“Plus, we can’t go back to Maine,” said David. “The government shut down the observatory. Mr. Fabris is fighting it as best he can—less because they’ve inconvenienced his daughter, and more because they’ve touched his stuff—but they’re claiming national security. If they’d let us into the think tanks working to thwart the alien menace, we’d be there instead, but…” He shrugged helplessly. “They think we’re collaborators.”

“We weren’t free for twenty-four hours before I started seeing people following us on the street, and half of them were even real,” said Toni, in a dry, matter-of-fact tone. “I have enough trouble leaving the house without being followed by government agents looking to do me harm. Can you imagine how quickly I’d lose my shit if I went wandering around in the open? No, thank you. I’ll stay here where it’s safe, and observe you fuckers learning your own biology. That way, when NASA is ready to play ball and treat me right, I’ll know everything there is to know.”

“Mmm,” said Jeff. His lips were a thin slash across his face, and I got the feeling Toni was going to find leaving more difficult than she assumed.

Leaving … “Where are we?”

“Drink your breakfast and I’ll explain,” said Graham. I turned to stare at him. This was blood in my hand, human blood, and he was telling me to drink it like … what? Like it was nothing, no big deal, his girlfriend had always been a vampire perennial from beyond the stars?

Except I had been. He had always known that. He was just one of the people who’d decided to believe me.

“It’s okay, honest,” he said, apparently taking my silence for displeasure. “I donated it. Not all at once, but … we started figuring out what you were going to need pretty quickly, and then Tahlia joined us and confirmed what Jeff and I already suspected. We’ve been putting blood aside for you ever since. You need to be healthy if you’re going to deal with this bullshit.”

“Not sure I’d call an alien invasion ‘bullshit,’ but sure,” said Toni cheerfully.

That was it: the last straw. My head was throbbing, my arm was aching, and I could almost feel the dead skin around the puncture wounds in my elbow beginning to detach and peel away, becoming nothing more than medical waste. I hoisted the bag of blood, popped open the seal, and raised it to my lips.