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not stay away from this—this—psychopath?”
    “I don't scare easy,” I said with a bravado I didn't feel, “and I'm not going to be warned off by idiotic pranks like these cards. I want to know why now—why is someone so determined to keep me from the reunion? Why?”
    “Curiosity may kill more than cats,” she cautioned. “If you're going, I'm going with you. You'll need someone to watch your back.”
    “You sound like a bad cop show.”
    “I'm not joking, Jordan. I'm not letting anyone hurt a hair on your head.”
    I blushed at the intensity of her words, which was somehow more revealing than our casual nakedness in bed. And I knew better than to argue. “Okay, fine. As long as you stay out of trouble.” My blood ran cold at the thought ofCandace near anyone who could send such missives, but we'd moved past the point of debate—I saw the stony set of determination in her face. “And not a word to Bob Don. I have my own plan for dealing with this sicko.”
    “Tell me,” she murmured.
    So I did.

I WONDERED IF ANY PASSING MOTORISTS WOULD render aid if I leaned out the car door window and screamed.
    “—and that's when I decided Sass and I would not only be sisters-in-law, but be best friends,” Gretchen continued. “She was just so kind to me, and chock-full of marital advice when Bob Don and I got hitched.”
    “Lord knows she should have been,” Bob Don muttered. “Sass'd been married often enough. I half thought she was gunning for the world record for times down the aisle.” Even his normally jovial temper seemed strained by the long drive.
    It was not an auspicious start to our family reunion. Mostly in that I did not want to be reunited anytime soon with my loved ones in this car, much less make the acquaintance of a whole passel of new kinfolks. For all his enthusiasm for this trip, Bob Don seemed itchy. Gretchen's paean to his family irritated him, and he'd snapped more than once at his wife. Candace was strangely quiet, offering no relief from the ongoing Gretchen monologue. Gretchen appeared determined to sparkle all the way to Uncle Mutt's home. Not even the stars in the sky glitter quite that long.
    I don't mean to complain. Honestly. But my stomach had started roiling at the idea of being introduced to a bunch of complete strangers (although they were technically blood kin) and tension gripped my limbs. I wanted Bob Don's family to like me and accept me—but at the same time I wanted not to care about their reactions to me. I tried not to reflect overmuch that at least one of themseemed inordinately displeased that a stray sperm of Bob Don's had ended up sentient, blond, and breathing.
    A final card had arrived the day before, a last-ditch effort to avert my arrival at Uncle Mutt's. I had not even shown this one to Candace; it would have scared the bejesus out of her. At the moment the card lay safely contained in a bag in my suitcase, along with its fellow couriers of hate. I could nearly imagine a faint throb of evil emanating from the car trunk, like a telltale heart.
    The card's designer had intended comfort; the front of the greeting, in flowery script, said IN DEEPEST SYMPATHY. Open it and you saw the rest of the sentence, hacked from magazine letters:
    FOR YOUR IMPENDING DEATH
YOU'RE NOT ONE OF US
WE'LL MOURN ONLY A MOMENT
    I wish I could say a cold shiver raced through me when I read those words; it seems the normal reaction, and I pray for normality in my life. But at this last, most bitter missive, I felt only a numb disbelief that someone hated me so. What crime had I committed, aside from the accident of my birth? (A crime I could hardly be judged and hanged for.) I'd spent the rest of the day in a quiet funk.
    I had not rallied for this morning's drive to the coast. Bob Don's sudden silence, Candace's odd detachment, and Gretchen's prattling hadn't improved my mood. She rarely veered from discussion of her sister-in-law and she made no useful announcement, like “How's