I wanted to close my eyes. I couldn’t. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to see Graham anymore, and I’d been so sure I’d never see him again that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “Long enough,” I said. “I’m sorry you had to break the law for an alien.”

Graham scowled. “Don’t apologize. You stayed there to save me.”

“Not just … Where are Toni and David? Are they here?”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “I think they’re trying to stop the invasion by infiltrating your ranks. It’s sort of cute, in a deeply delusional way.”

“Toni slipped me a twenty and asked me to buy her some weed killer the last time I went to the store,” said Mandy. “I’m really not sure what she thinks that’s going to accomplish.”

“NASA is trying to do the same thing, only they’re making their weed killer from my blood.” I thought about sitting up. It seemed like a bad idea. It also seemed like the sort of thing that was only going to get harder if I let myself keep putting it off. In the end, I sat up, and groaned. “I feel awful.”

“Same amount of awful, or less awful?” asked Graham.

“Less awful,” I admitted.

“That’s my fault,” said Jeff. I turned. He was stepping into the room, with Mandy close behind him. I stared.

The bandage was gone, exposing the smooth expanse of green skin covering the entire left side of Jeff’s face. His eye was still there, but the sclera had turned a pale jade, and his iris was a bright neon lime. Even a streak of his hair had turned green, so dark that it could almost blend into the black around it.

He smiled and asked, “Not quite what you were expecting?”

“What happened?”

“Time.” He shrugged. “Once the process starts, it doesn’t stop. It can be put temporarily on hold by outside forces—your blooming doesn’t appear to have progressed as much as it should have, probably because they were shielding you from us—but it doesn’t go away, and it doesn’t go back. Humanity was only ever a husk for us.”

I bit my lip and didn’t say anything. Graham’s hand settled over mine, a warm weight that clasped and held fast.

“What…” My throat was dry. I swallowed and tried again. “What do you mean, it’s your fault I feel less awful?”

He held up his right arm. There was a cotton ball taped there, surrounded by radiating lines of green. The sight made me want to look at my own arm, to see how much of the skin had lifted up and peeled away. I didn’t. Knowledge was something else that couldn’t be taken back. I wanted to put it off for as long as I possibly could.

“We don’t appear to have blood types—sap types—the way humans do. Your blood mimics type A when it’s red, so I couldn’t have given you a blood transfusion, but once we filtered the remaining blood out of my sap, I was able to donate nearly a full pint. Tahlia will be doing the same, when she wakes up. That should get you almost back to normal.”