letting myself out into the cool night air. My feet left clear impressions in the dewy grass as I made my way to the barn.
Inside, Heloise was still strapped to the table, and Dad was sitting nearby, the can of Raid in his hand. James was standing over the captive cuckoo, fingers spread wide, like he was soaking up the heat from a campfire.
“What’s he doing?” I asked.
Dad glanced over at me, and I saw the flicker of grief in his expression before he clamped it down and said, with merciful neutrality, “Testing to see how much cold a cuckoo can endure before it starts talking. They can apparently survive in sub-arctic temperatures, which is pretty impressive. There must be something strange about their musculature. We’ll pay close attention when we analyze the tissue we got from that other one.”
“This is boring,” said Heloise. She turned her head and smiled brightly in my direction. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the little half-incubus. I didn’t expect to see you so soon. Or ever, really. The hive should have torn you apart.”
“Annie’s back,” I said. “I bet cuckoos like heat a lot less. Sarah hates the middle of the summer.”
“You know, my family thinks I’m the nice one, because I spend most of my time in my room and I don’t bother people unless I have to, and because I think it’s not fair of me to use my pheromones on standard humans. They didn’t ask to share the planet with a bunch of people who look like them but aren’t them. This isn’t the X-Men.” I made my way to one of the trays of tools that had been set out for the first cuckoo’s necropsy. There were several scalpels of varying size and sharpness. I selected one of the larger ones before turning back to Heloise.
She was still watching me. She wasn’t smiling anymore. Not even a little bit. I started walking toward her, the scalpel in my hand.
“They think I’m the nice one because I don’t give them any reason not to, but you know who never thought I was the nice one? Sarah. That’s part of why we get along so well. She’s always known that I could be really dangerous if I wanted to. I never wanted to. I just wanted to read comic books and play with my computer and love her. Even if I never told her I loved her, being able to do it was enough.”
“I didn’t do anything,” said Heloise hurriedly. James had closed his hands and stepped back, expression going politely neutral. He wasn’t going to stop me from whatever I wanted to do next. That was good to know.
“I think we might disagree there,” I said, stopping next to the table. I lowered the scalpel until it was pressed, lightly, against the skin above her collarbone. I wasn’t pressing down—not yet—and she wasn’t bleeding, but she would be soon enough. Skin, whether human or cuckoo, is easy to cut, and difficult to heal. “We got her back.”
Heloise’s eyes went even wider. “What?”
“We went to your hive, and we were careful, and we got her back. She’s here now, in a room that’s warded against your little telepathic tricks, so the other cuckoos can’t hear her.” I pressed down slightly on the scalpel, until the blade was indenting her flesh. “Here’s a fun question for you: why would I tell you this, knowing that you’ll just broadcast it all to any cuckoo who gets close enough to potentially help you? Got any ideas?”
Heloise couldn’t pull away from the scalpel, so she held perfectly still, staring at me. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Why not? You’re not my family. She is. You’re just the monster that helped them hurt her.”
“Because I look exactly like her,” Heloise said, and for a moment, the smugness worked its way back into her voice. “You humans are so stupid. You can threaten me all you want, but you’ll never—ahh!”
Dad winced when she screamed. So did James. I raised the scalpel, blade now dripping with the clear lymph that serves cuckoos in place of blood.
“Want to say that again?” I asked. “You’ll look a lot less like her if I start slicing pieces off. It might be easier to look at you. So it’s not a bad idea.” I started to bend over her again.
“Wait!” Heloise looked at me with fear and misery in her eyes, and maybe it made me a monster, but