We hurried back home. The sun was just edging up over the horizon as we pulled up, and the kitchen lights were on downstairs. The chance of Uncle Fonzo being up at this hour was slim. But if Sabina was opening the shop today, she could very well be awake. I burst in as quietly as I could (meaning, I kicked off my shoes as I ran and let Yuri catch the door before it banged shut behind me) and headed straight for the kitchen.
Sabina was, thankfully, alone, sitting at the table in a ratty tank top and a pair of my discarded boxers.
She squinted at me over her coffee. “What’s with you? Did you just get home? And why are you all jacked up? You didn’t let someone talk you into testing their diet pills again, did you?”
Yuri came in behind me and planted his hands on his hips. As he seethed with disapproval, I realized the actual reason for my hasty visit might not go over too well. “Just stopping by to say hello to my favorite cousin.”
“Uh huh.” She slurped her coffee. “There’s no leftover pizza, Dixon. We ate it all last night.”
I assumed “we” meant her and Uncle Fonzo—my uncle can pack away a lot of leftovers. But then I heard the shower in the first-floor bathroom turn on…while a snore that was definitely my uncle’s drifted down from his bedroom upstairs.
And I realized there was a white smudge on Sabina’s collarbone that could only be greasepaint.
I have never been overprotective of my cousin. In fact, despite her being younger, it’s always been the other way around: me blubbering all over Sabina every time my heart’s been broken, and her pragmatically reassuring me that a pint of ice cream can fix anything—and if anyone needed the air let out of their tires, I should just let her know where the car was parked.
Then again, my cousin had never been romantically duped by a shifty businessman looking to trade our fond childhood memories for profit.
Sabina’s bedroom was a small, dark first-floor room that was intended either as a minimal home office or an expansive linen closet. None too fancy, but it was right across the hall from a bathroom. A bathroom with a door that hadn’t locked properly since the time we locked our young selves in, then sat and cried until Uncle Fonzo took apart the doorknob with a screwdriver. Okay, technically, I cried while Sabina tried to Spellcraft us out of there with Aunt Rose’s lipstick and a whole roll of toilet paper.
Why bother replacing a perfectly good doorknob if it was just as easy to yell out, “Someone’s in here!” when it rattled?
But Quint wouldn’t know that.
I banged open the bathroom door, filled with adrenaline and righteous indignation. “How dare you?” I said dramatically, and whisked open the shower curtain….
Only to find the man standing in the bathtub was a stranger.
A total stranger.
A wet, naked total stranger. And not a bad-looking one, either.
Luckily, the tub had rubber treads stuck to the bottom, and when the stranger backpedaled, he didn’t fall down. But he did snatch the shower curtain out of my hands. Plastic rings ricocheted off walls, ceiling and floor as the curtain snapped off the rod.
Sabina dashed into the bathroom. “What in the heck are you doing?” she cried.
“Well, I—ah, that is, he—uh….”
“Obviously, you’ve got a thing against mimes, but this is extreme. Even for you.”
Yuri crammed himself into the bathroom behind Sabina. “Where is mime?”
I took another look at the guy in the tub. He was currently attempting to swaddle himself in the shower curtain, though it was one of those frosted plastic deals that didn’t leave much to the imagination. Especially the parts pressing right up against the vinyl.
“Hold on a minute!” I said. “That’s Crouch?”
“Stop calling me that!” Naked Guy bent his knees. The shower curtain rustled. “How is this a crouch? My back is straight and my knees are together. Obviously, I’m not crouching. I’m bobbing.”
“I’m not entirely convinced the knee position matters,” I said.
Sabina muttered, “Just let it go, Bob,” and squeezed out past Yuri to go back to her coffee.
The plastic slipped as Bob made a shooing motion. “Do you mind?”
“Oh. Right. Sorry. My mistake.”
I gathered up Yuri and walked him back out to the kitchen. He sagged into a chair next to my cousin and shook his head. “Sabinochka, seriously. A mime?”
“At least he’s kinda cute,” I offered.
Sabina grimaced. “What can I say? He came by to drop off a bag of seashells and one thing led to another.”
“So,” I said. “That’s what I saw him lugging up the beach last night. Did he know how much you adore them?”
“I think it was just a lucky guess. Plus, they’re free. I don’t think miming is a very lucrative business, and he blew a big chunk of change on the cookie bouquet.”
Yuri looked around. “I have never seen you decorate with seashells.”
“I don’t decorate with them,” Sabina said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I pitch ’em into other people’s yards. Like that mean old Mrs. Mangold across the street who’s always giving us the stink-eye. Fresh seashells—especially the ones with little bits of sea creatures stuck inside—reek something fierce once they start going rancid.”
Bob-not-Crouch strode into the kitchen in yesterday’s mimewear, sans the greasepaint, and said, “Well? Did the two of you ever figure out what that interloper was up to? Or did you fool around playing tour guide all day?”
Yuri gave him a dangerous look. “I did not see you helping.”
“Unbelievable! Not only did I pickpocket his Spellcraft so you could fix it, I told each of you exactly who to watch out for.”
“You told us nothing,” Yuri said.
Bob struck a pose with his hand under his chin.
“You’re tired from lugging all those seashells?” I guessed. “No, you’re bored. No, wait—you’re stumped. So, our answer is in a tree.”
“For crying out loud,” Sabina said to Bob. “This is ridiculous. Use your words.”
“He is thinking,” Yuri said. “Like the Rodin sculpture—The Thinker.”
Bob pointed excitedly at Yuri with both forefingers.
Yuri nodded grimly. “Quint was not mime. He was living statue.”
“I’d better get going,” Bob said. “If I don’t stake out my spot early, the yodeler sets up in the shade of the only decent tree.” When he leaned in to give my cousin a kiss goodbye, she turned her mouth aside and offered her cheek.
Hopefully not on my account. Her love life really was none of my business.
Once Bob was gone, I said, “Sabina, you’ve always supported me—whether it was warranted or not. If you want to date a mime, I’m one hundred percent behind you.” Plus, I had to admit, the whole pickpocket side hustle was kind of intriguing. And at least it would mean he was good with his hands.
“I’m not so sure there’ll be a repeat performance,” Sabina mumbled into her coffee. “That guy was way too chatty in bed.”