Elsie screeched to a stop at the front gate, which was towering, solid, and very locked. Annie hopped out of the car to enter the code. Elsie looked over her shoulder at me.
“Everything all right back there?” she asked. Is my brother alive? her thoughts asked.
When I was a kid, I couldn’t always tell the difference between the questions people asked out loud and wanted you to answer and the questions they thought so loudly that I couldn’t avoid overhearing them. There is a difference. Thoughts can be soft or loud, but they always sound exactly like the person they belong to. There’s no distortion, no getting drowned out by the sounds around them, no getting lost.
“He’s still asleep, but I can hear him,” I said, trying to sound encouraging. “I don’t know enough about head injuries to be absolutely sure what’s going on, but I’ve been with Verity when she had a concussion, and he sounds clearer than she did then.”
Of course, Verity had been awake with a concussion, not knocked cold. I didn’t think saying that to Elsie would be a very good idea.
Elsie’s thoughts were a roil of half-formed notions and questions she couldn’t quite put into words. She opened her mouth, a question starting to crystalize, and stopped as Annie threw herself back into the passenger seat. The gates began creaking open.
“They’re ready for us,” said Annie. “Drive.”
Elsie drove.
The compound “yard” was really more the compound meadow: a long stretch of reasonably flat ground that had been divested of trees and major obstacles, but otherwise left alone. Sometimes the carnival pitched tents there, when they were in town and wanted to visit their extended family. I had spent hundreds of hours there as a kid, racing around with my cousins, shrieking, having the normal childhood that most cuckoos are denied by their territorial, homicidal natures.
My species isn’t inherently evil—my existence, and Mom’s, proves that—but wow can we do a lot of damage when we’re not raised right. And almost none of us are raised right.
All the lights in the main house were on, turning it into a beacon against the grasping hands of night. As we got closer, I felt Evie’s mind snap into focus against mine, the sweet, generous thoughts of my beloved big sister instantly soothing me. If anyone could help Artie, it would be Evie. Kevin’s mind came into focus a few seconds later. We hadn’t spent quite as much time together, since he wasn’t my sibling or someone my own age. Still, he was a stable presence, calm, steady, ready to do whatever needed to be done. I relaxed a little, my hand still resting against Artie’s forehead. They would know what to do. They would fix this.
The other two minds I’d detected in the house were nearby, both bright and unfamiliar and subtly . . . off . . . from the human norm. I didn’t have enough of a grasp of what they were to understand the deviations I was picking up on, but neither of them felt hostile. That would have to be enough.
Elsie whipped down the driveway fast enough to make my shoulders tense, screeching to a stop in front of the porch. Evie and Kevin immediately descended the brick steps, moving toward the car. Evie opened the door next to me, warm welcome radiating from her.
“Hi, Sarah,” she said, leaning quickly in to brush a kiss against my forehead. The brief skin contact let me pick up more of her thoughts. She was frightened but keeping it under rigid control, not wanting to worry Elsie more than she already was. Injuries are common in our family. Injuries bad enough to leave a half-incubus unconscious for an extended period of time are not. “Mom told me you were coming. Can you keep your hands where they are while I check Artie’s pulse? I want you to say something if his thoughts change at all.”
“Sure,” I said. “Mom wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, though. In case I didn’t make it to Oregon.”
“I know, and she told me as much, but I’m out of practice at controlling my thoughts around a cuckoo, so I figured it was best to get things out in the open.” She leaned into the car, checking Artie’s pulse with practiced hands. “She wanted to make sure your room would be ready when you got here. We haven’t had a telepath in residence for years.”
Not since I’d gone and hurt myself. Cuckoos don’t normally make good house guests. “Thank you.”
“You’re family, silly. You don’t thank us for welcoming you home. You thank us for letting you settle in before we put you on the chore rotation.” Evie felt her way along the sides of Artie’s neck and skull before looking at the gash along his cheek. “You bled on him?”
I nodded.
“Good girl. That should slow down any infection enough that we can deal with it. No hospitals needed.”
Taking Artie or Elsie to a hospital was always a fraught thing, since their blood had a tendency to scramble human emotional responses in negative ways. I paused, realizing that the three of us were alone in the car. Elsie was talking to Kevin, and Annie was . . .
“Evie, why is there a monkey?” I asked, in a small, tight voice.
“That’s Sam,” said Evie. She stepped back. “He’s Annie’s boyfriend. He’s a fūri—a kind of yōkai therianthrope. We try not to call him a monkey; he doesn’t like it.”
“I can hear you, you know,” said the monkey—sorry, fūri—without taking his hands off Annie’s waist. He was easily six feet tall, with a tail almost as long as the rest of his body. He was also wearing jeans and a denim jacket, which made him unique among the monkeys I had known.
Humans are a kind of monkey. This was no stranger than Aunt Jane and Uncle Ted, or than Mom and Dad, honestly. Love finds a way.
“Sorry,” I called back. “Didn’t mean to be rude.”
“Hey, Sarah,” said Kevin, stepping up next to Evie. His thoughts radiated joy and concern in almost equal measure. He was as relieved by my return as my sister, which was nice. “Can you get out of the car? We want to move Artie inside.”
“Sure.” I undid my belt, sliding carefully out from under Artie. Kevin answered the question of what I was supposed to do next by ducking in and placing his own hands under Artie’s head, keeping it supported in basically the same position.
I stood, and Evie and Kevin crowded me out, attention focused on getting Artie out of the vehicle without jostling him more than he already had been. I took a step backward, and then another, wrapping my arms tightly around myself. I was still wearing Artie’s jacket. It was too big on me, and I didn’t need the warmth, but I didn’t take it off. Anything that made me feel like I was still anchored would be better than feeling like I was about to float away.
How had everything gone so wrong? And why had the wind only been blowing on one side of the street? Something about that seemed wrong. It seemed like a threat. I just couldn’t figure out what it was.