Falise backpedaled to the wall, tried to brace her shivering legs, turned to spit the vile peppermint taste onto the floor. She’d never expectorated in public in her life, let alone in someone’s home. Couldn’t care less. Her heart was fit to beat its way through her breastbone.

Staggering, every nerve in her body trembling, she watched the monster curl up on a mat in the corner. The thing took up half the room. Then, impossibly, Kylee settled into the gap between the monster’s front and back legs where she could rest against the beast’s stomach. As she did, a riot of white and pink colors in incomprehensible patterns seemed to flow across the creature’s skin.

“This isn’t happening to me,” Falise whispered, feeling her stomach flip.

Through slitted eyes, Kylee was watching as Falise placed a hand to her stomach.

She could feel the growing nausea, her mouth still watering.

“If you’re going to puke,” Kylee warned, “do it outside. ’Cause I’m sure not cleaning it up.”

Falise felt the tell-tale tickle in the back of her throat. Spun on a heel, and bolted out the door. She barely made it to the yard. Bent double, while her stomach tried to turn itself inside out.

It pumped. Pumped again.

Wiping her mouth, Falise staggered back for the door, only to hear Kylee call, “Hey, don’t forget to turn off the light. And close the door. Never know what kind of unwelcome guest might come wiggling in during the night.”

Falise blinked as she stepped inside, stared down at the bedding on the floor. She, Falise Taglioni, was supposed to sleep on the floor? With only those filthy blankets?

She closed the door, aware that Flute was studying her with his left eye. Turned off the light. Then she sank onto the blankets, mouth now tasting like peppermint bile.

Her stomach heaved again, but she kept it down, staring wide-eyed in the dark at where the monster and sleeping girl lay.

“I am in hell,” she whispered, and, back to the wall, prepared to wait out the night.

Chapter 49

  49  

“To the west” covered a lot of territory.

Kalico glanced over at Talina Perez and Dek Taglioni where they sat in the row of seats behind the pilot and co-pilot’s chairs on the shuttle command deck. Ensign Brian Schulyer kept the bird on course; co-pilot Venus Abena had an eye on the lateral array as they banked tightly to the starboard and began the next transect headed south. On a hunch, Kalico had sent them as far north as the Wide Ridge Research Base. Though the outlying bases had been abandoned for a couple of decades, IG Soukup had mentioned seeing them as part of his fact-finding mission.