A horrifying parallel occurred to me. “Oh, God, she’s your Annie.”
“Not a bit,” said Shelby amiably. “She’s much crankier.” We were too close to the car to continue talking without being overheard; she shut her mouth, beamed, and walked faster, arriving at the SUV just as the front driver’s-side door opened and spilled an older blonde woman with Shelby’s funereal scowl out onto the curb. The newcomer looked the pair of us up and down before focusing on Shelby.
“Shelly,” she said.
“Hello, Mum,” Shelby replied. Her own smile faded, replaced by that same “the world is ending” expression. She always looked sad when she wasn’t smiling, like she hadn’t bothered to develop any of the intermediate steps between joy and despair. “Thank you for coming to collect us.”
“Did you really think I’d trust you to make it home on your own? You went out for milk and wound up in America.” The woman’s gaze flicked back to me, her look of utter despair not wavering. “This must be your guest.”
“Ma’am,” I said. It seemed like the safest thing to say.
“Mmm,” she replied, and slid back into the car. “Shell, up front with me. Your boy can ride in the back with Ray and the bags.”
“All right,” said Shelby. She leaned close to me, ostensibly to pass me her suitcase, and murmured, “Don’t taunt my sister. She’s been known to hit,” in my ear before turning and bouncing off toward the other side of the car.
I stared after her, feeling utterly in over my head, and moved to start loading the luggage into the SUV. No one helped me. After the last piece was secure, I climbed through the open passenger-side door. Shelby’s mother turned the engine back on and pulled away from the curb while I was still fastening my seat belt.
Raina was a silent lump on the other side of the backseat, her attention fixed on what looked like a Nintendo 3DS. She didn’t seem to be playing Pokémon, which was my first guess; instead, she was using the stylus to flip through screen after screen of complex diagrams and complicated schematic designs.
“We’re clear of the last cameras, and the TSA bought Gabby and her friend as Shelby and her friend,” said Raina finally, looking up from her little screen. “Mum, floor it.”
Mum floored it.
The declaration of success and the sudden acceleration of the vehicle proved to be too much for the mice, who had, after all, been very good for a very long time, especially by rodent standards. My roller bag cheered. Loudly. Raina jumped. Shelby’s mother slammed her foot down on the brakes, bringing us to a screeching halt in the middle of the road. I winced.
“If we’re trying to be unobtrusive about getting out of here, maybe that wasn’t a good idea?” I said, as carefully as I could. “I think sudden stops in the middle of the road are noticeable no matter where you are.” The mice were still cheering. That, too, was extremely noticeable.
“What,” said Shelby’s mother, in a dangerous tone, “is that noise?”
“Aeslin mice, Mum,” said Shelby. “Seems they’re not extinct after all. Surprise!”
“I brought a splinter colony, ma’am,” I said, glaring daggers at the back of Shelby’s head. “The mice get uncomfortable and distressed if any member of my family is outside their presence for too long, so we usually travel with at least a small part of the overall congregation.”
“Do you now?” To my relief, Shelby’s mother restarted the car, and we resumed our forward journey. “What are they worshiping?”
“Us, ma’am.”
“Ah.”
Raina had twisted in her seat and was peering warily back at the pile of our luggage. “Where are they?” she demanded.
“My carry-on bag,” I said. “There’s a nice little habitat set up for them in there. My youngest sister makes them out of shoeboxes and toilet paper rolls. I’ll let them out when we get where we’re going. Assuming that it’s not a shallow grave somewhere.”
Raina turned her glare on me. That was quickly becoming almost comforting in its familiarity. “What, do you think we murder visitors without good reason? Or were you planning to provide a good reason? Because I’m not actually opposed to murder, especially since we didn’t invite you and can easily erase all proof that you ever entered this country.”
“Come off it, Raina, we can’t erase the immigration records,” said Shelby. “Just ignore her, Alex, she likes to take the piss as much as she can. It’s what gives her such a pissy disposition.”
“Watch it, or I’ll be pissing in your bed,” snapped Raina. Then, with no sign that anyone’s mood had changed in the slightest, the two sisters began giggling merrily.
I leaned back in my seat and sighed. “There are two of them,” I said, to no one in particular. “My body is never going to be found.”
“There are three of them,” corrected Ms. Tanner, from the front seat. It sounded like she was at least marginally amused. That was probably a good thing. “And what makes you think there’s going to be a body? I raised my girls well.”
Good thing, officially canceled. “Well, ma’am, based purely on my experiences with Shelby, I have absolute faith that your daughters could make me disappear without a trace if they wanted to. I’m hoping they won’t decide that they want to, seeing as how I’ve just come a very long way, and I did it with the intent to help.”
“Yes, and don’t think we’re ungrateful.” She certainly sounded ungrateful, but that didn’t have to mean anything: my family habitually answers the phone with snarling and threats of physical violence. “It’s just that we didn’t ask you to come, and we’re not in the habit of importing Americans to solve our problems for us. It seems a little, well . . . Untidy isn’t quite the word I want, but it’ll do in a pinch.”
“I asked him to come, as you well know,” said Shelby.
“You refused the authority to make that kind of call when you refused to come home and let your father finish your training,” countered Ms. Tanner.
“I know you didn’t ask me, ma’am, but I couldn’t let Shelby walk back into danger alone. Not when I could help her.” For a brief moment, I wished that I were truly the emotionally detached scientist I sometimes tried to be. That man could have let the woman he loved face a lycanthropy outbreak alone. He wasn’t the better man, but he was probably the one with the longer life expectancy.
“Mmm,” said Shelby’s mother. She was silent after that. I didn’t know whether that was a good thing.
We were driving down a highway that would have looked completely at home on the California coast: surrounded by scrubland, the occasional ramshackle convenience store, and eucalyptus trees. (California has a massive eucalyptus problem. They were imported during the 1800s by people who thought they could be used to build more railroad tracks. The joke was on the people who did the importing, since eucalyptus trees are only good for feeding koalas and setting the state on fire . . . and California has a real shortage of koalas.)
Then a flock of parrots flew past, their wings flashing pink against the pale blue sky, and the illusion that I was anywhere familiar shattered. I found my hands pressed against the window without having consciously decided that I was going to move, unable to tear my eyes away from the contrast of pink wings and blue sky.
Shelby twisted in her seat to see what I was doing, and laughed. “We’ve lost him. He’s going to want to stay in Australia forever now, just so he can keep staring at the budgerigars.”
“I never thought you’d go in for a man who could be enchanted by parrots,” said Raina scornfully.
“It’s good to focus on the simple things,” said Shelby. “They’re less likely to eat you.”
I didn’t respond to either of them. Raina was trying to bait me—a behavior I recognized from spending years with my own sisters—and Shelby, who was a naturalist and who had left her entire world behind when she came to America and found herself marooned in mine, understood lik
e almost no one else could. I was in a place where everything familiar was strange again, and the only really strange thing was that the sky still looked the way it always had. I kept watching the parrots fly, and Shelby’s mother drove on, into the sprawl of Brisbane.
Australian cities turned out to be just as large and complicated as American cities, which shouldn’t have been a surprise, considering. It was still odd to realize that after an hour in the car, we had barely reached the outskirts of town. We’d been driving for a little over two hours when Shelby’s mother—who had been quietly listening to the radio for the last thirty miles or so—lifted her head, eyes appearing in the rearview mirror, and said, “It’s time. Shelly, if you would do the honors?”
“Do we really have to do this, Mum?” Shelby sounded less annoyed than resigned, like she knew that whatever she was about to say to me would be poorly received, and felt the need to put up at least a token protest. I stiffened but tried not to show it. Too many things that start with “do we really have to do this” end with a body wrapped in chains and sinking to the bottom of a swamp. Maybe tears were shed after the trigger was pulled and maybe not; that sort of thing is only a comfort to the living.
“You know your father insists,” said Shelby’s mother. I realized I still didn’t know her first name. It hadn’t seemed important, somehow. The parents of friends and acquaintances were always “Mr. and Ms. Last Name,” not independent people. Not until they were the ones holding the gun.
“Uh, what are we insisting on, and do I get a vote?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light, even amiable. The sort of tone that belonged to a man no one was planning to shoot and dump in the nearest billabong.
“Mum wants you blindfolded for the final approach to the house,” said Raina. She had her Gameboy out again, and was focused on the little glowing square of the screen. “Since you’re a stranger and you’ve been exposed to Johrlac and all, it’s best if we don’t let you know where we live, in case this has all been a long, elaborate plan to get yourself to where you can invite your hellish masters over to slit our throats while we sleep.”
The image of Sarah slitting anyone’s throat was enough to make me pause. Laughing felt like a terrible idea, but that didn’t kill the urge. “I see,” I said, in a somewhat strangled tone. “Shelby? Could’ve warned me.”
“Didn’t want to spoil the surprise.” At least she sounded apologetic.
“Right.” I removed my glasses and tucked them into my pocket before leaning back in my seat and closing my eyes. “You may want to tie my hands, too, if we’re taking basic precautions. I won’t fight you. If you try to disarm me, on the other hand, you’re going to find that it’s not worth your time, and someone’s going to wind up with a bloody nose.”
There was a long pause before Raina said, “What?”
“If you tie my hands, I can’t go for a gun. I figure that makes the odds about even. That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you take my weapons.” I kept my eyes closed. Nothing says “willing to be blindfolded” like voluntarily giving up the sense of sight. “I’m trying to be accommodating, in part because I’ve just traveled a long way to help, and it would be silly to get myself put on the next plane home because I don’t feel like playing your reindeer games, and in part because we’re in the middle of nowhere, and I’m hoping that my being cooperative will reduce the chances of a bullet to the brain.”
There was a long pause. Then: “Your boyfriend’s mad as a cut snake,” said Raina, at the same time as her mother said, “I’m beginning to see why you like him.”
“He’s pretty neat,” said Shelby. There was a little upward lilt in her voice, and I knew that if I opened my eyes I would see her looking back at me, a smirk on her lips, eyes bright with amusement. Looks like that made a lot of things worthwhile . . . even the feeling of her sister pulling a strap of canvas tight across my eyes.
“Not going to chain your hands,” she said brusquely. “Didn’t think you’d stand for it, so we didn’t bring the handcuffs. Don’t give me reason to regret that, yeah?”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. The car started moving again.
My parents were fond of alternative teaching methods, reasoning that we were the latest—and largest—generation of a lineage that had supposedly been wiped off the face of the earth, and would thus need to be prepared for anything, because the one thing they didn’t prepare us for was going to be the one that got us killed. Our training included an entire summer spent being locked in the trunk of the car and taken for long, rambling drives, after which we would be dumped by the side of the road and expected to find our own way home. Verity had made it back to the house about half the time. Antimony had never made it back, but after she had displayed her unerring gift for locating the nearest pool hall, comic book store, or arcade for the fifth time, my parents had declared that her sense of direction was just fine: it simply had a different set of priorities. And I?
I had made it back every single time. So I sat in the back with my eyes covered, and mentally mapped the route from the highway to Shelby’s house with no distractions from the local flora or fauna. I was almost grateful for the blindfold. It’s funny how we underestimate each other in this world, isn’t it?
The car rolled to a stop after fifteen minutes. “You can take the blindfold off now, Alex,” said Shelby. “We’re here.”
I hesitated, waiting for Raina to contradict her sister, before I reached up and removed the strip of canvas, bringing the world back into blurry color. Replacing my glasses on my nose put the hard edges back on the scene around me, and I turned to look out the window . . .
...only to find myself looking straight into the barrel of a shotgun that had apparently been designed to take down rampaging bull elephants. I blinked, following the line of the barrel until I reached the man on the other end. He, too, was built like he had been designed to take down rampaging bull elephants, possibly by punching them in the face until they decided to go rampage somewhere else. He had sandy blond hair, narrow blue eyes, and the sort of deep tan that only comes from spending every possible minute outdoors over the course of twenty or thirty years. I blinked. He scowled.
The car door slammed and Shelby leaped into my field of vision, hurling herself at the gun-toting mountain of a man with a gleeful cry of, “Daddy!”
For his part, the man with the gun—who had to be Shelby’s father, unless their family was substantially more complicated than I’d been led to believe—weathered her impact without flinching or allowing his aim to waver. “Roll down the window,” he said, loudly enough that I could hear him through the glass.
“Better do as he says,” said Raina, who hadn’t budged from her seat beside me. “He gets impatient easy.”
“Yes, but if he was going to shoot me, you’d have already gotten out to avoid the glass spray,” I said, and rolled the window down, careful to keep my hands visible. The smell of eucalyptus and freshly-cut grass wafted into the car, garnering a cry of “Hail!” from the suitcase behind me. I ignored the mice as best I could, fixing a polite smile on the man with the gun as I said, “Mr. Tanner, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“You bring any proof you are who you say you are?” It wasn’t the friendliest greeting in the world. That wasn’t a real surprise. Cryptozoological conservation is difficult. Not only are we trying to protect a population of creatures that can’t be legally defended from poachers, on account of not legally existing, but we’re trying to do it without attracting the attention of the Covenant of St. George, which is always lurking in the shadows, waiting to destroy everything we’ve worked for. We’re friendly with each other, once our identities have been confirmed, but as far as Shelby’s father was concerned, I was a semi-known quantity. His daughter vouched for me. His daughter also claimed I was sharing a house with two cuckoos without having my brain come dribbling out of my ears. There was every chance in the world that she’d been compromi
sed.
“I don’t have any photo ID with my real name on it, because that would be a violation of all known security protocols, but I may have something better,” I said. “Do you mind if I get my proof of identity out of my suitcase?”
“You armed?”
“I’m a Price, sir. If I were unarmed, I would be trying to take someone else’s weapons, just for the sake of my own peace of mind. But you have my word that I’m not going for a weapon. Even if I were lying about my identity, which I’m not, I wouldn’t want to risk Shelby getting hurt.”
“I can take care of myself, Alex,” said Shelby. She was still hanging off her father’s arm, and part of me insisted on pointing out that this would throw his aim slightly off, making it easier for me to take his gun away if it came to that.
“I know you can take care of yourself,” I said. “I also know that making a good impression on your parents gets harder if I get you shot in the process.”
“This is what you call making a good impression?” asked Raina. I decided to ignore her. It seemed like the safest course of action.
Shelby’s father frowned, his eyes narrowing further. “The ship of good impressions may have already sailed,” he said. “Keep your movements slow. Ray, if he does anything you don’t like, subdue him.”
“Sure thing, Dad,” said Raina, her attention still on her Gameboy. “If the presumably heavily-armed American does something I don’t like, I will absolutely throw myself on that grenade.”
“Actually, my grandmother’s the one with the grenades,” I said, and unbuckled my belt before twisting—oh, so slowly—to lean over the backseat and rummage through the top level of our luggage. Luckily for me, my carry-on bag had been placed with the zipper facing the front of the car, and it was a relatively easy matter for me to wiggle it open and call, “I require an acolyte,” into the depths of the bag.
A tiny brown head popped out, whiskers quivering and ears pressed forward, like its owner was afraid of missing some piece of essential wisdom that would finally tie the workings of the universe together. “Hail!” piped the mouse.