Page 69 of Imaginary Numbers

Mark turned to look at her. “I never said I was. I said I loved my sister and my parents. Three humans, out of however many billion there are currently running around this shithole of a planet. And before you judge me for that, how many cuckoos do you care about, again? Because I’m counting two. Two cuckoos, full stop. Seems like I’m doing a little better with the cross-species empathy project.”

Elsie narrowed her eyes and kept on driving.

The house we wanted was at the end of the street, a small, standard, 1970s tract home that didn’t stand out in any way from its neighbors, save for the seven RVs parked out front, and the dozen or so cuckoos standing patiently on the lawn. Their eyes were glowing a steady white, like Christmas lights strung through the air. Elsie stopped the car in the middle of the street, just staring at them.

“That’s it,” she said. “We can’t get any closer.”

“You don’t need to,” said Mark. “All of you are wearing anti-telepathy charms. You’re basically invisible to me right now, unless I’m looking directly at you. All the cuckoos in the house have already sunk into the corona of Sarah’s metamorphosis. They’re watching her do the math, waiting for the moment when it all comes together and she wakes up with the knowledge like an egg waiting to hatch inside her mind.”

“Meaning if we stay quiet, they won’t realize we’re here,” I said slowly.

“Bingo.”

“What’s to stop you from telling them? We’re outnumbered.”

“There aren’t enough bullets in the world,” Antimony muttered.

“Nothing,” said Mark. “If I want to betray you, I’ll betray you, and you won’t be able to stop me. So I guess this is the part where you either trust me or don’t. If you trust me, we go get your cousin. If you don’t . . .” He let his voice trail off.

His meaning was still perfectly clear. “If we don’t, we lose her,” I said. I unbuckled my seatbelt. “Fuck this.”

The sound of the car door opening was incredibly loud in the eerily silent neighborhood. A few cuckoos looked our way, only to look away again immediately afterward. We weren’t people to them. We didn’t matter.

Mark waited until we were all out of the car before starting toward the house. We fell into step behind him, forming a short, terrified line. My palms were sweating. I wiped them on my jeans. I’d never wished my pheromones were more effective before, but in that moment, I did. If I’d been able to affect cuckoos, I wouldn’t have needed to worry about a thing. I could have just wiped off my cologne and waltzed right into the middle of things, demanding they all love me, knowing that I would be obeyed.

Normally, I would have flinched away from that thought. If consent matters where the body is involved, how much more important is it when it comes to the mind? Normally, I wasn’t walking into a cuckoo hive to retrieve my cousin, who I—who I was coming to hate calling “cousin” more and more, because it implied a blood relationship that wasn’t there, and I had finally allowed myself to admit, to myself and everybody else, that I was completely in love with her.

The cuckoos didn’t move as we approached, or as Mark began leading us through the invisible maze formed by the placement of their bodies. We couldn’t walk in a straight line without bumping into them, but he seemed to know where to put his feet, or at least how to avoid overly attracting their attention. He walked and we followed, swallowing the sound of our own breathing, doing whatever we had to in order to go unnoticed.

Sam was so tense that he’d shifted back into human form, walking barefoot through the grass. Flames flickered around Annie’s fingers, brief and bright and fading out as quickly as they appeared. Only Elsie looked perfectly relaxed, as calm as if she’d been waiting for a sale down at the Sephora. She was also the closest to Mark. I looked a little closer. There was a knife in her hand. If he betrayed us, she was planning to take him down before he could enjoy the fruits of his betrayal. It wouldn’t be enough to save us, but it would be better than nothing.

I appreciate my sister. She can seem like a massive flake, but she’s pragmatic as all hell when she needs to be. People get hung up on the sparkly nails and the neon hair and forget that she’s still a Price. We all are.

I stood up a little straighter as I walked. Yes, we were marching into a cuckoo hive, and yes, there was every chance that one or more of us would die tonight, but we were Prices. This was what we were born to do.

Mark reached the door without incident. He turned to look at the rest of us, pressing one finger to his lips in an exaggerated sign for silence. Then he pushed it open and stepped inside. We followed, still in our straight line, until I pulled the door gently shut behind me. It wouldn’t stop the cuckoos on the lawn from pouring into the house if they got the signal—it would barely even slow them down—but every little bit helps when you’re going up against telepathic killers from another dimension.

Sometimes my life is more like an X-Men comic than I want it to be.

The house had been built along a much more predictable floor plan than the Price compound: the front door deposited us in a little atrium attached to the front hallway, with pegs for our coats and a rack for any muddy shoes. There was a pair of blue boots, sized for a small child, lying on their sides next to the rack. I gestured toward it, eyebrows raised in silent question. Mark followed my gesture, and grimaced. He shook his head before pointing to his chest and mouthing, exaggeratedly, “Not me.”

Right. Whoever had owned this house before the cuckoos came to claim it was already dead, and there was nothing we could do to save them. It was sort of nice knowing that Mark hadn’t been part of whatever group had decided that this was their new base of operations. I didn’t really want to kill the only cuckoo who was actually helping us. He deserved to go home to his sister. He deserved a chance.

There were lights at the end of the hall, and voices, although no one was talking. Someone laughed; someone else made a dismayed grunting sound, like they’d stepped on something unpleasant. I couldn’t get a sense of how many of them there were, but the house felt full, oppressive, like it was almost at capacity. Telepaths didn’t really need to speak to give themselves away.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, opened the notepad function, and typed a quick message before holding it out to Mark.

Where’s Sarah?

He looked up from the screen and shook his head, spreading his hands in an indication of ignorance. Then he produced his own phone, and repeated my actions, finally flipping it around so we could all see his screen.

She isn’t broadcasting, so she must still be in morph, he wrote. She could be anywhere in the house.

Great. We split up and look for her, I replied. Me and Elsie upstairs, you, Sam, and Annie down here. If you find her, Annie will text me. Same if we find her. Okay?

I looked around our little band of unlikely saviors—Earth deserved something way more organized, and even more heavily armed—until each of them nodded in turn. Then I put my phone back in my pocket and started toward the stairs, with Elsie on my heels.

Hold on, Sarah, I thought. All you need to do now is hold on.