“Evie, why is there a monkey?” I asked, in a small, tight voice.
“That’s Sam,” said Evie. She stepped back. “He’s Annie’s boyfriend. He’s a fūri—a kind of yōkai therianthrope. We try not to call him a monkey; he doesn’t like it.”
“I can hear you, you know,” said the monkey—sorry, fūri—without taking his hands off Annie’s waist. He was easily six feet tall, with a tail almost as long as the rest of his body. He was also wearing jeans and a denim jacket, which made him unique among the monkeys I had known.
Humans are a kind of monkey. This was no stranger than Aunt Jane and Uncle Ted, or than Mom and Dad, honestly. Love finds a way.
“Sorry,” I called back. “Didn’t mean to be rude.”
“Hey, Sarah,” said Kevin, stepping up next to Evie. His thoughts radiated joy and concern in almost equal measure. He was as relieved by my return as my sister, which was nice. “Can you get out of the car? We want to move Artie inside.”
“Sure.” I undid my belt, sliding carefully out from under Artie. Kevin answered the question of what I was supposed to do next by ducking in and placing his own hands under Artie’s head, keeping it supported in basically the same position.
I stood, and Evie and Kevin crowded me out, attention focused on getting Artie out of the vehicle without jostling him more than he already had been. I took a step backward, and then another, wrapping my arms tightly around myself. I was still wearing Artie’s jacket. It was too big on me, and I didn’t need the warmth, but I didn’t take it off. Anything that made me feel like I was still anchored would be better than feeling like I was about to float away.
How had everything gone so wrong? And why had the wind only been blowing on one side of the street? Something about that seemed wrong. It seemed like a threat. I just couldn’t figure out what it was.
“So you’re the mysterious Sarah.”
The voice was new. I turned. There was a human man behind me, dark-haired, pale-skinned, and dressed in what I thought of as “mathematician casual”—button-down shirt, dark jeans, a light windbreaker. I got the feeling he didn’t stand out in crowds even when he was dealing with people who could see faces the way humans saw them. His thoughts were curious, wary, concerned, a swirling maelstrom of vaguely negative emotions that made him feel as prickly as a nettle under the questing fingers of my mind.
“I’m James,” he said, apparently reading the blank confusion in my expression. “Annie adopted me after she decided my father didn’t deserve me anymore.”
“He never deserved you in the first place,” called Annie. “You’re a Price now. Deal with it.”
“It’s James Smith, actually,” said James, and extended his hand toward me.
I looked at it warily. “I’m not sure you want to do that,” I said. “Did Annie tell you anything about me, other than ‘that’s Cousin Sarah’?”
He shook his head, hand still outstretched. “She said you’d been injured and were convalescing, and that she hoped I’d have the chance to meet you someday, but that was all.”
James wouldn’t be living at the family compound—or, apparently, be an honorary member of the family—if he hadn’t had a high tolerance for weirdness. From the spiky, almost crystalline edges of his thoughts, I was willing to bet there was something out of the ordinary about him, some little tweak or twist to his DNA that made him safer here than he’d be in the world outside. But he was still human. I could tell that as easily as I could tell that he was breathing. And unlike Evie, who’d grown up in a cuckoo’s house, or the biological members of the family, who’d inherited Fran’s inexplicable resistance to cuckoo influence, he didn’t have any protection from me.
Crap.
“I can’t shake your hand.” I took a big step backward. “I shouldn’t touch you at all, ever. And as soon as we’re done taking care of Artie, you need to ask my sister for an anti-telepathy charm. It’s dangerous to let me into your head.”
His thoughts turned quizzical—and oddly excited. “You’re a telepath?”
“Um. Yes.” Behind me, Evie and Kevin had managed to pull Artie out of the car and were carrying him toward the porch steps. Annie and her boyfriend moved to help. The four of them moved quickly, heading toward the light and warmth of the living room.