The school day had passed with the accustomed slowness, and Jake was glad to have had so much time to spend with Cassie during lunch. Even if some of it was spent talking about the new mission and the information that Erek had given them. Anything that pertained to Marco's secret was left out, of course.
Jake wasn't the type to betray a friend that way, even if Cassie probably was the best person to help him with his problems.
Once the day was over, the six of them met back at the barn to discuss their plan of action. And to let Slade know what it was that they would be doing soon.
"Cassie, can you get Slade? We'll need his vote on this mission, too," Jake said, even though he suspected he knew what the older boy's response would be.
(I'll bring Ax here; we'll need the information he might have on these new Controllers the Yeerks are using.)
"Thanks, Tobias," Jake called to the hawk as he flew away.
Walking into the barn, Jake looked up just as Cassie scrambled down the ladder. From her posture and stride, Jake could tell she was worried about something.
"Jake, there's someone in the hayloft," she said, looking back over her shoulder the way she'd come. "I think you should come see them."
"I thought we already agreed that Slade was going to stay in your hayloft, Cass," he said, as he started to climb the ladder up toward the hayloft.
Up to where the Animorphs' seventh member lived. What Jake saw wasn't what he had been expecting. Slade was there, like he always was, but there was also a younger-looking blond person – wearing what looked very much like one of Cassie's outfits – laying down with their head on his chest. Jake didn't know what to make of the situation; Slade wasn't the type of person who would just go and blithely endanger the Animorphs' security like this, but then that seemed to be exactly what he had just done.
"Slade?" he called softly, not wanting to wake this new person if he could help it.
As it turned out, though, they were either a particularly light sleeper or they had the same kind of enhanced senses as Slade himself did. Sitting up, and incidentally revealing themselves to be a girl at the same time, she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Making a concerted effort to keep his eyes away from the loose folds of Cassie's shirt draped across her chest, Jake focused on her face.
She was kind of pretty, and in a way she reminded him of his cousin Rachel. This new girl had the same blonde hair and pale, flawless complexion, but those were the only similarities that Jake could pick out at the moment. Time would tell if this new girl was really anything like Rachel or if they just bore an uncanny physical resemblance.
"Hi," Jake said, crouching down so he could look the new girl in the eyes. She might have been someone important to Slade; he was pretty sure the older boy would have been wary of any other person who came into the barn.
He seemed like the kind of person who would take any threat to them or himself very seriously. Maybe a little too seriously.
"Who're you? What're you doing here?"
"I was about to ask you those very same questions," he said soberly. "You're clearly not one of us, so who are you? How did you get here?"
"What do you mean, 'one of you'? Just who are you people?"
"I think you should be the one to start first," he said, trying to sound reasonable.
"Why don't we start with how you know my brother, and work from there?" she said, sitting up and folding her arms.
"Slade's your brother?" he asked, pausing to think on what that could mean. "Wait, you're not Shara Carter, are you?"
"Good guess; but how do you know me when I know we've never met before?"
"I don't really know you," he rushed to reassure her; Shara looked like she was getting impatient. "It's more like I know of you. Your brother was on the school's track team. I heard about you from Molly; she followed the team's activities… really closely," he finished lamely.
He knew that was kind of an understatement, but there wasn't really any nice way to phrase what she'd been doing.
"Molly Henderson?" Shara echoed, chuckling. "You mean my brother's stalker-in-training?" she laughed softly, right up until she looked back over at her brother and got really morose. "I wonder if he even remembers her now?"
"I've really never thought to ask him about that," Jake confessed.
"I guess it really isn't the kind of thing you talk about with strangers," she said, still staring at the sleeping form of her brother.
Jake, meanwhile, was starting to wonder just how Slade was sleeping through this entire exchange. He'd gotten the impression that Slade had greatly enhanced senses; an impression that had only been strengthened by the time that he had spent with the older boy. When he mentioned this, though, Shara just smiled knowingly.
"I guess you don't really know my brother, then," she said, gently running her fingers through Slade's black hair. "He only relaxes this much around people he trusts; he was up for awhile there when you first came in, but he's napping again now. Are you going to tell me who she is, though?"
Looking back over his shoulder where Shara's gaze was fixed, he saw Cassie standing there and remembered that he hadn't been the only one who wanted answers.