The reaching hand also froze above me.

I tried to move my hand again, to protect myself, but that moved the hand above me. I started shaking, and the hand trembled.

Oh.

I opened and closed the hand, looking at it carefully.

Was this my hand, this tiny thing? It was a child’s hand, except for the long pink-and-white nails, filed into perfect, smooth curves. The skin was fair, with a strange silvery cast to it and, entirely incongruous, a scattering of golden freckles.

It was the odd combination of silver and gold that brought the image back: I could see a face in my head, reflected in a mirror.

The setting of the memory threw me off for a moment because I wasn’t used to so much civilization-at the same time, I knew nothing but civilization. A pretty dresser with all kinds of frilly and delicate things on top of it. A profusion of dainty glass bottles containing the scents I loved-I loved? Or she loved?-so much. A potted orchid. A set of silver combs.

The big round mirror was framed in a wreath of metal roses. The face in the mirror was roundish, too, not quite oval. Small. The skin on the face had the same silver undertone-silver like moonlight-as the hand did, with another handful of the golden freckles across the bridge of the nose. Wide gray eyes, the silver of the soul shimmering faintly behind the soft color, framed by tangled golden lashes. Pale pink lips, full and almost round, like a baby’s. Small, even white teeth behind them. A dimple in the chin. And everywhere, everywhere, golden, waving hair that stood away from my face in a bright halo and fell below where the mirror showed.

My face or her face?

It was the perfect face for a Night Flower. Like an exact translation from Flower to human.

“Where is she?” my high, reedy voice demanded. “Where is Pet?” Her absence frightened me. I’d never seen a more defenseless creature than this half-child with her moonlight face and sunlight hair.

“She’s right here,” Doc assured me. “Tanked and ready to go. We thought you could tell us the best place to send her.”

I looked toward his voice. When I saw him standing in the sunlight, a lit cryotank in his hands, a rush of memories from my former life came back to me.

“Doc!” I gasped in the tiny, fragile voice. “Doc, you promised! You gave me your oath, Eustace! Why? Why did you break your word?”

A dim recollection of misery and pain touched me. This body had never felt such agony before. It shied away from the sting.

“Even an honest man sometimes caves to duress, Wanda.”

“Duress,” another terribly familiar voice scoffed.

“I’d say a knife to the throat counts as duress, Jared.”

“You knew I wouldn’t really use it.”

“That I did not. You were quite persuasive.”

“A knife?” My body trembled.

“Shh, it’s all okay,” Ian murmured. His breath blew strands of golden hair across my face, and I brushed them away-a routine gesture. “Did you really think you could leave us that way? Wanda!” He sighed, but the sigh was joyful.

Ian was happy. This insight made my worry suddenly much lighter, easier to bear.

“I told you I didn’t want to be a parasite,” I whispered.

“Let me through,” my old voice ordered. And then I could see my face, the strong one, with the sun-brown skin, the straight black line of the eyebrows over the almond-shaped, hazel eyes, the high, sharp cheekbones… See it backward, not as a reflection, the way I’d always seen it before.

“Listen up, Wanda. I know exactly what you don’t want to be. But we’re human, and we’re selfish, and we don’t always do the right thing. We aren’t going to let you go. Deal with it.”

The way she spoke, the cadence and the tone, not the voice, brought back all the silent conversations, the voice in my head, my sister.

“Mel? Mel, you’re okay!”

She smiled then and leaned over to hug my shoulders. She was bigger than I remembered being.

“Of course I am. Wasn’t that the point of all the drama? And you’re going to be fine, too. We weren’t stupid about it. We didn’t just grab the first body we saw.”

“Let me tell her, let me!” Jamie shoved in beside Mel. It was getting very crowded around the cot. It rocked, unstable.

I took his hand and squeezed it. My hands felt so feeble. Could he even feel the pressure?

“Jamie!”

“Hey, Wanda! This is cool, isn’t it? You’re smaller than me now!” He grinned, triumphant.

“But still older. I’m almost -” And then I stopped, changing my sentence abruptly. “My birthday is in two weeks.”

I might have been disoriented and confused, but I wasn’t stupid. Melanie’s experiences had not gone to waste; I had learned from them. Ian was every bit as honorable as Jared, and I was not going to go through the frustration Melanie had.

So I lied, giving myself an extra year. “I’ll be eighteen.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Melanie and Ian stiffen in surprise. This body looked much younger than her true age, hovering on the edge of seventeen.

It was this little deception, this preemptive claiming of my partner, that made me realize I was staying here. That I would be with Ian and the rest of my family. My throat thickened, felt oddly swollen.

Jamie patted my face, calling my attention back. I was surprised at how big his hand felt on my cheek. “They let me come on the raid to get you.”

“I know,” I muttered. “I remember… Well, Pet remembers seeing you there.” I glared at Mel, who shrugged.

“We tried not to scare her,” Jamie said. “She’s so… kind of fragile-looking, you know? And nice, too. We picked her out together, but I got to decide! See, Mel said we had to get someone young-someone who had a bigger percentage of life as a soul or something. But not too young, because she knew you wouldn’t want to be a child. And then Jared liked this face, because he said no one could ever dis… distrust it. You don’t look dangerous at all. You look the opposite of dangerous. Jared said anyone who sees you would just naturally want to protect you, right, Jared? But then I got the final say, because I was looking for someone who looked like you. And I thought this looked like you. Because she sort of looks like an angel, and you’re good like that. And real pretty. I knew you would be pretty.” Jamie smiled hugely. “Ian didn’t come. He just sat here with you-he said he didn’t care what you looked like. He wouldn’t let anyone else put a finger on your tank at all, not even me or Mel. But Doc let me watch this time. It was way cool, Wanda. I don’t know why you wouldn’t let me watch before. They wouldn’t let me help, though. Ian wouldn’t let anyone touch you but him.”

Ian squeezed my hand and leaned in to whisper through all the hair. His voice was so low that I was the only one who could hear. “I held you in my hand, Wanderer. And you were so beautiful.”

My eyes got all wet, and I had to sniff.

“You like it, don’t you?” Jamie asked, his voice worried now. “You’re not mad? There’s nobody in there with you, is there?”

“I’m not mad, exactly,” I whispered. “And I-I can’t find anybody else. Just Pet’s memories. Pet’s been in here since… I can’t remember when she wasn’t here. I can’t remember any other name.”

“You’re not a parasite,” Melanie said firmly, touching my hair, pulling up a strand and letting the gold slide between her fingers. “This body didn’t belong to Pet, but there’s nobody else to claim it. We waited to make sure, Wanda. We tried to wake her up almost as long as we tried with Jodi.”

“Jodi? What happened to Jodi?” I chirped, my little voice going higher, like a bird’s, with anxiety. I struggled to get up, and Ian pulled me-it took no effort, no strength to move my tiny new body-into a sitting position with his arm supporting me. I could see all the faces then.

Doc, no more tears in his eyes. Jeb, peeking around Doc, his expression satisfied and burning with curiosity at the same time. Next, a woman I didn’t recognize for a second because her face was more animated than I’d ever seen it, and I hadn’t seen it much anyway-Mandy, the former Healer. Closer to me, Jamie, with his bright, excited smile, Melanie beside him, and Jared behind her, his hands around her waist. I knew that his hands would never feel right unless they were touching her body-my body!-now. That he would keep her as close as he could forever, hating any inch that came between them. This caused me a fierce, aching pain. The delicate heart in my thin chest shuddered. It had never been broken before, and it didn’t understand this memory.