Who had placed them there? Was Mara here?

She looked around the kitchen. She didn’t see Mara, but the table was growing, stretching from a circle into an oval, and the light over the top had developed a smile, like the Cheshire Cat, only brighter.

“This isn’t right,” she muttered. “The table can’t stretch and the Cheshire Cat is in Wonderland. This isn’t Wonderland. I haven’t drunk anything to make myself larger.” She looked down at her legs and up at the ceiling. “Nope. I’m not taller. I haven’t eaten a mushroom to make myself smaller.”

The light over the tables smiled brighter and nodded. “Then what happened?” it asked.

“She drugged me.” Kellen was sure.

“How could she do that?” the light asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t drink or eat anything that she could have touched.”

The light developed eyes, and swiveled toward the sink.

Kellen looked at the chrome faucet where she’d poured herself water, at the mini-filtration system that protruded off the faucet’s arm. She staggered over there and peered into the chrome, and a Cheshire Kitten smiled with wicked delight. “She put drugs in the filter!” Kellen announced. She pulled herself fully erect, as if holding herself with a straight spine would counter the effects of the drug, and staggered across the kitchen toward the entry. “I’ve got to get to my hiding place and lock myself in,” she announced.

But first—she was starving. Opening a package of crackers, she shoved a handful in her mouth. She followed that with another handful.

She really wanted the tuna, but how could she open it? It was in a can. She didn’t remember how to open a can. “In the Army, I opened lots of cans,” she reminded herself, and stuck the tuna into her shirt.

Again she started toward the stairs, then circled back to the canned tuna. She didn’t know how to open a can. “Look! It’s a pull top!” she announced, put it in her shirt, then returned to her quest for the stairs.

Dimly she was aware she was behaving as Rae had behaved, moving in dizzy circles, unable to get where she wanted to go.

But Kellen wasn’t a child. She could fight the drug and…wow. She found herself standing with her hand on the newel post. Look at the stairs. They never ended. If she climbed them, she could reach the stars. She put one foot up. And another foot up. She ran up three steps.

Something dropped on her foot.