"It's just Alex snoring, or maybe the wind, just go back to sleep." Liz yawned still half asleep. To make the fact that they all had to share a room even worse, Alex's low, growling snore had blared in Liz's ear the entire night. But strangely, it was Maria's dreams the snoring had raided. She had already had 2 nightmares where she was caught in a garbage disposal.

"No, I heard something moving around." She pulled the covers up to her chin. "Or someone moving around."

"Maria, no one gets up this early on Sunday morning, I'm sleeping." Liz shut her eyes and felt her mind get that fuzzy feeling she got whenever she started to fall asleep.

"How can you sleep knowing someone is in this house." She pinched Alex's arm. "Wake up."

"Huh?" Alex mumbled into his pillow.

"There's someone in the house." She sat up and shook him until he answered.

"Yeah, and all of us except for maybe you are sleeping." He turned onto his back so he looked up at her.

"That's right Maria keep him talking long enough for me to fall asleep." Liz said in between the dream world and real life. Maria ignored her.

"No, I heard noises from downstairs." Maria said twisting the bed sheet between her fingers.

"You're okay, no one is here who isn't supposed to be." He patted her on the shoulder. "Now come on let's go back to sleep. We can snuggle." He made a spot next to him for Maria and held his arms out to her.

"I hear it too." Max sat up startling everyone in the bed.

"Gosh, heart attack." Alex sat up putting a settling arm around Maria.

"Max, what are you doing?" Liz reached out to him as he lit a lantern.

"To see who it is. It's probably Michael and Isabel." He stopped at the door looking at the three of them still in the bed.

"Yeah, then we'll all go." Alex jumped out of the bed and grabbed his lantern.

"Wait-" Alex cut him off, while Liz and Maria both took their lanterns and joined them at the door.

"You're right, it's Michael and Isabel. So let's just all go." Maria couldn't wait to literally see Michael. His facial expressions, his spiked hair, she loved everything about him.

"Follow me." Max started down the dark hallway with Maria right behind him. "I said follow me, not walk on my heels." He took Maria's hand, making her walk beside him. "Relax." They walked closely until they made it to the top of the old stairway. Liz shivered in the strangely cold air. It was quiet and still but something that lurked in the darkness couldn't be looked over. Someone was standing at the bottom of the dark stairway looking up at the four of them and it wasn't Michael or Isabel.

******************** "So this is it?" Michael stared out the window at the old mansion they were approaching.

"Yeah, no electricity, which means no fridge, no TV, no fans for the hot afternoons, no music-"

"Okay, Iz. I get it." He unbuckled his seat belt. Holding his excitement in was next to impossible. He couldn't wait to get out of the car and see Maria.

"I'm surprised Aunt Becky had running water. At least this place will be remotely normal." She pulled beside Max's jeep and turned the car off.

"Hurry Isabel, let's go." He was out of the car and standing outside waiting for her.

"Gosh, I'm exhausted and all I want to do is sleep!" She walked next to him up to the front door.

"Just think, in a few minutes you'll have your own room and a big bed to yourself." They both stopped at the front door. "Should I knock?"

"No, they're probably sleeping. Just go in." She watched him open the door with no struggle. "Wow, you're getting good with your powers."

"It wasn't locked." He looked at her seriously. "Max?" He opened the door all the way to see Max, Alex, Liz and Maria on the other side of the room at the top of the stairway.

"What's going on?" Isabel looked at them, then noticed stranger at the bottom of the stairway. Michael grabbed an old lantern and lit it.

"I don't know, you tell me." The stranger walked towards Isabel, the lighted lantern revealing his face.

"Kyle?" Michael held up the lantern.

"No!" Max yelled bolting down the stairway. "Don't touch him! He'll kill you!" Maria ran past her friends, down to Michael. She couldn't wait any longer.

"Maria, no!" Alex and Liz chased her down the stairway. The situation was rapidly getting weirder and the last thing they needed was to be stuck in the middle.

"Wait." Kyle latched Maria's arm and ripped her body to him before she made it into Michael's arms.

"It's him." As Liz reached his side, Max pulled her behind him. "We're not going to let you kill them."

"Let her go." Beside him, Michael bunched his hands into fists almost unable to control the anger that tore through him.

"What are you talking about? I just want to know who killed my father." He let go of Maria and she stood there looking up into his eyes for a second. Was he Nesado?

"What was the name of the little league team you and I were both on?" He looked at her strangely for a minute.

"The Roswell Renegades. Why?" He raised an eyebrow as she poked him in the stomach. "Ouch, what are you doing?"

"And who gave you your first black eye?" She looked him over not completely satisfied it was really Kyle.

"This is irrelevant but, you did. Don't you remember that day during practice? I was short stop and you were up to bat. You nearly took my head off with that ball." Maria smiled satisfied.

"Yeah, It's really him, it's Kyle." She smiled standing next to Kyle looking at the five of them, then back to Kyle.

"Yeah, it's me. As if you couldn't tell by looking at my face." He looked them all over strangely.

"How'd you find us?" Alex who stood in his sweat pants and white T-shirt spoke in an unfriendly tone.

"I followed you and Evans." He still looked bizarrely at all of them in their nightgowns and couldn't help but stare at Liz in her spaghetti strap top and shorts.

"We've been here for at least three hours." Max said gruffly not liking the way Kyle was looking at Liz. "What have you been doing?"

"When I saw you all were asleep, I did the same. I tried to get comfy on that old dusty couch-" He pointed to what used to be the living room. "-and finally caught a few Z's."

Maria turned her focus to Michael behind her and flung herself in his arms. It felt so good to be close to him again. To feel his arms around her.

"I missed you." She felt him kiss her cold earlobe and warm her to the bone.

"You're lying, if you're that worried about getting revenge for your father you wouldn't go to sleep and say, 'oh well I'll figure it out in the morning.'-"

He cut Isabel off. "Whoa, who said anything about revenge? I came here to find out what's going on. To see who killed my father and to see who's after me too."

"What?" Liz slid in front of Max, joining the conversation.

"I've had a shadow all day." He ran a hand through his jet-black hair. "Just some guy I keep seeing. He just shows up wherever I am. When I went to the Crash Down looking for Liz, he was there. I went to Maria's house and I passed him on the street walking a dog, I went to Michael's apartment-"

Liz cut him off. "You were looking for us?"

Michael felt the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stick up as Nesado's word's echoed in his head. 'She's watching.'

"I figured I'd be safe with you guys." He couldn't help but let a twinge run up his spine. "I know my father's death had something to do with you guys not being from around here." He looked at Max, Michael, and Isabel but strangely, his eyes stayed the same. He didn't look at them as if they were freaks. He looked at them as if they were the only people left on earth to trust.

"Why would you think that?" Michael spoke over Maria in his arms.

"It doesn't take a genius to figure it out." He stared at their questioning faces. "From what I understand, Tess came to the police station to talk to my father about some kind of trouble you all were in." Liz almost dropped her lantern at the mention of her name. Tess, ugh, the name just put a weight in her stomach. "When they found my dad, Tess was with him passed out on the floor in his office." Maria's mouth gaped open and she let everything she was thinking flow freely from her lips.

"It was her then! Tess killed your father!" She looked at everyone and slapped her hands together. "On the news it said he was suffocated. She didn't need Nesado for that one she could have easily killed him. And then she just laid on the floor and pretended to be out cold." She regretted what she had just said, seeing the hurt in Kyle's eyes. It was his father she was talking so insensitively about. Sheriff Valenti was really dead. "So she's a good actress."

"Seriously you think Tess did it?" They could see the tears in Kyle's eyes, the hate for whoever took his father from him.

"To tell you the truth, we have no idea." Isabel rubbed her hands over her face, digging her thumbs hard into her cheeks. "We don't have a clue who is doing what. There's innocent, little Tess with her blonde, curly-Q hair and blue eyes and then there's Nesado, almost a complete stranger who-" She laughed. "-honestly, we have no idea what he really looks like."

"So the police have no leads on who did it?" Max took the lantern from Liz's shaky hands. Talking about Tess really did disturb her.

"No one suspected Tess." Kyle bit his lip. "I got there just in time to see her big show she was putting on. She was still crying and being hysterical when they put her in the ambulance."

"Ambulance? She went to the hospital?"

*********************

He placed his hand on the stained glass pane making the cloudy window look brand new. Inside he could see the seven of them in the dark. Some of them were pacing the large room and a few sat staring off into space. Nesado scanned the grounds, making sure he and the 7 of them wouldn't have any uninvited guests. The last thing he needed was Tess showing up early and giving an encore presentation of her act at the police station.

Frowning, he ran a hand over the window, touching each of their small figures inside the house. He knew what he had to do but the hard part was getting them to trust him. There was still a greater chance of the 7 of them believing Tess instead of him.

*********************

"Tess can't shape shift." Michael clenched his hands into balls and popped each knuckle, feeling some of the tenseness in his body release. "We can't so neither can she. It has to be Nesado."

"We can't believe what either of them has told us. Look, we're not getting back into this." Isabel sat on an old step and got a flash of dajavue looking at the old carpet.

"No, I don't think it's just Tess or Nesado. It's gotta be both of them. They're working together. That's the only explanation for all of this." Maria sat next to Isabel on the step.

"She's right." Isabel mumbled from her cold seat on the step. "They are working together."