“No, I’m going to help them.” I ran back the way we’d come, angling toward the section of the Wall they stood on.

Tad grunted, and then he was running beside me. “We don’t have magic powers, Lena. It’s not like that.”

“We can help. Maybe we can distract them.”

He didn’t answer me and I hurried, arms and legs pumping hard. A few feet from the Wall, I leapt and caught handholds. I pulled myself up as fast as I could, not caring about the scrapes and bruises, hardly feeling them. Above us the three cornered Super Dupers pleaded their case, though after dealing with Smithy and Ober-whatever, I knew it would do them no good.

“Please, we’re not sick. We have family on that side, and we haven’t seen them in years. They don’t even know we’re alive.”

Their words tore at me, spurring me on. What the heck I thought I was going to do once I got up there I didn’t know. But I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.

I had to try to help.

The SDMP didn’t seem to notice me climbing, so focused on those they were trying to capture that they’d blocked out everything else around them. I peered up over the edge of the Wall, right at the foot of one officer. Before I thought better of it, I grabbed his ankle and yanked him backward out into open space.

He let out a yell and the other SDMP members spun. Still they didn’t see me. Tad grabbed an officer to the right of the group and shoved him off on the Supe side of the Wall.

The remaining four SDMP members swung around, all holding those dang dart guns. Worse? One of them was Icy-Blue Eyes: Smithy. He saw me, lifted the gun, and pulled the trigger. I flattened myself against the Wall and the dart missed me—barely.

I popped my head up, waved at the runaways. “Hurry up!”

They didn’t need any more prompting. They dropped to the edge and shimmied over as the SDMP officers leapt for them. Icy-Blue Eyes caught the tiniest girl, a petite blonde who looked light as a feather. She kicked out at him, her hooves catching him in the knee. He snarled and dropped her. She fell, and rolled over the edge in that split second.

Flinty Eyes glared at me. I gave him a weak smile. “Sorry we keep meeting like this, Smithy.” I scooted down the Wall, a part of me wondering why they weren’t chasing us. Because they really weren’t. Even the guy I’d tossed off the Wall just dusted himself off as he headed back to climb the Wall, ignoring us.

Tad, the three Super Dupers we’d helped, and I dropped to the ground within seconds of each other and bolted away. No chasing, though, no pursuit from the SDMP.

Fear and adrenaline drove me, along with a fair bit of euphoria. Tad and I had saved someone from the SDMP and their crooked ways. I couldn’t help feeling like I’d won a prizefight.

Even if it was more of a schoolyard tussle.

We ran for ten minutes until we hit a natural line of trees and bush that provided decent cover. I stopped, clinging to a tree as I panted for breath. “Tad, why didn’t they chase us?”

“They’re too lazy,” the petite blonde gasped out. I looked at her, really looked, and realized she was not going to pass for human in any way, shape, or form. Two tiny horns curled out from the side of her head, ivory colored, so they blended in well with her white-blond hair. Her ears were pointed at the top like they’d been cropped, and they twitched every few seconds as though the wind tickled them. Her eyes were two steps off normal, the pupil running vertical in a slit imitating that of a goat. Maybe all those differences could have been hidden, but there was no way she could cover her legs. Under the jeans, her legs were a strange shape from the knee down, bent like a horse’s back leg and ending in two solid black hooves. Not exactly what I’d call easy to blend in, even in a crowd.

I racked my brain for the right Supe denomination. “Dryad?”

“No, satyr,” she said. “Natural.”

That made me pause. “I don’t understand, what do you mean by natural?”

She laughed. “You’ve obviously been turned. My name is Damara. I’m a natural, which just means my parents were satyrs. I was born like this.”

“I’m Alena. I guess . . . not natural?” I wasn’t sure how else to denote myself. Turned sounded like I’d been turned to the dark side. I didn’t like the connotation.

She laughed, her smile wide as her ears twitched, though there wasn’t a mean thing about any of it. “Good enough. Nice to meet you, Alena.”

I glanced at the other two with her. Two men. Both with the same characteristics as her with the strange legs and eyes, blond hair, and curling horns. “Are they your brothers?”

She grinned, her wide, expressive mouth giving me the impression that there was a joke I didn’t understand. “Boyfriends. Tim and Gavin.” They grinned at me in unison.

“Oh my,” I whispered. She laughed softly and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Thanks for the help. You didn’t have to do that. It’s been a long time since Supes helped each other out.”

“That’s what I told her,” Tad said.

Damara glanced at him. “She may have saved the world by helping us.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”

Damara waved for me to walk with her. Tad tried to pull me away, but I wanted to hear whatever it was she had to say. A gut feeling, perhaps, but there was something about her that called to me.

Like she fit with me somehow, which made no sense. I had no horns, no hooves. Yet the feeling persisted.