“Someone needs to talk to your alien lords and masters about project management,” said Mandy. She punched me lightly in the arm, clearly trying to jolly me out of my funk. “Thirty years with no updates, and then a dozen deadlines in a week? Not a good way to keep up employee morale.”

I lifted my head and flashed her a wan smile. “But see, we’re not employees. We’re their kids.”

“Family businesses exist.”

Toni looked up from her attempt to repair Tahlia’s arm and scowled. “This is not a ‘family business.’ Finance is a family business. Joining your grandpa’s law firm. Letting your father buy you a planetarium. This? This is an invasion. You need to get with the linguistic program.”

“You’re siding with the invaders,” said Jeff. It was the first time he’d spoken since we had reached the motel. He turned away from the window, where only a thin sliver of parking lot was visible between the paisley-patterned curtains, and frowned at Toni. “You chose us over your own species. You chose us. So could you stop acting like we’re somehow keeping you here against your will?”

“Did I hit a nerve, Begonia?” Toni picked up the cloth she’d been using to keep the wound clean, dabbing around the edge. “You’re not keeping us against our will, except in the sense that by the time you let us go—oh, wait, you didn’t do that. Stasia did.”

I blinked. “When did I earn a name?”

“When I ran out of flowers to call you.” She dropped the cloth on the table. “Come with me. I want to try something.”

Graham looked alarmed, moving to put a hand on my knee. “Where are you taking her?”

“Uh, the bathroom, genius. We can’t leave this room, and there’s not anywhere else to go.” Toni waved her hands, encompassing the whole of our cheap, no-questions motel room. It would probably have seemed spacious, when it was just the four humans. Now that there were seven of us, it was cramped beyond belief.

That didn’t even go into the smell. The sap from Tahlia’s wound had helped a little, keeping my nose full of green and not the meaty reality of the people to either side of me. That wasn’t going to last. It had been getting harder and harder not to think of my friends and allies as walking juice boxes when we’d been in the house, where there had been plenty of room to get away from—