Istas blinked. “You are distressed,” she said. “Why? Are we under attack?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Where’s Mike? I need him. Tell me where he is.” I couldn’t resist giving a telepathic “push” at the end, trying to make her tell me. I encountered nothing—no resistance, no response. Istas might as well have been a rock for all the effect that I had on her mind. That was what I got for trying to push someone who wasn’t human. I’m more attuned to humans than I am to any other species, even my own. Istas was the only waheela I’d ever met, and I had no idea how to make her do what I wanted. I couldn’t even pick up on her thoughts, just her emotions, and even those were blurry, like I was reading them through thick fog.

Luckily for me, she felt like playing along. “He is in what was originally the foreman’s office,” she said. “I believe he is attempting to make the Internet function, so you can communicate with the outside world, and I can go shopping.” A brief scowl crossed her face. “I hope this is resolved soon. Verity will not allow me to have things shipped here, and Kitty becomes annoyed if I receive more than one package per day.”

I stared at her. The Covenant was in town and Verity had gone silent in my head, but Istas was worried about the mail. Verity would probably have called that proof that trivial desire endures no matter what, allowing our minds to find stability under the most chaotic conditions. Then she would have made a bad dance pun. All it made me do was want to scream.

I swallowed my first three responses before asking, “Where is the foreman’s office?”

“He said that he would be in the office in the leftmost corner,” said the younger Madhura. I could feel him at the edge of my mind, a little static melody against the louder, less delicate noise generated by Istas. I couldn’t feel his brother at all. If I hadn’t been looking at the table, I would have assumed that only two people were there. “Are you well, lady Johrlac?”

The older Madhura hissed, “Sunil! Do not insult her.”

“I’m sorry.” Waves of stricken embarrassment that I didn’t understand washed off the younger Madhura. “I meant no offense.”

Exhaustion swept over me, washing the Madhura’s incomprehensible embarrassment away. I shook my head. “It’s fine. I need to go talk to Uncle Mike.” He would know what to do. He would know what to tell me. Standing in this kitchen with three relative strangers, the only thing I could think to do was crawl back into my bed and wait until all this blew over, and I knew that wouldn’t help anyone. “Thanks for your help,” I said. Then I turned and left the kitchen.

Somehow I managed not to start running again until I was out of their sight. This time, I looked for the sound/feeling of a human mind nearby, and followed it to the office where Uncle Mike was setting up a cable router on another of the folding card tables that seemed to be everywhere around the Nest. He didn’t look up when he heard my footsteps, but his thoughts tensed, going from calm to on alert without visibly changing his posture. I glanced toward his hand. He had a knife that I was pretty sure hadn’t been there a moment before.

“What’s going on, Sarah?” he asked.

His question was calm, reasonable, and the last straw for my overstretched nerves. “I can’t find Verity!” I wailed.

“What?” Uncle Mike lifted his head. Concern baked off him like heat off pavement in the summer sun. “Verity went out for a run, to clear her head. She should be back in a little while. Is there something I can help you with?”

I took a deep breath. Sometimes humans can be so slow. Choosing my words carefully, I said, “I don’t mean ‘she’s not in the building’—I knew that. I mean I can’t find her anywhere in the city. I should be able to find her no matter where she is in this city, and if she left, I should have had time to realize that she was moving farther away. I was in my room when my head started hurting like my skull was busted. Then the pain went away, and Verity was just gone.”

Uncle Mike stood slowly, putting both modem and knife down on the table. “Sarah, are you telling me Verity’s dead?”

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.”