Four
“There’s a special sort of egotism that comes with being a member of the human race. We call compassion, kindness, love, all part of ‘showing humanity.’ That’s not what they are at all. They’re part of being a good person. Humanity barely counts.”
—Evelyn Baker
In a semi-abandoned warehouse, sitting on the bleachers, waiting for the last of the derby girls to go home
ANNIE PASSED ME A bag of air-popped popcorn, rich with the scents of butter and tomato powder. I sniffed appreciatively before shoving a greasy handful into my mouth. It tasted better than anything had any right to taste. I barely chewed before shoving another handful in after the first. My stomach grumbled at how slowly I was going. The food in first class had been tolerable, as airline food went, but the portions had been nothing to get excited about, and I’d had a busy, physically taxing day.
“I don’t know how you can eat that stuff,” said Annie, settling beside me and bumping her shoulder against mine. She was back in her street clothes, although she was still wearing a Slasher Chicks T-shirt along with her jeans and flannel overshirt. She was radiating a degree of contentment that I’d never felt from her before. Contentment, and something else, like the faintest hint of ashes in the air.
I gave her a sidelong glance, trying to figure out why she was making the inside of my mind taste like charcoal. “It’s easy,” I said. “I put it in my mouth, then I chew it up, and then I swallow. See?” I shoved more popcorn in my mouth, gave it a few good chomps, and stuck my tongue out at her.
“Ew, gross.” She shoved me, laughing. “Remind me why I missed you?”
“I’d rather she tell us why she carries tomato powder in her backpack,” said Elsie. “That’s weird, Sarah. Grade-A weird.”
“Says the succubus,” I shot back. “I like tomato powder. It tastes the way you feel when you eat chocolate. Since I don’t eat chocolate, I make do.”
The warehouse seemed much larger, and much quieter, without the rest of the derby girls. Every word we spoke rose into the rafters, becoming a distorted echo of itself. It would have been unnerving, if I hadn’t felt so utterly, blissfully safe. I had my cousins back. I was in Oregon again, and I’d made the trip all by myself. I was healing.
Thinking of the trip made my smile fade. I needed to tell Evie and Kevin about the cuckoo in the airport, so they could figure out what to do about her. I needed to not tell Annie and Elsie, because Annie would be all for grabbing a field kit and charging straight at the problem. She was the most level-headed of my cousins in many ways, but not when she felt like she might be able to do something to show up her siblings. Having Verity and Alex in different states had probably helped that tendency somewhat—it’s easier to shine on your own when you don’t have anyone to measure yourself against—but I couldn’t count on that.
Resistant or not, two Price girls wouldn’t be enough to take out a cuckoo, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stand that static again, not so soon on the heels of the first time. Especially not when she was likely to have an active grudge against me for that whole “hitting her” thing.
Annie laughed abruptly. I looked at her again. She had her phone out, attention focused on the screen, radiating smug contentment.
“Something funny?” I asked.
“It’s her boyfriend,” said Elsie, in that familiar, hectoring tone of hers. “Didn’t anyone tell you? Our Annie’s in love. With a person, not a siege engine. I never thought I’d live to see the day.”
I blinked. That didn’t seem like a big enough reaction, and so I blinked again, more slowly, before saying, “What?”
Annie’s cheeks flushed red, a vascular response I’ve sometimes envied. People with visible blood don’t know how lucky they are. “Both of you shut up,” she mumbled.
“Um, no, not going to shut up, don’t tell me to shut up, and what?” I poked her with my elbow. “I have popcorn, which makes this the perfect time for gossip. You have a boyfriend? As in, a person you’re dating, not a boy who happens to be your friend?”
“As in a person I’m dating,” said Annie, cheeks still burning. The taste of char grew stronger at the back of my throat. “It’s been a weird few years while you’ve been off recovering. I’m really glad you’re back.”
“This is so weird,” I said.
“Hey, Alex is the one who’s having a baby,” objected Annie. “I think I’m still in the normal band for the youngest sibling.”
Elsie’s phone buzzed. She checked the screen. A sudden burst of smug satisfaction radiated off of her. “I hate to cut this short—”
“I don’t,” muttered Annie.
“—but I’m afraid I’m going to have to. Sarah, you might want to wipe the butter off your cheek. It’s red. That’s disgusting. It looks like bloody snot.”
I frowned at her, perplexed.
The warehouse door banged open. The quality of the air changed, going from the soft hum created by my proximity to Annie and Elsie—two people I’d known for years but had never been particularly physical with—to something louder and more electric, like sparks racing along my skin. I lowered my popcorn, frown becoming an open-mouthed stare.
“You didn’t,” I accused.
Elsie shrugged, reaching over to rub her thumb in a quick arc across my cheek, presumably wiping away the smear of butter. “I did,” she said. “I know you. You were going to put it off and put it off and maybe fly back to Ohio without ever telling him you were here. You don’t get to be afraid anymore, Sarah-baby. You scared us too much for that. Now stop fucking around and go tell my brother that you’re back.”
I shook my head, fighting the urge to pull a psychic blanket over me like a shield. Annie and Elsie wouldn’t lose sight of me if I did that—they were sitting too close, they could see me too clearly—but they weren’t the ones I was trying to hide from. “I’m not ready. You shouldn’t have done this. I’m not . . . I don’t know that I’m better. I’m not ready.”
“Sarah?”
Artie’s voice came from somewhere back by the front door, pitched loud enough to reach us without becoming an echoing smear in the aural landscape. He sounded . . . he sounded scared, almost, as scared as I felt. He sounded hopeful, too, and resigned, like he knew, somewhere deep down, that this was a cruel joke. It didn’t matter that his sister had never been the kind to play this sort of prank; it was easier to believe that she had turned suddenly brutally thoughtless than it was to let himself think she was telling the truth.
I’d been broken, but Artie . . . I’d left Artie alone. I closed my eyes, letting my chin drop toward my chest, and reached for his thoughts.
They were a whirling maelstrom of fear and hope and anger and blame, almost all of it directed squarely at himself. He shouldn’t have let me go to New York with Verity; he knew I’d gone because I wanted to challenge myself, and he hadn’t been willing to do more things that would be challenging, hadn’t wanted to stray outside the comforts of his familiar basement, where he never needed to worry about running into people who might be affected by his pheromones. He was worried he’d driven me away, and terrified that even if Elsie wasn’t playing a nasty trick for some reason, that I hadn’t called him myself because I didn’t actually want to see him. He thought I was done with him. Artie. The person I would call my best friend without a moment’s hesitation, thought I was done with him.
Artie, come on, you know better, I thought.
His response was silent joy and silent sorrow, both blended together. The connection intensified, drawing me deeper whether I wanted to go or not. I could suddenly see again, despite my closed eyes: I was looking at the back of the bleachers, at the shape of three women barely visible through the slats between the rows. He couldn’t quite see us well enough to tell us apart, but he knew we were there.
And I could see through his eyes. I could still slide myself into his thoughts as easily as sliding a book back onto a shelf, because the connection between us wasn’t broken. Maybe it was a little less stable than it had been before and maybe it wasn’t. I couldn’t tell, and it didn’t matter. I was here now. We were here now. I opened my eyes and stood. Elsie and Annie exchanged a look I couldn’t read and didn’t need to; the air around them crackled with smugness. I ignored them and ran down the bleachers, almost stumbling on the last step. I grabbed one of the rails, using it to whip myself around the corner of the bleachers, out into the open.
For a moment—only a moment, but long enough—my connection to Artie’s mind was still active, and I saw myself, pale, black-haired girl in yoga pants and an oversized teal sweater that hung to cover my hands and almost obscure my figure. It was designed to keep me from accidentally touching anyone, not to be flattering. That didn’t stop a feeling of intense joy from welling up and filling Artie’s thoughts, almost overwhelming me before it snapped closed, shutting me out.
Artie has always thought of me as a sister, something I remember all too well from when we were kids and I still thought it was okay for me to read his mind. Cross-species relationships are hard enough even when both participants are mammals. But when he looked at me like that, sometimes I could almost let myself forget how impossible anything more than friendship was for the two of us.
“Hi,” I said, like none of this was a big deal. Like I came home every day. “I would have called. I just got into town.”
Artie stared at me, the expression exaggerated enough that I could pick it up even with the distance between us and the limitations in the way my mind interprets human faces. Then he broke into a run. I didn’t move, at first because I was too puzzled to understand what was happening, and then because I didn’t want to. Instead, I braced myself and spread my arms a little wider and let him run right into them.
According to Annie and Elsie, who look at Artie the way humans do, he’s pretty good looking, for all that he checks a lot of boxes on the “average” side of the sheet: average height, neither fat nor thin, with the build of someone who works out because he has to, not because he wants to. He’s a noncombatant with natural abilities that will mostly keep him safe if he ever winds up in the middle of a fight. Natural abilities, and a really vicious family. He has brown hair and brown eyes and a smile that the minds of everyone around me say is sweet and kind, even if it’s rare.
He has one of the most soothing minds I’ve ever touched. Spending time with Artie is better than meditating, or napping, or almost anything else. It’s not the only reason I’ve been in love with him since I was a kid, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.
And now he was holding onto me like he never, ever wanted to let go of me again.
I pressed my face into his shoulder, breathing in the bright, faintly spicy smell of his skin. It was largely drowned out by the horrifying quantities of body spray he was wearing, as always when he needed to leave his basement. Normally, I wouldn’t have been able to smell it at all. He was usually better about getting even coverage—sometimes spread out across six or seven applications—before he left the house.
“How many speed laws did you break?” I asked, without lifting my head.
“All of them,” said Artie, and pulled away.
Regretfully, I let him go. Our big reunion was over, and odds were good he wouldn’t let me touch him again for days. Being half-incubus means his skin secretes pheromones that can cloud the minds of anyone who might be sexually attracted to him or genetically suited to making adorable part-Lilu babies. Women and gay men, mostly, and his own species, mostly, but not one hundred percent on either of those counts. Family members—blood family—are immune. I’m not blood family, which means I’m not covered in the catch-all immunity, so Artie has been reluctant to touch me ever since puberty first came stalking up and whacked him with its mighty hammer o’ suck.
I’m not blood family. I’m also not a mammal, strictly speaking; his pheromones don’t work on me, and never have. Even Uncle Ted’s pheromones don’t work on me, and Uncle Ted’s a full incubus, with none of that pesky humanity to get in the way and weaken the effects of his natural weaponry. And Lilu pheromones are a weapon. Incubus, succubus, it doesn’t matter. They attract mates to make breeding easier and less dangerous, and make it possible for them to get in and out without getting hurt. But they evolved in this dimension, not in mine, and their biology doesn’t know how to deal with a Johrlac. We’re a mystery to them.
Not that this matters to Artie, who figured out fast that touching non-family girls was not okay and filed me in the “not family” bucket shortly thereafter.
Artie took a big step backward. That still left us in arm’s reach, so he took another one before he lifted his chin and looked at me. That was all. He just . . . looked at me, searching my face like he was trying to memorize it, like something must have changed while I’d been in Ohio. Finally, he took a deep breath.
“You didn’t call,” he said.
“I did,” I objected.
“You didn’t call enough.”
“I’m sorry.” I worried the hem of my sweatshirt between my thumb and forefinger, resisting the urge to look away. Eye contact doesn’t make telepathy easier the way skin contact does. It just makes me faintly uncomfortable. “I was . . . for a long time, I wasn’t myself. And then I was scared I still wasn’t myself, but that I’d lost so much I couldn’t actually tell anymore. I’m sorry, I really am. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“Didn’t mean to—Sarah, I thought you were never coming back.” Frustration and fear rolled off him in a wave: wordless, formless, and oppressively strong. “I thought I’d lost you forever. You’re my best friend. Do you know how scary that was?”
“I thought I’d lost me, too.” My voice came out in a whisper. “I know about scary, Artie, because I’ve been scared since the day I got hurt. I thought I was never going to be okay again. I thought I’d broken my own brain so badly that I’d never be able to control myself around people who weren’t wearing anti-telepathy charms. It’s still . . . I’m still not like I was. I pick up more things from people I’m not attuned to. The world is loud, and when I sleep, I wind up walking in dreams that aren’t mine if I don’t set up barriers in the room to keep my thoughts from getting out. I thought I was never going to see any of you again because Mom wouldn’t let you into the house in Ohio unless I told her it was okay, and I wasn’t going to say it was okay until the thought of you feeling sorry for me wasn’t so terrifying that it put me back in my bed for a week. So yes, I know how scary it was. I know how scary all of this was. I’m sorry I didn’t call. Getting myself to Portland without freaking out or hurting myself was the last big test of whether or not I was recovered.”
Slowly, Artie blinked. “You mean you came here on your own?”
I nodded.
“How?”
“I flew.” Bit by bit, I explained the day I’d had, starting with saying goodbye to Mom outside of security. I mentioned my suspicion that a cuckoo had been hunting in the Cleveland Airport, but I didn’t mention the cuckoo I’d actually seen here in Portland. That needed to wait until I saw Evie. She’d know what to do, and her resistance to Johrlac influence was almost as good as a born Price’s, thanks to growing up in a house with Mom. Long exposure leads to increased resistance to the negative aspects of cuckoo influence, along with the easier telepathy. I guess it’s a balance thing. Otherwise, cuckoos would just keep their favorite humans with them always, malleable and obedient and open books.
By the time I finished, Annie and Elsie had given up on giving us space and drifted over to join us, forming a rough little circle between the bleachers and the doors. Annie looked at Artie, looked pointedly at the open space between us, and rolled her eyes.
“All right, since it looks like the big reunion is over, we should probably go tell the rest of the family that it’s time to throw a welcome home party for Sarah,” she said. “Elsie, you have room in your car for one more?”
“I can give Sarah a ride,” said Artie.
“Did you offer?” asked Annie. “Because dude, if I were you and this were Sam, I would already have been in the car and driving away as fast as I could.”
“You don’t know how to drive,” said Elsie.
“My point stands,” said Annie.
“Sarah and I aren’t . . . like that,” objected Artie, cheeks flushing. His thoughts turned into a tangled mess before shutting off entirely once again, blocked by the defensive action of his own empathic abilities. Full incubi can not only sense the emotions of the people around them, they can influence them, making direct changes to other people’s moods and hence minds.
I can’t change minds. I can’t even directly change thoughts. I can manipulate memory and insert myself into someone’s emotional landscape, but it’s a lot less of a precision job than Uncle Ted or even Artie can manage. Artie’s empathy had always been mostly receptive and defensive, allowing him to pick up on feelings or block out other psychics, including me. It might even have improved since I’d seen him last. The walls between us certainly felt sturdier.
“No, of course you’re not,” said Annie, with withering sarcasm. “Sarah, you’re coming back to the compound tonight?”
“Yeah,” I said, not looking at Artie. “I’m still not stable enough to sleep just anywhere. The room Mom and I set up is going to be best for me.” It had triple-strength anti-telepathy charms worked into the walls, creating a psychic null space that never moved, never varied, and would last as long as the house was standing. I could sleep peacefully there, without worrying about picking up on any dreams I shouldn’t be part of.
“If she’s going home with you, I want to drive her.” Artie squared his shoulders. His thoughts were still too sealed off to let me understand his expression; it could have meant virtually anything. “I need to come over anyway. Sam borrowed a bunch of my comic books, and I want them back.”
“Sarah?” asked Elsie. “That okay with you?”
“Sure,” I said, not looking at Artie. “I’ll see you both at the house.” I turned and walked to the bleachers to retrieve my backpack, waiting for some crack in the shell around Artie to open up and let me know what he was thinking.
It didn’t happen.
Evie and Uncle Kevin understood the importance and necessity of privacy. In their line of work, having neighbors could mean way too many visits from the police, and they’d always known they wanted to be a safe space for the kind of people they were likely to associate with. Not just family members: other cryptozoologists and researchers, cryptids like me or Artie, and bounty hunters like Grandma Alice. All kinds of folks could be found in the living room on any given day, and that meant having the space and the distance to host them.
Artie kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes fixed on the road as he drove past the Portland city limits, heading into the deep, dark woods outside. The trees pushed down on us from all sides, swallowing the ambient light, leaving us dependent on the headlights’ glare.
According to my Aunt Rose, a lot of people die on that road. She ought to know. She died on a similar road more than sixty years ago, and when we’re talking about death, we know to treat her as the expert that she is.
“This is going to be a long drive if you don’t talk to me,” I said.
Artie didn’t reply. The shell around his thoughts was like a wall, built solely to keep me out.
Vexed, I shot a quick arrow of thought at his ramparts. You say you missed me, but this doesn’t feel like missing me.
“Oh, come on, Sarah,” he snapped. “You know that’s not fair.”
“So you can hear me.”
“I can’t help hearing you.” He kept his eyes on the road. I guess it seemed easier than looking at me. “I hear you even when you’re not around. I hear you having opinions on things I’m reading, and I hear you complaining when people talk during movies, since it’s not like you can read the actors’ minds and know what they were trying to say, and I hear you making nasty gagging noises every time I choose chocolate over strawberry. I hear you all the time. But you weren’t hearing me, or you would have called.”
“I called as much as I could,” I said in a small voice.
“Then you didn’t hear me, because I needed you to call a lot more than you did.”
I closed my eyes, sagging in the seat. “Phones are hard. I can hear what you’re saying, but I can’t hear what you mean, and it makes my brain itch. I like text more. Text is always flat. It doesn’t have tone or nuance; it just has what the person on the other side of the keyboard said. I texted you all the time.”
“I’m sorry the phone made you so uncomfortable, but I needed to hear your voice a lot more often than I did.” Artie abruptly smacked the steering wheel, the sound echoing through the cab. “I thought you were dead, and then I thought you were gone forever, and then I thought . . . I thought you didn’t care about us anymore, because you were never coming back. I thought a lot of things. And you wouldn’t let me see you, and so the thoughts didn’t go away. They didn’t get any better.”
“Artie.” I opened my eyes and reached for him. If I was touching him, he wouldn’t be able to keep me out. I could finally make him understand why I’d stayed away, and why I’d come back; I could show him, and he’d see, and this would all get better. We’d get better. We’d—
The truck came out of nowhere, roaring down a side road that was barely more than a logging trail. It slammed into the passenger side of my cousin’s ancient Camaro, sending us spinning out of control. Artie shouted. I screamed. There was a roaring crash as we hit a tree, the front end of the car buckling. Glass filled the air, and for a moment it seemed to stop, shining and spinning in front of us, unable to touch us. Then my head hit the dashboard, and everything was darkness.