Everything in me stilled as the figures moved around, like smoke in the air, curling and twisting in their pale purplish light. The realization hit me after a moment of staring, disbelieving, at what was before me. Aliens. Luyians. And even as recognition smacked me in the face, I still wasn’t sure. I’d never seen Beck’s true for before—he drew it for me, once, but never was able to show me. Once the Luyians pick their human form, they can’t change back. At least, not on Earth.
And now I was staring at four newly touched down Luyians, in the flesh. Well. Sort of.
The smoke and light filled beings curled around in the air, as if wandering around in a circle in the roadway. A strange feeling worked its way through me as I watched them move around, something similar to disbelief, to a certain kind of shell-shocked. It was one thing to believe Beck in there being aliens—that took me a while, in all honesty—but it was another to be faced with them, in the day, in reality.
And there were four of them.
Cassian rustled the bush behind me, parting a few branches with his fingers so he could see. The shadows of light paid no attention to the sound, but I gripped Cassie’s fingers tighter. Please don’t speak, I thought in the little boy’s direction, my heart in my throat. Don’t speak, don’t speak, don’t make a sound.
Cassie, though, seemed to understand, and kept his silence.
The shadows shifted, and paper materialized from their…bodies. Their hands? From the shadowy space where their hands would’ve been. From the distance Cassie and I stood at, I couldn’t see exactly what was on the pieces of paper, but they flapped in the breeze, the one that the darkening sky brought along.
A second later, the light that held the papers positioned in midair turned into skin, fingers, hands—a body.
It was like watching a high budget scifi movie. All at once, their purplish-like glow morphed into more skin-like appearance, the lilac pigment seeping away. The four beings of light turned into four humans—three women, one man. One of the women had straight black hair that nearly reached her elbows, her almond-shaped eyes half-hidden by a pair of pink glasses frames. The other woman stood tall, taller than all three of the aliens combined, with her dark hair twisted back into a high ponytail. The last woman stood with the paper crumpled in a small fist, the appearance of a teenager almost, her auburn hair similar to Beck’s. Every one of them wore a black ensemble, like they were about to go on a heist.
But the man…the man was what threw me. Because he was tall, he was broad-shouldered, and he was entirely familiar. He was…he was…
He was the striking image of my father. My dead father.
“What street are we on?” the man demanded, his voice pitching low as he raised his voice. The sound of it took all the air from my lungs, like the words themselves reached into my chest and pulled every last drop of oxygen out, ripping along my throat and leaving me raw. Cassian’s hand twitched in my own, but I didn’t even know if he was old enough to remember my father. Yeah, Grisham Falls was a small town, but it wasn’t often that the Michaels’ and the Verandez’s paths crossed. Still, those five fingers were grounding, and though the world still swayed beneath my feet, I didn’t feel like my face was about to be introduced to it. “The meeting point was on Fletching, wasn’t it?”
The black-haired woman shifted on her feet, folding her paper up and slipping it into her back pocket, pulling out a small metallic device. “Indeed. But this seems to be named Brooke. At least, that’s what my meter tells me.”
