After relieving myself, I had a chance to check myself out in the mirror for the first time. I slipped off my shirt and twisted to look in the mirror. Long, black hair fell over my true body. I pulled aside the ratty locks before prodding the mottled red edge of my wing. My feathers had been plucked off, and my skin was sewn in place with fine threads so close together that I couldn’t slip my fingers through them. Snipping the sutures without cutting myself would be difficult.

I moved my fingers to my true head. The only parts Dr. Swanson hadn’t sewn down were my antennae. Not that that would do me any good right this moment. With clumsy fingers, I took a razor off the counter, slid its blade from the handle, and set about carefully slitting threads. My unsteady hands cut my skin as often as the sutures, but I was making headway. 

Dr. Swanson’s voice sounded above the furious mutters he and Celest had been exchanging in the hall. “It wasn’t for shocking her. It was for that thing on her back. If it goes out of control, we’ll want the collar.”

“You can’t know what’ll happen to Leah if you shock that thing. It could paralyze her again--or kill her.” Celest scoffed. “The leech can’t do worse than that if it goes out of control.”

I finished cutting my right wing free and started pulling out the threads. Now might be the right moment to escape entirely, but I wasn’t sure. There was every chance Dr. Swanson would send the police after me if I left now. It would be better if I left at night, which would give me a head start.

Dr. Swanson let out a frustrated grunt. “You don’t understand. That thing- it isn’t a normal animal. It’s smart. It-” He lowered his voice past what I could detect. 

“What?” Celest shouted. “You put a- an alien person on my baby?”

“I didn’t have any choice. She was too far dead for the best healer.”

“No, no, she wasn’t dead. She didn’t-” 

The pain twisting her voice made my resolve waver. This wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t even known what was happening. In the colony, she would’ve been deemed weak for caring so much about replaceable offspring, but I couldn’t fault her. After I lost my favorite hatchling minder, I let my host’s immune system weaken enough that the animal nearly died of red fever. 

But however grieved Leah’s mom might be when I left this host, it couldn’t be helped. Nothing I could do would change the fact that Leah was dead. Staying here and pretending to be someone I wasn’t would only delay the inevitable loss and pain. Besides, I was never meant to be her. I belonged in the colony. 

“Celest, listen to me. She’s not dead anymore. Somewhere in there, Leah is alive.” Dr. Swanson quieted again, but I moved to the door to catch what he said. “I just have to figure out the right chemicals to sedate or kill the alien without hurting Leah.”

“You-” She inhaled sharply. “You said it’s a person.”

“It’s a parasite infecting our daughter.”

“Who’s fault is that?” 

Maybe I didn’t need to keep this act going any longer. Celest might have access to the portal room or at least the ability to make Dr. Swanson open the portal room door. I reached for my shirt, but it would only hinder the point I wanted to make. Forcing my face into a pleading expression, I opened the bathroom door. 

Celest and Dr. Swanson were only a little ways away in the living room. 

She gasped, presumably at the scars crossing Leah’s body. Or perhaps it was my free wing poking out from behind me.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m very sorry, Celest. I lied out of fear for my life, but I now believe that might not have been necessary. My name is Elva vor Dariala. All I want is to go home, but the collar your husband put on me prevented me from escaping. It would’ve killed me had he activated it.” I turned partially so she could see my true body. “He’s sewn me to Leah’s body, and I’ve only managed to remove some of the sutures.” Blood dripped from the many cuts on my wing and Leah’s back. I made no attempts to hide them in the hope that they would garner sympathy. 

She stumbled back against the wall, clutching her chest as a desperate moan escaped her. Dr. Swanson moved to her side and reached out, but she slapped his hand away. 

“Don’t touch me.” Her whole body shook as she flung her hand toward the front door. “Get out before I throw you out on your ass.” 

Dr. Swanson looked at me as if he expected me to leave.   

“Not her, bastard. You.” She shoved him toward the door. 

“You can’t be serious. Everything I did was to save Leah.”

She let out a heart-wrenching scream. “She’s dead because of you, and we couldn’t even have a funeral because you needed her body for your insane experiments. Just get the hell out of my house.” She hurled her phone at him. 

Frozen in shock, he didn’t dodge. The phone glanced off his forehead, and he stumbled back. As his wife dissolved into incoherent screams, he staggered to the front door. He grabbed his keys off an end table before slipping outside. 

I was left with Leah’s inconsolable mother crumpled on the floor. Nothing I could say would ease her grief, and my appearance as her lost daughter could only cause harm. Perhaps she would be able to face me later. I turned to go back into the bathroom.

“Wait,” Celest cried out. “Elva, was it?”

I nodded. 

“Is she- is Leah in there, somewhere?”

“I’m sorry, but Leah passed some time ago. When I leave this body, it will cease to function.”

A shudder rolled through her. “How soon will you go?”

“As soon as I can disconnect myself and go through the portal to my realm.”

“Where’s that?”

I gestured at the lab. “Through a door at the back of his lab is the portal he used to take me here. The door is locked behind several scanners--hand, eye, voice. Is there any chance you could get past them?”

She shook her head. “He’s never let me in his lab.”

“Unfortunate.” It was more than unfortunate. I’d already reviewed Leah’s memories on the subject, and portals large enough for me to escape through were rare and typically well-guarded. The one in this house was the only one she or I knew of. Without Dr. Swanson’s constant monitoring, I might be able to get my hands on a computer and research other portals. That was assuming Celest didn’t kick me out immediately. I might have a better chance of convincing her when I wasn’t half naked and filthy. 

I slipped into the bathroom and went back to removing my sutures. 

After a few minutes, the bathroom door opened, and Celest came in. “Let me do that.”

“It’s okay. You have bigger things to worry about.”

She sighed. “I need to do something to keep my mind off… things.”

“Oh. I understand.” I gave her the razor blade. 

Her hand was much steadier than mine, slitting through the sutures without a nick. I was uneasy having someone behind me with a blade, but she seemed to have good intentions. Those intentions might be to remove the parasite from her daughter’s corpse as soon as possible, but as that alligned with my plans, I couldn’t complain.

“How old are you, dear?”

“Ten.”

She jolted and nicked my wing. “Sorry, I- I’m not sure I heard you right. You said you’re a child?”

“No, I said I’m ten.” I quickly scrubbed through Leah’s mind for something that might explain her surprise. “Ah, I suppose I would be a child if I were human. Ten is the age of adulthood for my kind. I was taking part in a coming-of-age ceremony when I was captured.”

“Oh.” She finished with my second wing. “I’m sorry for what my husband did to you.”

“You needn’t apologize for someone else’s actions.” I tried to tug some of my tendrils free despite the risk of falling off Leah’s back, but they were still firmly embedded. Even twisting my head around as much as I could, I couldn’t get a good view of where my true body’s torso connected to Leah’s. “I believe there are more sutures, maybe hidden from view beneath me. There’s something stopping me from disconnecting.”

“You’re going to ‘disconnect’ here and now? There’s nowhere for you to go yet.”

“I know, but I’m… I can’t think of a better word than ‘claustrophobic.’ I’m not used to being trapped like this.”

“You’re used to being able to hop from person to person whenever you want?” There was a hint of disdain in her tone. 

I shook my head. “For the last eight years, I’ve lived on a tachak. It’s an animal that vaguely resembles a tiger. She was a wonderful host, but tachaks aren’t especially long-lived. As she neared the end of her life, she couldn’t continue supporting me.”

“You only live on animals?”

I wanted to say ‘yes,’ but it wasn’t really that simple. In the past, some aryta scouts had taken human hosts to learn more about them and Earth. And it was debatable whether the vezes that kings often inhabited were animals, as they had an impressive intellect for beasts. None of that really mattered, as I had no intention of inhabiting a human or a vez. It did raise a question, though. 

“If you thought I made a habit of inhabiting humans, why did you help me?”

She paused. Her face in the mirror looked on the verge of tears. “I don’t know. Maybe I thought… if I helped you, you might have a different answer for me now.”

“If you’re referring to whether Leah still exists in this body, I’m afraid my answer hasn’t changed because I’ve already told you the truth.”

“I was afraid you might say that.” Her face fell. “You imitated her so well; I assumed there must’ve been something left of her.”

“I have access to most of her memories.”

She inhaled sharply and leaned on the vanity for support. “Then there is something left. She’s not gone completely.”

“I suppose so.” The memories were just chemical patterns in billions of neurons. They weren’t really Leah. 

Celest sobbed. “Did- did she suffer in the end? Did she feel alone?”

I searched Leah’s memories for the answer, but her death wasn’t there. Of course it wouldn’t be. The events surrounding her death hadn’t been stored in long-term memory before she died. Lying to Celest about something this important felt wrong, but the truth would’ve hurt her far more than a comforting lie. 

“She was thinking of her loved ones when she went, so she felt loved, not lonely. There wasn’t much pain, either. She stopped feeling it before she passed.”

A weepy smile appeared on her face, but it was hesitant, maybe suspicious. “How did she die?”

This was certainly a test to see if I could actually see Leah’s memories. I could see enough to know that one of the most common causes of death among people her age were car accidents. That made sense, given Celest’s comment about the ‘alcoholic bastard’ Leah ran off with. If the alcoholic in question had been driving, an accident wouldn’t have been terribly surpising. 

“A car accident.”

“Who was driving?”

The only person in Leah’s life that could’ve been considered an alcoholic was her boyfriend. “Kyle, Leah’s boyfriend.”

She closed her eyes with an expression of pure relief. “She really didn’t suffer?”

“She didn’t suffer.”

Repressing sobs that shook her slender frame, she gestured at my back. “I’m sorry, but you don’t want me working on you when I’m like this. Give me time, and I’ll help you some more.”

“Okay.”

She stumbled out of the bathroom and disappeared down the hall.