Changeling Read Free

little spooked.”
    “A little spooked isn’t nothing. Your subconscious might be picking up on something that your conscious mind is missing.”
    She laughed, though it was an uncomfortable sound. “Since when did you become so superstitious?”
    Even as she said it, she realized that the source of the strange feeling was Norris himself.
    Amelia’s birthday .
    Norris never called his daughter by her given name. Whenever he spoke of her, he almost always said, “my little girl” or sometimes “my daughter.” When he called her by name, which was rare, he always used the pet name “Mellie.” But today, he had called her “Amelia.”
    Despite the still-unexplained incongruity, Carrera felt an odd sense of relief. Simply knowing what it was that felt out of place had eased her concerns. She felt as if a bothersome sliver had finally been tweezed out of her subconscious.
    “It’s nothing,” she reiterated, and this time she meant it. Maybe the birthday girl had scolded him about his refusal to use her proper name. Carrera could remember when she had demanded that her own parents cease and desist from using nicknames. I was probably about the same age as Amelia.
    “You’re sure?” Norris pressed. “Four hundred and twenty-two people are about to put their lives in our hands, so if for any reason you don’t want to fly, you need to let me know.”
    “Seth, it’s fine. I’m good.” And she was, even though she didn’t know why Norris had started referring to his daughter in a different way, or why he had shown up early when he almost never did, or why he was suddenly insisting that she pay attention to her intuition when she had never known him to do that….
    Even though there was no explanation for any of those things, the satisfaction of having figured it out was enough to put her mind at ease.
    Mostly.
    They concluded the pre-flight checks and finished boarding, and as Norris greeted the passengers and briefed them on the itinerary for the trans-Pacific flight, Carrera made the final preparations for take-off. As she watched him work and listened to his voice on the public address system, she found herself scrutinizing everything he did, every minor perceived deviation from his normal routine. She could not tell if he was acting differently, or if she was merely being hypersensitive, but from a technical standpoint, his flying was spot on.
    About two hours after take-off, Norris handed the controls over to Carrera and rose from his chair to stretch his legs. There was nothing unusual about this. Flying, particularly on a long trans-oceanic route, was mostly a struggle against tedium. There was very little for the pilot to do aside from remaining vigilant and ready to respond to the unexpected, which could mean anything from steering around pockets of turbulence to coping with mechanical or electrical failures. Carrera focused her attention on the instrument panel while Norris stepped into the lavatory.
    Although her initial discomfort had long since passed, Carrera continued to be plagued by the surreal sense of dislocation she had experienced before take-off. She could not shake the feeling that she was actually asleep and dreaming everything. The phenomena was so persistent that she felt compelled to test the reality of her circumstances by checking to see if the printed weather report made sense. She had heard that, in dreams, written text often changed or was illegible, but the weather reports were completely normal. She was not dreaming then, but she definitely felt like she was in the Twilight Zone.
    “Still spooked?” Norris asked from behind her.
    “Is it that obvious?” She smiled without looking back and quickly added. “Not spooked exactly, just feeling a bit…odd.”
    “If I may ask, when did it start?”
    Carrera craned her head around to look at him. Norris was standing just behind her, his arms crossed over his chest. The pose was all wrong; he never stood like that. Or did he? She