Nat made a disgusted noise with her tongue.  “Of course, I do.  I’m not a total savage.  I live on an island, I am not an island.”  Was the quick retort.  So easy, so much hope in that voice.

A laugh rose in Jo’s throat.  “Mais oui, pardon moi.”  Jo said, falling quickly into the rat-a-tat-tat back and forth that she and Nat had always had.

Nat snickered at the use of French, Jo’s way of charming someone back into her good graces.  Jo could charm a snake, or the straightest girl’s in California.  Nat let her lips form a smile.

“Well, good.  I’ll pick you up at seven.”  She could hear Nat’s eyebrow raising, and intervened in the forming protest.  “I need to talk to you.”

“Do you have something to confess?” Nat asked softly, her eyes finding the hard wood floor.  She wasn’t ready to plunge a stake into Jo’s heart for the killing at Crystal’s, but her genetic fingerprints were all over the crime.  If indeed, a stake would work.  She needed to….

“Non!” Jo practically shouted at her.  “Two children’s lives are at stake.  I need to know who is moving them about.  The girl, she’s a psi.”  Nat’s silence invited her to continue.  She did, briefly summarizing the investigation she’d taken on, the telepathic distress call; she held nothing back, despite her better judgment.  She trusted Natalie, not the organization she worked for.

“Jo…are you sure you want to be in the middle of this?”  Nat asked with the same gentleness that Jo had grown to love over the years of watching Natalie grow up.

“What am I in the middle of, Nat?  Tell me what you know?”  Jo said softly, begging to see this to the end.

“I don’t know anything except…except this feels dangerous for you.”  Jo grimaced, more webs vibrating she thought ruefully to herself.  Expect the unexpected, Jo thought to herself and she heard Nat chuckle at the old saying.

“If you think I’m a killer, then that shouldn’t worry you.”  Jo announced, her fingers rubbing her own temples, knowing that somewhere in that brain of hers, was a way to track this child.

Nat clamped her mouth shut on an angry response.  If Jo really was hunting and killing again, this was no way to bring her in.  And if she was innocent, then…. “So where are we going?”