Yenn lowers her hands and lets the honeybee worker shuffle onto the hive platform. She’s lethargic, her antennae heavy and slow. And there’s a blood-red lump attached to her thorax. Solma was right. Since Orchid alerted Warren before he disappeared, Yenn’s been looking out for the strange red lumps. She thought Warren’s sister was hysterical at first. But she wasn’t. At least, not completely. The red lumps are real.
Most of the bees in her hive have them. Once, she saw one moving and realized it was a creature. A creature, feeding on the bees. She went and threw up after that, then cried, and now she’s spent. There’s nothing to do. After she found the lumps on her bees, she ran to Warren’s aunt and asked for her books. For an afternoon, she sat, racing through the pages until she found t
