TANSTAV part 3

Chapter Two
In which I have another crisis on my hands (the story of my life)

Next to shooting pool, playing Frisbee, and watching rugby (there's nothing like a good game between the Walla-Walla Werewolves and the Oberpfaffenhofen Ogres to get the blood pumping), there are few physical activities I enjoy more than flying.  I don't mean sissy human flying, in an airplane, or a hang glider, which is the closest they can get to it.  I mean real, actual flying, with my own wings.  The wind whistles through my hair, I can fill my lungs to the bursting point, and I just feel alive, and free from all my troubles.  The open air, especially on a moonlit night, out in the country, is the place to be.

Unfortunately, my intended destination was much less pleasant.  The police station for the MCPD, Western region, is in one of the most polluted areas of town (it flows over from the human settlements), seemingly for the sheer purpose of ruining both my lungs and my olfactory senses.  You'd think, with all these magic users in the area, we'd be able to clear it up, but nooo, the ones in charge of that always make some lame excuse about "modern technology messing with their spell-casting abilities," blah, blah, blah.  I'm sure they could get rid of the pollution if they wanted, they're just too lazy.

Anyway, the station is this 3-story, shabby old building on a street corner, with a fluorescent sign outside (whose letters keep flickering out, or else dying altogether; I don’t know why we haven’t replaced it already), spelling "MCPD-West".  In what turned out to be very bad luck for me that particular day, Chief Ishida's office is on the third floor, with a humongous glass window, so that should he feel so inclined, he can admire the smoky view.  Also unfortunately, there was a stronger wind than usual that day, which happened to blow me off course from my intended landing site on the roof.  And possibly the worst thing of all: Chief Ishida's window just happened to be in the way of my landing.

CRASH!!

To my relief, I was unhurt.  My skin, especially that of my wings, is very tough, kind of like rhinoceros hide; by closing my eyes and wrapping my wings around myself, I was able to safely land inside the office in one piece, without anything getting gouged out or cut up.  However, I can't say the same for the chief's window.  Once the glass stopped flying, I cautiously unfolded my wings, just in time to meet his withering stare.  He was standing in front of his desk; his chair had toppled over, and papers were flying.  I deduced that upon noticing my impact, he had leaped over the desk, out of danger from the glass.  His agility was quite commendable.

As soon as he recognized who I was, his scowl deepened.

"Uh, hi, Chief.  I know this seems-"

"What the h___, Wormwood?!" Ishida interrupted.  Smoke literally billowed from his nostrils and ears; since his grandmother on his father's side is a Japanese fire demon, this was not too surprising.  He also has his almond-shaped, glowing red eyes, near immunity to fire, fangs, and a preference for raw meat to thank her for (traits not uncommon among many monsters).  If it were not for the scaly patches on his neck and chest, and his coffee-colored skin being at a nearly-constant temperature of 115 or so degrees, he could almost be mistaken for a vampire (which is ridiculous, of course, since vampires do not exist).

After the opening "pleasantries", Ishida erupted into an expletive-laced rant concerning my sanity, manners, and character, as well as who I thought was going to pay for his window.  I pointed out that he just needed to ask his secretary (who was a mage) to put it back together good as new, but he told me to shut up.  Not wishing to jeopardize the situation any more, I shut up.  When he finally finished yelling, Ishida gave a loud, world-weary sigh, and then said, "Now get out of my office.  Grimm will debrief you on the way to the transport room."  I left, choosing not to say that I personally wore boxers.  That would probably not amuse him.

"Let the boss bulldoze you, huh?" a voice hissed outside the door.  Leaning casually against the wall, listening to his iPod, was Morty Grimm, Ishida's deputy.  He is a Reaper.  Now, for you who are less knowledgeable about different species of monsters, a Reaper is not the same as a reaper.  For one thing, a Reaper has a capital R at the front, while a reaper has a lowercase r.  For another, a reaper is the sickle used by both farmers and Reapers.  A Reaper, by contrast, is a cloaked and hooded figure with eyes like orbs of fire, who separates your soul from your body when you die.  They collect the souls they harvest, and carry them around in a bag, until either an angel or a devil comes to claim them.  Typically they shape the souls into spheres while they wait, and use them to play marbles.  Reapers also need these souls in order to absorb the energy they had in life, as an essential source of nutrients.  This leads to them becoming greedy, conniving creatures, who will sometimes try to make bargains with you so they can take your soul before your time has come.

But Morty’s all right.  He’s good-natured, if a bit lazy, and doesn't seem to have any interest in collecting souls.  Perhaps it is this that makes his cloak gray instead of black, and his eyes the color of moonlight, not fire.  Other Reapers shun him, considering him a heretic and a traitor to his species.  Morty doesn't mind, and since it makes him more tolerable than most Reapers, neither do I.  In fact, he’s more or less my best friend.

"Good to see you too, Morty," I sniped.

"Sorry."

"It's fine.  I should be used to it by now."

He gave a dry chuckle.  Of course, his voice is always rather dry and raspy, like dead leaves skidding across pavement.  I've suggested throat spray, but it doesn't seem to have worked.

"So, what happened?" I asked as we headed for the transport room.  Morty said, "At 0900 hours, there was an explosion over in Idaho Falls, Idaho.  It resulted in the complete obliteration of a house on 63201 Crescent Avenue."

"Any police in the area?" I asked, referring to the human variety.

"There were within minutes, but we got some of the magic users to put a confusion spell on them, and make them leave, so they won't be in our way.  If any humans come by, they won’t feel any interest, and will forget about anything they saw soon afterwards."

Before I knew it, I was standing in front of the teleportation mirror, flanked by two big trolls named Bjorn and Stoick, a mage named Fleming, and a Dark Fae (Note: There are two types of Folk in the world: Light Fae, and Dark Fae.  'Dark' does not mean 'evil' in this sense.  It refers to their being nocturnal.  The fae accompanying us was a Yoon, one of the four types of Dark Fae; they are well-known for their healing powers, which come in handy in this line of work.  To keep herself awake, this fae, Harper, had taken to drinking copious cups of coffee, which effectively kept her alert and moving, but also made her slightly jumpy and hyper).  I murmured the address we'd been given, and touched the glass.  Instantly our reflections vanished, to be replaced by a pile of twisted, smoldering wreckage.  I was confused, until I noticed the mailbox in front with 63201 Cres----- written on it.  The rest of the address was completely obliterated.  As I slipped on a pair of sunglasses, I wondered what it was that could do such a thing.  A dragon?  A salamander?  A flock of rogue fire-breathing butterflies?  Any of them had the capacity, to be sure.  But what was the motive?  Still pondering this, I stepped through the mirror's surface.

As I have mentioned previously, teleportation is not good for my digestive system.  It's hard to describe exactly, except that it makes you feel as if you have been turned inside out, had some child play tug-of-war with your guts for a few minutes while jumping up and down violently, and then you've been turned right-side in again, and you wind up at your destination.  For some reason, other species can stand it, but not me.  As soon as I found myself back on solid ground, I collapsed to my knees and began retching violently.  Since I had not yet eaten breakfast, all that came up was some quantities of bile, which is still pretty disgusting.  My companions, who were familiar with my traveling problem, waited patiently until I was finished.  Finally, I stood on shaking legs, adjusted my sunglasses, and wiped my mouth.

"Let's go and see what this is all about."

Even though it had been a while since the actual explosion, the rubble was still smoking slightly.  I could see no signs of life.  Cautiously we began to maneuver our way through the remains of what had once been a house.  I could tell that the blast had been on the ground floor (it had been a 2-story house), and magically based.  Small pieces of it were still floating around.  I could see them, but since I have no magical ability myself, I would let Fleming handle them.  It was more of his department, since he's a mage, though in my opinion, he's a pretty lousy one.

Of course, this might be based on my intense dislike of him.  Not only is Fleming whiny, but he is also obnoxiously closed-minded, and worried about trivial things like following rules, listening to the chief, etc.  The others are almost as bad; Harper is annoyingly hyperactive from all that coffee, as I said, and Stoick and Bjorn are just kind of slow.  It's sad how often I get on the same team as them, and so have many occasions to recognize their flaws, and become even more annoyed with them.  Technically I’m not a cop, but when Ishida wants me to investigate something for him, I get put in this group.  I wonder if he does it to annoy me.

Sorry, got a little sidetracked there.  Going back to the magic, when a magic user performs a spell there's almost always some residue left over; even if not, I can see the spell that was used.  That was the scraps of magic floating around, and they're the same colors as that person's aura.  To me, they look like floating scraps of light, if that makes sense.  It's best if the mage or whatever retrieves and reabsorbs as much of the residue as possible, since magic is basically their energy, converted into power.  Since there was so much of it in the air, I figured that whoever-or whatever-had done this had to be nearly comatose, if not completely so.  Either that, or they were extremely powerful; if that was the case, I hoped we wouldn’t have to fight, as we would all die horribly.  I managed to catch a piece in my claws and examine it.  This magic was quite pretty: pieces of blue and green light, with small gold flecks here and there.  The colors swirled and swished around, like water.  It felt comfortably warm in my palm; I gave an involuntary smile.  This magic was so nice; I did not think that the being this belonged to had hostile intentions in this mess.  Granted, this was more of a gut feeling than an actual deduction, but I’ve learned to trust gut feelings.

"Wormwood!  Come look at this!"  The shout startled me into releasing the residue, which floated lazily away.  I gave Harper a dirty look, but she didn't even notice.  She was staring down at something on the far side of the wreckage.  She had on sunglasses too, so her eyes were shaded from me, but her mouth was shaped into an expression of disgust.

I meandered over, and did a double-take.  The object of her attention appeared to be either some insane artist’s grotesque idea of an abstract painting, or the charred, bloody remains of a body.  Little bits and pieces were scattered here and there away from the main chunk, and it had already attracted flies. 

"What was it?" rumbled Bjorn; he, Stoick, and Fleming had joined the party.

"Given the bits of clothes, and the few pieces of bone structure I can make out," I said, scanning the mess, "I'd say it used to be a human being."

Fleming clamped a hand to his mouth and gagged, the wimp.  Crouching down on my haunches, I pulled out tweezers and a few plastic bags.  I meticulously plucked a bone here, a chunk of flesh there, and a rag over there, and put them into individual baggies.  Harper took them, and slid them into her pocket.  The pathologists back at headquarters would be glad to see what they could learn from them.  I could already tell that when the explosion occurred, whoever this had been was actually in the house at the time, and got blown apart by it.  And I was pretty sure it had been an adult male, probably late thirties to early forties.


However, for the moment, I was baffled as to what had actually caused the explosion.  I like to think I'm a good detective, but it's really hard to come to a conclusion when you have minimal evidence, no suspects, no-  My moment of wallowing in self-pity was interrupted by a loud groan that nearly made me jump out of my skin.  I looked down at the corpse.  Had that-?  But no, the noise came from behind us.  We all turned around, and saw one of the piles of rubble shifting.  There was something under there; something alive.  The trolls and Fleming ran to the pile and began digging, while Harper and I watched from a safe distance, just in case.  They uncovered the heap in record time, producing-a girl.

TANSTAV part 2

Chapter One cont.

My new client was a troll.  He stood about 8 feet tall, average for his species, and had fur the color and thickness of granite.  He also had big orange eyes, a bulbous nose, and a craggy mouth surrounded by a thick beard. The troll was wearing, oddly enough, a business suit that contrasted with his rugged appearance.  Also odd for his species, as they are normally imperturbable, gentle giants, he was agitated.  The troll was breathing loud and fast, leaving me to conclude that he had run here, and his ham-like hands were trembling so hard that he either had arthritis, or was terrified out of his wits.

"Meester Vormvood?" he asked in a deep, gravelly voice, made all the thicker by his accent.  I gave a curt nod; I was feeling rather annoyed by the fact that I needed a new door, thanks to him.

"Oh, thank heavens!  I am deeply in need of your help!  It is a disaster of vich I am speaking!"  By now, he had punched several holes in my ceiling by throwing his hands up in the air. 

"Whoa, hey, relax!" I cried, jumping up onto my desk and catching them before they could do any more damage. 

"How about you sit down, please," I said in near-perfect Jotun (the language of trolls; I'd taken a course in high school, and I was pretty good, though my voice is nowhere near deep enough to fully imitate the guttural rumblings that a troll can reach), "and tell me what's troubling you."

The troll looked rather startled.  After all, gargoyles typically do not speak Jotun.  But he sat down (the chair creaked ominously under his weight), and presented the case, speaking his own language, now that he knew I could understand it.

"My name is Sigurd Jorgensen, and this morning, as of 8:30 a.m, my brother-in-law vanished from outside his home, and has not been seen since.  Apparently he went out to get the morning's newspaper, and never came back in.  All they found of him was this-" Mr. Jorgensen reached into his pocket, and produced a slipper the size of two large watermelons, the kind that would only fit on the foot of a fully-grown troll.  I deduced that the pocket, which did not look large enough to accommodate such a slipper, had to be one of those new expensive, expands-from-the-inside-can-hold-a-car models that I will never be able to afford, which is a shame, because they are totally awesome. 

"It was found lying on the sidewalk, right next to the newspaper."  The troll sniffled, and blew his nose loudly.  I was surprised that he should have such tender feelings for a relative by marriage.  I have one sister-in-law and two brethren-in-law, and they are all complete pains in the neck.  But maybe his family was more connected, and more affectionate, than mine.  Not that that would be much of an effort.

"May I come inspect the scene of the crime?" I asked.  "There may be some clues there." 

"Of course, Mr. Wormwood!" cried Mr. Jorgensen.  You could tell he had been waiting for me to ask.  I was getting up, when my phone began ringing.  I could tell it was somebody important, because it made the loud, obnoxious sound of somebody blowing a raspberry.  With a sigh, I stretched out a claw and picked it up off the desk.

"Hello?" 

"Wormwood!  Get down here!  It's an emergency!"

"Good to hear from you too, Chief," I sniped.  Don't get me wrong; I'm sure Chief Ishida is a wonderful person, really deep down.  After all, he is married, and has three kids.  But he's always seemed to me to be a bit, well, neurotic.  Obsessed with success, workaholic, virtually no sense of humor.  Know what I mean?

"Don't you use that tone with me!" Ishida bellowed.  I imagined his face turning bright red, and then exploding.  It's never actually done that, but thinking about it cheered me up to no end.

"Can't it wait?  I have a client, and-"

"NO!!  There's been an explosion in eastern Idaho, and I want you to go with a team and find out what happened!"

I groaned.  Eastern Idaho today meant sunshine, which hurts my eyes, and also teleporting, which causes major nausea in me.

"On my way, boss," I muttered, and then hung up.

"Sorry," I told Mr. Jorgensen in Jotun, "but I have to go.  Emergency case.  Please leave your address, and the address of your brother-in-law, and I'll be over as soon as I can."

He looked disappointed, but did as I requested.  Then he left.

With a sigh, I looked up at the shattered remains of my door, splintered top of my doorway, and gaping holes in the ceiling.  I could see that I needed to make the door bigger, and wondered how much all of this was going to cost me.  Well, no time to think about that now.  I picked up my desk, moved it in front of the doorway to discourage burglars, and then flew out the window (remembering to open it first).

There Are No Such Things As Vampires part 1

Some time ago, when I was not quite finished with my previous story, I asked if anyone had any opinions or requests for my next story.  I only received three replies, two of which asked for a mystery.  Well, I will try to be obliging, but if you don't like my next story, remember that I gave you all a chance...

Chapter One
I get a new case

Regardless of what contemporary authors may say or write, vampires do not exist.  Many other 'monsters,' as we have chosen to call ourselves, such as werewolves, dragons, and fae exist, but not vampires.  They never have.  Personally, I think the reason for humans thinking them up might have been us gargoyles.  After all, we typically sleep during the day, and roam at night.  Many of us have fangs.  Our strength and speed are by far superior to that of humans (no offense).  While we are asleep, our skin turns to stone (and even when we're awake, it's pretty darn tough).  But we don't drink blood.  And we have wings.  Many of us have tails.  Our skin is warm, unlike the alleged cold of the undead.  And we commonly have a short layer of fur.  Other than that, we're almost exactly like vampires.

Sorry, I should introduce myself.  My name is Tristan Wormwood, and I am a gargoyle.  I am also a private investigator.  My job is to solve private cases, and also, if the police need my help, to track down any monsters that are making our presence in the world known to the human population, and thus endangering our existence. 

You see, for some strange reason, humans tend not to like us.  It could be that we don't look like them, most of the time.  It could be that most of us could kill them in about 1001 nasty ways.  It could even be that they want to experiment on us to find out why we do what we do.  But whatever the reason, they've had a history of trying to kill us, or stuff us, or dissect us, etc.  So many centuries ago, we set up little pockets in reality-special communities where monsters live, but humans can’t go.  And we decided that it's best for all if we keep our existence hidden.  So nowadays, if some numbskull werewolf gets drunk one full moon and goes on a rampage, or a mummy begins randomly putting curses on people, the MCPD (Monster Control Police Department) has to find them and clean up the mess.

Being a detective gets me into the craziest scrapes.  However, the one I would have to say was one of the wildest occurred in the early months of 2012, and nearly jeopardized all life as we know it!  And yes, I am fully aware of how cliche that sounds.

It was a cold morning in March, in the town of Styxburg, Idaho.  It's a hideout place for monsters, protected by about 50,000 spells, so only monsters know where it is.  It's somewhere north of Boise, and my home.  Rains a lot, but I like rain.  Anyway, it was 9:30 a.m, the time when most gargoyles are asleep.  However, since most of my clients are diurnal, I've had to adjust.  I was just thinking of getting myself a toasted bagel and a glass of milk (I hate coffee), when the door to my office crashed open, and before I knew it, I had a case.

Acknowledgments

In the back of most books, you will find a short thing thanking all the people who helped the author with the story.  So, I figured I might as well do that here.

 Unequivocal appreciation to my magnificent older sister, Amber, for giving me the idea of writing a story on my blog.
Praise to my stupendous older brother, Court, for taking the time to be a ghost writer for some of my chapters.
Many expressions of gratitude to my fantastic mother, for nagging me to complete it.
And thanks to anyone else who might have helped out somehow.

Freegans Ending

Epilogue
Cara

And that is how we made it home.  Everyone, even people who didn't know us particularly well, was overjoyed to see us.  The celebrations and joy lasted for days, if not weeks.  As Madiza had expected, Mom and Dad were more than willing to take her and Ben in.  A couple of years later, they married, and moved into a home next door, so we still got to see them every day.

Ben and Madiza now have twins, a boy and girl, named Samuel and Ivy.  For two-year-olds, they are incredibly smart.  They learn at twice the speed of other children, and are very good thinkers.  Madiza explained that we can thank Project 112 for this, too.  Apparently, it was set that the new intelligence would be hereditary, so that there would be no need for school ever again.  Speaking of Madiza, she has improved a lot. Granted, she still mutters to herself, and can be found scrawling on scraps of paper at odd hours of the day, and cackles a lot.  She will never fully get over the brain damage done by the government.  But we can have semi-normal conversations now, and since she goes out in the sun more often, her skin has lost that ghastly whiteness.

Ben is still silent and kind, but  that's to be expected.  Lucy, soon after we were rescued, finally got over her crush on him.  Now that we were heroes, there were plenty of young men around to attract her attention.  She has become rather close to Paris too; they like to flirt and gossip together.

And as for me and Matt?  Well, when we were eighteen, we joined up with the Resistance!  After all, this war isn't going to win itself, and one liberation of prisoners isn't going to change things any time soon.  If you don't mind the fact that you're risking your life virtually every minute of the day, it's quite fun.  And we get to visit the hide-out on our days off.

Considering all that we've gone through, I'd say our lives have turned out pretty good.  Hopefully it will last.

Freegans part 61

Matt
There was a long, awkward silence.  When Cara finally spoke, it was in a strangled tone, as if she had a mouthful of marbles.
"How-how do you know?"
"I remember you!" said Madiza brightly.  "I can remember, when I was young, playing with my little cousin Cara.  Well, you weren't that little.  Just a year younger than me.  But to me that was very little.  And you look just like her, only older.  I even checked your hand, and it has the same scar on it from when you were two and cut it on a sharp rock!"

Cara looked down at her hands, and Madiza pointed to the left one.  There was indeed a scar, on the knuckle of her index finger.
"I wondered how it got there," Cara murmured.  Suddenly, her head snapped up, and she stared straight at Madiza.
"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME BEFORE?!"
"You didn't ask," was the mild reply.
Cara stood up.  For a moment, I thought she was about to hit Madiza, and I started to intercede.  To everyone's surprise, she hugged her instead!  I felt my jaw drop, and saw that Lucy's had too.  In all the years we had known her, Cara had never, never hugged anyone.  However, I guessed she was willing to make an exception for her own flesh and blood.  After stiffening in shock for a moment, Madiza hugged her back.

When she finally pulled away, Cara asked eagerly, "Who were my parents?"
"Logan and Sylvia McTavish."
"McTavish?!" we all gasped at once.  I asked, "As in-?"
"That's right, as in Angus McTavish.  He had a younger brother, Logan, who was lost during the attack by the consumerists that led McTavish to become the leader of the Freegans and take us to safety."
"So- is Mr. McTavish your father?" Lucy wanted to know.
"No."  Madiza shook her head and grinned her pointy-toothed grin.  We all looked at each other.
Finally, Ben used his hands to sign something at her.  I surmised that it was a question, because she said, "Angus McTavish also had a younger sister, Deirdre McTavish Hatter."

"H-  So your last name really is Hatter!" Cara exclaimed.
Madiza cackled with delight.  "Yes! Hee hee hee hee!"
We all had a good laugh over that.  It wasn't that funny, but it was a good way for us to work off stress.  After so much time being under pressure, and facing death, we were (hopefully) safe.  We needed an opportunity to laugh.  Everyone else was busy treating wounds, steering the sub, etc.  They were ignoring us.  I saw the Ox at the controls, Deep Thought tapping away at the computer system, Kestrel sitting by Max ( I got the impression there was something between them).  And then I realized that not everyone was ignoring us.  Sitting a few feet away, giving us one of the most wobegone expressions ever, was Paris.

Madiza suddenly noticed her old friend.  She stood up, and headed over to her.  Paris stood up too.  I noticed that they were about the same height, though Madiza's shaggier hair made her look a little taller.
"Ivy-Ivy, I am so, so sorry," Paris whispered.  "Can you ever forgive me?"
Madiza didn't say anything.  She stood there, practically nose to nose with Paris, staring her intensely in the face.  We watched with baited breath, wondering what she would do.
Suddenly, Madiza lifted a finger, and shaking it at the other girl, said five words in a stern voice: "Don't let it happen again!"
Then she smiled, and, taking Paris's hand, pulled her over to join our group.

Freegans part 60

Ben
"What do we do?" cried out one of the members of the Resistance to the Ox. "There's no way we can outrun them!"
"We won't have to!" he called back. "Deep Thought! Can you plug in sequence 82X into the computer system?" Deep Thought gave us one of his crazy grins, and sprinted to the keyboard, where he began tapping feverishly away.
"Everyone, as soon as it goes dark, you need to be very still and quiet!" the Ox said. "It's a matter of life and death!"
What's sequence 82X? I signed to Madiza.
It activates the cloaking device on the submarine, she replied. It's a special modification the Resistance made for this particular vessel, in case of such an event as this. Once it's turned on, it will make the submarine seem to disappear to the people chasing us. But we need to stay quiet, because any movement or noise will show up on their radar. I wondered how she had learned this. Sensing my confusion, she said aloud, "He told me," and pointed at Deep Thought.

Without warning, there was a flash of light, and then the cabin went dark. The only lights came from the computer system.
What happened? I signed to Madiza.
Cloaking device activated, she answered, and covered her mouth to stifle a giggle. It was then I noticed that Cara, Matt, and Lucy were huddled next to us. I guess the fact that it was dark made us feel a need to join together. It was odd that after so much time being locked up, I had become used so quickly to having friends again. Granted, we were joined together in an escape from certain death, but still. I hoped fervently that we were not also about to become dead.

The whole submarine had gone silent. We were afraid even of breathing, not sure if the enemy's radar would be able to pick that up. I was sure that every time my heart beat, it was detected. My eyes flicked from face to face of my comrades, and I could see that they felt the same. Only Madiza seemed unperturbed. She was grinning, and her hand was twitching slightly. I gently put my own over it, wanting her to stop. She complied, and suddenly laced her fingers through my own. I let her.

Hours seemed to pass, though it was only a minute or two. I could hear ragged breathing from the rest of the crew, and slight rustlings, and a few shushing noises. Finally, Deep Thought whispered, "They've gone past us. The cloaking was successful." I breathed again. The lights came back on, and we all gave each other looks of pure relief.
"...So, what now?" asked Cara.
"Now," said the Ox, "we take you children home. I think it is far past time."
"Me too!" Lucy agreed.
"Yay!" Madiza cheered. Everyone chuckled at that.

However, I felt troubled. Where was home for me? The government had told my family I was dead when they failed to fix me, and even created a clone corpse of me for them to take home. Where could I go? Madiza, at least, belonged with the Freegans. But I was sort of an intruder. I looked down at my disguise, frowning.
"Don't worry, Ben-ben!" exclaimed Madiza. "I'm sure my cousin will allow us to stay with her!" I looked up, and frowned.
"Your-what?" asked Matt. Everyone else looked as confused as I did.
"Oh, didn't I tell you?" She looked straight at Cara. "You're my cousin!"