The last thing I was aware of was Graham hoisting us both into the van and the engine coming on, setting the metal vibrating around us. Then I knew nothing at all, and I was glad of it.

2.

“—not human.” Lucas’s voice was pitched low, possibly in the hope that I wouldn’t be awake enough to hear him. Poor guy. If he’d talked a little faster, I probably wouldn’t have been. Everything still felt fuzzy, like it had been wrapped in too much cotton. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“You did it.” Mandy sounded crisply annoyed. It was familiar enough to be soothing. She always sounded like the queen of efficiency when she was mad. “You get to be an enemy of the state just like the rest of us.”

“Only because I was going to be arrested for being her housemate anyway,” he snapped.

“Liar.” Now Mandy sounded sad. I felt a hand stroke my forehead. I assumed it was hers. “You came because you love her; again, just like the rest of us. You can have cold feet if you want. It won’t change anything that happened.”

“Have you looked at her arm?” Lucas demanded. “She looks like a—”

“Don’t.” Graham’s admonition was soft. “You don’t get to say those things.”

The world wasn’t vibrating anymore. The van had stopped moving. Were we even still in the van? Slowly, I forced my eyes open and found myself looking at exposed wood beams below a ceiling covered in white flocked stucco. It looked like something that had escaped from the late seventies by the skin of its teeth, old and unchanged and refusing to be judged. I blinked.

Graham’s face appeared above mine, a strained smile on his lips. “Hey, you,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“I…” I stopped. How was I feeling? Still dizzy, but not as bad as I had been. It was like waking from a bad cold to find that my fever had broken in the night. “I don’t know.”

“I’ll go tell Jeff she’s awake,” said Mandy, rising from her seat next to me and walking quickly away.

“Where’s Lucas?” I whispered.

“Here,” said Lucas, from somewhere off to my left. “You’re awake.”

“Yes.”

“How long have you been awake?”

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.”