“AND A-ONE, and a-two —” Nudge said, leaning into a perfect forty-five-degree angle. Her tawny russet wings glowed warmly in the afternoon sunlight.

Behind her, the Gasman made squealing-brakes sounds as he dropped his feet down and slowed drastically. “Hey! Watch gravity in action!” he yelled, folding his wings back to create an unaerodynamic eight-year-old, his blond hair blown straight up by the wind.

I rolled my eyes. “Gazzy, stick to the choreography!” He was sinking fast, and I had to bellow to make sure he heard me. “This is a paying job! Don’t blow it!” Okay, they were paying us mostly in doughnuts, but let’s not quibble.

Even from this high up, I could hear the exclamations of surprise, the indrawn gasps that told me our captive audience below had noticed one of us dropping like a rock.

I’d give him five seconds, and then I’d swoop down after him. One… two…

I wasn’t sure about this whole air-show thing to begin with, but how could I refuse my own mom? After our last “working vacation” in Ant-freaking-arctica, my mom and a bunch of scientists had created an organization called the Coalition to Stop the Madness, or CSM. Basically, they were trying to tell the whole world about the dangers of pollution, greenhouse gases, dependence on foreign oil — you get the picture.

Already, more than a thousand scientists, teachers, senators, and regular people had joined the CSM. One of the teacher-members had come up with the traveling air-show idea to really get the message out. I mean, Blue Angels, Schmue Angels, but flying mutant bird kids? Come on! Who’s gonna pass that up?

So here we were, flying perfect formations, doing tricks, air dancing, la la la, the six of us and Total, whose wings by now had pretty much finished developing. He could fly, at least, but he wasn’t exactly Baryshnikov. If Baryshnikov had been a small, black, Scottie dog with wings, that is.

By the time I’d counted to four, the Gasman had ended his free fall and was soaring upward again, happiness on his relatively clean face.

Hanging out with the CSM folks had some benefits, chiefly food and decent places to sleep. And, of course, seeing my mom, which I’d never be able to get enough of, after living the first fourteen years of my life not even knowing she existed. (I explained all this in earlier books, if you want to go get caught up.)

“Yo,” said Fang, hovering next to me.

My heart gave a little kick as I saw how the sun glinted off his deeply black feathers. Which matched his eyes. And his hair. “You enjoying being a spokesfreak?” I asked him casually, looking away.

One side of his mouth moved: the Fang version of unbridled chortling.

He shrugged. “It’s a job.”