Page 87 of Butterfly Effects

“My father doesn’t know,” snapped Artie. “And if he did, he’d say I needed to go and get her back. He’d have done it for Mom. You did it for Grandpa. Why are you not willing to let me do exactly what any member of our family would be doing right now?”

“Honestly, Artie, I don’t have a good answer for that, and we just met, so it’s not like you have any reason to trust me anyway,” said Thomas. “But I can’t open a tunnel to Johrlar again so quickly after the first one. I don’t have the power. We need to sit down and come up with a plan that doesn’t just count on us blundering into an answer, and give me time to recover. Then we can go back for Sarah. Once we have a plan.”

“We’re going back,” said Artie firmly. “This isn’t a discussion and it isn’t a request. I refuse to leave her behind after everything she’s been through, and everything she’s done trying to save us. Mom raised me better than that.”

“All right, sweetheart,” said Alice.

I had the distinct feeling I was overlooking something. I watched as my grandparents left for the kitchen, and mice began swarming onto the table, staring at Artie like he was some sort of impossible miracle. None of them seemed confused in the least about who he was. I guess Aeslin mice don’t have the same issue telling identical people apart as humans would, because they started to cheer and praise the return of the God of Chosen Isolation.

Sam’s tail snaked around my waist, and I leaned back against him as he wrapped his arms around my chest. “This has been … a lot,” he said, watching Artie and the mice.

“Yeah, it has,” I agreed. “And I can’t help feeling like I’m missing something that would make this all come together. What am I forgetting?”

“We just left your cousin, possibly two of your cousins, and a whole bunch of your distant relatives in a dimension swarming with Johrlac,” said Sam. “Oh, and now the only friendly cuckoo we have access to can’t telepathically receive, which makes her a lot less useful when it comes to stopping hostile telepaths from breaking into our brains…”

He stopped talking and craned his neck around so he could eye me suspiciously.

“Annie, what are you thinking?” he asked. “Because you have that look again.”

“I’m thinking that sometimes I can be really stupid for a smart person,” I said. “I totally forgot about our backup cuckoo.”

“Our … Oh!”

“Yeah.” I dug my phone out of my pocket, relieved to see I still had almost 80 percent battery charge. “Mark started this mess by calling me. Now I’m going to finish it by calling him.”

Finding Mark’s number wasn’t hard: it was the only recent unknown in my call history. I pulled it up, put the phone on speaker, and pressed the button, setting the phone down on the table as it began to ring. Artie detached himself from the still-cheering mice and wandered over to eye the phone warily.

“Who are you calling?” he asked. “It better not be my sister. She’ll just try to talk me out of this.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” I said. “I’m calling Mark.”

“Mark? As in the cuckoo?”

“The cuckoo king,” I said.

He was still eyeing me in disbelief when the phone clicked and the ringing stopped. For a moment, I thought Mark had decided to hang up on me rather than answering the phone. Then an unfamiliar female voice said, sweetly, “If you’re calling about my brother’s hospital bills, I will extract your larynx through the front of your throat before you have time to name a number, you fucking health insurance ghouls.”

“I told you, Cici, my hospital bill’s been covered,” said Mark in the background, barely managing to contain his laughter.

“Never put anything past these collections assholes,” said the girl—Cici, presumably. Mark’s human little sister. Not so little anymore, from the sound of her.

“Yes, you’re wiser than I in the way of hospitals,” said Mark. “Give me back my phone.”

“Why should I?”

Mark didn’t answer verbally, but Cici’s shrieks of laughter told me he was tickling her to get his phone back. The laughter died out and then he said, “This had better be important, I’m a little busy right now.”

“Your sister sounds really happy to have you home,” I said.

He paused. “Annie?”

“Yup.”

“I did not expect to hear from you so soon.”

“Because I’m supposed to be off on a suicide mission recovering my cousin?”

“Something like that.”