“Yes, thank you.” Carolyn quickly undid her shoe, slipped it back on and did it up only to frown as her heel immediately slipped out again. She stared at it blankly, slow to realize that her foot hadn’t worked itself out of the shoe, but that the sandal strap had actually broken.

“Damn,” she muttered.

“This pretty lady is Caro,” Adam announced to the van at large, and then added, “Caro, this is the band. I am taking them down to the main building so they can perform.”

Carolyn briefly forgot about her shoe and glanced around with surprise, her eyes skating over the shadowed faces of the five other people on the van’s bench seats behind her. It was hard to see much. The roads weren’t exactly well lit; all she could really make out was that she thought one of them might be a woman. Maybe two, she thought next as she noted the long hair on the one in the seat directly behind hers, although, if that was a woman, she was one hell of a big female.

A snicker came from the smaller one she’d thought was a female and Caro glanced to her curiously.

“Say hello,” Adam ordered cheerfully.

“Hello,” Carolyn murmured even as the riders in the back did as well. Well most of them did, the one in the back who had moonlight glinting off his bald head remained silent and she eyed him curiously, wondering if he shaved his head as some sort of fashion statement, or was balding and trying to hide it by shaving his head. Really, that sort of thing fooled no one, she thought. Although he seemed to have a nicely shaped head, the sort that took well to the style.

“Caro is a friend of Genie’s,” Adam announced and then glanced to her and asked, “You are sitting with Genie tonight to watch them play?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling as she settled back in her seat. “Genie and a young couple on their honeymoon, Marguerite and Julius.”

Adam nodded, but the sudden tension in the back of the van was actually palpable, and Carolyn recalled that Marguerite and Julius had arranged for the band to come here. She bit her lip, wondering if she should say something to acknowledge that, but didn’t have a clue what she should say.

“We are all related to Marguerite and Julius.”

Carolyn turned in her seat again to see that the smaller female had sat forward in the second bench seat to peer between the two band members on the first seat . . . and she was definitely female. Not that Carolyn could see her any better, but the woman’s voice was a beautiful, husky singsong that could only be female.

“Really?” she asked with a smile. “How are you related?”