“You’re welcome.”

“Is that why you came home early?”

“Maybe.”

It totally was. I grinned up at him. “For the record, I like it when you sound like a dying horse.”

His hips rocked against mine in one slow but insistent push. “First Jesus, now a stallion? You’ve really got it bad for me, don’t you.”

“I’m not the one who took an early flight home,” I said as I smacked him on the ass with the tips of my fingers.

He retaliated by running his teeth over my neck and making a humorous growl that sounded neither holy nor horse. “Goddamn, it’s cold in your house, Cadybell. You gonna let me inside the sheets?” He hooked a finger over the bedcovers. “Hold on just one minute . . . are you wearing”—he tugged at the quilt, trying to pull it down—“a nightgown?”

Crud. I’d forgotten all about it.

I didn’t own much lingerie. Before Lon, I slept in a T-shirt. After Lon, I mostly slept naked. But this was the first time Jupe had spent the night at my house, and all of my acceptable lounge pants were dirty or at Lon’s. I didn’t want to be surprised in the middle of the night if the kid couldn’t sleep, which is why I was wearing the ugliest nightgown known to human- or demon-kind. The printed design was scattered with cupcakes, hearts, and the word HUGS! repeated on a Pepto-Bismol-pink background. Kar Yee gave it to me in college as a prank. Hard to believe at times, but she really did have a sense of humor.

“Cupcakes?” His nose crinkled and he struggled to yank down the covers while I slapped at his fingers. I couldn’t have been more embarrassed. This was so not helping my ongoing anxiety over our age difference. He knotted his fingers into my sides to tickle me. I jumped and squealed. He redoubled his effort. I tried to buck him off of me, half laughing, half yelling in protest.

Without warning, the door to my bedroom was flung open and slammed against the wall with a loud crack.

A throaty “Hey!” boomed from the open doorway.

Lon and I yelped in surprise.

“Goddammit, Jupe!” Lon bellowed.

“Dad?” Squinting away sleep, he stood in the doorway with his hand over his heart and his shoulders sagging in relief. No shirt, barefoot, army-green drawstring pajama bottoms, his hair a frazzled electric mess. “I thought maybe that mugger from the parking garage had followed us and broken into the house or something.”

“Mugger?” Lon said.

I jerked the edge of the quilt up and wrapped it around Lon’s hips as he rolled off me, settling against my side. “We didn’t get mugged,” I said quickly. We almost got mugged. Completely different. And Jupe was supposed to keeping quiet about it, the little traitor.

“What are you doing back so soon?” he asked his father.

“I just am,” Lon grumbled.

“You were both screaming pretty loud in here. . . .”

“Laughing,” I corrected.

“Go away.” Lon buried his face in my hair and draped his arm across my waist.

“Wait!” Jupe pleaded. “I’ve got twelve things to tell you!”

“Twelve? That’s twice as many as usual,” Lon remarked, pushing my hair out of the way so that he could scoot closer to better share my pillow.

“I’ve been busy.” Jupe shuffled over to the bed and plopped down near our feet. I pictured him lying in bed and counting all twelve things out before he went to sleep. He claimed to struggle with history dates at school, yet he had memorized the original release year for every horror movie in existence and was excruciatingly exact with numbers in his daily life. “And some of it’s really important,” he insisted. “I haven’t seen you in three days.”

Total guilt trip. Well played, Jupiter.

Lon moaned and consented. “Five minutes.”

I braced myself, debating what riveting news he could possibly lead off with. He’d already blown his promise to keep the mugging secret and I wasn’t eager to rehash the Snatcher rumors.

“Okay, the number one most important thing: I met the hottest woman in Morella. Her name is Kar Yee, she’s Cady’s best friend, and she promised to give me her phone number when I turn sixteen.”

I should’ve guessed.

“Number two: this hippie waitress at Tambuku gave me an awesome tiki mug shaped like a mummy. It’s worth twenty dollars. Col-lect-ible.” He’d obviously bought into Kar Yee’s promotional scam. “Number three: Cady’s crazy next-door neighbor, Mrs. March—”

“Mrs. Marsh,” I corrected.

“Whatever. More like Mrs. Hag.”

“Jupe!” we both scolded.

“That’s not very nice,” I added. Kind of accurate, but still.

“Well, it sure wasn’t very nice when she gave us those nasty homemade cookies, and mine had a big orange cat whisker baked into the middle of it. Not a hair, Dad—a fucking whisker.”

Lon made an appreciative retching noise.

“I wasn’t letting him have sugar or anything—we just accepted the cookies to be hospitable and threw them away when we got in the house,” I added quickly as I sat up in the bed and slid out from underneath the sheets.

“You mean those Pop-Tarts were sugar free?” Jupe asked seriously. “They sure tast—”

I gritted my teeth and sliced my fingers across my throat repeatedly. “Ix-nay on the op-pay arts-tay.”