I was still browsing through them when the dogs suddenly left their various napping stations and swarmed toward the door, barking frantically. “Guys,” I yelled tiredly, but they ignored me. We went through this routine several times a day, and it was almost always nothing. The cabin was surrounded by woods on three sides, so there was plenty of wildlife out there. I rolled my eyes and waited it out, silently pitying the cat burglar who thought he could get into my cabin unnoticed.
But instead of dying down, the tenor of the dogs’ cries changed from their usual “There may or may not be an animal in the yard!” barks to their “This is not a drill!” barks, finally transitioning into their “Code human! Code human!” barks. I trudged toward the front door, but the doorbell rang before I reached the entryway.
I peeked through the small vertical window in the door, squinting against the twilight. The woman on the other side was a couple of years younger than me, maybe in her late twenties. She was pretty, with warm, dark-brown skin, blue eyes, and small dreadlocks that reached her shoulders. She had on a skintight denim jacket over a floor-length brown silk skirt and dark clogs. A nose ring sparkled in the automatic sensor light on the porch, and a hemp bag big enough to hold an LP record crossed her chest and rested on one hip. She saw me peeking through the window and shouted something, but I couldn’t hear her over the clamor from the dogs.
“Guys!” I yelled. The dogs paused long enough to look at me, tails wagging proudly at their security prowess. I sighed and opened the door a few inches, wedging my leg into the crack so the pack wouldn’t run out. They crowded around my leg, trying to get a sniff of the newcomer.
“Can I help you?” I asked politely.
“I’m Lily,” she said, a little impatient. “Simon’s sister?”
“Um. Oh,” I said stupidly.
Seeing my embarrassment, the younger woman grinned. “Don’t sweat it, we get that all the time,” she said cheerfully. “I happen to have inherited more of our dad’s genes; he was black. Not in a young Michael Jackson way or anything—Dad would still be black, except he’s dead. Can I come in?”
“Sure,” I said, a little dazed. My hostess instincts kicked in belatedly, and I remembered to ask if she’d prefer that I put the dogs away. “They’ll calm down in a couple of minutes, but some people are bothered . . .” I added.
“I’m good,” Lily said, her voice still cheerful. “I like animals.”
I backed up, and she expertly squeezed through the door after me, not leaving enough room for the dogs to run out. I held out my hand. “Sorry about them. I’m Lex, it’s nice to meet you.”
We shook, which made the stitches in my back prickle uncomfortably. “Nice to meet you too,” she said. “Simon told me you have some stitches that need to come out?”
“Oh, God, yes. Come on in.”
Chapter 10
In the kitchen, Lily began spreading medical scissors, tweezers, and a few other odds and ends on my island counter. We made a bit of small talk about Boulder and the weather, and after a few minutes she took off her jacket, revealing a black ribbed tank top and toned arms that were covered in black patterns from wrist to shoulder. “Wow,” I breathed. “Your tattoos are amazing.” Each arm was obviously planned as one piece, and instead of separate pictures the swirling ink seemed to suggest a random, always-moving design: part tribal, part Eastern, as if Native American carvings had procreated with Japanese calligraphy. It was only after looking at the tattoos for a few seconds that my eyes started to detect connections in the pattern, although I didn’t recognize any of the symbols or structures.
“Oh, thanks.” Lily looked fondly down at her arms. “Designed them myself. I used to be a tattoo artist.”
“What do they mean?” I asked, then caught myself. “Sorry, that was kind of a rude question.”
“It’s okay,” Lily said, unruffled. “It’s a long story, is all. Another time.”
“And Simon said you went to med school?” I said tentatively. I wasn’t really worried about the stitches—I’d taken my own stitches out before, so I knew it wasn’t that hard. I just didn’t know what else to talk about.
“Oh. Yeah.” She rolled her eyes ruefully, as if med school was just a post-college rite of passage, like backpacking through Europe. “I did two years, but I got sick of not being able to add any magic to what we were doing. I mean, it’d be like you going into war armed with heavy rocks when you could be using guns. Simon told me you were a soldier. I hope that’s okay.”
“Uh, sure.”
She surveyed the counter. “Okay, I think I’m all set up here.” Pulling on a pair of surgical gloves, she made a quick motion in the direction of my chest. “Time to sit down and lose the shirt.”
“Right,” I said, feeling a little awkward. It had been a while since I’d taken my shirt off in front of a stranger, even another woman.
Lily cocked an eyebrow, clearly picking up on my discomfort. “Here, look.” Her fingers dropped to the hem of her tank top, pulling it up and exposing smooth brown skin and several more tattoos, not to mention small, firm breasts—she wasn’t wearing a bra either. She dropped the shirt back down. “Now we’re even.”
A laugh escaped from between my lips, and I sat on the stool and started to unbutton my flannel shirt. “I can’t believe you just flashed me as an icebreaker.”