The Shifter's Trail

If an alien passed you on the street, would you know?

Something white hot was streaking across the blue April sky, pursued by a troubled trail of white smoke. Andromeda Brown had a brief sense of something enormous and powerful tumbling end over end. Even though it was far too high to hear, she could almost imagine its roar as it ripped through the heavens, arcing gracefully towards the horizon.

Andromeda sat quietly at her desk and waited for instructions. Whatever else happened today, at least there would be no detention....

Except for an unfortunate attachment to numbers, Andromeda Brown is an ordinary girl with an ordinary life at a perfectly ordinary school. Until, that is, a spaceship crash-lands near her home in Chicago, and circumstances throw her into contact with folks whose zip code is, quite literally, out of this world. Her new acquaintances are in trouble and desperately need her help. They are frantically looking for a freakish, shape-shifting alien scientist who has been hanging out on planet Earth for, well, ages. And hard as it is to track down someone who can change appearance at will, Andromeda's difficulties are multiplied by the fact that she and her friends are not the only ones on the shifter's trail. Darker forces are at work. 
For if the shifter's knowledge falls into the wrong hands, humanity is in for a very bad day....