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“And you shouldn’t believe all the press about Ouija boards. They can’t be used in an exorcism. Trivial Pursuit can, but that’s another story.
My grandmother being a living spellbook isn’t nearly as weird as the fact that she looks roughly the same age as Elsie. She spends most of her time in parallel dimensions, searching for her husband. She ages—I saw her looking almost as old as Mom once—and then she somehow runs the clock backward, keeping herself young enough for the strain she puts her body under.
Silence fell over the room. The mice didn’t cheer. Some things, apparently, were too serious even for that. Swell.
Call me weird, but an overly enthusiastic sister is not something I want to deal with after a trip involving planes, trains, and automobiles.
“I am on a Spy Mission,” said Mindy proudly. She pulled herself to her full, if diminutive, height, and squeaked, “Hail to the Arboreal Priestess, who did not know I was here!”
I WAS DONE. No. That wasn’t quite right. I was a hundred miles past done, cresting into the Fjords of Nope, heading for Fuck-That-Ville. The sidewalk was uneven, traffic was moving in the wrong direction, pedestrians kept looking at me like I was an accident about to happen—which, let’s be honest, I probably was—and I was ready to lie down in the street and sleep for a month. Which was exactly why I had to keep going.
“Trust the mice. They may lead you weird, and they may lead you stupid, but they’ll never lead you wrong.”
Aeslin mice put their faith in us, in every sense of the phrase, and all they ask in return is protection, the occasional plate of cheese and cake, and the security of knowing their gods love them. The mice who’d chosen to stay with Charles and Ada—them and their descendants—had given up those things for the cold comfort of doing what they saw as their duty to the family. They had been neglected. They had been ignored. And it wasn’t fair.
She was such a small mouse, talking so earnestly about finding a way to reunite her people, even though they were continents apart.
“Is this a joke?” I asked. Mushrooms have no place on a breakfast plate. Neither do baked beans, or fried tomato, or whatever that slice of squishy black stuff was. There was bacon, but it was outsized and soggy-looking, and there was a dismaying absence of potatoes.
“It’ll be nice to be back in the States. Halloween is next month, and you people don’t even have candy corn. How can you exist in a world without candy corn? It’s criminal, I tell you. So this will be good for me.”
The baggage claim area at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport, getting real sick of time zones
One nice thing about jet lag: it can lend an air of resigned unreality to everything, so situations that would normally seem time-consuming or pointless become dreamlike and fine.
“Do I pass, or is this where I try to see whether I can run faster scared than you can murderous? Because I can run really fast when I’m scared.”
Well, Sam, it turns out some kinds of magic run in families, even human families, and I’m becoming a walking Stephen King novel. No. Saying that would not get me anywhere good.
“Yes, Priestess,” said Mindy. “We have avoided the Realm of Unreasonably Large Pythons.”
“You’re a Jorōgumo, aren’t you?” I demanded, dancing back as I tried to get out of her range. “I didn’t know there were any of you outside of Japan. What are you doing here?”
“HAIL THE RETURN OF THE PRECISE PRIESTESS! HAIL THE COMING OF THE VERY LARGE MONKEY!”
“Did you want to come in? The mice are singing hymns about home repair.”
“When someone judges you for something you can’t help, try to forgive them. They don’t understand. And if they keep doing it, knock their fucking teeth in.” —Jane Harrington-Price
Mindy put a paw on his shoulder. “You must speak. If you do not speak, she cannot know, for did not the Thoughtful Priestess say We Are Not All Mind-Readers Here, We Leave That To Sarah?”
The cobra, lacking eyelids, did not blink back, but did flare its hood out a few extra millimeters, making sure I remembered that it was a dangerous snake, and should not have its Netflix time interfered with.
My theory of combat is simple: keep it as far away from myself as I can. I am a soft, squishy creature, with lots of moving pieces, and I want to keep all those moving pieces safely contained inside my skin.
“How normal is she for your family?” asked Sam. “On a scale of like, one to fucking weird?”
