Those were the words I’d been most afraid of hearing. Tears suddenly burned in the corners of my eyes. I managed to swallow and forced myself to shrug, whispering, “I don’t know. I’ve never been connected to anyone who died before. I don’t know what it would feel like. Maybe she’s dead. I don’t know.”
“Shh, Sarah, shh.” He closed the distance between us in three long steps, putting his arms around me and gathering me close to him. It was a human gesture, and not one I was entirely comfortable with, but I let myself be gathered, pressing my face against his chest and sobbing. At least there was a layer of fabric between his skin and mine. He stroked my hair with one hand. “You need to calm down, okay? Can you do that for me? Because if Verity’s out of the picture, we have to figure out what we’re going to do, and I need you to be with me for that. So let it out, and let yourself calm down.”
How can yousay that?I demanded, my throat too full of tears—and snot, since mucus production is one of the biological traits that cuckoos are “lucky” enough to share with the human race—for me to speak.
Mike didn’t respond. He just kept stroking my hair. Slowly, I realized that he hadn’t heard me. I can only communicate telepathically with people I’m attuned to, and that requires spending a certain amount of time in my physical company. Uncle Mike and I only saw each other at holidays, if then, and I usually spent Christmas and Thanksgiving hiding in my room, if we were in Columbus, or hiding in Artie’s room, if we were in Portland. Without Verity, there was no one left who could hear me when I didn’t remember to talk out loud.
Swallowing to try and clear some of the stickiness from my throat, I pushed away from Mike and said, “Verity’s not out of the picture, okay? She’s just missing. I don’t know how, or why, but she’s not out of the picture. She’s not gone. Don’t you let yourself think that she is, not for an instant, or I swear, I will make you regret it.”
“I’m not saying she’s dead, Sarah, but if you can’t find her, and you hurt before she disappeared, there’s a pretty good chance that she’s not in fighting shape right now. We’re going to need to find her, and you’ve been here a lot longer than I have. So what do we do?”
The word “panic” rose to the tip of my tongue. I swallowed it, and said, “We need to call the Freakshow. Kitty will know if anyone saw anything.”
“Bogeymen aren’t always happy to share information. Kitty had a relationship with Verity. What makes you sure that she’ll talk to us?”
He was already referring to Verity in the past tense. I didn’t think he even realized he was doing it. I swallowed again, this time to stop myself from screaming, and said, “Kitty’s relationship with Verity is whyshe’ll talk to us. Kitty and Verity have an understanding, and Kitty and I know each other.” Calling us friends would have been too much of a stretch, but “allies by necessity” was a pretty accurate description.
Kitty would want Verity to be okay. If there was any way for her to help us out, she would.
“Okay,” said Uncle Mike. “So you go call the Freakshow.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Check the defenses, make sure there’s a lot of traps set, and change anything Verity would have known how to get around.” His tone was apologetic, and his words were accompanied by a wave of sorrow and determination so emotionally loud that I could have picked it up from a complete stranger. “We gotta assume she’s compromised, kiddo, and that means we batten down the hatches and we get ready for the siege to begin. Now get Kitty on the phone, and find out if there’s anything she can do to help us get Verity back. You’re the one who comes closest to knowing what happened to her, and I’ve got work to do.”
With that, he turned and walked out of the room, leaving me standing alone, staring after him, with absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do. No; that wasn’t true. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and started scrolling through my contacts. I would call the Freakshow. Kitty would know what to do. Someonewould know what to do, because I didn’t have a clue.
“You’ve reached the Freakshow,” said the bored, half-attentive voice of Angel, the bar’s only human bartender. “We’re closed right now, but if you’d like to come see us tomorrow night, we’d be happy to make all your dreams come true.” It might have been easier to believe her if she hadn’t punctuated her words with the sound of gum being noisily snapped.
“Angel, this is Sarah Zellaby, Verity’s cousin. Is Kitty available?”
“Who?” Angel’s tone changed over the course of that single syllable, going from distracted to fully focused on the phone. “You’re the blue-eyed girl, right? The one that comes in with Very some nights.” I could practically hear her thoughts rearranging themselves, making me important to her. My telepathy doesn’t work at a distance, but Angel had been in my sphere of influence before. Cuckoo tricks can linger. “Is everything okay?”
“Not really, no,” I said. “Is Kitty available?”
“Yeah, yeah. Hang on.” There was a soft scraping sound as she cupped her hand over the receiver. She may as well not have bothered; I heard her clearly when she shouted, “Hey, Carol! Tell Kitty she’s got a priority call on line two!” The scrape repeated as Angel took her hand away. Then she said, in a more reasonable tone, “She should be with you in a second. Sorry about the wait.”
“It’s okay.” I started walking in a circle around the card table, trying to calm myself down. It wasn’t working very well. I tried another tactic: “You’re still working? Even with the . . . even with everything that’s going on?”
“I like it here,” said Angel. “The Covenant of St. Stupid isn’t going to chase me off a job I actually enjoy just because they’ve decided to get judgmental about my coworkers. Kitty said I could have the time off without penalty, no problem, and I told her I’d rather stick with my friends. Some assholes want to come in here and start hacking, I’ll be right there with my pepper spray.”
A nervous giggle welled up in my throat. “That’s a really good attitude. Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. It’s the right thing to do.”
There was a clunking noise, followed by Kitty saying, “Thanks, Angel. You can hang up now.”
“Anytime, Kitty. Sarah, hope everything gets better for you. You sound stressed.” A click, and a change in the quality of the sound over the line, told me that Angel had hung up on her end.
“Hello?” I said.
“Sarah Zellaby,” said Kitty. Her voice seemed to come from next to me, rather than through the phone. That’s a classic bogeyman trick. They can throw their voices anywhere they can hear—which includes the other end of telephone lines. Just one more way nature and technology combine to make the world a creepier place. “Verity’s little adopted cousin with the big blue eyes and the clear antifreeze for blood. What brings a cuckoo like yourself to my virtual door?”
Humans have only known about cuckoos for a few generations. The bogeymen have known for centuries and, surprise surprise, they don’t like us much. That’s something they have in common with every other sapient species in the known world. “It’s Verity,” I said. “I can’t find her.”
There was a pause. Knowing what cuckoos were meant that Kitty also understood what we could do. “I’m listening,” she said.
I gave her the same explanation I’d given Uncle Mike, dwelling a little longer on the static, and the way it had gone away completely when the pain did. I finished by saying, “I’m scared. I think something terrible may have happened to her.”
“Before we start jumping at sunbeams, let me ask you this: is there any chance you’re having the cuckoo equivalent of a muscle cramp or something? Maybe you can’t feel her because you’ve got a problem, not because she’s not there.”