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get a jump on the day.”
    Brian stared at me, incredulous. I put my finger up to my lips; I was still the polar opposite of a morning person, but Bucky was worse. And there is no point in having a sister unless you can torment her.

Chapter 3
    I GOT UP EARLY THE NEXT MORNING ONLY BECAUSE I knew I needed five minutes by myself before the general rush hour. Most everyone in my acquaintance knew not to speak to me until the second or third cup of coffee, but there was no sense in needlessly taking risks. In the bathroom, I brushed my teeth and looked out the window blearily; I thought I saw Dian skulking across the yard, hair trailing wet tendrils, with something clutched in her hand. A towel. Although they had the use of our bathroom, the grad students had also rigged up a camping shower in the back yard where we had plenty of trees to ensure everyone’s privacy. Just from the way she was moving, I knew something was up.
    Sure enough, I heard a squawk and saw Joe, fully dressed, come shooting out from the woods, yelling, “It wasn’t me! I didn’t mean to see you!”
    Meg followed, uninterested in Joe, dripping wet, utterly naked except for a pair of work boots, and completely unselfconscious. I would have run too, if I knew myself to bethe cause of the look on her face. “Where is it, Dian!? I haven’t got time for this shit!”
    I rapped on the window and raised the sash. “Um, Meg? If you don’t mind? It’s a little early in the season for dryads.”
    The student peered up at the house, hand shielding eyes that were squinting against the sun. “Morning, Emma. It’s Dian’s fault, she stole—”
    A towel came flying out from the underbrush and Meg caught it, wrapping it around herself, shaking her head. “You’ll get yours, Kosnick!”
    I heard a giggle come from the shrubbery and realized that I was struggling against the gravitational pull of no coffee. I shut the window and headed downstairs, where I could smell the coffee brewing. Brian handed me a mug and I drank, waiting for everything to come into focus.
    “Good morning,” I said at last. He came into focus and looked cute, for all he was awake already.
    “Hey there. What was the noise outside?”
    Good, he hadn’t seen Meg. “Kids were fooling around. I told them to knock it off.”
    “You wake up Bucky?”
    “No, I’ll do it now. Give me another—”
    But Brian had already filled another cup from the pot.
    “You’re so good to put up with me. With all this.”
    “I know. But the secret is that all you require is equal parts coffee and sex, so it’s really not too difficult for me.”
    “Hmmm, I never thought of myself as quite that simple. Well, now that I’ve had the coffee part….” I kissed him and gave him a friendly pat on the butt. “Good morning. Have you decided what you want for your birthday, yet?”
    “We already got the presents—is yours charged up, by the way?”
    “No, I’ll go plug it in when I wake up her nibs.”
    “Good, just don’t forget it when you leave. There’s nopoint in having a cell phone for safety if you keep leaving it home.”
    I nodded exaggeratedly. “Right, I get it already. I meant, what do you want to do for your birthday? Party? Dinner out?”
    “I don’t know, maybe. I’ll think about it. Go on, now.”
    I could hear the students clambering into the kitchen and pause in silence until Brian said, “It’s all right. She’s had a cup and is making sentences.” Then conversation began and I heard the fridge door opening and the tap running as breakfast was made.
    I didn’t bother knocking; I knew what would be waiting for me on the other side of the guest bedroom door. The door opened about halfway before it jammed on something, but I was able to squeeze myself in through the crack. Jeez, she’d only been with us two days, and already my sister had turned the guestroom into a pigsty. Clothes—clean ones, I presume—were strewn about the floor and chair, and my sister herself looked