“She listens, I think. I guess I don’t know.”

“Can you hear her now?”

“No.”

I yawned, and he was quiet. I thought he was asleep. I drifted in that direction, too.

“Do you think she’ll go away? Really gone?” Jamie suddenly whispered. His voice caught on the last word.

I was not a liar, and I don’t think I could have lied to Jamie if I were. I tried not to think about the implications of my feelings for him. Because what did it mean if the greatest love I’d ever felt in my nine lives, the first true sense of family, of maternal instinct, was for an alien life-form? I shoved the thought away.

“I don’t know,” I told him. And then, because it was true, I added, “I hope not.”

“Do you like her like you like me? Did you used to hate her, like she hated you?”

“It’s different than how I like you. And I never really hated her, not even in the beginning. I was very afraid of her, and I was angry that because of her I couldn’t be like everyone else. But I’ve always, always admired strength, and Melanie is the strongest person I’ve ever known.”

Jamie laughed. “You were afraid of her?”

“You don’t think your sister can be scary? Remember the time you went too far up the canyon, and when you came home late she ‘threw a raging hissy fit,’ according to Jared?”

He chuckled at the memory. I was pleased, having distracted him from his painful question.

I was eager to keep the peace with all my new companions in any way I could. I thought I was willing to do anything, no matter how backbreaking or smelly, but it turned out I was wrong.

“So I was thinking,” Jeb said to me one day, maybe two weeks after everyone had “calmed down.”

I was beginning to hate those words from Jeb.

“Do you remember what I was saying about you maybe teaching a little here?”

My answer was curt. “Yes.”

“Well, how ’bout it?”

I didn’t have to think it through. “No.”

My refusal sent an unexpected pang of guilt through me. I’d never refused a Calling before. It felt like a selfish thing to do. Obviously, though, this was not the same. The souls would have never asked me to do something so suicidal.

He frowned at me, scrunching his caterpillar eyebrows together. “Why not?”

“How do you think Sharon would like that?” I asked him in an even voice. It was just one example, but perhaps the most forceful.

He nodded, still frowning, acknowledging my point.

“It’s for the greater good,” he grumbled.

I snorted. “The greater good? Wouldn’t that be shooting me?”