“Good. Now go get some sleep.” Riley seemed to be looking at Shelby rather than me as he continued, “We’re going to have one hell of a day tomorrow. It’d be best if everyone was rested and ready.”

“Yes, Daddy,” said Shelby. She took her hand off my arm as she stepped toward him, and he hugged her, and I had never felt more like an outsider in my life. These people were depending on me. That didn’t mean I felt like they wanted me here.

“Come on, fancy-pants.” Raina was suddenly at my elbow, taking up the place Shelby had occupied only a moment before. “Let me get you back to your room.”

I didn’t have a good reason to argue, and so I just nodded, and turned away from my girlfriend and her father (and her father’s friend), and let Raina lead me away.

The mice were waiting on the bed when I got back to the guest room. They gave a muffled cheer at the sight of me stepping through the door, waving leaves and scraps of snakeskin and something that looked like one of Shelby’s hair ties in the air in place of pennants. I rubbed my face with one hand. In my family, you learn to deal with the mice early. There is no alternative. That didn’t mean I was in the mood for their inevitable celebration.

“I have a headache,” I informed them. “Can we please keep the shouting and cheering to a minimum until I’ve managed to sleep off the existential terror of this continent?”

“We have added a new Occasion to the calendar,” squeaked the junior priest in charge of the congregation. “We will spend this night in Solemn Contemplation, and there will be little shouting, or cheering, or speaking.”

“Cool, thanks.” I paused. “What’s the new occasion?”

“We will celebrate Crossing the Sea, and Arriving in Australia, and Killing a Very Large Snake,” said the priest solemnly.

Given the size of the mice and the fact that there were only six of them, the “very large snake” could have been the size of my shoelace. But they weren’t demanding food, and they had a tendency to eat their kills. I decided it was better not to ask.

“Great.” I began removing my weapons, stacking them with brisk efficiency on the bedside table. A thought struck me. “I don’t know if anyone apart from Shelby has a pet with them. Please don’t eat anything that looks like it could be a domestic companion. And try not to eat any of the parrots, either. I don’t know what’s endangered around here.” We normally took a live-and-let-live approach to Aeslin predation—anything they killed was probably trying to kill them first. At the same time, they weren’t native to the Australian continent. The last thing I needed was to try explaining to the Thirty-Sixers why I’d allowed my traveling cryptid circus to eat the last living member of some ultra-rare species of macaw.

The mice looked disappointed by my edict, ears dropping and tails wrapping tighter around their legs. The reason why was revealed a few seconds later, when the priest in charge asked hesitantly, “May we still gather feathers and bits of shell? There is so much new color here, and the livery of the faith grows faded over time . . .”

Aeslin mouse fashion tended to demonstrate an aesthetic of “we found it, and we found a way to stick it together, and now it looks awesome.” They’d been known to steal ribbons, hair ties, scraps of fabric, and of course, feathers. Crow alone was responsible for the production of several feather cloaks every time he molted. “You can gather anything you find and wish to use for your purposes, providing you don’t distress the birds in the process,” I said. “Fair?”

“HAIL!” declared the mice, and scampered down the side of the bed, no doubt to start moving the feathers they’d already collected to whatever hidey-hole they were planning to use during our stay. I smiled after them, pulled my shirt off over my head, and collapsed onto the bed. I rolled over only long enough to put my glasses down next to my pistol, where both would be easily within reach.

Sleep came fast, which was a mercy, given the events of the evening; the change of time zones was hitting me harder than I’d expected. Wakefulness came even faster, when I felt someone slide into the bed beside me. I snapped instantly alert, thrusting my hand toward the bedside table, and the waiting protection of my pistol.

A hand caught my wrist, fingers tightening enough to let me feel the familiar shape of them. “It’s me,” Shelby said. “Alex, it’s me. Calm down.”

“Shelby?” The question came out louder than I intended, powered by both adrenaline and relief. I hadn’t realized I was sleeping so deeply. I should have snapped awake as soon as she opened the bedroom door, and the fact that I hadn’t was a worrisome failure on my part.

“In the flesh.” She pressed herself against me, looping one ankle over mine, as if to hold me on the bed. I outweighed her by enough that it was a futile gesture; I could have had us both on the floor in seconds, if I’d needed to. And somehow, that made it okay. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. Had to wait for everyone to be asleep enough not to catch me sneaking out.”

“Wha’ . . .” I was still waking up, and it took a few seconds for the import of her words to hit me. When it did, I tried to push myself away, stopping only when my back thumped against the cool plaster of the wall. “Shelby, you can’t be in here, your father will kill me,” I hissed. “He will kill me, and then he will feed my body to the crocodiles. Crocodiles are very efficient methods of body disposal. Trust me, I’ve done it.”

“Won’t, shan’t, can’t,” said Shelby, scooting closer, so that I had no way to escape without hurting her. She was wearing a thin shirt and a pair of running shorts. I was wearing nothing. Between us, we had way too little clothing for this conversation to be comfortable, under the circumstances. “I’m a grownup. I’ve been living with you for going on a year now. He knows I haven’t had my own room that whole time—I told Raina, and I know damn well she’s told him by now. That’s the sort of loving sister she is. My father needs to come to terms with the fact that our relationship isn’t as pleasantly chaste as he might like to think it is.”

“Okay, Shelby, all my ‘your girlfriend is right here’ instincts say to agree with you, and all my ‘you grew up surrounded by women who could kill you in their sleep’ instincts say that your father doesn’t get to control your life, but my ‘let’s try not to die in Australia’ instincts keep reminding me that he’s twice my size. I mean, have you seen the man?”