“I like the babbling all right, and cocoa’d be nice,” Shelby said. “Thank you. For everything, really. I truly didn’t want to be at home alone tonight.”

“It’s my pleasure. Come this way.” I started for the kitchen, casting one last nervous glance over my shoulder at the closed living room door. Sarah had promised to be good. I needed to take her at her word.

Shelby followed me, and sat down at the kitchen table while I busied myself with preparing two cups of hot chocolate and a plate of Grandpa’s snickerdoodles. Touching the cookies would normally have triggered an avalanche of mice, but like Sarah, they had promised to be good. I had to take them at their word, too.

I handed Shelby a mug, and was rewarded with another smile. “Thank you,” she said. “You really do have a lovely home. What I’ve seen of it, anyway.”

“My grandparents believe that a healthy mind begins with a healthy environment.”

Shelby paused with her mug half-lifted to her mouth, expression turning skeptical. “This isn’t hot carob with a soy-based ‘whipped cream’ on top, is it? Because I’m afraid I’ll have to pour it on you if you say it is.”

“Not that kind of healthy, I promise.” Grandma had no arteries to clog, and Grandpa regularly flushed his circulatory system with acids. “Health food” wasn’t a risk in their kitchen. “I meant more that they really think a home should be a home, and not a house where you’re temporarily living.”

“They sound like clever folks,” said Shelby, and finally sipped her cocoa before asking, “Is that why you agreed to move back home? I remember you used to have an apartment, even though I never saw it.”

“That was part of it, yeah,” I agreed. Back in Portland, the house was always full of people—my parents, my sisters, my paternal grandmother, and whoever among our allies and extended family had followed us home that week. In Columbus I’d lived alone, in a one-bedroom apartment that didn’t allow pets. Its layout made it essentially indefensible. I hadn’t slept well once while I was living there. “And then there was Sarah. My grandparents couldn’t take care of her on their own, so they asked if I’d come and help them out.”

“Family first,” said Shelby.

“Yes, exactly,” I agreed. “Family first.”

Shelby took another sip of her cocoa. For a moment, it felt like she was watching me over the top of the cup. The hairs on the back of my neck rose. Then she raised her head and smiled, and I knew that I was just being silly. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

“Me, too.” I reached across the table and took her free hand. “I was really worried when the cops shooed me off and kept on talking to you.”

“They mostly just wanted to know if I thought you might be a serial murderer.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I hope you told them that I was your beloved boyfriend who would never murder anyone.” Without good cause.

“I told them you were a bastard who canceled dates and refused to let me see his home and probably had a wife hidden in the attic, but that you weren’t the type to commit murder in cold blood,” said Shelby sweetly, before taking another sip of cocoa.

“Hey,” I protested. “I haven’t canceled that many dates.”

“Any woman in the world will tell you that one date canceled is one too many,” Shelby said, and took a cookie. “I told them you almost certainly were not a serial killer, and that they were being horribly sexist by assuming that of the two of us, only you were capable of committing murder. That may have been a tactical error—it got me rather a lot more questioning that I hadn’t exactly been planning on.”

“Well, yes. It’s usually unwise to tell the police you could be a serial killer if you really, really wanted to.” I took a cookie of my own, dunking it in my cocoa. “But everything is okay otherwise?”

“You mean beyond the dead man in the bushes and our ruined lunch? Yes. Everything is fine. How was your staff?”

“They’re not technically my staff. I don’t run the reptile house.”

Shelby snorted. “Come off that, Alex. You run Dee, and Dee is the force that holds that place together. Before they hired her on to keep records, it was like a bunch of children playing at being a serious research institute.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And you would know this how? We arrived at the zoo at the same time.”

“Yes, and you brought Dee with you, and while your staff may have been too grateful to go telling tales, the rest of the zoo wasn’t so restrained. If you stuck your head outside the snake box every once in a while, you might have heard a thing or two.”

My cheeks reddened. “I was busy getting settled into my new position.” Rearranging the labs so that no one would notice my basilisk enclosure had taken months, shifting things one piece at a time while Dee adjusted the paperwork and kept the rest of the staff distracted with her streamlined schedules and improved feeding processes. She wasn’t a zookeeper, but she knew her reptiles.

“I know; the gossip had died down before you stuck your head aboveground, and by that point, it seemed a little silly to tell you everyone basically assumed you were in charge. Where’s the harm? Means no one’s monitoring your lunch hours, unlike me.” She grimaced. “I’m thirty seconds late and it’s another lecture from the head keeper on punctuality and pride and lots of other words that start with the letter ‘P.’”

“Still. I didn’t know.” And I didn’t like it. I was supposed to be keeping a low profile, not setting myself up as the new god-king of the Columbus Zoo reptile house.

“I know. That’s part of what made you so interesting.” Shelby grinned.

After a pause, I grinned back. She started to lean across the table toward me. I did the same—and froze, pulling away just before our lips could meet. Shelby blinked at me, smile fading into a puzzled frown.

“What is it?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m sorry—I was going to give you something. Hang on just a second.” I bolted from the table before she could argue with me, running back into the front hall. The kitchen door swung shut behind me. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I chanted, wrenching open the drawer on the hallway table and digging through the mass of protection charms, rope, and old batteries that had built up over the years. (Why the old batteries, I don’t know. Maybe there’s some sort of natural law that says every drawer without an exact defined purpose has to contain a certain number of batteries.)