House to herself, and could shower and map out what she would say to her cousins before—
A door slammed open. A gust of wind came through the kitchen. Already spooked by the lamp, Sailor reached for the dagger she’d set down.
“Sailor! You home yet?” a voice called, and a door slammed shut. “Where are you?”
“Kitchen,” she called back, and looked around for a dish towel to throw over her bloody shirt, but too late, because her cousin Rhiannon was walking through the archway, accompanied by Wizard, a dog so large he made Jonquil look dainty. Sailor clutched the shirt close and reminded herself not to make eye contact with her gorgeous relative.
“You’ve been out all this time?” Rhiannon reached down to pet Jonquil, who greeted her and Wizard with enthusiasm bordering on hysteria, as though he hadn’t seen them both a few hours earlier. Rhiannon glanced at Sailor. “Are you slaughtering something for dinner?”
Sailor looked down at the dagger in her hand and set it on the butcher block in front of her. “Oh, I— This is just—”
“Very slasher movie, that thing.” Rhiannon frowned at it. “Listen, Dad called. Mine, not yours. Apparently the rumor that we missed paying one lousy electric bill—or, okay, two bills—”
“Three.”
“Three lousy electric bills, fine. So somehow he heard that they turned off the power because—and you’ll love this—the alarm system is wired to his computer, and he happened to check in and was able to see that the system was down, so he called the company, who ratted us out, and—” She stopped, taking in her cousin again. “What have you got all over yourself? Paint?”
There it was. Could she talk about the attack without divulging everything else? Probably not. “It’s nothing. Go on.”
“That’s it.” Rhiannon picked up an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter and peeled off the sticker. “My dad and his gadgetry. You’d think he could relax the surveillance, knowing that I’m engaged to a cop, but no.” She rubbed the apple on her sweater, apparently an alternative to washing it, and took a loud, crunching bite. She peered at Sailor as she chewed. “You’re a mess.”
“You’re looking a bit ‘circus refugee’ yourself,” Sailor replied, with a sideways glance. Rhiannon’s lanky body was draped in plaid flannel pants, a tie-dye T-shirt and an argyle sweater, everything in colors so at odds with her flame-colored hair that Sailor felt nauseous.
“Cleaning closets,” Rhiannon explained. “Carving out space for Brodie. Trying on stuff before I hand it off to the Goodwill, in case I still like it. It’s insane how tiny the closets are in Pandora’s Box. How come nobody in the 1920s believed in storage space? It’s like junk wasn’t invented until 1985. Never mind me. Look at you. Your shirt’s filthy. What did you do, fall down the hillside?”
“Yeah, something like that. Listen, Rhi, I just need to take a shower and—”
“It’s like you got run over. And the dagger—is it antique? Let me see that.”
Sailor, in proffering the dagger hilt-first, let go of her own shirt.
“Sailor!” Rhiannon shrieked. “What in God’s name happened to you? Look at your chest.”
“What?” another voice called. “What did I miss?” And into the kitchen sauntered Barrie, the third cousin.
Barrie was petite by Gryffald standards, but the toughest of the cousins in many ways. When she saw Sailor’s state, however, she turned tender. “You poor thing. What did you do to yourself?”
“It’s not a big deal,” Sailor said. “Just a jogging...incident. Accident. Happens all the time on the trails. I’m clumsy.”
Rhiannon took Sailor’s hands in her own and turned them over. “Really? So you trip and fall, but you don’t skin your knees or scrape your palms, you fall directly on your sternum?”
“She probably ran into a tree,” Barrie said.
“With arms outstretched,” Rhiannon said.
“Very common among runners,” Barrie added. “It’s why they don’t route marathons through forests.”
The two women looked at Sailor expectantly, and for the first time got a good look at her face.
“Holy hell!” Rhiannon screamed. “What’s with your eyes?”
“Good God,” Barrie said. “Are those...colored contact lenses?”
“No. But if you have a spare pair, Barrie, I need to borrow them.”
“If you want to borrow anything,” Barrie said, “start explaining.”
Sailor sank into the sofa as a wave of weakness rolled over her. “I need coffee.”
“I’ll make coffee, you talk,” Rhiannon said, walking across the kitchen.
Barrie plopped down on the sofa alongside Sailor. “This isn’t some extreme ploy to get the night off work, is it?”
“Damn. Work.” Sailor sat up on the sofa. “What