Trouble shrugs.

"Your mum, your call," says Robin.

"This is gonna be weird. And I thought we weren't supposed to say stuff about - stuff - on the phone?"

"We don't. We get ahold of her - on purpose, actually trying - tomorrow morning, we tell her Charlie's dead, we get her to come fetch us, we tell her then."

"That'll be fun," Ethan says dryly.

"Tremendous fun. I just wanted you all to know and to see if anybody had last-minute objections, that's all."

"Not me," he shrugs.

"...Do you want a hug?" says Trouble.

"Hm? I'm fine."

"You sure?"

"I'll be able to tell her the truth when she gets here, which will be soon. Besides, I wouldn't have been nearly as convincing a half-orphan if there hadn't been any crying, even on the phone."

"Okay. I just know, if I'd had to cry like that, I'd want a hug after."

He shrugs. "Wasn't offering for me. It's okay."

She relaxes, a little. "Thanks."

Trouble smiles.

"...Uh..." says Trouble. "I mean, maybe? I mean, she never drew me a picture."

"It's a Na. They're metamorphosed from a bigger roach kind of alien. They sometimes abduct people - and Earthlings aren't unheard of as targets."

"Wow," says Trouble. "I did nnnot expect that."

"Reggie's Yeerk probably figures that if all she's seen is a few Na she doesn't know enough to be a problem - if she even really saw Na and it's not something else going on."

"Probably," he says. "If Reggie's Yeerk even knows that. It doesn't come up much these days."

"Do you feel inclined to see if she can be extracted?"

"...Maybe," he says. "I don't know. I mean, on the one hand, I could get her away from Reggie; on the other hand, I'd have to go near Reggie."

"Someone else could do it, if we knew how," Bella points out.

"Do what, though? If I'm the one who shows up, she might actually trust me."

"I'm not sure," shrugs Bella. "If nothing else, we could keep an eye out for Reggie and you could time it for when he's not home."

"There is that. Or I could kill him," Trouble says thoughtfully.

"It would probably," says Bella, "be kind of conspicuous if my dad and your stepdad both 'died in a bear attack' within a few days of each other."

"Well, I wouldn't make it a bear attack," he says reasonably.

"Any kind of animal attack. Poison him, or something," she suggests. "If it has to be an animal attack be a dog - a Frolised one, at that, don't want the neighbor's pets put down."

"I was not planning on making it an animal attack."

"What were you thinking?"

He shrugs. "I was thinking some very nasty and very detailed thoughts involving knives, but I'm not married to the idea."

"Anything suggesting you might still be alive is a bad idea. You're the one with the obvious motive as far as people who cannot be allowed to know you are alive are concerned."

"Yeah. I'm not thinking planning thoughts right now, I'm thinking wouldn't-it-be-nice thoughts."

"Okay. Well, I won't stop you if you want to kill him as long as you get the Yeerk and don't leave evidence of your survival."

"Okay," he says cheerfully.

Bella flips her notebook open, and starts writing. She tucks the picture of the Na between earlier pages.

"Whatcha writing now?"

"Stuff about condoning premeditated murder."

He giggles.

"Hilarious stuff about condoning premeditated murder."

"Aww, I know it's not hilarious to you," he says. "Is to me, though."

"Why?"

He shrugs. "Just is."

She shrugs. She writes. "If your stepdad died would your mom inherit his stuff as per usual or is there something else set up?"

"I don't even know."

"Does he have other close relatives you know about that he'd bother setting something unusual up for?"

"Nah."

"So there could be some peripheral perks too," she murmurs, writing still.

"Yeah. Unless she gets arrested for it, I guess."

"Give her an alibi," shrugs Bella. "Convince her to go someplace where she'll be noticed, make it look like he fell down the stairs."

"Could work. Tricky, though, the falling down the stairs part. And she almost never goes anywhere."

"Does she have people over? Anyway, she has an excuse to change her behavior around now - her kid just ran off."

"True."

"I bet you can plan a perfect murder what with telepathy and morphing and being missing presumed dead. They are useful tools. Anyway."

"I bet I can too!"

She laughs. Slightly. She goes on writing.

Trouble goes off to think about murder some more.

Renée shows up at the house at eleven-thirty.

Robin, being one of the few people in the house who is officially both alive and in Forks and happening to be nearest the door, answers it.

"Robin, hi," says Renée in a subdued voice, "how are my girls?"

"I know, I know, my poor girls -"

"Mom," says Bella, "I still don't like to be interrupted. And it's more complicated than you know. Dad isn't actually dead. He faked it."

"...What?"

"The short version is, aliens exist, one was possessing him, the others would notice if he just stopped showing up to alien meetings, we killed it but Charlie has to look dead for them not to be tipped off. Other, nicer aliens also exist and gave us powers and there is one of those in the garage."

"...What?"

"Trouble had an alien possessor too but we cut a deal with her and he ran away from home to avoid detection," Bella adds, "and he's here, as is Ethan, they both helped with un-possessing Charlie."

"Also we can all turn into animals," Andi adds helpfully, "want to see?"

<Hi, Mom.>

Robin looks from the barn owl to the barn owl's mother and shrugs.

"What in God's name is going on?"

"...Evil aliens?" says Robin.

"Evil aliens! Less evil aliens! Owls!" exclaims Renée, throwing her hands into the air. "Faked deaths and faked running-away -"

"He really ran away, it just was for evil-alien reasons," clarifies Andi.

"Yeah."

"Where is Charlie, then?" demands Renée.

<Hey Dad!> says Andi. <C'mere in the living room, Mom is here.>

And here is Charlie. "'Lo, Renée. Girls told you about the aliens and all that?"

"They told me something - look, did you know they called me and told me you were dead - that you can all turn into animals -"

"Didn't have much choice. Aliens in the NSA, aliens in the phone companies, don't want to say too much over the phone. I am sorry," he adds. "Just - didn't have a better idea."

"How long has this been going on?"

"Aliens've been on Earth in numbers for 'bout ten years. I only got sucked in last August myself."

Robin nods corroboratively. (She has her thinking-about-Hork-Bajir face on, but since Ethan is not present, no one is likely to notice.)

"It's a bit much, isn't it," Charlie sighs.

"More than a bit," exclaims Renée. "I want to see the - the friendly garage alien."

"Sure. Be nice to him. He's helping us," says Bella, getting to her feet.

"I've never been impolite to a garage alien in my life."

Bella snorts, and opens the garage door. "Ax," she says, "this is my mother, Renée."

<Hello, Renée,> says Ax the garage alien, holding up a hand in greeting.

"Hello, I - how are you doing that?"

"Same way Andi did when she turned into an owl," says Bella. "Friendly garage aliens can do it, and so can we if we turn into anything but ourselves."

"...Okay. Hi, Ax."

"Do you need to sit back down?"

Andi, now demorphed except for some feathers on her cheeks and amongst her hair, adds, "Or see anybody else turn into anything? But it's grosser when they do it, and slower, I'm really good at it."

"I think I'm fine, girls, thank you. Did you say Trouble was here?"

"Downstairs, with Ethan. They will probably reemerge sometime in the next fifteen to twenty minutes."

"Well. Okay."

Robin snorts.

"Questions?" Bella asks Renée. "Further evidential requirements?"

"I think I'm, er, convinced. But what are you doing - why can you turn into owls and such?"

"Ax's brother crash-landed conveniently near us not too long ago and gave us some garage alien technology that lets us do it. We have to touch the animals to get them. We raided a zoo, a while back. And we're trying to come up with ways to use that ability and anything else we can get ahold of to get rid of possessor aliens."

"...Okay."

"Robin, d'you want to go see if Trouble and Ethan would like to come greet Mom?"

When she returns, it is with a fluffy, purring kitty in her arms! Purrrrrr.

"I'm gonna assume that's Trouble."

<You are right!> says Trouble. <Hi, everybody.>

Robin scritches his tummy.

"This is really strange."

"But fluffy," Robin says contentedly.

"Yes - what kind of cat is that?"

"It's a mix. You can do that, with closely related animals. Ax has a human morph that's all of us mixed up."

"I suppose you can. So do you all - turn into things for fun, a lot?"

"That and telepathy. It's a little tiring and we can't stay in other forms for more than a couple hours or we risk getting stuck that way, but there's recreational applications, yeah."

<Fluffy ones,> says Trouble, purring.

"There's not room for all of you in the car," says Renée after a moment.

"We don't have to all fit in the car. Trouble and Charlie need generic human morphs and will be flying to some population center where they won't be recognized to acquire the component humans. It would be nice to stow Ax and Ethan away with us in small morphs, so we'd have to stop occasionally to let them change out and back again - Ethan might be able to do it in transit, Ax can't - but that doesn't seem like it should be that serious a problem if we drive at night and don't take crowded highways, and if it proves really complicated they can get out and fly."

<Yeah,> says Trouble, <getting around as a pigeon is pretty easy, as long as you can find good places to demorph along the way.>

"Ax doesn't have a pigeon, is the difficulty here, he'd have a bit of a hard time following Ethan, but yes."

<True. But they could figure it out, I bet.>

"Do you think that should be plan A instead of sticking them in the car? I suppose maybe it should, the side of the highway is probably a bad place for Ax to be morphing. Either that or somebody should take a bird of prey and go bring in a pigeon for Ax."

<I'll do it,> Trouble volunteers cheerfully.

"Okay. It's dark, we can put you out the back door now if you want to do it right away."

Andi goes with him to open the door once he is a bird of prey.

He picks the great horned owl. Off he goes.