It made sense that they’d want to debrief Shelby without me around—everything that had happened since we had arrived had made sense—but that didn’t mean I needed to like it. I put my hand on the doorknob, looked at her, and asked, “Is it as bad as I think it is? Shelby told me what was going on.”

Charlotte’s laugh was strained and tight, the laugh of a woman who has looked into the abyss only to discover that it is deeper than she could possibly have imagined. “Shelly never had much of an imagination,” she said. “However bad she said it was, she was wrong. It’s worse.”

I sighed. “Of course it is,” I said. “What would be the fun of it being anything else?”

Five

“This is a terrible, horrible, incredibly foolish idea. Let’s try it and see what happens.”

—Jonathan Healy

The guest room of an isolated house in Queensland, Australia, trying to wake up

I HADN’T EXPECTED TO be able to sleep after Charlotte’s dire proclamation, but I had gone into the guest room anyway: it was clear that I wasn’t going to be left anywhere else without a chaperone for the time being, and I wanted to visit the promised toilet sooner rather than later. She had been speaking in the British sense—instead of a commode in the middle of the room, there was a narrow door leading to what my family would have called a “half-bath,” with a toilet, sink, and nothing else. I took care of my business, washed my hands and face, and returned to the main guest room to find my bags propped against the foot of the bed. The roller bag was unzipped, and the mice were nowhere to be seen.

Aeslin mice are small and have limited natural defenses, but they’re also smart, and surprisingly good at surviving, considering the massed forces the world has rallied to kill them off. I sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled out my laptop, trusting the mice to take care of themselves.

The wireless password was where Charlotte had said it would be, and I got it on the first try. My inbox was a nightmare sea of messages from the zoo, my grandparents, Dee, and people who hadn’t emailed me since I’d left college, but had been prompted by the strange force that works to explode the email of travelers. I tapped out quick messages to the people who needed to know that I had landed safely—my parents, Grandma, Verity—before closing the lid on my computer and setting it aside. My eyes itched. I removed my glasses so I could rub my eyes with the heel of my hand, and somehow that translated to placing my glasses on the bedside table and letting my head drop to the pillow. It wouldn’t hurt anything to close my eyes for just a few moments, I reasoned; I didn’t actually have to take a nap.

The sound of a knock on the guest room door snapped me back to consciousness, my hand going for the gun at my belt before I realized where I was—and that I’d gone to sleep with a loaded weapon on my person. Not good gun safety. Not good anything, really. I sat up, rubbing my entire face with my hand, and noticed that the room had gone dark. However long I’d been asleep, it had carried me past sunset. “Who is it?” I called.

“Shelby,” came the answer. “Are you done snoring your life away and ready to join the ongoing crisis, or should I come back in an hour? Mum’s made lamb stew, if that makes a difference in your answer.”

“I’m up.” I grabbed my glasses, slid them on, and stood. Everything hurt substantially more than could be explained by the position I’d been sleeping in. I decided to hate jet lag. “What time is it?”

“Just past seven. You decent?”

I paused. Shelby had seen me naked any number of times, and I had seen her the same way; I could recreate the scars she bore from her years of working with predators both known and cryptozoological with my eyes closed. Being in a house with her parents was going to take some getting used to. “I fell asleep with my clothes on.”

“Alex.” The door swung open to reveal Shelby standing silhouetted by the light that filled the hall. She was wearing a sundress I’d never seen before, and her hair was down, tempting me to plunge my fingers into it and skip straight to getting in trouble with her father. That temptation only lasted a few seconds before my attention was caught by the creature crouching on her shoulder and watching me with wary, avian eyes. It was about the size of a small housecat or a very large ferret, with bright pink plumage on its head and wings, and the striped hindquarters of an animal I’d never seen before.

Shelby saw where I was looking, and beamed. “Alex, meet Flora. Flora, this is Alex.” The little beast responded with a warble that devolved into a screech.

“I’ve never seen a garrinna in the flesh,” I said, standing and moving slowly closer, so as not to frighten her. “She’s beautiful.”

“She was the runt of her litter, which is why she wound up brought into the house instead of staying in the aviary with her brothers and sisters. They all moved on to conservation sites, she stayed here with me.” Shelby kissed the top of the garrinna’s head. Flora responded by rubbing her beak, birdlike, against Shelby’s cheek. “She’s a clever girl. Can have the blender apart in minutes, if we leave her unmonitored in the kitchen. You ready to come downstairs?”

It took me a moment to follow her change of topics. I nodded. “I think I’m as ready as I’m going to be. Did your other sister get here safely?”

“Gabby? Yeah, she’s here. Came in about half an hour ago with a sob story about Cooper getting them lost and being stopped by tourists and something about a kangaroo in a chemist’s and anyway, she’s here now, so if you’re ready to come downstairs . . . ?” Shelby stopped, looking at me expectantly. The garrinna on her shoulder chirped.

I smiled. “Let’s go.”

The sound of voices and the meaty smell of stew greeted us halfway down the stairs, wafting from somewhere toward the back of the house. I let Shelby take the lead, since we were on her territory now, and focused instead on the things around me, trying to get an idea of what I was walking into.

The first thing: there were no pictures on the walls. Back at home, my family history was displayed in black and white, Kodachrome, and even the occasional ink drawing. Once you were in the house, you knew who we were and where you were standing, and you weren’t going to leave alive unless we let you. There was no point in hiding ourselves in the one place where we should have been able to be safe. But these walls were virtually bare, brightened only by a few small watercolor paintings. There were alcoves set into the wall every three feet, and vases of bright artificial flowers had been placed in them, creating a slightly homier atmosphere.