Still, Adrian was smiling as she approached. “The others are already downstairs. Come on in.” He held his arm toward the open door, ushering her into the foyer.
It was warm inside the house. Almost uncomfortably warm. The sort of heat put off by fireplaces in the dead of winter, first chasing away the chill in the air, before making everyone forget there had ever been a chill to begin with. True enough—as Nova walked past the formal parlor, she spied a fire raging inside a tiled fireplace. With sweat already sprouting on the back of her neck, she unzipped her hooded sweatshirt.
“My dads think it makes the place feel cozier,” said Adrian, almost apologetically. “It’s a lot cooler downstairs. Come on.”
She followed him down the narrow staircase into his basement bedroom and froze on the bottom step.
Oscar and Ruby were there—Ruby perched on the sofa and Oscar facing backward on Adrian’s desk chair.
But what made Nova hesitate was that Danna was there, too, in the form of hundreds of gold-and-black butterflies that filled every available shelf and table and the narrow sills of the high windows along the south wall.
Nova’s mouth ran dry.
Seeing so many of them at once, and not in the blur of battle like Nova always had before, might have been a beautiful sight. Except they weren’t moving. Not a beat of wings. Not a twitch of antennae. And though it was impossible to know for sure, Nova had the distinct feeling that all of their tiny bug eyes were fixated on her.
“She’s been following me around since we found Ace,” said Ruby. “Didn’t come with me to headquarters, but otherwise…” Her worried gaze flitted around at the butterflies.
“Has anyone contacted her dad, to let him know?” asked Adrian.
“I mentioned it to Thunderbird,” said Ruby, “and she said she’d have someone reach out and let him know that Danna is okay … sort of. I figured she’d go home by now, but maybe she thinks that seeing her stuck like this will make him worry even more?”
“Or maybe she doesn’t want to be left out of our exciting detective work,” said Oscar. “She’s still on the team, even in swarm mode, right?”
“Absolutely,” said Adrian. “She did lead us to Ace Anarchy. Maybe she’ll have more input to offer … however she can.”
“Why…” Nova paused to clear her throat and dared to take the final step into the room. “Why hasn’t she transformed back yet?”
“We figure she can’t for some reason,” said Adrian. “She needs all of her butterflies to converge. If even one is missing … not dead, but, like, trapped somewhere or too far away, then the others will be stuck in this form.”
“What I can’t figure out,” said Ruby, fidgeting with the wire on her wrist, “is why she doesn’t take us to that missing butterfly … or butterflies, if there is more than one. If she’s trapped somewhere, why hasn’t she helped us figure out how to help her, like she led us to Ace?”
Oscar shrugged. “Maybe she doesn’t know where it is.”
“But they all communicate with one another, even when they’re in this form,” said Adrian. “Like … a hive mind sort of thing. It seems unlikely that she wouldn’t know where the others are.”
Nova sat stiffly beside Ruby, thinking of the night one of Danna’s butterflies had been spying on her and the Anarchists inside the catacombs. They had captured it in a pillowcase and held it prisoner, eventually bringing it back to the row house and putting it in a mason jar.
Like a blindfolded hostage, that butterfly wouldn’t have been able to see where it was being taken. She supposed it made sense that it still didn’t know where it was, and therefore couldn’t call the rest of the creatures to it.
Still, she imagined she could feel the disgust emanating from the insects that surrounded her, making the hair stand on end all down her forearms.
Danna may not be able to speak to the others, but she did know the truth. She knew Nova’s secret.
It was only a matter of time before she figured out a way to communicate it to the rest of the group.
“I’m glad she’s here, at least,” said Adrian. He paused then, studying the swarm. “I’m glad you’re here,” he corrected, because it was rude to speak about someone like they weren’t even there, though Nova wasn’t sure Danna could actually hear in this form. “We’ll find a way to help Danna. There must have been