Michaela woke with the sun and no memories of the night. She’d fallen into bed and straight to sleep. Opening her eyes, she couldn’t for a moment figure out where she was, but Trisha breathing in the bed next to her made her remember. She rubbed her face and leaned over Trisha, still sleeping soundly. She smiled and pulled back a strand of long hair from Trisha’s cheek.

She was wide awake. She checked her watch and swore lightly under her breath. She really needed to change her time zones. Looking around she guessed it was still early. The light was only the dimmest glimmer from the window. The rest of the room was shrouded in shadows.

Shadows. She thought of the website’s shadow people. It was an ugly thought to be watched by great gummy black shadows, some of them apparently with red eyes. What the hell were they? There was something almost vampiric about it. Not that she expected that to be what they were. It was just the gathering round, watching, bit. What did we have that they were so interested in?

Michaela brooded on that as she slipped from the bed. She needed to pee and she wanted coffee. Coffee helped her think. And she was here for a reason, after all. Not just a pleasant holiday reunion with an old lover. She looked back at Trisha and suppressed the urge to go back to bed and gather the woman in her arms and not let go until she agreed to come home with her.

Michaela groaned. She did not want to feel that way. Far far far too complicated. There was no way Trisha would want to go back to New Zealand with her. And there was Caro to consider now too. Michaela refused to think about it and fished around in the gloom for some clothes instead.

The house was quiet. The door to Caro’s room was closed. If there was anything lurking around at the moment, Michaela couldn’t see it. She hurried instead into the bathroom to relieve herself. Then she would make coffee and plan what she was going to do. God, what was she going to do?

She drew the curtains in the living room, wondering if Trisha’s mother had come home. She hadn’t heard anyone, but she might as well have been in a coma last night for all that was worth. She glanced back down the hallway but all the doors were shut. She shrugged and went back to the kitchen. She knew what it was like to have an absent mother.

She’d been fourteen when her own mother discovered the magazines. Michaela had found them in the trash. Skin mags, only a couple of them, soft stuff, mostly boobs and provocative poses. She’d been fascinated by them, her skin feeling hot and flushed when she looked at the naked women inside them.

But her mother had been furious and Michaela had been too startled by their discovery to lie. Instead she’d told her mother she liked the pictures, and no, she didn’t like boys at all and she didn’t think she ever wanted to get married. Most mothers would probably have blown it off, but not Elizabeth Perdue. She watched her daughter like a hawk ever after that. It was inevitable, Michaela supposed that her mother would have caught her out eventually, walking into Michaela’s bedroom one day to discover her daughter kissing another girl. Elizabeth had loaded Michaela into her car and drove seven hours to leave her daughter on her mother’s doorstep like an abandoned puppy.

Michaela could still hear the yelling that went on that day as she huddled on the porch with her arms around her grandmother’s dog. Her mother never even looked her way when she finally came flying out of the house letting the door slam behind her. Seconds later it was just Michaela, the dog, and her grandmother. And that’s the way it stayed.

Michaela shook herself and poured the hot water. She must still be muzzy with sleep, she decided, to be remembering things like that. Waste of time. She had other, much more important things to think about today. Outside the window, dawn was a yellow smear across the sky. She leaned against the bench and sipped her coffee, watching the light spread. She shouldn’t have thought about her mother. She screwed her eyes closed and blew out a breath.

What had she been thinking about before? Ah, the relevant question. Why were the shadow people watching? What did we have that they were so interested in? Okay, that was two questions, but it was a start.

Caro’s laptop was still on the table. Michaela checked that the cables were all still plugged in and turned it on. She smiled to herself when she saw it was password protected. Smart kid. She turned it off and went back to the bedroom for her own.

Swopping the dial-up over to her own computer she started it up. She checked her email first, and answered a short one from Heyward, the orchard’s manager, then opened up Firefox and went on the Internet. She Googled ‘Shadow People’ and whistled when the results loaded in 2.4 seconds. Caro had been right. People were seeing these things everywhere. She clicked on a link and watched the page load. She sat down and reached for the coffee mug, scanning the page as she did. The cup was empty. She let the page finish loading while she went to the kitchen to make more coffee.

There was so much information. Caro was right, though. Most of it was people writing about their experiences, usually with no attempt at using correct grammar. But in a weird way, that made it more convincing. These were just ordinary people, living ordinary lives, and all of them seeing something so extraordinary, so strange, that Michaela didn’t know what to think of it.

After an hour and two cups of coffee, the sun had made it to window height and Michaela had a page full of scribbled notes, a thousand questions and still no real idea of what was going on. She stretched and yawned. She was hungry. Too much coffee on an empty stomach was not good. She listened to the house but it was quiet, the two sisters still sleeping. Michaela wandered into the kitchen and checked out the cupboards. They were pretty bare.

She laced her feet into her boots and hooked her jacket from the back of the couch. She’d go find a bakery or something. Bring back something good to eat for breakfast. She had a hankering for something with lots of sugar.

And then, she would ask a few questions.