“The grass is always greener,” Malcolm says.

“They do not appreciate it, if that’s any consolation,” Adam says quietly, the first words he’s spoken since we started on these last few miles to Ashwood Estates, his former home. “They are taught not to enjoy something unless they can possess it.”

“What’s that mean, exactly?” Sam asks. “Like, if a Mogadorian went to the park . . . ?”

“‘One takes no satisfaction from that which one cannot hold,’” Adam recites, suppressing a sneer when he finishes the quotation. “That is from Setrákus Ra’s Great Book. A Mogadorian wouldn’t care about your park, Sam, not unless the trees were his to chop down.”

“Sounds like a great book,” I say dryly.

I glance over at Adam, next to me in the passenger seat. He’s staring out the window, a distant look on his face. I wonder if this is strange for him—it’s basically a homecoming, even though he’s not actually from Earth. Adam turns his head, notices me looking at him and seems almost embarrassed. His expression quickly changes to one I’m familiar with—cold Mogadorian composure.

“Pull over here,” he instructs. “It’s only a mile farther on.”

I pull the van over to the side of the road and kill the engine. Without the noise from the van, the constant chirping from behind me seems even louder.

“Jeez, guys, calm down,” Sam says to the box of excited Chimærae sitting on the bench between him and Malcolm.

I turn around to look down at the Chimærae, all of them in bird form. Regal, whose resting form is a stately hawk, perches next to a trio of more common birds—a pigeon, a dove and a robin. Then there’s a sleek gray falcon that must be Dust and an overweight owl that has to be Stanley. All of them have lightweight leather collars strapped gently around their necks.

This is step one of our plan.

“Is everything working?” I ask Sam, who looks up from the laptop resting on his legs and grins at me.

“Check it out,” Sam says proudly, turning the laptop to face me. Using the Chimærae in this way was his idea.

Tiled on the laptop screen are half a dozen grainy video feeds, each of them showing my face from a slightly different angle. The cameras are working.

On our way from Baltimore to Washington we stopped at a dark little storefront called SpyGuys that specializes in cameras and home-security gear. The clerk didn’t ask Malcolm why he needed to purchase more than a dozen of their smallest wireless cameras; he seemed grateful for the business and even showed us how to install the necessary software on one of our laptops. After that, we picked up the collars at a pet store. The others carefully attached the cameras to them while I drove south towards Washington.

The Mogadorians have spent so much effort running surveillance on us, stalking us. Now we’re going to turn the tables.

“Spread out around Ashwood Estates,” I tell the Chimærae, punctuating my command with a mental picture of the satellite photos of Ashwood that I’ve been studying since yesterday and sending that on to the flock telepathically. “Try to cover every angle. Focus especially on where the Mogadorians are.”