“Yeah. Your siblings get to torture you, and you get to torture your siblings, but you don’t get to torture yourself.”

  “Like you can pick your nose, and you can pick your friends—”

  “But you can’t pick your friends’ nose,” she concluded. “Just like that. So stop hurting my brother, before I’m forced to kick your ass.”

  “Having siblings is surprisingly violent.”

  “Surprising, no, violent, yes.” She finished sweeping up the mess and walked the dustpan over to the wet trash. Back in Maine, we had one trash can, and everything went into it. Convincing my dad that separating out the recycling would have been a good idea had been a nonstarter, and I’d given up the fight long before Annie had rolled into my life.

  Here, they not only had separate cans for wet and dry trash, they had two different recycle bins—one for glass and metal, the other for plastic and paper, and sometimes Jane grumbled about how we really needed to split those up and go to four, which would have Evelyn remind her, always with utter politeness, that she had her own kitchen in which she could have a hundred recycle bins if she wanted, while Evelyn’s kitchen needed to retain room for things like “appliances” and “food.” Since no one ever seemed very upset about this argument, I had to assume it had been going on for years and would probably outlive us all.

  There were also two bins for scraps, one to go into the compost bin, the other to go into the bloodworm tubs. Bloodworms lived naturally in wet earth, and were usually found in swamps and wetlands, and their blood was like catnip for a wide range of cryptid species. After leaving Buckley, the family had started breeding them for bait purposes, and so they occupied five twenty-seven-gallon tubs in the garage and got all the household meat and dairy leftovers.

  Annie had confessed, almost ashamed, that when she was a kid, she used to give the bloodworms ice cream on her birthday, figuring that everyone deserved a treat. “I’d still be doing it, but it turns out bloodworms are lactose intolerant. A few cheese scraps is fine, a whole gallon of ice cream is not. And you do not want to be around a flatulent bloodworm colony.”

  She moved to the sink, rinsing the coffee stains off the dustpan and propping it up to dry before tearing off a few paper towels. “Are you feeling any better?”

  “I’m trying,” I admitted.

  “You ready to tell me what happened?”

  “I am not.”

  “Okay. Just checking.” She crouched down to wipe the remaining coffee off the floor, keeping an eye on me as she did. “You realize you’re on the countdown before Sam notices I’ve been gone more than five minutes and just ‘happens’ to come wandering in here to check on me.”

  “How much longer are you going to put up with that?”

  “I don’t know. When it stops being cute and starts being annoying.” She shrugged. “I figure he’s earned a little neurotic hovering, after everything.”

  I sighed. “I guess you’re not wrong. It would still be driving me absolutely out of my mind.”

  “Yeah, but you grew up with an expectation of privacy. I did not. My childhood prepared me for a traumatized boyfriend who doesn’t like it when I’m in a different room.”

  I reached for a fresh mug, making a noncommittal noise. She wasn’t wrong: Sam had been through a lot. We all had, really, but in some ways, Annie and I had gotten off lightly. For us, our little pan-dimensional adventure had been a few days of trauma and screaming, followed by a crash landing back in our home reality. For everyone who hadn’t been with us, well . . .

  Some of them had been here in Portland when Sarah ripped a hole in reality and Annie, Artie, and I had followed her through, vanishing in an instant. Others had been elsewhere, either as close as the fence line—Sam—or as far away as Australia—Alex and Shelby. They hadn’t been given an opportunity to react.

  We’d reappeared in Iowa, only to vanish again, this time taking an entire college campus with us. That would have been bad enough if time had been running at the same rate between dimensions, if we’d been gone and completely out of contact for a few days—something that really didn’t happen to Prices, since they had phones and allies and their small but reliable network of ghost aunts, who would normally make sure that nothing short of dying would keep a Price from checking in. But no, time couldn’t be that accommodating.

  We’d been gone for a few days . . . for us. We’d been gone for a solid year for the rest of the world, meaning that our return to Ames with an entire college campus had been even more dramatic and upsetting than originally anticipated. People had mourned. People had moved on. Construction for several new structures had begun, all of which had been summarily smashed flat when we’d dropped the university on top of them. We’d disrupted a lot of plans rather severely, first by disappearing, later by coming back.

  At the time, if you’d asked me, I would have said that Sarah and Artie had an understanding of sorts, one that might not be as formal as “dating” but which definitely encompassed “in some sort of complicated relationship that would have been weird even if it hadn’t been between two nonhuman intelligences.” I’d been tragically single, as always—Sally used to say a boy could tattoo “James Smith, I like your ass, will you take me to the prom?” across his forehead, and I still wouldn’t be sure that he was into me—and Annie had been with Sam. Who hadn’t made the dimensional crossing with us.

  He would have been absolutely within his rights to decide that disappearing into an alternate dimension for a year was a really complicated method of breaking up with him. Instead, he’d spent the entire year of our absence working with the rest of the family—dead aunts included—to find a way to bring us home, or at least to confirm that we were still out there somewhere to be found. For that year, everyone in the family had been a little closer to understanding Alice than they normally were, and then we’d come back, battered and bruised and completely unaware of how long it had been for everybody else.

  And Sam had been waiting.

  Since we’d come home, it had become a rare thing to find Annie in any room without him, apart from the bathroom and the barn we used for our makeshift “sorcery lessons,” and he would usually walk her to both those places. I thought it was cloying and a little invasive. Annie thought it was sweet, or at least she said she thought it was sweet, and not being one of the family telepaths, I had to take her word for it.

  “I’d like it if my life had prepared me to have a boyfriend at all,” I said, glumly.

  Annie paused. “You’re just trying to distract me from asking more questions about the waffles,” she accused.

  “Maybe. Is it working?”

  “Yes, but only because you’ve refused to seriously talk about your dating prospects up until this point.” She looked at me levelly. “Dirty pool to bring it up now, James Price. Dirty pool indeed.”

  “Any rope when you’re falling.” I shrugged, pouring coffee into my mug. “Besides, it’s not like I have a lot of opportunities to meet people, much less start dating them. There’s the whole ‘Sometimes things freeze solid when I touch them’ aspect—which, I know you and Sam play your kinky little games with heat, and don’t think I wish I didn’t know that, but cold is a lot less sexy when you’re not expecting it—and then there’s the ‘I never go anywhere’ part of things. You moved me cross-country and I don’t know anyone here.”

  “As opposed to that bustling social circle you had back in New Gravesend. Pour me one of those.”

  “For my sins, I must watch you torture innocent coffee,” I said, and took out a second cup.

  “Your sins are many and great,” said Annie, straightening to throw away her paper towels and get the mini marshmallows down from a cabinet.

  “This great?”

  “Greater. Now please, continue telling me why it’s my fault you can’t get a boyfriend.”

  “Well, one, you’re my sister now, and you’re kind of terrifying.” I filled her cup and handed it over, only grimacing a little as she topped it off with a generous serving of mini marshmallows. Her crimes against coffee may never be forgiven. “So there’s that.”

  “It’s true, I am skilled in the area of frightening off boys,” she said, grabbing a spoon and giving her coffee a stir. “I did it for myself, pretty consistently, for years. Still not sure what I did differently with Sam.”

  “Sam’s not human.”

  “Yeah, that probably helped. Our specific flavor of weird flies a little bit better with people who aren’t defaulting to thinking the world both makes sense and belongs to them. Huh. Maybe that’s part of why the boys never wanted to hang around when they saw me coming.” She took a long drink of coffee. “Sounds like they’re starting to wind down out there. You want to tell me what happened before they all come in here looking for something to eat?”

  “Not really.” I pushed my hair back with one hand. “I was talking to Acadia—she’s one of the priests who’s least likely to freak out because I’m paying attention to her—and she said that when your grandparents showed up last night, they had someone else with them. Someone she called ‘the Sally.’”

  “Oh,” said Annie, eyes widening in apparent understanding.

  “And apparently ‘the Sally’ left a message for me.” I sighed. “She said to tell James that Sally took his waffles.”

  The mice remaining in the kitchen cheered.

  ACADIA

  The novice—formerly undecided, now Called—was where I had been told to find him, still draped in the beige and white of the clergy-to-be, with only the first small gleaming beads of his station-to-come affixed to his sleeves and collar. He was bent over the book of the teachings of the Stolen God when I entered, and looked up at the scratching of my claws against the floor. Seeing my raiment, he straightened, flattening his ears and fanning his whiskers in show of respect.

  “Priest,” he said, bowing his head. “I am Honored by your Presence.”

  “I am told you have come to join our number,” I said, more briskly than I intended, but I was on a mission from the Precise Priestess, and had little time for niceties. “I am told you Witnessed the coming of the Pilgrim Priestess, the God of Inconvenient timing, and the Sally?”

  “Yes,” he squeaked, nerves splintering his voice into a shrill crack.

  “Fortunate, to Witness such a Moment, such a Mystery!” I exalted. “Now come. The Precise Priestess has asked to speak with one who Witnessed.”

  He stepped nervously forward, ears still flattened. “I have never . . . never spoken to the Precise Priestess. I have heard—”

  “She is not cruel to the Faithful,” I said, reassuringly. “And was she not the one who went into the Wilderness and returned with the Stolen God, not mate nor child, but sibling stolen from the wide world? She will be kind to you. She wishes only to hear what you have Witnessed, to receive the details of the moment that she might better understand them.”

  Still he hesitated.

  Hesitation was allowed; only refusal was forbidden. Still, I didn’t want to leave the divine waiting, and so I cajoled, “If we are Swift, and the news we carry is Welcome, there may be Cheese and Cake.”

  No Aeslin has ever been born who could resist the allure of cheese and cake. His ears came up and his whiskers relaxed. “It counts as my required time in contemplation if I am attending upon our God, does it not?”

  “Of course it does,” I said. “What truer Devotional could there be than serving as His memory of a moment which he was not present to behold with his own eyes? Come. They are waiting for us.”

  I ran back the way I had come, and he followed close behind me, the two of us plunging past the senior clergy without pause and out into the streets, paved with buttons and with pennies from the pockets of our divinities, worn smooth and gentle upon the paws of pedestrians. Still we ran without pausing, until we reached the tunnel’s entrance and plunged through, racing down, down, down into the darkness, into the depths of the house.

  When we at last emerged into the kitchen, the Stolen God and the Precise Priestess were yet there, awaiting our arrival. The Stolen God had a fresh cup of coffee, which was good; the divinities are calmer, by and large, when they have something to sip at as we speak to them. The Precise Priestess had a cup as well, and the bag of marshmallows was open on the counter. How I yearned to dive into its sugary depths, and how firmly it had been forbidden. So instead, we took up place beside the toaster, and I squeaked for their attention, as the initiate beside me clutched his tail in his hands and tried not to pant with nerves.

  “Good, you’re back,” said the Precise Priestess, as the Stolen God went very still beside her. “Is this the one who witnessed?”

  “I am,” squeaked the initiate, nerves still shattering his voice. Then he winced, and said, “Your Divinity. I am, Your Divinity. I am sorry, I mean no Offense.”

  “Oh, he’s young,” she said, with evident sympathy. “First time talking directly to a member of the family, hey, kid?”

  He squeaked wordless affirmation, as she elbowed the Stolen God lightly in the side.

  “He’s wearing your colors. This one’s yours.”

  The Stolen God looked upon us with interest, focus intent. “Are you new?”

  The initiate nodded, silent with awe.

  “I can’t pronounce your real name. I’m sorry. If there’s something you’d like to be called, I can absolutely use that name for you, or I can give you one that I can use. Which would you prefer?”

  The initiate, whose name I had not bothered to learn in advance of his meeting our mutual God, looked as if he might pass out from the sheer ecstasy of the moment. He stood, quivering, in silence, until I reached over and tweaked his tail, startling him. He flinched away from me, then looked to the God, squeaking a desperate, “Please! If I might have the Gift of a Name, it would be an Honor!”

  The Stolen God glanced to the Precise Priestess, as if seeking her counsel. She laughed.

  “He’s an initiate,” she said. “Look at that cloak. I bet he was undecided before he saw your waffles get stolen, and now he’s part of your clergy. Initiates are jumpy. They’re not used to speaking directly to the family. Not like a Priest, or even a fully initiated novice. You learn to tell the differences between the tiers. After a while, it’s second nature. Just be gentle with this one. He’s not used to us yet.”

  The Stolen God nodded his understanding, then looked again to the initiate. “Your friend there, I called her Acadia, because it’s the prettiest park in the state I’m from,” he said. “I always liked Camden, too. Would you be willing to let me call you Camden when I need to address you directly, or ask the other mice to send you to see me?”

  The initiate—Camden—nodded, ears going flat. He hugged himself, and I knew this moment would be replaying in his heart for the rest of his life. So it went, for those who served the divine. We all had our private catechisms, the things which mattered more to us than to the collective memory.

  “Nice to meet you, Camden,” said the Stolen God.

  “I am Honored,” Camden managed, voice only cracking a little.

  “Now that we’re through the pleasantries, can you please tell us what you saw last night?” The Precise Priestess’s words were polite. Her tone was not.

  The newly dubbed Camden picked up on her intonation as easily as I did. He twisted his tail between his paws as he looked to the Stolen God, took a breath, and began his recitation:

  “It was two hours and seventeen minutes past the Striking of Midnight when a Hole did Open in the Membrane of the World, and Three Humans did Appear . . .”

  JAMES

  Sally.

  The little mouse in the virtually unornamented cloak had described Sally so perfectly that a police sketch artist could probably have drawn her. He had described her, and when he’d shifted his stance to repeat the words she’d spoken—actually spoken, in this house, in this kitchen, while I’d been asleep less than fifty feet away—he’d managed to look like her, despite being a mouse and not a human being. He sounded like her.

  Sally was alive. My Sally was alive, and somehow, she’d ended up with Annie’s grandparents, and they were planning to come back here, and when they did, we’d be together again. Me and Sally, the way it was supposed to be, without New Gravesend to pen us in and tie us to an endless succession of parental expectations and molds we were never going to fit. Sally.

  Camden had finished speaking and looked at us expectantly as he said, “And thus is the Mystery Revealed.”

  A general cheer went up from all the other mice in the room, who had quieted to pay attention to his story. Annie smiled at him.

  “That was very well told, and we thank you,” she said. “The Stolen God is a bit overcome right now, by the return of his friend, but he’ll thank you too, when he’s able.”

  I nodded vigorously. The lump in my throat was so large that I could barely swallow, much less speak. The mice, Camden and Acadia both, continued to look at me with wide, expectant eyes. I glanced at Annie. If they were expecting some great show of gratitude or wise proclamation, they were going to be waiting for a while.

  She met my eye and winked, then set her coffee down on the counter. “A story so well told deserves a reward,” she said. “Who wants cheese and cake?”

  I would have sworn there were fewer than two dozen mice in the kitchen. The cheer they sent up was still loud enough to border on deafening, and continued as she turned to open the fridge and extracted half a sheet cake from the top shelf. “This was meant to be tonight’s celebration,” she said, removing the foil. “I’ll have to get someone to drive me to the store before dinner. But they’ve earned it.”

  She set the cake on the counter next to her coffee. The mice watched, ears and whiskers vibrating with eagerness, still cheering. She didn’t pull out a knife. Instead, she opened a drawer and removed a Tupperware container of pre-cut cheese cubes. “Gouda and cheddar today,” she announced, popping off the lid and putting the container down next to the cake. Then she retrieved her coffee and stepped back.