“He did, but I was the only family member who could get here before you were out of surgery . . . and given the circumstances, I was the only one for the job.”
The Bakers lived in Columbus, Ohio, the same city where my brother was doing his research project on basilisk breeding. I frowned. “Is Alex here?”
“No. I couldn’t reach him when the call first came, and I told him he didn’t need to come once we were sure that you were going to live.” Her smile was fleeting, and strained. “I didn’t see any point in filling this hospital with anxious relatives before we had to. Not when Mike and I are already filling that role, and your various cryptid friends are coming and going at all hours.”
She wasn’t mentioning Sarah. The chill intensified. “Grandma, what aren’t you telling me?”
She took a deep breath. When she let it out, she seemed smaller somehow, like she had deflated. “Verity, it’s important you understand that I am not angry with you. I’m not angry with any of you. You were in an impossible situation, and it was a choice between doing . . . what you did . . . and endangering the whole family. I might have done the same thing, if I were in your position. Sarah made her own choices.”
Alarm bells were ringing in my head. I sat up a little straighter. “Where’s Sarah?”
“She’s asleep.” Grandma’s lips thinned into a hard line. “She’s been asleep since I got here. I made her sleep, because it was the only way to make her stop screaming.”
“Oh, God,” I whispered, slumping against the pillows. “Is she going to be okay?”
“I’ll be honest with you, Verity: I don’t know. I don’t have any way of knowing. Cuckoo psychology is such a strange thing, and Sarah didn’t start out like me.”
I swallowed hard, looking at her as levelly as I could. “You mean Sarah didn’t start out knowing right from wrong.”
Grandma didn’t say anything.
By human standards, cuckoos are born sociopathic. They get it from their mothers. Literally: when a telepathic sociopath carries a baby for nine months, that baby is going to be born with a radically skewed moral compass. Grandma Angela was born “normal” by human standards, because she’s not a receptive telepath. So she didn’t get the in-utero conditioning to teach her that other people existed only to be pawns and playthings. Sarah, on the other hand . . . did. Grandma adopted her when she was seven years old, after her human foster parents died, and spent years after that carefully removing the deep conditioning Sarah had received from her biological mother.
Sarah is a sweet, thoughtful, empathic person. She didn’t start out that way. And there was no way of knowing whether Grandma had managed to get all the little mental land mines out of Sarah’s head. That was a large part of why Sarah always arranged to audit courses at schools near one of her cousins. If she ever went back to her cuckoo roots, she wanted one of us close enough to kill her before she did too much damage.
My mouth was suddenly dry. I swallowed several times before I managed to ask, “Is there anything I can do?”
“What she did . . .” Grandma shook her head. “I couldn’t do that if I wanted to. If you’d asked me, I would have told you it wasn’t possible. But she managed it, and now she won’t stop screaming. She hurt herself, Verity. She hurt herself very badly. Not in a physical way, although that would have been easier. Somewhere inside her mind.”
“Like pulling a muscle?” I ventured.
“Something like that.” Grandma sighed, very briefly looking every one of her years. She reached over and patted my hand. “I’m glad you’re all right. And I truly don’t blame any of you for what happened. But Sarah’s going back to Ohio with me, and I don’t know how long it’s going to take her to recover.”
Or if she was going to recover. Grandma didn’t say that part; she didn’t need to. It was written in the tension of her mouth and the defeated slant of her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Don’t be sorry. Just get better.” Grandma leaned forward and hugged me tight. “You had us all scared, Very-Very, and you know Sarah wouldn’t have done it if she didn’t love you more than anything.”
“I know,” I said, and returned the hug as best I could with the tubes sticking out of my arms. “If there’s anything I can do . . .”
“Just get better,” Grandma repeated, and let go, standing. “I don’t want to tire you out. You’re supposed to be still recovering.”
“Okay.” I sighed, sagging deeper into the mattress. “I love you, Grandma.”
“I love you, too, Very-Very.” She leaned in and tapped me gently on the forehead. “Now get some rest.”
Grandma wasn’t a receptive telepath, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t push. I was asleep almost before I felt myself getting tired, and I didn’t hear her leave the room.
I awoke to the sound of cheering.
“HAIL THE RESURRECTION OF THE ARBOREAL PRIESTESS!”
Normally, waking up to the mice will elicit a groan and maybe a flung pillow. This time, I just smiled and said, without opening my eyes, “Amen.”
The mice went nuts, shouting hosannas and praising the hospital room, the bed, the pillows, and everything else they could think of to high Heaven. One enterprising acolyte even began praising my bedhead, calling it “the tousled proof of our glorious Priestess’ trials.” I’d have to remember that one the next time there wasn’t enough mousse in the world.
Next to the bed, Uncle Mike snorted and said, “You know, they’re not going to shut up for like a week.”
“I’m looking forward to it.” I opened my eyes and turned to face him, a process that was greatly simplified by the fact that most of the tubes—and the catheter—had been removed while I was sleeping. “Hi, Uncle Mike.”
“Hi, Very-girl. You planning to stay awake for a little while this time?”
“That’s not fair,” I protested. “Grandma knocked me out before.”
“Because you needed it. If you’re awake, you don’t need it anymore. The doctor says you’re just about fully recovered at this point. I knew you were too stubborn to stay injured for long.” Now Uncle Mike smiled, relief underscoring the expression. “You scared the crap out of me, you know.”
“HAIL THE FAMILIAL TERROR!” exulted the mice.
“Hey, this is a hospital,” I said, sitting up to see the congregation gathered on my bed. There were only about a dozen of them present. It had sounded like more. “Keep it down.”
“Yes, Priestess,” said one of the mice, sounding abashed. The others cheered. Very softly.
“That’s better.” I looked back to Uncle Mike. “I didn’t exactly sign up to get kidnapped.”
“I know, I know.” Uncle Mike scowled. “When we got that anti-telepathy charm back, Kitty took it to some hidebehinds for a look-see. They said it had a homing compulsion on it. Once you picked it up, you had to return it to Margaret.”
“Well, that’s one bit of stupidity explained,” I said. “When you say ‘got it back,’ you mean . . .”
“That you had swallowed it, yes. And no, I’m not the one who had to do the actual retrieval.”
“Thank God for small favors,” I muttered, before asking, in a normal voice, “How did you find me?”
“Dominic. That boy’s crazy about you, you know. He’d better be. The Covenant will never take him back now.”
“Good thing I’m crazy about him, too.” I tried to say it lightly. I failed. “Uncle Mike, about Sarah . . .”
“She’s the one who made sure we kept looking for you, right up until Dominic showed up to help us out,” he said. “She’s the one who got the dragons looking for you, and it was the dragons who followed the Covenant back to their base and confirmed you were being held in that warehouse. She’s the one who transported the mice to the area to survey the ground floor and give us the all clear. Sarah knew what she was doing. I know it’s hard for you to believe right now, but she had her eyes wide open through this whole thing. None of it happened to her without her knowing it was a risk, just like you didn’t get shot without knowing it was a risk. Am I clear?”