Maria and Michael had risen not long after ten, luckily it was a Saturday, and so no classes could get in the way of a much-needed conversation with both Katie and Isabel. They had decided that inviting Max was not an option, since he had no handle on any of the memories the four of them possessed, though neither Michael nor Maria could remember any detail about Max from the past.

Currently, they sat at Maria's kitchen table, Michael wearing the clothes from the previous day (much to the secret disappointment of Maria, who had hoped he would simply wear his boxers until they called Isabel). Maria wearing a pale T-shirt and a pair of khakis eating cereal quietly, thinking back to the last night she had seen Katie before the collapse.

She wondered if her friend had recovered from her guilty heart. Maria couldn't say she blamed the other girl for anything that happened before, and she longed to tell exactly that. She knew that if she could, if she could let the girl who was set to be her keeper know that there was no anger, guilt, anything but love and sympathy between them; that she could find answers to the gaping questions in her memory. The largest of those questions being one Max Evans. A soft knock stirred Maria from her thoughts. She looked up at the door, then at Michael.

"Who is it?" she called carefully, not wanting another intruder in her house.

"Me, Ria," Katie said softly from the other side, "can I come in?"

"Course Katydid, you don't have to ask," Michael said, getting up and opening the door for her. He looked down to see almost the same girl he had in his dream, unhinged, slipping.

Dark circles were under her eyes from lack of sleep and the deep, calm green of her eyes was now wild and tempestuous. She took a tentative look up at him, saw him smiled, and sighed, relieved. She took a faltering step before crumpling to the floor.

"Katydid!" Maria shrieked, moving to her friend fast as lightning.

The girl looked up, her eyes fluttering, her mind racing. She needed to tell them so much, but the only thing she could think to whisper before her eyes shut and she slipped into unconsciousness was simply, "I'm sorry…"

Maria choked, checking wildly for a pulse. There was one, slow and shallow, same as the girl's breathing. "Oh god…" she whispered, lifting the girl into her arms. She looked up at Michael, tears in her eyes, "do something!" she pleaded.

"She won't die," a mocking laughter came from outside and a tall woman in a dark cloak stepped into view. "Yet, anyway," the laughter was still there, mocking the two worried teens."Go away," Maria said coldly, rising to her feet.

"Not likely, child, I come for the keeper and the keys. Give them now, and I can assure you nothing will come of the fate she foretold."

"What fate?" Michael asked guardedly, trying to see beyond the hooded shadows to the woman's face. She was familiar; somehow, he thought he should remember her from somewhere.

"Be gone, star of the past, trouble the keeper no more, lest you wish to hand your star to her directly," Isabel had silently come up behind the cloaked figure, and was now standing in close proximity to her.

"Stupid fools," the woman laughed, before she whirled around and caught Isabel around the throat. "Do you know nothing of your drawn destinies?"

At the vacant looks on the three faces that glared at her, she laughed. "I have one, now," she said, tightening her grip on Isabel, "I wonder how long it will take for you to give up your key," she said, almost dreamily.

"No!" a shriek from where Katie lay, a small girl, transparent, like an apparition, stood over the fallen girl's body. "By the sanction of the fates, the crystal, and the shards scattered beyond this light I order you, star of the past, to drop the keepers charge and be gone from this light. Hand me your star," the girl had moved, hovering above the floor, her eyes were an impenetrable green, her words harsh beyond her apparent years.

"Child, you know nothing of the sanction give to you, there is no need for it in your light," the figure laughed, "you know nothing of the ancients, the crystal or the charges."

A long, deadly looking blade appeared in the girl's hand, it seemed to be a scythe, the blade long and sharp at the end of the long handgrip. As the scythe appeared the girl changed, from a blue hared child with silver running through her long curls to a tall woman, a flowing gown of light falling around her, long silver hair tumbling over her shoulders and falling down her back. "Hand over your star, Deana, lest you tempt my fury," the woman said coldly, looking worriedly at Isabel, "and my charge, if you know what's best for you."

"Give me the host and you shall have your star of the past," the woman said slowly, "and your charge."

"The host is inconsequential," the tall, silver hared woman said slowly. "Take her if you wish, but know that another will be sent."

"Then give me the host, do not bar me entrance, keeper, I will finish you if you force me," she said threateningly. The silver hared woman laughed musically, dismissing the threat and raising the scythe.

"Take her," she said with a shrug, and the woman dropped Isabel and reached into a satchel to remove something. It was a shard of glass, with millions of facets, it looked like the deep color of blood, and when held up to the light it glowed deep red from the inside outwards. The cloaked woman stepped past the silver hared keeper and lifted Katie easily in her arms, as if she weighed nothing. In actual fact, the girl did weigh next to nothing; the only things that gave her any physical permanence being the three spirits that were housed within her body, she had no actual material weight, just as she really didn't have any material form.

The dark woman laughed and held the girl's body close before sauntering out past the three stunned teenagers and the wary keeper.

"What the hell was that?" Michael demanded the first to regain his wits. "You just gave her to them?"

The apparition glared at him, "hold your tongue, boy," she said coldly, "I am not your keeper, and I am most certainly not your friend. She threatened my charge, I did the only thing I could."

"You could have used your powers!" Michael raged, something inside him breaking. Losing his keeper was not a pleasant experience for him.

The woman holding the scythe moved swiftly, so the blade rested against the base of his neck. "Have no misconceptions, boy," she said in a low, even tone, "I may be an apparition, but my blade is very real."

Isabel couldn't move to stop her keeper, fearing for her friend, but unable to condone his actions.

Maria, however, moved quickly to her lover's side, looking up at the tall, menacing woman timidly. "She would have made this choice if she could," she said softly, looking at her lover's defiant eyes. "She wanted to when the star of the future appeared last night."

Michael looked down at the blonde by his side, frowning. "So you'll stand by and do nothing while we wait?" he asked, harsher than intended.

"No," Maria retorted, venom in her breath, "how you can ask that is beyond me, but I plan on finding my friend and keeper, and retrieving her from wherever she is so that I can get some answers to the millions of questions running through my head."

The apparition of Isabel's keeper smiled at the girl. "Katydid chose her messiah well," was all she said, before disappearing and a swirl of silver glitter and light.

Michael glared at Isabel, "This is your fault, you know."

"How, Michael," she snapped angrily, as the blood colored shard appeared in her hands. "Did you expect me to stand by and watch while one of the dearest friends I've had was threatened as she struggled with a madness that my brotherinduced?"

"You didn't have to come," he said coldly, "you could have stayed out of it."

"Stop it, both of you!" Maria shouted furiously, "we may have time for the luxury of bickering amongst ourselves, but Katie doesn't. We have to find her, now!"

Michael looked down at Maria, while Isabel still glared firmly at the boy in front of her. "How do you plan on finding her?" she asked slowly.

"With that," Maria said, pointing to the shard in her hands, "and these," she said, sighing and retrieving four small items from her pocket.

"What are those?" Michael asked, recognizing them vaguely.

"Shards," Isabel supplied, knowing the items immediately.

"Yes," Maria said, almost sadly, the four items had been hers, Michael's, and one was Katie's. A small white ring had belonged to her, as well as the shard necklace Katie had given her the previous night. A small black ring, identical to the white one, had belonged to Michael. Finally a small silver chain with an exact crystal replica of a lily of the valley flower suspended from it had belonged to Katie.