Page 83 of Imaginary Numbers

“Ames,” I said. “Ames, Iowa. We’re in Ames, Iowa.”

“Yes,” said Annie. “Look, Artie, this is not a good time for you to fall apart on me. I’m sorry, but I need you to hold it together. Okay?”

“I’m not falling apart,” I said. “Your phone. How much battery do you have?”

“Not enough.”

“There’s a major university here. Cuckoos are math addicts. They’ll head for the school if they have any choice in the matter. How far away are we?”

Annie’s eyes lit up with sudden understanding. She began poking at the screen of her phone, announcing a minute later, “About three miles.”

“Great.” I looked back to the mouse. “What else do you know?”

“Only that the Heartless Ones are Not Of This World, and that one day they must Leave it.”

“Peachy.” I grabbed a rock off the road and started walking toward an old Camaro parked in front of a store that either sold rocks or decorative soaps intentionally made to look like rocks. It can be hard to tell.

“What are you doing?” asked James.

“Getting us to school,” I said, and threw the rock through the car window.

The shattering sound was remarkably loud on the quiet, cuckoo-snared street. There was a pressure at the back of my head that I recognized as the cuckoos trying to influence me, whether they knew they were doing it or not. I shunted it aside. I’m a Price. We don’t take well to being mentally controlled. Great-Grandma’s gift to us, even if we still don’t understand it.

“Annie, your cousin is stealing a car,” said James, in a carefully neutral tone. I ignored him in favor of reaching through the broken window, unlocking the door, and using a McDonald’s bag from the passenger footwell to shovel the glass out into the street.

“My cousin’s a genius,” said Annie. “You know how to hotwire that thing?”

“I don’t need to,” I said. “My old Camaro never met a screwdriver it didn’t want to be friends with, before you went and torched it. Which is why—ah!” I held up the long, narrow-headed screwdriver that had just dropped from the glove compartment. “Your chariot awaits.”

“I’m quite sure this is illegal,” muttered James, as he and Annie started toward the car.

“Pretty sure destroying the entire world is worse than a little minor car theft,” said Annie.

I slid into the driver’s seat, leaning over to unlock the doors on the other side of the car. Annie and James climbed in, and I shoved the tip of the screwdriver into the ignition, wiggling it until I felt that essential, comfortingly familiar catch. When I twisted it, the engine rumbled on.

“Next stop, the end of the goddamn world,” I said, and hit the gas.

Nothing moved except for the wind as we drove through Ames. Somehow, the little waves of motion in the grass and the trees made it more obvious how frozen everything else was. There were no cats, no dogs, no squirrels or birds . . . and no people.

“How many cuckoos are we expecting to find here?” asked James.

“Too many,” said Annie.

“That’s not a number,” he said. “I know you think you sound cool when you say things like that, but actual information and tactical plans are much, much cooler. I promise you.”

“I’m a big fan of actual information,” said Annie. “Unfortunately, right now, we don’t have any. We know Sarah was somehow able to transport us across the country to Iowa. We know there isn’t time for backup to get here before we deal with the literally world-destroying cuckoo situation. We know that they’ve forced Sarah into her fourth instar, which is apparently a big enough deal to make even other cuckoos say ‘wait, maybe this is bad.’”

“We know we might have to kill her to make this stop.”

My words fell into a sudden silence that yawned like a pit in the middle of our stolen car, seeming to steal away all sound. I glanced at Antimony. She didn’t meet my eyes.

“That’s what you’re not saying, isn’t it? We know we have two anti-telepathy charms and the weapons we were carrying when we fell through the hole in space, and we know I just stole a car, and we know that maybe we’re about to have to kill our cousin.”

“Artie—”

“And you know I’ve been in love with her since we were kids, and you know she’s my best friend, and you know that these last five years have almost literally killed me, so maybe it’s only fair that I should actually literally kill her.”

“You know I don’t want to have to do this,” she said, and her voice was very small, and very tired.