I sighed. Growing up with two sisters has given me a highly-advanced ability to know when I’ve been beaten. “I’ll talk to my grandfather.”

“The equation hasn’t balanced,” said Sarah suddenly.

“What do you mean?” I glanced over at her. “Do you need more juice?”

“Yes,” she said. “But no. I mean, yes, I need more juice, the good kind, please and thank you, but I also mean the equation isn’t balanced. You’ve given one half of the numbers. She needs to provide the other, or we’ll never know what it equals.”

“What?” Shelby looked from Sarah back to me. “Are all Johrlac like this?”

“You knew what she was well enough to come hunting for her,” I said, picking up my gun and flipping the safety back on before I stood and stuck it into my belt. I started for the fridge. “Haven’t you ever talked to one before?”

“No. I don’t like getting this close, even with blockers to keep them out of my head.” She fingered her necklace, finally cluing me in as to the location of her anti-telepathy charm. “They’re tricky.”

“That’s true, I suppose. No, most Johrlac aren’t like Sarah. She’s from the rare ‘not a sociopath’ segment of the population, and she really is ill. I wasn’t making that up.” I pulled the orange juice and A-1 sauce out of the fridge as I spoke, combining them in one of the large juice tumblers. Sarah was aware enough of her current limitations that she didn’t mix her own drinks, but I knew what she meant by “the good kind.”

“Then you should let nature take its course.”

I slammed the orange juice down on the counter, making both Sarah and Shelby jump. “She’s ill because she telepathically injured herself saving my sister’s life,” I said, barely restraining the urge to yell. “If she’d been willing to let ‘nature take its course,’ I’d be short a sibling right now. So you’ll excuse me for feeling like I owe her.”

“Okay, I’m sorry,” said Shelby, eyes very wide. “I didn’t know.”

“No, you didn’t. So back off.” I shook my head, picking up Sarah’s drink. “Besides, I think you’d like Sarah under normal circumstances. When she’s feeling herself, she’s a lot more linear and a lot less like trying to have an argument with a prerecorded phone tree. Right now, she’s getting better. It’s just a slow process.”

Shelby looked dubious. “I’m sorry. I just can’t imagine caring for one of them this much.”

“Stop that right now,” I snapped. I stalked to Sarah, put her juice down in front of her, and rounded on Shelby. “You are in my home, which means you are in her home. Yes, you were invited, but I don’t recall saying ‘bring your own bullets’ when I called you. Stop acting like she’s not a person. She’s done nothing to hurt you. If anything, she’s helped you. Now leave her alone.”

Shelby blinked at me. “You really mean all that. She’s not toying with your mind, is she?”

“Didn’t I just spend the last twenty minutes telling you my life story so you’d believe me on this?”

“That was my concern, yes: that you were telling me what you thought I wanted to hear in order to keep me from harming her. Again, Johrlac can be tricky.”

“Right now, Sarah’s about as subtle as a bull moose in the middle of a shopping mall.” I reclaimed my seat. “Now it’s your turn. Explain what you’re doing here, and why you’re so bent on shooting my cousin.”

“Why should I?”

“Because if you don’t, we’re going to have to shoot each other, and that would be a lousy end to an already lousy day.” I shook my head. “Also that would officially be my worst breakup ever, and that’s not a bar I was looking to exceed. So please. What are you doing here?”

Shelby sighed, leaning forward a little to rest her elbows on the kitchen table. “How much do you know about the Thirty-Six Society?”

“Um . . . Australian organization, very territorial, successfully drove the Covenant of St. George out of the country during my grandparents’ time, although according to the family records, the Covenant has been trying to get back in since the door was slammed in their faces.”

“Hence you thinking I might be a member; you thought the Covenant had succeeded and taken us over while your family wasn’t looking.”

“Something like that,” I agreed. “I mean . . . no offense, but you guys are awfully far away, and we’ve always had other things to deal with here at home. I guess you just fell off our radar.”

“That’s always what happens to Australian ecological concerns, if you’re not Australian, isn’t it?” There was a faint bitterness in Shelby’s voice, but it wasn’t aimed at me: more at the whole world. “There have always been cryptozoologists in Australia. They predate the word ‘cryptid’ by quite a lot, but for a long time, we weren’t organized. The Covenant never found us easy targets, but they could still make headway against us. The Thirty-Six Society was founded after the death of the last officially known thylacine—the Tasmanian wolf—in 1936. They were hunted to extinction over a relatively short period of time, and a lot of the incentives that were used to goad people into killing them were provided by the Covenant of St. George. Your Covenant always hated my country. Everything in the ecosystem looked like a monster to them.”

“They’re not my Covenant,” I protested. “We quit generations ago.”

“Some things take a long time to stop mattering, if they ever do.” Shelby shook her head. “We’ll never forget the thylacine. My parents were both members of the Thirty-Six from as far back as I can remember, and so were my grandparents. I grew up understanding that if I didn’t help protect Australia’s more . . . esoteric . . . flora and fauna from humanity, no one would.”

“It’s a big world,” I said, feeling obscurely bad. I shouldn’t have: North America is large enough that my family can’t patrol it all on our own, even as we enlist allies from the human and cryptid communities. Covering Australia as well would have been impossible, and would have stretched our already overtaxed resources to the breaking point. That didn’t stop me feeling like I should have helped.