to make sure the scene is sterilized before they join us at the compound. Did Annie set the car on fire?”
“She did,” I said. “She’s still down there. Why—”
“Once she’s sure the car is burnt enough not to be a problem anymore, she’ll call the fire back into her body,” said Elsie. “She couldn’t contain like, a forest fire or anything, but something as small as burning out a car, the fire won’t have time to forget who it belongs to. That way, we don’t have to worry about accidentally burning down Portland or anything. Global climate change means we have to be responsible about our pyrokinesis.” She laughed, sudden and bright and absolutely mirthless.
I winced. “He’s going to be okay, Elsie. I promise.”
“Did you turn into a Caladrius while I wasn’t looking?” She lowered her phone. “Because unless you have special healing powers that you’ve never mentioned before, you can’t promise anything. My baby brother has head trauma. People can die from head trauma.”
“He’s a Lilu,” I said desperately. “Lilu heal faster than humans.”
“Sure, but we’re not superheroes, and healing at roughly three times the human rate doesn’t mean we can’t be broken.” Elsie glanced over her shoulder at the brightly lit car. “So you know, if he dies before the two of you get to talk this out, I am never going to forgive you.”
“Talk what out?”
A wave of irritation washed off Elsie as she focused back on me. “You’re not this stupid. Stop trying to be.”
“Whoo!” We both turned. Annie was trudging back up the incline, her hands dark with soot, radiating contentment. “Car’s done. Fire’s contained. Let’s get the hell home before something else goes wrong.”
“This isn’t over,” said Elsie, attention on me.
“I know,” I said, and walked toward the car. I was tired, I was injured, and I already wanted to go home.
Sometimes recovery’s not everything it’s cracked up to be.
Six
“Every relationship, good or bad, is different. Some of them are just more different than others.”
—Enid Healy
On the way to a safe, secure, intentionally isolated family compound in the woods outside of Portland, Oregon
SHARING THE BACKSEAT WITH Artie meant riding with his head resting in my lap, since the seatbelt could keep him safely restrained, but it couldn’t keep him upright. I stroked his forehead with one hand, savoring the foggy glimpses of his thoughts that came with the contact. It wasn’t enough to tell me what he was thinking—or whether he was aware enough to be thinking anything at all, rather than displaying flashes of random brain activity—but it meant he was alive. That was what really mattered. Artie was alive.
I let my hand rest against his skin, reaching deeper, looking for signs that the faintness of his thoughts was somehow related to the damage he’d suffered in the accident. Elsie’s words from before were haunting me, making it difficult to focus on anything but worrying.
People die from head trauma. People die. Artie was people, and Artie had hit his head, and no matter how silly and overdramatic the thought might seem, Artie could die. I could wake up tomorrow to a world that didn’t have an Artie in it, and I would never have told him—
And that didn’t matter, because I was pretty sure he didn’t feel the same way about me. He loved me because I was his cousin, not because I was a girl who liked him more than girls are supposed to like their cousins, even the ones who belong to a completely different species. All I could do by saying something was make it weird.
Still, I pushed deeper into his blurry, half-formed thoughts, looking for some sign that they were anything out of the ordinary. What would thoughts born of a concussion even look like? Would they be tattered around the edges, or too scrambled to hold themselves together, or something else, something worse and more confusing?
“—are you listening?”
Annie’s voice. I raised my head, pulling myself out of Artie’s thoughts, and said, “Huh?”
“You weren’t listening.” She twisted in her seat so she could look at me. “I said, we’re almost to the house. How’s Artie doing?”
“Still knocked cold, but I’m not finding anything scary in his head. Just a lot of jumble. Pretty normal for someone who’s hit their head. I’m not too worried. I’m pretty sure I’d be able to tell if something was really wrong in there.”
“And if you couldn’t?” asked Elsie.
I took a deep breath. She was worried about her brother. Of course she