I opened the door.
Everyone’s bedroom is unique. Even hotel rooms, which start out sterile and identical, will take on the character of their occupants after a day or two. Annie had been sleeping in the same bedroom since she was two years old. She’d had a lot of time to settle in.
The walls were dominated by books and weapon racks. The closet—which had no doors, since closets with doors are practically an invitation for things to sneak in and jump out at innocent cryptozoologists who just want to sleep—contained her dresser, as well as all her clothes, and several polearms. The swaths of wall that weren’t blocked off by other furnishings were covered in a patchwork quilt of posters and photographs. Some of them were new, and I assumed they’d come with the man who was curled up next to her on the bed, his tail wrapped loosely around her ankle.
Thankfully they were both clothed enough to qualify as “decent,” and hence unlikely to throw things at me for the crime of seeing them in the altogether. I looked around the floor, settled on a pair of jeans that seemed unlikely to be booby-trapped, and flung it at the bed.
Sam reached up and snatched them out of the air before they could land. Then he tossed them aside and pressed his face into the pillow, all without apparently waking up.
“I think you two are a whole new category of ‘light sleeper,’” I said, trying to pitch my voice into the room and keep it from being heard by anyone downstairs. My shoulders were starting to lock up from the tension. “I can keep throwing things, but we’d all be happier if I didn’t have to.”
Antimony sat up. Sam made an unhappy grumbling noise and slid an arm around her waist as she blinked blearily at me through the tangled curtain of her hair.
“Is it morning?” she asked. “It better be morning. There better be coffee. I don’t smell coffee.”
I stepped into the room, shutting the door behind me before turning on the light. Sam made a second grumbling noise, louder and unhappier than the first, and attempted to bury his head under the pillow. His tail uncurled from around Antimony’s ankle and snaked around her waist instead. Antimony, for her part, shoved her hair out of her face and glared.
“Artie,” she said, voice already much more clear than it had been only seconds before, “what the fuck?”
“There’s a cuckoo sleeping on the couch downstairs,” I said.
“Um, yeah. Happy fucking birthday. You’ve been praying for this for five years. Calm down, get out of my room, and enjoy it. Before I kill you and you don’t get to enjoy anything anymore. Your parents have an heir and a spare. They’ll be fine without you.”
“It’s not Sarah.”
Silence so loud it was like a siren filled the room, drowning out everything else. Then Antimony swore and leapt out of bed, stepping with calm assurance over the piles of clothes, knives, and books littering the floor. She yanked open the top drawer of her dresser and started rooting through it, sending underpants flying in all directions before she finally pulled out a fistful of anti-telepathy charms. Each thin silver chain ended at a tiny vial containing a disk of copper and a sprinkling of herbs, preserved in water and sealed with wax. I blinked.
“Those are expensive,” I said.
“Not when they’re homemade,” she replied, and tossed one at me. “Me and James, we’re like Etsy for cryptozoologists. I mean, our first batch had a tendency to explode—”
“You promised we were never going to talk about that again,” said Sam, voice muffled by the pillow.
“—but we’ve worked the kinks out. Put that on.” Antimony slung a charm around her own neck before moving back to the bed and prodding her prone boyfriend. “Up. You need to shield your mind. Get moving.”
“I hate you,” said Sam, even as he reached up and took a charm from her outstretched hand. “I hate your whole family. You’re garbage people. You’re what fūri parents warn their children about.”
“I love you too, asshole,” said Antimony.
I gaped at her. “What—why—how—?”
“Which, where, and when,” Antimony finished quickly. “Now you’ve taken a journalism class. What, you thought we weren’t going to prepare for Sarah coming back wrong? I’ve read all the comic books you have. When a telepath breaks, sometimes they get better, and sometimes they go Dark Phoenix. I love Sarah as much as you do, but that doesn’t mean I was going to sit back and wait for her to set my world on fire. Fire’s my job.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, wounded.
Antimony looked at me with sympathy and steel in her eyes. “I really do love Sarah as much as you do, but you love Sarah way differently than I do. She’s my cousin, not my conclusion. If I’d told you I was afraid she’d come back wrong, we would have had an epic fight, you would probably have said some things you’d be regretting right about now, Sarah might not have come home in the first place, and you still wouldn’t have an anti-telepathy charm, because why would you need one?”
I took a breath, intending to argue. Then I deflated. “Fine,” I said sullenly as I put the charm around my neck. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have listened. But now you’re not listening. The cuckoo downstairs isn’t Sarah.”
“If she’s not Sarah, how did she get into the house?”
“The door in the fence was unlocked when Elsie and I got back.”
That was enough to make Sam sit up. Unlike Annie, who was wearing an oversized roller derby shirt and a pair of jogging shorts, he was wearing nothing but a pair of sweatpants. When the blankets fell away, I was treated to more answers about how furry her simian boyfriend was than I had ever actually wanted.
“That door’s never unlocked,” he said. “I got found in the woods by a bunch of campers once and had to walk back here in human form, and Mr. Price made me stand at the gate for twenty minutes while he took his time finding his shoes and coming down to get me.”
“Dad took pictures,” said Antimony, reaching into the drawer again, this time to produce a Taser and several throwing knives, which she promptly dropped on the bed. “Artie, turn around. If I have to go downstairs and kick an imposter’s ass, I want to put a bra on first.”
“Superheroes never stop to put on their underwear before they fight the forces of evil,” I said, dutifully turning to face the door.
“Most of them are telekinetic and have gravity-defying boobs,” said Antimony as she rattled around behind me. “My boobs aren’t gravity-defying. My boobs are very, very aware of gravity, and they don’t like it. They want to be protected from it whenever possible, especially if I’m about to go up against a cuckoo. Why was the door unlocked?”