Sandy was a small town, but it was still many times larger than the village Leah was from. She’d loved coming here, even though most of the time she was just attending Sandy High School. Neither she nor Celest needed a GPS to get to Lucille’s, as it was along the route to the high school. Celest parked on the cross-street nearest Lucille’s and let me out. 

“I’ll stay right here until you’re done.”

“What if I end up going with one of them?”

She hesitated. “You remember my phone number?”

I nodded. 

“Borrow someone’s phone and text me you’re going.”

“Can do.” I closed the door before heading toward Lucille’s. 

Despite being a fairly small cafe, Lucille’s was full of teenagers and young adults. Even more of them were sitting at the outside tables, sipping strange coffees and nibbling on even stranger muffins. There was no sign of Mark or Ethan. I would look weird enough sitting around without a phone or book, but I would look absolutely mental if I didn’t order anything to eat or drink. Only, I didn’t have a wallet on me. That was dumb. Should I risk going back and asking Celest for some money? No, Ethan might come and go before I got back from the car. 

I checked my pockets, just in case there happened to be some cash in them. There wasn’t anything. Not that I’d expected anything different, as my luck had never been that good. “Damn it.” Now I was loitering on the sidewalk outside the cafe like a total weirdo. 

Someone at the nearest patio table turned their head in my direction. Their oversized hoodie hid their face in shadow. They’d probably heard me. I definitely should’ve kept my thoughts to myself. I spun on my heels with the intention of hiding in the neighboring shop. 

“Wait.” It was the man in the hoodie. He’d stood but hadn’t lifted his head enough for me to see his face under the hood. “Leah?”

Crap. How had he recognized me so quickly? And who was he? His voice didn’t seem familiar at all, even after a quick scrub of Leah’s memories. If he wasn’t close to Leah, how had he recognized me at all? Had he seen the news and was just really good with faces? 

“Leah Swanson?” he asked. 

“Who wants to know?” No, that was a stupid question. If I weren’t Leah, I would’ve just said ‘sorry, you’ve got the wrong person.’

He cocked his head. “I’m Mark Walker. I was driving the other car when you went over the cliff.”

Finally, a stroke of luck. Even if I couldn’t make him take me to the portal, it was worth a try, and he might introduce me to Ethan. I took off the sunglasses and hooked them on my pocket. “How’d you know it was me?”

“I remembered your scent.”

“Oh, come on, I don’t stink.” As soon as I said it, I knew it was a dumb thing to say. He obviously remembered Leah’s scent, not mine, and he had no idea what I was talking about. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean- I have a good nose. It’s part of my oddity.” 

“Right, right.” Feeling a little paranoid, I checked behind me just to make sure Celest hadn’t decided to watch me from afar. As far as I could tell, she wasn’t around. “Look, I’m not really supposed to let people know I’m--you know--alive. So if you could keep that to yourself, that would be great.” 

He moved closer to the railing between us. “Why’s it a secret?”

I moved close enough that I could speak in a quieter voice. “I’m not really supposed to tell you that, either, but honestly, I would love to be able to talk to someone about it. Is there anywhere we could go to talk alone?”

“Sure. Give me a sec.” He downed the remainder of his coffee before returning the mug inside. A minute later, he came out of the cafe and ushered me to his car. It was one of those cars that looked ‘normal’ enough from the outside, but something about its sleek, black body and darkly tinted windows gave me the impression that it cost far more than any of the vehicles around it. Though, I might’ve just thought that because I knew how much his parents were worth. 

As soon as I sat in the leather passenger seat and saw the dash made with real wood, I realized my initial assumption was correct. This car was worth a small fortune.

Mark pushed back his hood to reveal icy blue scales and head feathers, from which grew short ivory antlers. “So, what’s going on?”

I really should’ve thought through what I was going to say to him. “It’s kinda hard to explain.” Part of me wanted to tell him some of the truth in the hope that he would be as sympathetic as Celest, but I had a hunch that her sympathy was at least somewhat affected by the fact that I had her late daughter’s face. Mark wouldn’t have the same weakness. At least, not in the same way. He likely had guilt I could manipulate, if I had the guts to do it. 

“Take your time. I’m not in a hurry.” He sounded sincere, but even with Leah’s memories, I didn’t have her experience reading human emotions. Not to mention, lies were almost nonexistent in the colony due to our telepathy, so I didn’t have much experience with them, either. 

“Okay, so here’s the thing--for reasons I don’t really feel comfortable discussing, I need to get to the Otherealm, and I know you guys have a portal, so is there any way I could maybe… use it?”

“No, sorry.”

I really shouldn’t have been so direct. Or maybe I hadn’t been direct enough. “What if we had intercourse?”

His head feathers stood on end as he made a noise like he’d choked on his own spit. “Excuse me?”

Perhaps now wasn’t the time to be formal. “I’m offering you sex in exchange for using the portal.”

“That- that’s what I thought you said.” He shifted uneasily. “I said no because I don’t have access to the portal. My parents won’t give me the key until I’m a licensed guardian.” Rubbing the back of his neck, he frowned. “Why do you need to go to the Otherealm?”

Wonderful. Of course my lucky break turned out to be not lucky at all. Not all hope was lost, though. “How about you ask your parents to let me through the portal?”

“The liability of letting a stranger go through their portal-” He scoffed. “There’s no way they would let you.”

Groaning, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I don’t suppose you know anything that could convince them?”

He shook his head. “Not unless you have a very good reason for wanting to go to the ‘murder realm.’” 

“The ‘murder realm,’ seriously? That’s ironic, given the experiments humans are doing on people over there.” 

“What people?”

Crap, me and my big mouth. It wasn’t even my own mouth, and I was already saying stupid things without thinking. “Look, I don’t know-” I shouldn’t say anything else stupid. Only, if he’d already decided not to take me to a portal, it wasn’t like telling him the truth could make him less likely to help me. Besides, maybe he would have a useful suggestion if he knew everything. “Okay, here’s the thing--I’m not Leah. I’m Elva vor Dariala. I was hatched and raised in the Otherealm. Leah’s dad kidnapped me, and I’m trying to get back home.”

He blinked, paused, blinked again, and burst out laughing. Little puffs of frost escaped from his mouth. “How- how long did it take you to come up with that one?”

I turned my back to him, but before I could show off my true body, he caught my arm. 

“Don’t run off already. I haven’t laughed that hard in ages.”

“I’m not running anywhere. I’m showing you something.” I started pulling my shirt up. 

He yanked my shirt back down. “Flashing me won’t change anything about the portal.”

I turned back around to roll my eyes at him. “Last I checked, my breasts aren’t on my back. I’m showing you something else.”

He hesitated but pulled back. “Fine, go ahead.”

Again, I turned my back and pulled up my shirt. 

“The hell is that thing?”

I faced him again. “That thing is me, thank you very much. Like I said, I’m an alien.”

He was stubbornly staring at the ceiling, so I pulled my shirt down so he would actually look at me. Still looking uneasy, he glanced over my shoulder. “Wait, are you saying you’re the- the red flesh pancake on Leah’s back?”

The ‘red flesh pancake?’ “Sure, that’s one way of describing me. And just so you know, I’m only on Leah’s body because her crazy dad thought I could bring her back to life. I don’t usually ride around on human corpses.”

“So she did-” His head feathers drooped. “I’m sorry to hear that. All of it. But licensed guardians like my dad have to report Otherealm organisms, and my mom tells him everything. I couldn’t tell either of them what you are, and they wouldn’t let an unlicensed human through the portal.”

Great. “I don’t suppose you could ‘borrow’ the portal keys?”

He shook his head. “They have cameras in the portal room.”

That figured. Judging by his expression, he had no intention of risking his parents’ wrath to help a strange alien. Perhaps Ethan would be more daring. He certainly seemed to be the more outgoing of the two, based solely on how much he posted on social media. I wanted to ask Mark what he thought would happen if I talked to Ethan, but Mark spoke first. 

“What’s it like, living in the Otherealm?”

I shrugged. “I’ve lived there my whole life. It’s difficult to sum it up in words. The air is nicer, and it’s much darker there than it is here.”

He leaned closer. “I know about that; I’ve visited a few times. I meant, what’s life like as a realm leech? Do you guys have cities, or…?”

“First off, we call ourselves ‘arytas,’ not leeches. Secondly, we don’t really have cities the way you would understand them. We have colonies, which are closer to the city-states in ancient human history. Each colony has hundreds of thousands or millions of workers and barons led by a king and queen.”

“It’s a hereditary monarchy?”

I snorted. “Not exactly. Think less of medieval Europe, more of an ant colony.”

“Oh.” He frowned. “If you’re used to being around millions of siblings, I can see why you’re anxious to get back. It must be terribly lonely here.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” Actually, I wouldn’t say anything of the sort. It had actually been kind of nice to have Celest take care of me for a little while. She’d treated me like a unique person rather than one of the countless barons she was in charge of minding. It was a pity I had to go back, really, but I had a duty to the colony. And even if I didn’t have a duty, I couldn’t possibly live the rest of my life on the body of Celest’s dead daughter.

“Are you close with everyone or just a few people?” 

Mark’s genuine curiosity almost made me laugh. The idea of me being close with millions of other arytas was absurd. 

“I’m not close with anyone. I used to be. There was this worker who hatched on the same day as me named El.” My voice caught as I thought of my favorite day-sister. I tried not to think of her, not to indulge in the weakness of grief, but it wasn’t like my trainer was watching now. I couldn’t be punished if I failed to keep a straight face. Not to mention, my history might garner enough sympathy to get Mark’s help. “She helped me learn how to fly. It was a miracle I wasn’t culled when I hatched--because one of my wings is smaller than the other one--but I still had to take this fitness test with all the other barons and baronesses my age. I was going to fail and be culled, but El helped me a lot.

I swallowed and looked away in an attempt to avoid his stunned stare. “She helped too much, really. She missed her work quota a couple times, and… she was culled.” I shrugged like it was no big deal, like her death hadn’t affected me so much that I’d changed my name from Arva to Elva to remember her, like I hadn’t almost let my host die of red fever after her death because I was too much of a hatchling to control my emotions and my host at the same time. “I haven’t really gotten close to anyone since.”

He was quiet for so long that I regretted answering his question truthfully. Even by Leah’s standards, a man like Mark was pampered and sheltered. He’d likely never seen death in his life, much less been forced to watch while his best friend in the whole world was torn apart by wild animals. Why had I said anything at all besides “No, I’m not close to anyone?” It was as if once I’d started talking--actually describing what had happened for the first time--I couldn’t stop. The words just flowed out of me like a venomous river. 

It was a stupid thing to do. Describing how ruthless my species was wouldn’t encourage him to help me. If anything, he would be afraid enough to report me himself. I needed to get out of here before he came to his senses and called the guardians.