leaned toward him and wrapped my arms around him. He grunted, obviously thinking he was too sweaty to be given a hug. I tightened my arms around him until he was hugging me too. I felt like I was baking next to his heat, but I didn't care.

"Chloe, if she comes back—"

I interrupted him. "Not if. When, Derek, when. We both know she's coming back."

He sighed. "Okay. When she comes back, you can just do what you did last time." He didn't sound very enthusiastic. We both knew that she could cause damage before I realized she was back so banishing her was only good if I realized on time. Also, that wasn't a permanent solution.

"We'll talk to Dad. Maybe he has some ideas he hasn't shared yet." I nodded and we stayed there, his sweat was starting to soak into my clothes. I didn't care, but it wouldn't look good when I went back upstairs. I stood up.

"Come up, soon."

Derek was taking a shower when I went to find Kit and Aunt Lauren. I figured Tori and Simon might as well be there, too, so I called a group meeting.

We were all sitting at the table in the dining room when Derek came downstairs. He paused in the doorway and then came to sit next to me.

Kit folded his hands on the table and waited. Aunt Lauren looked between me and Derek before saying warily, "What's this about, Chloe?"

Tori and Simon looked just as intrigued. "I want to find a necromancer. I have a lot of questions and nothing I can find in books or on the internet are helping." I looked at Kit who seemed to be thinking something over in his head. He stared at the table while I spoke to him. "Derek's told me you've been looking for people to help us." Kit nodded but still didn't look up. "I was wondering what you'd found."

Tori and Simon had been looking back and forth between me and Kit like they were watching a tennis match. Now they stared at Kit. Derek was silent next to me.

Kit took a deep breath. "I haven't found anything I trust yet." He gestured at Derek. "While I was trying to find out about werewolves, I heard something about the council. The council was made up of Coven Witches for centuries, so I thought I was mistaken when I heard something about a werewolf being on the council." He looked at Tori, whose eyes were huge with…something like hope. "The Coven is very…conservative, you might say. If they found out about you, there's no guarantee they'd let you live. Not only were you experimented on," Kit looked pained as he said this but didn't make the mistake of thinking Tori couldn't handle it. "But you are also half sorcerer. Witches and Sorcerers hate each other. I have no idea how they'd react to someone like you." He turned to me. "For you Chloe, I contacted one of my old…colleagues. He wasn't happy with me and I think he only let it slip that…"

He trailed off. Kit had an indecisive look in his eyes. What? Was he thinking of not telling me what he found? No way. He can't dangle information like that in front of me and then take it away. I glared at him and he stiffened. Not happy with my attitude. Well, I'll give him attitude.

I was opening my mouth to say something, but Aunt Lauren spoke before I could. "What he found was a silly rumor that some woman who was on tv was a real Necromancer." She sounded annoyed. "That's ridiculous. Everyone knows those people are phonies and con people out of their money by using other's grief as tools." She sounded mightily indignant now.

We were all silent for a few moments.

Derek broke the silence. "Who's the necromancer?" Kit looked confused so Derek elaborated. "The one on tv." Derek didn't look at Aunt Lauren when she scoffed.

"Her name is Jaime Vegas. She does mostly live shows but guest appears on tv pretty often." Kit looked wary of where this was going.

Tori sat up straighter. "I've heard of her! I know who that is! Actually," Tori ran out of the room and came back in carrying her new laptop. "I saw this last night." She looked at me, excitement in her eyes. "I was looking up stuff on necromancers," I glanced at Derek in time to see the surprise leave his face as he controlled his expression. He wasn't the only one surprised by Tori's help. I was pretty shocked myself. "Jaime Vegas actually has a show in just a few days. Not very far from here. It's in Richmond, so that's only a few hours away. Why don't we go see her?"

I was shocked to see Tori so enthusiastic. She just found out that a Coven of Witches probably would want her dead if they found out about her. Maybe that yoga was working.

But then I saw her smile falter before coming back. She was just trying not to think about it.

"No." Aunt Lauren's voice drew my attention. "It's silly. She's a fake, girls." Aunt Lauren looked annoyed, but Kit was nodding.

"I think it's worth taking a look at, Lauren. I was thinking about contacting her at some point, anyway. If she's going to be this close, we might as well check it out."

He stood up and left, making the decision final. Aunt Lauren jumped up and followed, already arguing. She was using a calm and serious tone. I was almost worried she'd get her way. I heard Kit murmur something to her, though, and she stopped arguing. Derek laughed.

I turned to look at him. "What did he say?"

Derek just shook his and got up himself. "I'm gonna…" He looked down at me, meeting my gaze. "Go talk to my Dad. About college."

I smiled as he walked after Kit. Tori left, too, after a moment and it was just Simon and me.

I looked closer at him and saw that he had a black eye. I sucked in a breath through my teeth. "Ouch. Tori got you?" I asked.

He gave a weak smile. "Yeah." After a moment he said. "I guess I forget how lucky I am that I have Dad to ask questions to. You guys must be going crazy." He shook his. "I can't believe I didn't see this coming. Sure, I knew Derek would need someone to help him with all his wolf stuff, but I never really…"

"Thought about Tori and I?" I asked. He made a face. "No, I know what you mean. Derek needs help in a different way, but I think me and Tori need it just as badly. We're all pretty dangerous without help." I'd been thinking about this a lot. "Well, I guess we're going to a show." I smiled at Simon. He asked if I wanted to spar with him and we headed outside.

(Jaime's POV)

Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it. I hung up the phone before dialing Jeremy's number. The voice mail picked up so I left a message. "Hey, I just found out that my show has been moved from Wednesday to Saturday. It'll be another week before I see you." I sighed into the phone. "Miss you." Then I hung up.

I couldn't believe the show had been moved. Apparently, the original venue had water damage from a broken pipe. Now we have to contact everyone who bought a ticket and somehow give the venue change. We'll have to put a sign on the old place that says the show has been moved. I sighed and called my manager. This show was already turning out to be a big problem and I had feeling it was only going to get even more difficult.