“I really don’t believe this,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. Finally, against my better judgment, I nodded. “Yes, I’ll stay at home with Sarah so you can have your date night. But you have to promise I’m getting those autopsy reports.”

“I swear,” said Grandma.

I sighed and dropped my hand. “I guess I’m staying at home, then.”

“Yes, I suppose you are,” said Grandpa, and smiled.

An hour later, they were heading out the door, having delivered the usual list of instructions for the care and feeding of my cousin, most of which involved the word “don’t.” Don’t let her go outside, don’t let her answer the phone, don’t let her answer the door, don’t let her get into philosophical debates with the pizza delivery man, don’t let her eat chocolate chips. (To be fair, that last one was for medical reasons: chocolate is mildly poisonous to cuckoos, and she’d make herself sick before she remembered she wasn’t supposed to have it.) Sarah stood halfway down the stairs, clutching the banister and swaying slightly as she watched them go.

“Be good!” called Grandma, and closed the door behind her, leaving us alone. I turned to Sarah.

“What do you want to do?”

“Ignite the heart of a dormant sun and resolve the impossible fractions,” she replied.

“Well, since that’s not going to happen tonight, how about some television?” With her telepathy mostly blocked, TV was actually more soothing for her than live interaction. She knew she couldn’t read the minds of the people on the screen, and most of the time, the characters were easily distinguishable by hair color and wardrobe—two of the things she could pick up on.

“Television is good,” she agreed, descending two more steps. “What’s the menu?”

“I have season one of Numb3rs, or some downloads of Square One that Artie sent for you. Whichever you like.”

“PBS is better,” she said serenely, and finally walked to the bottom of the stairs, proceeding into the living room. I shrugged and followed her.

“Square One it is,” I said.

It didn’t take long to get her settled on the living room floor with a bowl of ketchup-covered popcorn in her lap and math-based edutainment programming playing on the television. Sarah stared raptly, swaying to the beat as two would-be rappers began singing about prime numbers.

“I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me,” I said.

She flapped a hand, dismissing me from her presence. I smiled.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said, and left, pulling my phone out of my pocket as I walked. I’d promised Shelby I would call her. Sure, it was originally going to be a little later, since I was hoping we might be breaking into the morgue, but I hadn’t specified an exact time.

Shelby picked up so fast that I wasn’t sure the phone had actually completed its first ring. “Alex? Is that you?”

“Caller ID probably says it is,” I said. Then I paused, and laughed.

“What?” she asked, tone turning suspicious. “What’s so funny?”

“I just talked to my father a little while ago, and I was making caller ID jokes with him, that’s all. What’s going on? I’m calling like I said I would.”

“What do you want, a cookie?” Shelby paused and sighed. “I’m sorry, that was nasty of me. I just don’t want to be alone right now. I keep waiting for something to jump out of the shadows at me, and it’s making me incredibly uncomfortable.”

I grew up waiting for something to jump out of the shadows at me. I sighed as I sat down at the kitchen table. “I’m sorry.”

“So I was wondering . . .”

“What?” I should have heard the danger in her tone, which had sweetened and taken on a faint wheedling quality. But I was worried about her, and anxious about the possibility of a cockatrice rampaging through Columbus, and I suppose I just wasn’t listening clearly.

“Could I come over? Tonight, I mean? I know I’ve never been to your place, but you can’t leave your poor sick cousin, and I won’t be any bother, I swear. I just . . . I really don’t want to be alone right now. Please?”

“Shelby . . .”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I keep thinking about Andrew.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, fighting the urge to groan. “Give me a second.”

“Of course.”

It wasn’t technically against the rules for me to have company—Grandma would have encouraged it if it hadn’t been for Sarah, since she really wanted me to have more of a social life. As long as I put away anything incriminating before Shelby arrived, and could convince Crow and the mice to stay upstairs for the duration of her visit, I wouldn’t have to worry about anything except for my cousin.

About that . . . Sarah was happy in front of the television, and lots of people eat strange things on their popcorn. One of my college roommates used to put baker’s yeast on his. Ketchup was nothing. I could give Shelby a telepathy blocker, say it was a piece of jewelry that made me think of her. The charms were pretty things, copper disks suspended in little glass balls filled with water. She’d probably believe me.

Shelby sounded honestly distressed, and I wanted to be a good boyfriend, no matter how bad at it I was. Certain that I was making a mistake—and less certain of exactly what it was—I said, “Come on over. I’ll text you the address. Just . . . give me twenty minutes to clean up?”

“What, disposing of the bodies, are you?” she asked, a bit of her normal playfulness seeping back into her tone.

“Something like that.” If she thought body disposal would take me twenty minutes, she’d clearly never watched me clean a snake cage. I could get rid of an average human body in ten minutes, tops.

...and maybe that would be a bad thing to brag about to the nice girl that I was dating. Clearly, “normal” was still a bit beyond my capabilities. I shook my head and quickly added, “Only a bit less gruesome. Mostly it’s just dishes and making sure Sarah understands we’ll be having company.”

There was a pause. “She’s really quite ill, then?” said Shelby, sounding unsure.

“Nothing contagious, I swear.” It occurred to me that Shelby might have taken my constant excuses about needing to care for a sick cousin as exactly that: excuses. I glanced at the kitchen door. “She’s watching television right now. I’ll talk to her before you get here.”