Page 53 of Imaginary Numbers

That was as far as she got before something hit her in the back of the head. She stopped for a moment, expression comically dazed, before she toppled forward, losing her grasp on the gun in the process. Sam yelped. He had a choice in that moment—catch his falling girlfriend or catch the gun—and sadly, he chose wrong, grabbing Antimony before she could hit the floor. The ball of ice that had knocked her down fell, unheeded, to the carpet.

And the cuckoo caught the gun.

“James, what the hell,” snarled Sam, looking over his shoulder toward the stairs, where our second resident sorcerer was presumably standing. James specialized in cold things. James specialized in cold things, and James wasn’t a biological member of the family; he didn’t have the protections against cuckoo influence that the rest of us had inherited.

I didn’t turn. Turning would have meant taking my eyes off the cuckoo, who was now holding Annie’s pistol aimed squarely at my forehead.

“If you move, I shoot,” she said. “If you say anything I don’t like, I shoot. Honestly, I’d shoot anyway, if I didn’t think we might need you later. What she sees in you, I have no idea.”

“Of course you don’t, I’m wearing an anti-telepathy charm.” I winced inwardly. Maybe backtalking the murderous cuckoo who had replaced Sarah was a bad idea.

“This would all be so much easier if you’d take that nasty thing off.”

“I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you.” The temperature in the room was dropping steadily. I still didn’t dare look behind me, but every hair on Sam’s shoulders was standing on end, and he looked like he was fighting a silent war between staying where he was and serving as possible backup and getting Antimony the hell out of there.

She wasn’t moving. James must have hit her just right to knock her out, or at least daze her for a while. I refused to consider anything worse. Antimony was the best of us or, at least, the most bloody-minded and tenacious. She’d figure this out. I just needed to buy her the time.

And just like that, I knew what I had to do. I took a step backward, away from the cuckoo. She bared her teeth in a snarl.

“Stop where you are, incubus,” she spat. “You’re mine now.”

“Are you all right, Heloise?” James sounded half-drunk, or maybe drugged, like he didn’t fully understand what was going on.

The cuckoo winced. “I’m fine, Jimmy,” she said. “I’m just explaining to Artie here why he needs to come with me.”

“He’ll come with us because we’re on the right side of the fight,” said James. “He’s smart enough to know that. Not like them.” There was pure venom in his voice, and I knew that if I turned, he’d be looking at Annie and Sam, hands full of ice, ready to attack.

I took another step back. “Sam,” I said quietly. “Run.”

Under other circumstances—if Annie hadn’t been taken by surprise, if we’d been able to fight ice with fire, if the cuckoo hadn’t managed to get her hands on a gun—I knew Sam would have argued with me. He’s not family by blood, but he’s still family, thanks to Annie’s fiat, and he knows better than to leave a man behind if there’s any other choice. Right now, there wasn’t a choice. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him tense, nod, and gather Annie even closer to his chest. Then he leapt into the air.

There’s almost nothing as fast as a fūri who has somewhere to be. I’ve watched Verity—who has reflexes that border on preternaturally sharp—throwing knives at Sam while he was in motion, and she’s never come anywhere near hitting him. When Sam wants to get away, he gets away.

His first leap carried him to the banister, one long arm clutching Annie’s unconscious form. He landed easy, grabbing the rail with both feet and his free hand before he leapt again, this time heading up the stairs to the first landing. The cuckoo swore loudly. James hurled a ball of ice after the fleeing fūri. It missed widely enough to become comic, smashing into the wall between two framed family portraits. One of them fell to the ground and shattered.

I didn’t move. The cuckoo still aiming her stolen gun at me made that an easy decision. If she’d been more mammalian . . . for the first time, I found myself wishing that my pheromones could affect a cuckoo. If she’d shot me, I could have swayed her completely over to my side.

Telepathy versus chemically-induced attraction, round one, fight. The cuckoo stood, eyes narrow, gun still aimed at me.

“Jimmy, grab his gun,” she said. “He’s a Price. They always have guns.”

“You know you hate being called ‘Jimmy,’ James,” I said. “If she was whatever she wants you to think she is—your sister or your girlfriend or your confessor or whatever—she wouldn’t keep calling you that.”

“I don’t like you calling me Jimmy,” said James, stepping up to me and grabbing the handgun off my belt. The temperature dropped again as he got closer. The cuckoo didn’t seem to notice. Having antifreeze for blood comes with an annoying degree of cold resistance.

James sneered at me as he tossed my gun on the couch and stepped back toward the cuckoo, slipping an arm around her waist and pulling her closer to him. Her aim never wavered. “I don’t like you calling me anything,” he continued. “Hel, are you sure we need to take him with us? You could shoot him right now for what he did to you.”

I wanted to ask what I’d supposedly done to her. For once in my life, I kept my big mouth shut. Whatever lies she was shaping in his mind would only get stronger if I gave her an excuse to make him repeat them out loud. Lies are like that. The more they’re told, the more realistic they tend to become.

Heloise looked briefly disappointed when she realized what I was—or wasn’t—doing. Then she jerked her chin toward the door. “All right, incubus,” she said. “Move.”

“Do I have a choice?” I asked.

“Yeah. I shoot you.”

I moved.

This is fine, I thought as Heloise marched me across the lawn, the barrel of her stolen gun digging into the skin between my shoulders. Mom will know what to do. It was a little weird that Elsie hadn’t come charging back with the various parents yet, but that was probably because they were busy coming up with some sort of plan for getting the unfamiliar cuckoo out of here. They had to have a coherent failsafe for this sort of thing.