“Well?” she demanded, in a low, dangerous voice. “Is it her?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t know.” My ears reddened with the shame of my admission. If this was Sarah, I should have known, the same way I’d known that Heloise wasn’t Sarah. Even with the anti-telepathy charm, I should have known. She’d been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. She was my Sarah.
But all cuckoos look essentially alike, and this one was no different. Everything about her was right, and everything about her was wrong, because I never saw Sarah in this kind of silence. Even when she was asleep, I could hear her in the back of my head. I’d been listening to her my whole life.
“We need to hurry,” said Elsie. “I don’t know how long we can creep around in here.”
“I know. Just . . . just hold on.” Cautiously, I approached the bed. The cuckoo didn’t move. She was profoundly asleep—if sleep was even the right word. She was so still that she might as well have been dead. Only the very slight rise and fall of her chest kept me from panicking. She was alive. She was. She was just . . . gone.
When I reached the head of the bed, I leaned over and gingerly brushed the cuckoo’s bangs away from her forehead. There was a long, shallow cut there, held closed with butterfly bandages. It was clearly Aunt Evie’s handiwork. I exhaled through my nose, trying to keep myself as quiet as possible, even as my hand started to shake.
“It’s her,” I said. “It’s Sarah.”
“Are you sure? Heloise had a cut on her forehead, too.”
“This is the real one. Heloise had a cut on her forehead because someone put it there. The edges were too regular, and the cut itself was too deep. This is from Sarah slamming into the dashboard of my car. It’s her.” I put my hand on her shoulder, pushing as hard as I dared. “Wake up. We’re here to rescue you.”
She didn’t react.
I pushed again, even harder this time. “Sarah, come on. You need to wake up.”
She still didn’t react.
I sighed heavily. “Okay. I guess this is the way it’s got to be.” I bent forward and slid my arms underneath her, gathering as much of her weight as I could before I straightened.
She felt like a dried leaf, all shape and no substance. Her skin was burning hot where it touched mine. She was running a fever so intense that it seemed like it would have to be fatal, the sort of thing no one really walked away from. I pulled her close to my chest, one arm supporting her torso while the other held up her knees, and looked to Elsie.
“We need to get her out of here,” I said.
“You think the cuckoos are going to let us walk out of here with their precious princess?” she asked. “We have telepathy blockers. She doesn’t.”
“I think we have to try,” I said. “Get the door?”
Elsie looked at me grimly. Then she nodded and moved to clear the way for me to carry Sarah into the hall.
Every step felt like a mile, weighted down by both Sarah’s body and my own growing fear. She wasn’t waking up. Whatever they’d done to her, she wasn’t waking up, and that meant she was defenseless; no matter what happened between here and home, we’d be the ones who had to keep her safe and get her away from the danger presented by her own kind. Would she understand why we’d done what we’d done? Would she forgive us?
The hall was dark, and I stepped on something that squeaked loudly, the sort of squeezebox that gets put into kids’ toys to drive their parents up the wall. Elsie and I both froze, counting the seconds. No one came to investigate. We started walking again.
Elsie led the way down the stairs, ready to catch me and Sarah both if my balance failed me. We were almost to the bottom when a familiar shriek of rage and indignation shattered the silence: Antimony. Which meant the cuckoos were onto us.
Which meant we had to run.
I didn’t look back as I raced for the door, and neither did Elsie, leaping several feet ahead of me to wrench the door open and start across the cuckoo-burdened lawn. Our approach had been quiet, careful, and masked by Mark’s presence. None of those things were on our side now. As we ran, the cuckoos turned to track us, snapping out of whatever fugue they’d been wrapped in and beginning to move forward.
“It’s Sarah!” I yelled. “They’re following Sarah!”
“Great observation! Keep running!”
The car was still parked in the middle of the street, exactly as we’d left it. Elsie pulled one of the back doors open and I thrust Sarah inside, not bothering with the seatbelt as I shoved her across the back seat and started to slide in beside her. That’s when I froze.
The cuckoos from the lawn were bearing down on us, their faces twisted with fury, their eyes glowing white. Annie, Sam, and Mark were nowhere to be seen. If we drove away now, we’d lose them.
“Artie! Get in the fucking car!”
I twisted to look at my sister, who was gesturing wildly for me to get in so she could start the engine. We had Sarah. We were saving Sarah. If we tried to wait and save the others—if that was even possible at this point—we’d lose her, and if Mark could be trusted, losing her meant losing the world.
This was what we’d been training for since we were old enough to understand what it meant to fight. This was what we’d always known was coming.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and slammed the car door.
I was still buckling my belt when Elsie hammered her foot down on the gas, sending us rocketing forward, into the front ranks of the charging cuckoos. I realized what she was going to do almost too late, and threw myself to the side, holding Sarah’s body in place with my own. I didn’t see the impact, or how many of the cuckoos she hit, but I felt it, a shuddering jolt that traveled through my entire body even as the car was spinning into a full turn and we were racing away down the street.
“How big is she broadcasting?” demanded Elsie. “Check her eyes!”
I peeled myself off of Sarah and forced her left eye open. A pale blue iris greeted me, the pupil so small that it was virtually a pinprick. “I don’t think she is,” I said.
“Good. Hold on.”
Elsie has never had a lot of respect for the rules of the road, but normally she at least drives like she doesn’t want to go back to traffic school. Apparently, having a swarm of cuckoos chasing us meant all bets were off. I yelped as the car spun and I was slammed against the door. I yelped again as I dove across the backseat to stop Sarah from hitting her head on the window. I didn’t know exactly what was going on inside her head, but I couldn’t imagine that a concussion would make things any better.
“Slow down!” I shouted.