one?”
I took a breath, intending to argue. Then I deflated. “Fine,” I said sullenly as I put the charm around my neck. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have listened. But now you’re not listening. The cuckoo downstairs isn’t Sarah.”
“If she’s not Sarah, how did she get into the house?”
“The door in the fence was unlocked when Elsie and I got back.”
That was enough to make Sam sit up. Unlike Annie, who was wearing an oversized roller derby shirt and a pair of jogging shorts, he was wearing nothing but a pair of sweatpants. When the blankets fell away, I was treated to more answers about how furry her simian boyfriend was than I had ever actually wanted.
“That door’s never unlocked,” he said. “I got found in the woods by a bunch of campers once and had to walk back here in human form, and Mr. Price made me stand at the gate for twenty minutes while he took his time finding his shoes and coming down to get me.”
“Dad took pictures,” said Antimony, reaching into the drawer again, this time to produce a Taser and several throwing knives, which she promptly dropped on the bed. “Artie, turn around. If I have to go downstairs and kick an imposter’s ass, I want to put a bra on first.”
“Superheroes never stop to put on their underwear before they fight the forces of evil,” I said, dutifully turning to face the door.
“Most of them are telekinetic and have gravity-defying boobs,” said Antimony as she rattled around behind me. “My boobs aren’t gravity-defying. My boobs are very, very aware of gravity, and they don’t like it. They want to be protected from it whenever possible, especially if I’m about to go up against a cuckoo. Why was the door unlocked?”
“I don’t know.” I stared at the posters on the inside of Annie’s door, twitching slightly. “Maybe Sarah went outside for some reason. Maybe someone lured her outside. And she didn’t lock the door.”
“She knows to lock the door.”
“Maybe . . . maybe she didn’t lock it on purpose.” The idea was appealing, which probably meant it was wrong. The most appealing ideas always are. Still, I pressed on, saying, “Maybe she knew she had to warn us somehow, and figured leaving the door unlocked would at least be a clue that something was wrong.”
“Hang on,” said Sam. “Why are you both focusing on ‘how did an imposter get in,’ and not on ‘how can you be so sure it’s an imposter’? I mean, is it just some weirdo wearing a Sarah mask, or what?”
“You can turn around now, Artie,” said Annie. She continued, “Cuckoos are a low-individual dimorphism species. They all look alike. They have about the same degree of sexual dimorphism as humans or fūri, but their faces, their bodies . . . they tend to be identical, or very close to it. It wouldn’t be hard for another cuckoo to take Sarah’s place.” She sucked in a sharp breath. When I turned around, she was staring at me.
“The hum,” she said. “Even before I put the charm on, the hum was gone. I didn’t notice because I was asleep. That’s how you knew, isn’t it? There was no hum.”
Sam put his hand up. “Footnote, please?”
“We’re all telepathically attuned to Sarah. Makes it easier for her to project thoughts into our heads, makes it harder for us to keep her out of our heads. When she’s in range—so within, say, a half mile—we get a sort of static effect behind our thoughts. Like white noise. The hum came back when she stepped into the warehouse, for me. And now it’s gone again. Sarah’s out of range.”
“My range is more than a half a mile,” I said. “I can tell she’s there when she’s within three miles of me. She’s not here. She’s not in the woods outside the compound, either. She’s gone.” Panic was clawing at the back of my throat.
Antimony must have heard it in my voice. She stepped quickly across the floor, dodging several suspicious-looking piles that clearly contained more than just clothes, and gripped my shoulders. “Breathe,” she said. “You need to breathe. We’re going to find her.”
“Um, maybe this is a bad time and everything, but if Sarah’s gone and there’s a cuckoo in the living room, we should probably worry about that before we worry about where Sarah is?” Sam finally got out of the bed, grabbing a sweatshirt off the floor and tugging it on. “I don’t know