It was really a cabin. A cabin all alone in the woods. If Emma hadn’t known of their species, she would have been angry with her father for keeping Sheila in a place devoid of human interaction, in a place devoid of life. She wondered how the nurses had coped with this sort of distance, way far away from town.

Emma had checked the time when her father had come to halt in front of the cabin. And from her calculations, it had taken more than forty-five minutes to get here. She looked at her father’s car in envy, a car that could rival Ferrari in speed. A normal car...