Grandma sighed again, even more deeply than before. “Just come home breathing, all right? That’s all I’m asking of you here. Come home.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said. I stepped forward and hugged her. Then I hugged Sarah, and Grandpa, and left the kitchen. It was time to call home and let them know what stupid thing I was up to now. On the plus side, “don’t go to Australia” had never been on my mother’s list of standard warnings. On the down side, it was almost certainly going to be there after this.

Three

“The trick to doing things people say are impossible is confidence. As long as you seem to know what you’re doing, and never hesitate, you’re very unlikely to face any challenges. People don’t like to break illusions, even when they don’t know that’s what they’re looking at.”

—Kevin Price

JFK International Airport, departure terminal, three days later

SHELBY HAD VANISHED INTO the women’s bathroom again, leaving me to watch the luggage. We were traveling carry-on only, which meant a backpack and a roller bag each, as well as a separate long case for Shelby’s “violin”—an instrument she didn’t play and wasn’t carrying. But the case was treated to show the image of a violin when put through a standard X-ray machine, and she had a letter from the Guild of Musicians guaranteeing her the right to carry it onto the plane, so we hadn’t encountered any issues with the TSA.

They might have gotten a nasty surprise if they’d decided to open the thing, and we would have probably been arrested on suspicion of terrorism. Luckily, Shelby was bubbly, vivacious, and wearing a low-cut tank top that made it difficult to think straight when I looked directly at her. It had had much the same effect on the TSA agents at the gate. She’d plainly done this sort of thing before.

I wasn’t nearly as practiced a traveler. Yes, we maintained valid passports at all times, and yes, Verity, Antimony, and I had all celebrated our eighteenth birthdays with randomly booked trips outside of North America—I’d wound up in Finland, and had a lovely time with two huldra girls who thought I was the cutest thing they’d ever kidnapped from a tour group—but that didn’t mean we traveled for fun. Travel was dangerous. Travel meant stepping outside the familiar bolt-holes and cultural rules of the North American cryptid communities and moving into spheres where we didn’t know the lay of the land. The Prices had been members of the Covenant of St. George for generations before my Grandpa Thomas defected to the side of good, as represented by the fantastic rack of my Grandma Alice (this was reported dutifully to each new generation of the family by our living historical record, the Aeslin mice, even when we asked them nicely to please stop). In some parts of the world, the Prices were still members in good standing of the Covenant, which made “Hi, my name’s Alex Price” a much more dangerous sentence to utter out loud.

Shelby came bounding back down the concourse, throwing herself into the open seat next to me with such violent abandon that I was amazed it didn’t throw up its arms in surrender. “All better,” she informed me, before pressing a noisy kiss to my cheek. Leaving her lips pressed to my cheek she murmured, much more quietly, “No unusual security activity, and most of the crowd’s human so far as I can see. Spotted two bogeys heading on-shift in the caf, and there’s some sort of snake-person waiting for a flight two gates down, but they’re not going to be a problem.” She leaned back in her seat and beamed at me. “Ready to experience the joys of the land down under? I warn you, you might not want to come back.”

“See, the problem with that sentence is simple: I’ve now been dating you for long enough that I know you don’t talk that way.” I smirked. “You cannot fool me with your stereotypical Australian ways.”

“Ah, but can I frighten you with talk of drop bears and bunyip?” Several of the Australians in the waiting area around us chuckled. So did Shelby. I fought the urge to shudder, and settled for glaring at her, which just made her chuckle more.

“Oh, I can already tell that this trip is going to be fun,” I said, through gritted teeth.

(To your average tourist in Australia—and, indeed, to your average Australian—the drop bear was a fun campfire story and something to scare kids with. Sadly, the cryptozoological world knows better. Why Australia felt the need to evolve a carnivorous, tree-dwelling marsupial that looks like a koala after it’s been exposed to serious amounts of steroids is anyone’s guess, but I was in no hurry to meet one. A normal koala is perfectly capable of clawing a man’s face off. A drop bear will both claw it off and eat it, which doesn’t strike me as particularly social. As for the bunyip . . . the less said, the better.)

Shelby twinkled at me. There was no other way to describe her smug, almost catlike smile, or the way she stretched languidly to her full length, defying both the size of her seat and the piles of luggage around her. One foot bumped my rolling suitcase, which gave out a faint cheer. She promptly retracted back into her seat, giving me a wide-eyed look.

“Sorry,” I said, grimacing. I bent forward, pretending to fuss with my zipper as I pressed my mouth to the small opening in the case’s side and whispered, “Hush. You promised to be quiet until the plane was in the air.” Our seats were in business class. The theory was that the people around us would be so busy either sleeping or drinking as much complimentary booze as they could that they wouldn’t notice the cheering of the Aeslin mice. At least, that was the hope. There were only six mice in my suitcase, chosen by sacred lottery to accompany me. If they got too loud, I’d have to improvise—but it would be better if the improvisation didn’t have to start before we even got on the plane.

(Aeslin mice: talking, pantheistic rodents that worship my family as gods. They make things like “Thanksgiving,” “laundry day,” and “going to the bathroom” uniquely exciting. Their eidetic memories and endless fascination with everything any member of the family has ever done also makes them incredibly useful. They were living black boxes, like the ones pilots used to record the final details of a crash. If anything happened to me, the Aeslin mice would be able to tell my family. It—and I—wouldn’t be forgotten. There was something comforting about that, no matter how obnoxious the mice themselves could sometimes be.)

Shelby frowned, looking uncertain. “You sure they’ll be able to keep themselves under control long enough for us to clear customs? I don’t want to get arrested for, well, much of anything, really. Getting arrested is at the permanent bottom of my list of things to do.”