“It might not be the best precedent to set,” Lily said agreeably.
I peeled the flannel off carefully, with Lily helping a little. She handed it to me, and I stuck my arms through the sleeves again, pulling it on backward to cover my front.
Lily let out a low whistle. “Wow,” she said admiringly, echoing my tone of voice from earlier. “Your scars are amazing.” I felt her touch the thick white line of older scar tissue that bisected my own tattoo, a black design on my shoulder with my unit’s shield and the words “US ARMY.” “What happened here?” she asked curiously.
“Oh . . . everyone in my squad was getting them,” I said, deliberately misinterpreting the question.
When I didn’t say anything else, she said quietly, “It’s good work.” She cleared her throat. “Right. Let’s get started on those stitches.”
She soaked a cotton ball in iodine and started disinfecting all my fresh injuries from the healed-over stitches. I felt the cold liquid running down my skin and shivered, grateful for the backward shirt. After giving the iodine a second to dry, Lily started at the topmost injury—snipping the stitches with her little scissors and pulling them free with tweezers. “These are either infected or were just about to get infected.” I could hear the frown in her voice. “Simon should have taken them out as soon as he gave you Sybil’s charm.”
“It’s not his fa-ault,” I protested, stumbling over my words from pain as she tugged at a stitch. “There wasn’t any time.”
“Still,” she grumbled, but good-naturedly now. “My brother thinks he’s a goddamned cowboy. A nerdy, overeager, scientist cowboy, which is obviously the worst kind.”
I smiled, although she couldn’t see it. “Which of you is older?” I said, though I was pretty sure it was Simon.
A snort. “He is. I’m the baby. My sister Morgan is the oldest. The heir apparent, or so she thinks. Then it’s Sybil, who tries to keep up by being really tightly wound. Simon and I are more laid-back.”
“Still, it sounds like you guys are close.”
“I guess. Do you have brothers and sisters?” she asked.
“I have a lot of cousins. We’re pretty tight,” I said truthfully. If there was one thing I’d learned about small talk in the last year, it was that “dead twin sister” pretty much ruined things for everyone.
“Oh, cousins are the best,” Lily said agreeably. “Sibling enough to love you forever, but you never have to worry about them stealing your clothes.” She made another careful snip. “I like your earrings, by the way,” Lily added. “Is that a griffin?”
“Oh, thanks.” I touched one of the little silver studs. I didn’t wear earrings often, but when I did, I usually chose this pair, each one a tiny curled-up animal. “Yeah. My cousin Anna gave them to me. She has this weird idea that griffins are my spirit animal,” I explained. “She’s got a New Age streak, but we’ve mostly learned to adjust.” And at least it wasn’t a unicorn.
Somewhere between the second and third line of stitches, the doorbell rang again. It was a sudden, shocking sound, given that the dogs were all still draped on various pieces of furniture when it happened. They hadn’t even made it to their first round of barks. I jumped, and Lily poked me hard with the tweezers. All four of the dogs leapt up like they’d been caught sleeping on the job, which was true. “My fault,” I called over the sound of barking dogs. “Can you stop for a second?”
Still wearing the backward shirt, I padded through the cabin to the front door, peering through the window again. It was fully dark outside by now, but the automatic sensor light showed Quinn, looking handsome in jeans and a black leather jacket. Was that look a vampire thing?
Using one foot as a stopper, I cracked the door open. The dogs, who had huddled around me, began freaking out in earnest—Cody and Dopey whined and pawed the floor, Pongo barked as loud as he could, and Chip actually began to howl. I’d never heard that sound from him before. “Hi,” I said over the racket. “You came over.”
He nodded, his eyes taking in my backward shirt without any particular reaction. I was getting used to a general lack of readable reactions from Quinn. “The situation has changed a bit on my end. We need to talk, and I try not to discuss anything important over the phone.”
“How did you find me?” I asked, eyebrows raised. “I’m not exactly in the phone book.”
“From your chart,” he explained, practically shouting to be heard over the dogs’ racket. I started to open the door, but Pongo, usually the most levelheaded of my crew, let out a vicious growl and lunged at the door. “Oh,” Quinn added casually, “dogs generally hate vampires. Some cats, too.”
I rolled my eyes. Further proof that dogs are smarter than people. “Of course they do. Hang on.”
Closing the front door, I herded all four dogs into the adjacent mudroom, tugging at collars and doing some fancy blocking maneuvers to get them all in at once. As I straightened up, I realized belatedly that I had probably given Quinn a good view of my scarred, naked back through the window—and probably a pretty solid glimpse of my breasts, too. Great. I rolled my eyes as a blush crept up my neck.
When I opened the door, Quinn was standing with his back to the house, pretending to survey the yard in the darkness. He turned when he heard the door open, but very slowly, checking his peripheral vision to make sure I was decent. Oh, yeah. He’d seen my boobs.