Page 71 of Tidal Creatures

“Huh,” says Smita. “She lasted a lot longer than I expected her to.”

“Not the most social person in the house,” says Erin. “And given that we have two teenagers who mostly hide in their rooms, and also me, that’s saying something pretty impressive. But if she says she’ll help, she’ll help, and that means she’s with us for charting out your windows and hopefully figuring out which one you want. Why are we doing this?”

“One of our friends was murdered while she was in a place no one should be able to access without a Lunar,” says Artemis. “We said we were looking for her body.”

“That can have a lot of meanings,” says Erin. “Sorry about your friend. And I’m sure you’ll find the answers you’re looking for now that you’ve got a little outside help. I’m going to go check on the kids, but I’ll come along with you all when it’s actually time to go out where the alchemists are.” She gestures for Smita to follow her out of the kitchen, and the two of them make their exit, heading quickly up the stairs.

“I should get home,” says Isabella, seeing the dissolution of their temporary gathering as an opportunity for escape. “My son will be home from school by now, and if there’s any chance the wards might go down, I need to be there before it happens.”

“Yes, you should be,” says Kelpie solemnly. “The people who made me … they wouldn’t think twice about killing him if they thought it would help them get whatever it is they want, and they’d use the pieces against you.”

Isabella looks horrified for a moment, then says, briskly, “I’ll look up moonrise online, and meet you all at the clocktower. Sir.” She turns to Roger. “Can I bring my son and husband here while we’re on campus? I can make something up to explain why, but I don’t want them left alone.”

Roger nods. “Tim and Kim won’t be coming with us. If you say you’re babysitting, they’re highly unlikely to come downstairs and contradict you.”

“Thank you,” says Isabella. She gives Kelpie a brisk, one-armed hug, then flees for the door.

One by one, they’re slipping away. Chang’e looks to Artemis, then to Kelpie. “Is there a place these two could go and talk, maybe? Without being listened to the whole time?”

“They can go out in the backyard,” says Roger, and gestures to a door. “No one will bother them there.”

“Wonderful,” says Chang’e. “I want to go out front and check out that peach tree I saw before Judy shoves me out of the way and starts trying to interrogate you about linguistics.”

Roger smiles toothily. “Having a little trouble keeping her suppressed?”

“You have no idea,” says Chang’e. “Being at Berkeley with you and feeling like she couldn’t talk to you has been wearing on her ever since we found out what you are. Máni, you want to come with me?”

“Going to leave me alone in the yard when she wins and jerks you back inside to yell at him, aren’t you?”

“Oh, probably,” she says, and he’s laughing as they head back toward the front door, leaving Artemis and Kelpie to look at each other awkwardly. Roger sighs and puts his mug down on the counter.

“Door’s right there if you ladies want to do this outside, or you can have the kitchen,” he says. “I’ll be in my office either way. It’s the door at the end of the hall with the bronze sign that says ‘Please, no,’ in eleven languages. If you can read them all, you may knock. If you can’t, unless the house is on fire, please leave me alone.”

“Okay…?” says Kelpie, and watches in bemusement as he picks up the coffee pot, refills his mug, and takes it with him out of the kitchen.

At last they are alone. Neither one of them looks particularly happy about it. Kelpie looks like she’s going to be sick.

“I didn’t—” she begins.

“I wasn’t—” says Artemis, at the same time. She stops, catching her breath, and takes a step backward, putting some more distance between her and Kelpie, and at the same time, opening the path to the back door. “They’re right, though. We should talk. Do you want to do it inside or out in the garden?”

“Outside is still really new to me,” says Kelpie. “It’s exciting. I’ve seen flowers before, but they were always in the hydroponics section, or part of someone’s experiment.”

Artemis frowns, biting the edge of one lip. “I don’t … I don’t like that for you.”

“I didn’t know anything different.” Kelpie shrugs. “Margaret told me the accident had messed up my head just as much as my body, and I trusted her, so I thought she was telling the truth. I believed her when she said I could never risk going up to the surface, not until they finished fixing me.”

“Fixing you?”

“I guess I was already too human when they made me for them to see me as the kind of tool they wanted me to be? Sometimes when new technicians came to the lab, they’d say I was in the ‘uncanny valley,’ and so funny-looking that I was cute. I didn’t really understand what that meant, but they didn’t seem to say it to be mean, and the ones who felt that way were almost always nice to me, so I figured it had to be a good thing.”

“Okay…”

“Oh, um. Fixing me. Right. I looked a lot less … human? I guess? When I first woke up?” Kelpie waves her hands, encompassing the hooves, the tail, the complexion that not even the world’s worst spray tan could explain. She doesn’t look human. She looks bipedal but like a member of some other species entirely, something that was never intended to stand in this kitchen and talk about human things. “So they were working to change those parts of me so they’d be more normal. And give me back my memory from before the accident.”

“Since now we know there was no ‘before the accident,’ what does that mean?”

“It means that Margaret would bring me papers she said I wrote, and my application to come and work in the lab, and pictures of my family in Florida. We’d do flash cards, with things on them that I needed to recognize so I’d be safe when I finally left the lab. Cars and buses and sidewalks and money. She worked really hard to get me ready.” Kelpie sighs. “I know it’s probably wrong, but my whole life, I’ve thought one day I was going to get to be something else, and even though I don’t mind what I am that much—people should have tails, it’s hard to tell what they’re thinking when they don’t, and toes are weird, I’m glad I don’t have toes—it’s hard to let go of what I thought I was meant to be.”