Jeanne smiled. “Merci pour tout les aides.”

“Uh, okay,” I said. Jeanne came and gave me a hug, her thin arms wrapping around me. She patted my shoulder, her small hand rough against the back of my neck. Then she hugged Angel the same way.

“Jeanne has gifts,” Angel said seriously. “Kind of like us. She’s very special. Let’s show Max, Jeanne.”

Jeanne smiled shyly and held out her hand, palm up, as if she were waiting for us to put something in it. Another hungry child, desperate for food.

Angel pulled an arrowhead-shaped rock from the pocket of her cargo shorts. It was so sharp it looked like the tip of a spear.

“Angel, what the -?”

“Just watch, Max,” she said, as she started to drag the rock’s point across the heel of Jeanne’s open hand.

And blood began to flow.

“STOP!” I SCREAMED. Lightning fast, I swept the sharp rock right out of Angel’s grasp, and it went spinning off into the dust. “Have you completely lost your mind, Angel?”

“It’s okay, Max,” Angel assured me, and Jeanne nodded. “Oui, oui.”

I dropped to my knees and examined Jeanne’s hand while she sucked a finger on her other. She had a thin puncture at least an inch long. “Wait here. I’m gonna run to get a first aid kit,” I said breathlessly.

Jeanne grabbed my arm with her nonbloody hand. “Non, non,” she said. “Voici.” She pointed to her oozing wound.

“I know, I know. I’m so sorry, Jeanne!” I babbled. “Please forgive Angel. She’s a little… unbalanced. I’ll fix you up right now. You’ll be fine, I promise.”

“Yes, she will,” Angel said calmly. How badly was I going to kick her butt later?

Jeanne placed the finger she’d been sucking on at one end of the incision and started pressing it.

“Jeepers, don’t touch that!” I said. “We need to keep the wound clean – keep it from getting infected.” I looked around. “Someone here who speaks French! Tell her not to -”

I broke off as I witnessed something unlike anything I’d seen before. And I’d seen a lot of weird stuff – including brains-on-a-stick (check out book three if you’re curious). Most of the weird stuff I’d seen had been nightmarish. But this was… something beautiful. Breathtaking. Miraculous.

As Jeanne ran her finger slowly along the bloody slash, pressing as she went, it closed up right before my eyes.

She had healed herself.

“ALL RIGHT, any second now…” The words were clipped, his accent thick. Mr. Chu leaned over his assistant’s shoulder, impatiently looking at a blank computer screen. And then, right on time, the screen flickered and split to show two charts, side by side. Points started blinking faintly, and small words began running along different lines: heart rate, temperature, blood oxygen saturation level, and so on.

His assistant peered at the charts for a moment, then typed “Maximum” on one side and “Angel” on the other. Mr. Chu became lost in reviewing the biological data streaming in from the microscopic monitors.

“Mr. Chu? You have a visitor, sir.” Another assistant stood in the trailer doorway, one hand on his weapon, as required.

Mr. Chu went down the short, narrow hall to the small receiving room. A young girl in a yellow dress stood there, twisting one of her thin braids between nervous fingers.

“Hello, Jeanne,” said Mr. Chu, smiling. Jeanne managed a tiny smile back. “You were successful in your mission,” said Mr. Chu, motioning to an assistant.

“Les filles oiseaux sont trés belles,” Jeanne said sweetly.

“Here is your reward,” said Mr. Chu, taking a lollipop from his assistant and giving it to Jeanne. Her eyes widened, and she eagerly ripped the wrapper off and stuck the candy in her mouth. Her eyes closed in rapture.

Mr. Chu nodded again, and his assistant quickly swabbed Jeanne’s upper arm with an alcohol wipe. The whole length of her arm was lined with dots, marking the sites of hundreds of needle insertions. And here was a new one, as the assistant injected the contents of a hypodermic needle into Jeanne’s almost nonexistent muscle. It was the first of a dozen injections to come in the next twenty-four hours.

Jeanne had learned to put up with all of the drugs – the pills, the drips, the shots. Without them, the side effects of being a self-healer were much, much worse. The treatments were a small price to pay for such rewards, after all.

Jeanne’s closed eyelids flickered a tiny bit as the needle went in, but she swirled the lollipop in her mouth and didn’t say a word.

WE WORKED ALL DAY, until dusk. The flock is usually chock-full o’ stamina, but it kind of depends on getting three or four thousand calories a day. By six o’clock, we were running on empty.

“Max?” said Patrick, walking up to me with a lumpy sack in tow. “Here’s some bedding – it’s not much, I’m afraid. There’s a tent set aside for you guys. Do you want to get it organized before dinner? You have about ten minutes.”

“Sure. By the way, Patrick, who was the camel platoon?” I asked.

“Don’t know for sure,” he said. “But some of the locals have a thing against Americans. It’s complicated politics we can talk about later. Right now, if you want to set up…”

“Sure, thanks,” I said, taking the sack. I looked at my tired flock. “You guys wait here – I think chow’s coming. And drink some water.”

“I’ll help you with that,” said Fang, nodding at the tent.

“Sure,” I said casually, but my heart was already speeding up.

We ducked through the worn nylon flap of our tent, and I dropped the sack. In the next moment we had our arms around each other, ignoring the dust on each other’s lips and our hot and sticky skin.

“The flying was amazing, but… I’ve missed you,” Fang murmured, his hands getting stuck in the snarls in my hair.

“Yeah. And this is probably our only chance to be alone for a while.”

“I couldn’t stand seeing you get shot at today,” Fang said, kissing my neck.

I drew back in surprise. “You’ve seen me get shot at, like, a million times!”

He shrugged, scratching my back between my wings, making me shiver. “It’s worse now.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said, and held his face so I could kiss him again. It felt like we were in a time-free bubble, the only two people around, and in the ninety-eight-degree weather, I felt like I was burning up from my head to my toes.

“Max! Fang! Dinner!”

I jumped and pulled back. But no one came into the tent, so Fang’s lingering hands stroked up and down my arms as we tried to get normal expressions back on our faces. Part of me wanted to stay in there forever and forget the rest of the world, but I immediately felt guilty, thinking of the flock waiting for us outside. I was still responsible for them; we were still a family.

And always would be.