Page 10 of Imaginary Numbers

“Now, are you sure this is where you want me to drop you?” The woman pulled to a stop in front of an old warehouse, a brief stab of disapproval shooting through her general air of contentment. “I could take you someplace much nicer. Or you could come back to the house and wait for your friends to meet you there. I don’t mind.”

“Duke might.” Duke was the dog. He had been almost pathetically grateful when I left, even as he’d warred with his fear of me and his desire to protect his human. He was going to be clingy and paranoid for days. His human wouldn’t understand why, and there was no way I could tell her, and I was sorry for that.

“Duke loves you.”

That was a lie. I dug the last of the cuckoo’s money out of my pocket and offered it to the woman. “Here. For the ride.”

She started to object. Then her own self-interest kicked in, and she took the money from my hand, saying, “It’s great of Carol to pay back what she owes me. Sometimes people surprise you.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Sometimes people do.” I got out of the car before she could make another attempt to convince me not to. As soon as she was clear of my immediate presence, she drove away, faster than was strictly necessary. Some part of her knew that she’d just had an encounter with a predator bigger than she was, and she wanted to get the hell out of the way.

I touched my upper lip. Dry. Then I turned toward the warehouse, noting the lights in the windows with relieved satisfaction, and started walking.

My family tree can get confusing sometimes. I get that. When you’re dealing with multiple generations, including some people whose lifespans aren’t limited to the human norm, the names and connections and complications pile up fast. So here’s the short and simple, or as simple as it’s possible for me to make things:

My adoptive mother, Angela, was born somewhere in New England and raised by a family in Maine who had been chosen without their consent by her biological mother. Cuckoos pick the nests where they abandon their children carefully, according to a set of standards I don’t fully understand, and never will, unless I decide to have children of my own. Infants are abandoned in homes that have the space and resources to raise them properly, and where there are no other children to get in the way of dedicating those resources to the new cuckoo-child. Her husband, Martin Baker, was originally several human men. They were killed, only to be brought back to life by a scientist with more ambition than sense. I don’t mind, though. I love my father, and he is who he is because of someone with a shovel and a dream.

Mom and Dad couldn’t have children of their own—they’re not biologically compatible—so they decided to adopt. Evie came first, left on their doorstep by one of the scientist’s apprentices as she ran into the night. Drew was next, adopted from the bogeyman community after an accident claimed his birth family. And I came last, dredged out of a storm drain after my instinctive telepathic distress call led them to my location.

By the time I came along, Evie was already a married adult with three children. Alex, who’s three years older than I am, Verity, who’s basically my age, and Antimony, who’s a couple of years younger. And that’s all pretty straightforward, I guess. Big age gaps exist in families. Evie’s husband, Uncle Kevin—and yeah, he’s technically my brother-in-law, but I call him uncle, the same way I call Evie’s kids my cousins, since thinking of Verity as my niece would be way too weird—has a sister, Aunt Jane, who married Uncle Ted. They have two kids: Artie, who’s pretty close to my age, and Elsie, who’s a couple of years older than I am. It’s not the biggest family tree ever, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be confusing.

Elsie likes a lot of things. Shopping, and dyeing her hair to match her nails, and veterinary medicine. And roller derby. She likes roller derby so much, in fact, that when Antimony graduated high school and couldn’t cheerlead anymore, Elsie talked her into trying out for the local league. Annie’s been skating ever since, while Elsie sits in the bleachers and cheers for her cousin. It’s about the closest they’ve ever come to a nonviolent family activity.

The big rolling warehouse doors were closed, but the smaller door intended for humans rather than trucks was propped slightly open. A sign was taped to the outside—“CLOSED PRACTICE. DELIVERIES TO OFFICE.” I ignored it, and let myself in.

Inside the warehouse it was bright and warm. Floodlights overhead illuminated the entire track, making the flat oval look bigger and more dramatic. And on the track, the skaters circled, more than a dozen girls in differently colored gear pushing, shoving, and skating their way to roller derby glory.

None of them looked my way. Neither did the coaches who stood by the sidelines and called encouragement, or the women who weren’t currently on the track for whatever reason. They were skating around the edges of the practice, adjusting gym mats, pushing brooms, doing all the little tasks required to keep an amateur athletic league up and functioning.

There were a few people seated in the bleachers. I scanned them until I settled on a woman with short, blueberry-colored hair, wearing the black-and-red gear of a Slasher Chicks supporter. That’s Annie’s team. I walked closer, reaching out mentally until my thoughts brushed against the familiar, reassuring edges of Elsie’s mind.

She turned instantly, eyes searching the floor until they landed on me. Her consciousness immediately narrowed into a single point of wary suspicion. I nodded, satisfied with her response, and kept walking toward her.

Because see, here’s a fun thing about Uncle Kevin and Aunt Jane: for some reason, they aren’t as vulnerable to cuckoo influence as most humans. Their mother, my Grandma Alice, is even more resistant, and to hear her tell it, her mother, Fran, was basically immune. Someone, somewhere back in the family line, wasn’t human, and whatever genetic gifts they gave their offspring have resulted in generations of people who aren’t at nearly as much risk where cuckoos are concerned. Genetic descendants of Frances Brown notice cuckoos. They can pick us out of a crowd. They remember us when we’re not directly visible. It’s terrifying, and awesome, and I wish to whatever gods watch over my messed-up species that I knew what their inhuman ancestor had been, so I could meet more of them.

Elsie slipped one hand into her purse as I approached, no doubt preparing to draw some sort of weapon if I turned out to be any other cuckoo in the world. She’s not much of a fighter as our family goes—I think I’m the only one who’s worse—but she was still willing to make the effort in order to protect her people. I appreciated that, too.

“Hi, Else,” I said, once I was close enough to make myself heard without needing to raise my voice. The rattle of wheels on the track continued in the background, a smooth, staccato white noise underscoring everything I said. “Long time no see, huh?”

I was trying to sound cool. I was probably failing. But I felt Elsie’s suspicion melt into surprise, and finally into awe, as she sent a single, virtually shouted thought in my direction: Sarah?

Yeah, I thought back, nodding for good measure. It’s me.

Elsie stood, withdrawing her hand from her purse. “Are you really?” she asked. “I mean, you’re really-really Sarah?”

“I’m really-really Sarah,” I said.

“Prove it.” Her voice was low, in deference to the derby girls circling the track below us—although one of those girls, dressed in black and red, with a long red-brown braid trailing out the back of her helmet, had slowed to a stop just beside the track itself.

A rush of almost startling joy washed over me. Antimony. I’d been hoping I might be lucky enough to catch the league during practice, and to find one of my cousins in residence. Finding two of them was almost unreasonable.

“You were super double bonus mad when Alex and his sisters came back from Lowryland with a new cousin as a souvenir, until Mom explained that even if she wasn’t your grandmother, I was going to be your cousin, too; you think it’s unfair that I have such good eyelashes without mascara; you also think it’s unfair that I’d rather do math than let you practice your makeup techniques on me. You once accidentally made chlorine gas in the front hall and we had to try to convince Artie to come out of his basement before he choked to death, all without saying anything that would alert the mice. Not that it mattered, because they tattled on us anyway, and we all got sent to bed without dessert for practicing our chemical weaponry without an adult present. Your favorite color is this weird shade of maroon that you insist is pink even though it isn’t, you like cocoa without marshmallows, partially as a form of self-defense against Annie, and you had a crush on me for like a year when we were teenagers, which we all pretended wasn’t happening.”

“How can you know all that and still insist Artie isn’t in love with you?” asked Elsie. If I’d had any doubts about her identity, that would have lain them to rest; she and my other cousins had been trying to convince me that Artie had nonfamilial feelings for me basically since we’d all hit puberty. They couldn’t seem to understand that my being a cuckoo made a difference, and so I’d stopped trying to argue with them when the subject came up. There was a hitch in her voice that could have been laughter and could have been the beginning of a sob. Based on the chaotic thoughts sparking in the air around her, as tangled as a ball of yarn, it was probably both. I braced myself. I’d seen that tangle of thoughts before.

Sure enough, she flung herself at me a second later, locking her arms around my torso and pulling me crushingly close, her chin resting on my left shoulder while her entire body shook with sobs. I stood rigidly still, aware that she didn’t need or want anything else from me. She was reassuring herself that I was really here, really real, and that was all that mattered.

The tip of a knife pressed against the back of my neck, positioned so that one quick thrust would slide it into the gap between my vertebrae and sever my spinal column. I may not have a heart, but I’m human-cognate enough that slicing through my spine will incapacitate me permanently, if not kill me outright. I closed my eyes and smiled.