Imaginary Numbers by McGuire Seanan

Author:McGuire, Seanan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2020-02-24T16:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

“Family is the only thing you can’t replace.”

—Kevin Price

The front room of an isolated compound about an hour outside of Portland, Oregon

THE CUCKOO WOKE WITH a gasp, eyes widening and then going narrow as she realized she was looking at the barrel of a gun.

“Um, what?” she said, in a tremulous voice. “What’s going on?”

I have never been so glad not to be the one taking point on an interrogation. She sounded like Sarah. She sounded just like Sarah, enough that it would have made me second-guess myself if not for the ringing silence in my head where the steady, comforting presence of the cuckoo I knew and loved best belonged.

Take off the charm and you’ll be able to hear her, whispered the small voice of my doubt. I shoved it aside. Doubt is one thing, but I’ve been training my whole life not to doubt what I know to be true, and even when I’d touched her, I hadn’t been able to hear anything. Whoever this was, it wasn’t Sarah. Sarah was gone.

Sarah needed me.

“Who are you?” I asked.

Her eyes widened again, glinting briefly white before returning to a cool, glacial blue. Something in my chest unclenched, because her eyes . . .

Her eyes were wrong. Oh, they were the right color, even the right shade, but they were still wrong. I’d spent way too many hours trying not to look into them to not recognize the pattern of her irises, the subtle gradations of light and dark and in-between. This wasn’t Sarah.

“I’m Sarah,” she said, in a small, injured voice. “I’m your cousin. I live in Ohio with my parents. I just came home. Why are you doing this? You’re scaring me.”

“What’s my name?”

The cuckoo went still. “What?”

“If you’re my cousin Sarah, and you belong here, what’s my name?”

Her eyes narrowed again as her expression turned sullen. “You’re wearing an anti-telepathy charm. You know I can’t see faces the way you humans do. I can’t tell who you are.”

“You can’t see faces, but you can hear voices,” said Annie. “You should be able to tell who we are by the sound of our voices. Why can’t you?”

“Jet lag,” said the cuckoo. “I only just got back here from Ohio. I’m still tired. I’m not used to being around you yet.”

“You’ve been in love with Artie since you were ten years old,” said Annie, voice mild, almost pleasant. That was a warning sign, even if this cuckoo didn’t recognize it as such. She really didn’t know my cousin, or what Annie was capable of. “You two spent more hours on the phone together than I did with my entire cheerleading squad. There’s no way you don’t recognize Artie’s voice. Jet-lagged or not, you know him.”

The cuckoo looked frantically at the three of us, an expression of profound misery and confusion on her face. She looked so much like Sarah that it was difficult to see her so unhappy without wanting to do something about it.

But she wasn’t Sarah. That was the problem.

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