Tessie stared up and up at Mr. Paine. "You sure don't look much like a babysitter," she said.

Leo smiled and crouched down, though this still put his head nearly a foot above Tessie's. "Well, I'm a special sort of babysitter's assistant. Your aunt is coming over to do the babysitting and I'm here just to chase monsters away."

Tessie nodded thoughtfully. "Do I know you?"

He shook his head, "I don't think so, little lady. I'm sure I'd remember someone as cute as you." He winked.

Tessie blushed. Her brother Kenny crowed with laughter.

* * *

"I couldn't believe it when you said okay to me coming along," Candace told Todd. They were in the big SUV, headed up into the mountains where the kidnappers' plane had crashed.

Todd sighed. "I think the kids will be safe. Krystal is pretty level-headed and Paine is one deadly, fricken.... He's good."

"He's scary. Where do you know him from?"

"We used to be on the crook together.... Bad old days. Him, M'Caliber, Blooddraught, and me. Before Masquerade, they called me Reaperman. None of us had powers then...long story." He didn't say anymore for a bit and she stopped herself from asking for details.

They got off the Interstate and started up the narrower roads, heading high into the Cascades. Green trees, gray rocks, blue sky.

Finally he spoke. "Your job is going to be to keep me sane. Who else could I get to do that?"

* * *

Kendra took a cab from the airport. "Marshalldale? Lady, that's sixty miles away, you sure you want a cab? I'll have to charge you both ways, you could rent a car a whole heckuva lot cheaper."

"I don't drive," said Kendra. She didn't tell him that complicated machinery involving moving pieces of iron or steel tended to have some rather severe failure modes when under the control of a practitioner of psionic sorcery.

"You got an address?" he asked.

* * *

The jet carrying the world famous surgeon, philanthropist and composer, Dr. Hyman Meridien left Dubai airport two hours ahead of the sunrise, heading in a pole-crossing path directly for the same airport Lady Karma had just left.

It might have been fate but it wasn't.

In the "clinic" in the back of the plane, Spartako began the chemical and psychological process necessary for his new mission. It wasn't something he wanted to do but it felt like part of him, part of his destiny. But it wasn't.

In the wide, friendly lounge in the middle of the plane, the philanthropic doctor removed his mirror shades and looked deeply into the eyes of the boy, Johnny. Fascinated, Johnny couldn't look away. Dr. Meridien smiled.

Six miles below them lay the land where fortunate happenstance was called kismet. Dr. Meridien didn't believe in kismet, destiny, fate, fortune, luck or accident. Everything that happened in the world must have a purpose -- preferably Dr. Meridien's purpose.