own funeral, black hair fanned across the pillows around her, eyes closed. She was wearing a simple white dress, almost childlike in its cut and style.
Elsie crowded into the room behind me, knocking me out of the doorway. When I still didn’t move, she pried my fingers off the doorknob and closed the door, creating a small bubble of privacy.
“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