Page 58 of Imaginary Numbers

“That’s pretty much the long and the short of it, yes,” said an unfamiliar voice from behind me.

We all turned, except for Heloise, who was both unconscious and tied down. The man standing just inside the barn door raised his hands.

“I surrender,” he said. “Or I come in peace, or whatever you need to hear in order to not shoot me immediately. Because we need to talk, and we don’t have a lot of time.”

His skin was pale and his hair was black and his eyes were blue and I didn’t have to be a genius to know that if I hadn’t been wearing an anti-telepathy charm, he would have been nudging the edges of my mind, looking for a way past my natural resistance. He was wearing blue jeans and a University of Portland sweatshirt and he looked like Sarah’s brother and I saw red, I literally saw red. I was moving before I had a chance to think about it, striding across the barn to knot my hand in his sweatshirt and yank him toward me even as I raised my fist and cocked it back.

He looked at me impassively, resigned, not flinching. “If it’s going to make you feel better, go for it,” he said. “Like I said, we don’t have a lot of time. Get it out of your system.”

I hesitated, hand still raised, unable to decide what to do next.

Antimony saved me from myself. She appeared next to me, pushing down on my fist until my arm was back by my side. She didn’t touch the hand clenching the man’s sweatshirt. “Hi,” she said, in the brightly pleasant tone that meant she was about five minutes away from setting everything in sight on fire. “Who are you, why are you here, and why should we let you leave?”

“My name is Mark,” he said. “I’m here because I need your help if we’re going to save the world, and you shouldn’t let me leave. I’m a cuckoo. I know you know what that is. You have one of us tied up on the table over there.”

“They’re cuffs, not rope, but continue,” said Antimony. I looked at her. She shrugged. “Precision is important, even when you’re talking to people you’re probably about to kill. Maybe especially when you’re talking to people you’re probably about to kill. That way they get to the afterlife with an accurate idea of what took them out.”

“I don’t think cuckoos go to this dimension’s afterlife,” said Mark, in a resigned tone. “If they do, I’ve never heard about it, anyway. We’re not from around here. Presumably, after we’re dead, we go wherever the hell it is we actually belong.”

“I’ll have to ask Mary about that,” said Antimony. Her hand moved in a complicated pattern, and she was suddenly holding an actual fireball. It flickered orange and red and blue, looking strangely like a pom-pom from her cheerleading days, if the pom-poms had been actively terrifying. “Later. Maybe when it’s time to hide your body.”

“I would really, really prefer it if you didn’t kill me,” said Mark. “I didn’t have to come here.”

“Yet you came,” Antimony purred. Sam loomed up behind her, apparently done with his adventures in bondage. “Your mistake.”

The cuckoo’s eyes flashed white. “Living things want to stay alive,” he said quietly. “Please don’t remind me how much I want to survive this. You won’t like what happens if you do.”

“We have you pretty solidly outnumbered,” said Elsie, joining our little cluster. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Dad heading for the back of the barn. Whether it was to get a chainsaw or find Aunt Evie and Uncle Kevin was anybody’s guess.

Aunt Evie and Uncle Kevin. Fuck. I turned back to Mark, raising my fist back into the perfect punching position. “Where’s my mother?” I asked.

“She’s not wearing one of those pesky telepathy blockers,” said Mark. “I could ‘hear’ her coming as I was on my way in. She wasn’t hard to evade. I didn’t hurt her, if that’s what you’re worried about. I came here to ask for your help. Hurting people would be contrary to my own interests. And I’m a cuckoo. Everything I do is about my own interests. Now please. What can I do to convince you that I come in peace?”

“Let us cut your hands off?” suggested Elsie.

“What else can I do to convince you that I come in peace?” Mark eyed Elsie, clearly alarmed. “You’re awfully vicious for one of the self-proclaimed good guys. Are you always like this?”

“Only with the people who deserve it,” said Elsie. “You deserve it.”

“Because I’m a cuckoo?” Mark scowled. “I expected resistance. I expected some honest caution. I didn’t expect bigotry. Not after everything Sarah had to say about you people.”

I didn’t think. I just moved. My fist slammed into his face hard enough to knock him free of my grip. He fell, sprawling in the doorway, and stared up at me with narrow, white-tinted eyes as he raised one hand to rub his chin.

“Don’t say her name,” I spat, taking a stiff-legged step toward him. “Don’t say it, don’t think it, don’t do anything unless you want me to hit you again.”

“That’s going to make this difficult, since I’m here because I need you to help me save her.” He touched the trickle of clear liquid now connecting his nose to his upper lip and grimaced. “You hit hard.”

“You can thank us for that,” said Dad, now fully clothed, as he walked over to join us. He looked around our little group before shaking his head. “Five on one isn’t fair, even when the one’s a cuckoo. Give the boy some space. He didn’t have to come here, and if he’s really trying to help Sarah—”

“I am,” said Mark hurriedly. “Look. Tie me to a chair or something, okay? You’ll trust me more if you know I can’t touch you, and you need to trust me. We don’t have a lot of time.”

“Before what?” I demanded.

“Before Sarah finishes the morph into her fourth instar and the rest of my hive uses her to destroy the world.”

I suddenly felt like I wanted to vomit and pass out at the same time. It wasn’t the most pleasant of sensations.

“Oh,” I said faintly. “Is that all?”