“Nothing,” I said, and I meant it. There was nothing I wanted to say, because I didn’t know how to say it. Not with the driver right there, capable of listening to every word we said. Not when my own thoughts were in so much disarray. I needed to get more sleep than I’d been able to manage on the plane. I needed to go back to the forest and make it all the way to the sweet, subtle embrace of the dragonfly flowers.

I could ask them what I’d seen on Jeff’s face, what was growing under my own skin, and maybe they would answer me. Maybe they would understand the importance of telling me what was going on. I couldn’t do my part for the invasion—whatever that part was supposed to be—if I was busy being scared out of my mind.

Graham’s hand settled on my knee. “Hey,” he said. “Look at me.”

I looked at him.

He was a wraith in the pale glow through the car windows, a figure of smoke and shadows. The short, bristling hairs on his cheeks glowed almost silver where the light hit them, standing out from his skin in a way they never did when the sun was up. He smiled at me, the expression sketched more in motion than in visible skin.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “We’re going to figure this out together, and everything’s going to be fine.”

I didn’t believe him. I smiled back anyway. Sometimes that’s the only thing you can do: just look at the future racing toward you, and smile, and hope it doesn’t hurt when it arrives.

2.

Steam billowed around me as I showered, filling the bathroom with a hot cloud of vanilla-scented moisture. I turned my face into the spray, letting it wash over me, wiping the last of my long night’s sleep away. The itching in my elbow retreated in the face of the hot water, wrapping itself tight around my bones. It would be back. I could feel it lurking, waiting for the opportunity to rise and try again.

I had slept soundly once we were finally in our own room, where it was safe to strip and collapse into the mattress, feeling the plastic anti-bedbug liner crinkle under my body as I buried my face in the pillow. The aches in my back and hip from a night of sprawling perfectly still, Graham pressed against me like a personal space heater, were proof of that.