An Hour of Need by Bella Forrest Page B

gripping hold of me to keep me steady—I already knew that it had not left me the same person.
    I knew instantly from the look on Orlando’s and my parents’ faces.
    “What is it?” I demanded in a panic.
    Their eyes were roaming the length of me.
    I glanced down at my hands and realized just how much paler they looked all of a sudden. Paler and more… veiny. I twisted my hands so that my wrists were visible. Blue veins jutted out so far my arms had become practically unrecognizable. These are not my wrists.
    “Hand me a mirror,” I stammered to my mother, even as I feared I would regret it.
    “Grace,” she gasped.
    “Please! Just hand one to me,” I begged.
    She dipped into her backpack and rummaged. “Oh, I handed my travel mirror to you earlier, darling,” she said. “You never gave it back.”
    Dammit. I must’ve left it back at the cave.
    My aunt Rose’s concerned face appeared within my view. Her expression was a mirror of the others’.
    “I have a mirror, but—” Rose said.
    “Then let me see myself!” I cried, too loudly.
    Rose searched her bag and pulled out a foldable mirror. Trembling, I pried it open and stared at myself. As I had feared, the tone of my face had changed drastically, just like the rest of my body. And it was as if my skin had thinned. Blue veins were also visible where there had been no trace of them before, especially near my temples.
    I clapped the mirror shut and flung it back to my aunt, terrified of my reflection. My father’s hand closed around my shoulder. “Grace, it’s time to take you back to The Shade. We are just asking for trouble dragging you around with—”
    “No,” I insisted. “That won’t solve anything ! I would turn there just as I am now! No,” I repeated, in a quieter though no less desperate tone, “That’s not what I need… I need to get through to Lawrence.”

Lawrence
    I was feeling beyond confused as I carried my father back with me and my colleagues to Aviary city.
    What had just happened?
    Who were those people who had taken my father hostage?
    One moment I had been on the phone to my father, filling him in on the progress we’d made and the remaining estimated tree count, and the next I’d heard him grunt, followed by the thump of the phone hitting the ground.
    I’d set out with an emergency search party immediately, though it wasn’t difficult to find him. As was mandatory for all IBSI members recruited to work on the new construction site in Aviary, as soon as we arrived in this land, we had to hook ourselves up to a central tracing system based in one of the technology caravan units in the center of the main clearing ground. For such a large project as this, it was mandatory that I had the means to know where everyone was, to manage our resources and ensure that everybody was working together as efficiently as possible… In all honesty, I was surprised that my father had given me such a prominent role so soon after my successful drug trial. I found the attention he was showing me now rather difficult to get used to, though it certainly was not unwelcome. I had been all but estranged from him while growing up. After my mother’s accident, I’d rarely seen him. It was understandable, of course. He had arguably the most demanding job in the world.
    Now, he thought I was up to managing the IBSI’s activities in Aviary. He assured me that I was a fast learner and would easily fill in the gaps in my knowledge while on the job.
    So far, he was right—it hadn’t been difficult to slip into this role, even if I did find myself asking several times a day what exactly I was doing in this position of authority.
    We arrived at our temporary base among the treetops in old Aviary city. We had cleared away the medieval treehouses that been perched among the branches and replaced them with glass box-like constructions with interconnecting walkways. There were over a hundred rooms in this sprawling architecture, and that was with some