Half-Off Ragnarok
Page 11

If the number of frickens in Ohio was going up, they had to be filling a niche that was previously occupied by something else. My money was on the frogs. That was the whole purpose of this study: to prove that the native frogs were being replaced by either an increase in the native frickens, or by an influx of frickens from elsewhere. Not the most exciting stuff in the world, I know, but it was ecologically important, especially if we wanted to continue keeping the frickens from being revealed to the world.
I yawned and reached for my laptop. I needed to make some more notes.
I woke up with my cheek on the keyboard, having already filled several hundred pages with random characters. I sat up, wiping the drool from my cheek. My back ached. I stood, straightening as I turned toward my bed. Then, before I could stop myself, I let out a short, sharp scream, which ended only when I clapped my hand over my mouth. Hopefully, that hadn’t been enough to wake my grandparents.
Sarah was sitting cross-legged on my bed.
She was wearing a white nightgown, and had a red ribbon tied in her hair, making her look like a Tim Burton horror movie reimagining of Snow White. She cocked her head when she saw me looking at her, but there was no trace of actual comprehension in her wide blue eyes. She just kept staring at me.
“Sarah?” I lowered my hand, wishing I could stop my heart from pounding against my ribs. “What are you doing here? This isn’t your room.”
“The moon doesn’t approve of the screaming in the cornfield,” she said. She sounded entirely reasonable, as long as I ignored the fact that she was talking like a book of Mad Libs. “Have you seen the Queen of Hearts today? Does she have the treacle tarts?”
“Sarah, you’re scaring me. Do I need to go get Grandma?”
“No. No no no no . . .” She started shaking her head viciously from side to side, knocking her ribbon askew. I took a step forward. She grabbed handfuls of her hair, pulling as she continued to chant denial.
“Sarah!” I grabbed her wrists before I could think better of it. Telepathy is easier for cuckoos when there’s skin-to-skin contact. Even with my anti-telepathy charm, there was a chance she’d be able to read me while I was touching her. That still seemed better than letting her hurt herself.
Sarah stopped shaking her head. She blinked at me, eyes luminescing with a brief flash of white, and asked, “Alex?”
It was the first time she’d really sounded like herself since she came back from New York. I smiled hesitantly, not letting go of her wrists. “Hi, Sarah.”
“Your head is full of scientific classifications and the natural order of things.” Well, that answered the question of whether or not she could read me. I was still a little surprised when a relieved smile spread across her face, and she said, “I like it. It’s been . . . not so orderly in here for a little while.”
I didn’t know whether she was aware of how long it had actually been, and I didn’t want to think about it too hard. Thinking about it would have been the same as asking her, and that wouldn’t have been fair. “We’ve been worried about you,” I said instead, and moved to let go of her wrists.
“No!” Sarah grabbed my hands, flipping the grip around so that she was holding onto me. She bit her lip, and said, “Please, no. I don’t want everything to come apart again.”
“Sarah . . .”
“I won’t push, I promise I won’t push, but Angela’s filled with worrying about me, and I can’t read Martin at all. Please, let me stay and be organized? Just for a little while? Please?”
She looked so anxious—and so exhausted—that I relented. It wasn’t like I could keep her out, and at least this way, she might follow instructions. “All right, but I need to sleep. Can I do that?”
“Even your dreams are orderly,” said Sarah. She let go of my wrists. “Hurry please. Hurry.” She still sounded more coherent than she had before she grabbed me, but there was an edge of harried desperation to it, like she was clinging to her renewed lucidity by her fingernails.
“I’ll hurry,” I assured her, and grabbed my pajamas from the floor next to the bed before fleeing the room, heading for the bathroom down the hall.
I reviewed my options as I brushed my teeth. I could wake Grandma and ask her to take Sarah back to her own room, possibly with a few strong suggestions about locks. That would prevent things like this from happening again, and also allow me to dismiss the dull but growing concern over how many times Sarah had crept down the stairs to watch me sleep. And yet . . .
And yet Sarah, for all that she wasn’t human, was family. Family comes first. The cryptid community comes second. She represented both those things, and she’d been wounded saving my little sister’s life. If all she wanted was for me to sleep holding her hand, was that really so much for her to ask? I had my anti-telepathy charm, and I had the mice. If she’d done anything to threaten me, I had faith that they would have woken me up.
Sarah was still sitting on the bed when I returned with my teeth brushed, my pajamas on, and my anti-telepathy charm firmly in place. “Hello, hello,” she said, looking down at her crossed ankles. “How’s your father?”
“In Oregon,” I said, reaching out to take her wrist. “Sarah.”
“Yes?” She raised her head, eyes focusing a bit better already.
“A few ground rules for tonight.”
“Yes, yes, it’s good to be grounded; how are you grounding me tonight?”
“You are sleeping on top of the covers; if you try to come under the covers, I’m sending you back to your room.” It wasn’t as harsh as it sounded. Cuckoos get some benefits from the clear hemolymph in place of blood; for one, they don’t feel heat or cold the way most mammals do. Like I said, Nature likes a good practical joke every now and then. As for why I didn’t want her under the blankets . . .
Skin contact made her stronger. If I wanted to keep her from burning my brain out when she had a nightmare, I needed to minimize how much we were touching one another.
Sarah nodded. “That’s fair,” she agreed.
“If you start feeling like you’re going to project at me, rather than just reading, you need to let go and get out.” I folded back the covers with my free hand.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” I said, and got into the bed. It felt strange to trust her like this. It felt even stranger to doubt her. Sarah waited until I was settled before she curled up next to me, resting her head on my shoulder. I dropped our joined hands to my stomach, staring up at the darkened ceiling as I listened to her breathing slowly level out into sleep.