back,” I said, voice cracking in the middle of the sentence, like my mother’s disapproval had somehow hurled me all the way back into puberty. “We didn’t have a lot of time, and you were all arguing about the best way to do this. I couldn’t wait any longer.”
“Arthur James Harrington-Price, did your father and I raise you to be a fool?” Mom took a step forward, virtually looming over me. It was a nice trick, since I’m taller than she is. “Because rushing in with minimal backup is the definition of foolishness.”
“No, it isn’t,” I snapped, and stepped forward, toward her. It was like our heights reversed in an instant. Now I was the one looming. “I took a sorcerer, a fūri, and a succubus who drives like she’s auditioning for Mario Kart, all equipped with anti-telepathy charms, assisted by a cuckoo who was willing to betray his own kind for the sake of saving this world, and I got Sarah back. Honestly, I would have been happier if I could have taken fewer people, because it wasn’t like we were ever going to have a pitched battle in the middle of Beaverton. We needed to get in, find her, and bring her home. We did that.”
“Artie . . .” Her face softened. “You know she’s not well.”
“He’s not stupid, Aunt Jane.”
We all turned. Antimony was standing on the stairs, her hair sticking to the sweat on her cheeks and forehead, a terrifying calm in her expression. She looked like someone who had come to deliver the news of a death to a family. My heart clenched.
She looked at me as she said, “Sarah’s in the middle of what the other cuckoos called a metamorphosis, and when she wakes up, there’s every chance she wakes up being driven by an equation so large that it breaks the brains that try to hold it. She’ll be a fourth instar cuckoo. She may not be Sarah anymore, at least not the way that we think of her. And we may need to make sure she doesn’t crack this world open like an egg. Artie knows all of that. He knew it before we went to find her. But he also knows that we’re family.”
“She’s right,” said Aunt Evie. “I hope and pray that Sarah can fight this—that she’s more Price than cuckoo. But if she can’t, it’s better that we be the ones to stop her. It’s better that it be her family.”
She was talking about killing Sarah. That was what this really came down to. She was talking about taking a knife and driving it into the base of Sarah’s skull, where it would sever her brain stem and kill her as quickly and painlessly as possible. Cuckoos don’t have the same arrangement of internal organs and weak spots as true mammals. The fastest, cleanest way of taking them out is by targeting the brain.
The thought was enough to make my stomach churn, especially since I couldn’t say that they were doing anything wrong. If it came down to a choice between Sarah or the world, we would choose the world. We wouldn’t have a choice.
“Where’s Dad?” I asked.
“Out in the barn with James,” said Uncle Kevin. “They’re trying to get the cuckoo we captured earlier to talk. The one you didn’t lose.”
“We didn’t lose Mark,” I said. “We just . . . didn’t bring him back.” If he had any sense of self-preservation, he’d already be on his way home, returning to the sister he loved and the parents he liked well enough to keep alive.
I somehow didn’t think the cuckoos would be very forgiving of his role in our recovering Sarah.
“That sounds like losing your hostage to me,” said Mom.
“Yeah, well, we had to do something, or we wouldn’t even be having this argument.” I shook my head. “I’m going out to the barn. Maybe Heloise knows what we can do to save Sarah.”
“Artie.”
I stopped and looked at Elsie, raising my eyebrows in unspoken question. She looked back at me, earnest and clearly grieving.
“What happens if she says there’s nothing we can do?”
Again, my stomach roiled. I somehow kept my voice calm as I replied, “Then you take the mice into Sarah’s room and you make sure they see everything. She’s a part of this family. She’s going to be remembered.”
This time, when I started walking, she didn’t stop me. Nobody did. I made my way across the living room and down the hall to the back door,