Which was something along the lines of SHE WAS ABOUT TO TURN AROUND IN FRONT OF THE FIRE, FRITZ. TURN AROUND. IN FRONT OF THE FIRE! DO YOU THINK I CARE ABOUT FOOD RIGHT NOW?!?!?!

Hell, on that note, someone could come and take at least one of his legs—maybe both—and he wouldn’t argue with the body-part burglary as long as it got whoever it was the fuck out of this house. And he would have called upstairs and reported that all was well, but he didn’t want his female to feel compromised.

“Listen, Fritz,” he said as he walked through into the kitchen. “It’s cool. I can put everything away.”

Of course, that would be after he went back upstairs and checked on the fire—or rather the mostly naked female standing in front of said combustion.

“But the milk needs to be refrigerated.” Fritz pivoted and opened the GE’s door. “And the meat. And the ice cream.”

Okay, so Trez didn’t care if the milk curdled, the meat spoiled, and that ice cream drooled out of its container.

“As I was saying,” Fritz continued on happily, “I had to go to two stores. The big Hannaford’s steak offerings were not to my liking. I called my butcher.”

At least the doggen was working fast, going back and forth to the fridge, the cupboards, those bags.

“Wait, it’s almost midnight,” Trez said. “You woke the guy up? I’m assuming your butcher’s a human.”

“Oh, you know him. Vinnie Giuffrida provides unto the restaurant Sal’s, as well.”

“Yeah, Vinnie you could definitely wake up. iAm swears by him.”

“Indeed, he took care of us.” With triumph, the butler produced a paper-wrapped bundle and then popped it into the fridge. “And now I am finished here.”

Except Fritz just started to fold the paper bags. Like they were origami sheets. And he was trying to re-create the continental United States out of only one of them.

“It’s okay, Fritz. I’ll do that—”

Trez clapped his mouth shut as the butler recoiled like someone had cursed in front of his grandmahmen.

“Sorry.” Trez put his palms forward. “I, ah, you’re doing great. This is great. This is all so incredibly… great.”

Once again, at least Fritz was fast, but still, the second that last bag was folded flat, Trez wanted to frog-march the butler out the front door. But if suggesting that the doggen needed help was a problem, actually touching the male was going to cause all this forward-motion-back-to-the-front-door to crash to a halt. Grounded in their ancient traditions, Fritz’s kind couldn’t handle any sort of acknowledgment, praise, or physical contact from their masters.

It was like having a hand grenade with a mop around: Very helpful, but you were extremely aware of whether the pin was where it needed to be.

“So thank you, Fritz—”

A strange sound—part thud, part thump—emanated from out behind the house, bringing their attention to the sliding glass doors on the far side of the kitchen table. Through the glass, the security lights come on and illuminated the back deck.

“I think you better go,” Trez said in a low voice. “In case I have to deal with something.”

Fritz bowed low. “Yes, sire.”

And justlikethat the doggen was gone. Which, again, was the good news when it came to the male. Fritz was used to the kinds of emergencies that left bullets and knives in people. He might dawdle with paper bags, but when the shit hit the fan, he knew when to get gone.

As Trez outed his gun again, he was unaware of having reholstered it—and he killed the outside lights with his mind.

The human neighbors didn’t need to see him flashing his piece all around.

Moving through the darkened kitchen, he back-flatted it against the wall by the slider and focused on the backyard—

Freezing in place, he did a double take. “What the…”

With a leap to the slider’s handle, he unlocked the thing and shoved it back on its track. “Are you okay?”

Jumping into the snow on the deck, he tucked his gun and ran over to his female—who, for reasons he could not understand, was lying flat on her back in the snow.

And laughing.

Trez threw himself on his knees and looked up. The window in the bathroom upstairs was wide-open.

“Did you jump?” he said. Which was a ridiculous question. Like she fell out of a double-paned, closed set of Pella? “I mean, why? What—”

“I thought you needed help,” she got out between laughing. “I’m sorry. I just—I don’t know what I thought I would do, but I didn’t hear anything like banging and crashing, so I was worried you were hurt.”

His female lifted her head and indicated her fully clothed body. “I put everything back on, went into the bathroom—I was so nervous, I couldn’t calm myself to dematerialize. I threw up the sash, jumped, and then panicked in midair that the snow wasn’t going to be enough of a cushion. Good thing I managed to get myself turned around or I would have landed on my face—”

Lights came on in the yard next door, and a man in boxers and a flannel robe opened his own slider and piff’d out into the fluffy snow on his own deck.

“You okay over there?” he said.

Behind him, inside his kitchen, a dog the size of a throw cushion was barking in a series of high-alarm, high-register yaps that made Trez question how long that glass slider was going to survive without shattering.

“We’re fine,” Trez’s female said with a grin. “But thanks for asking.”

As the human looked suspicious and opened his mouth—no doubt to ask if 9-1-1 needed to be called—Trez lost his patience with everything and everyone. Reaching into the man’s mind, he threw a patch on the memories of anything strange-noise, strange-sight related, flipped a bunch of switches relegating everything to misinterpretation, and sent Tony Soprano back into his two-story with his little dog and whatever wife was waiting for him upstairs in their bed.

“I hate the suburbs,” Trez muttered as he got up and held his hand to his female. “I really do.”

She accepted his help and brushed the snow off the seat of her pants. “Well, maybe you could move? Although this is a great house.”

With a grunt, he checked out her mobility. “Are you sure you’re okay? Do we need a doctor?”

Batting a hand, she brushed the concern aside. “Oh, God, I’m so perfectly fine. I’ve been jumping out of windows into snow forever.”

“You have?”

“Before my transition, I used to sneak out of the second story of my house with my brother during the days while our parents—” She stopped herself. Put her hands on her hips. Made like she was looking around. “Well, anyway. I’ve done this before.”

She didn’t want him to see her expression. Not when she talked about her family, at any rate.

“Come on,” he said with exhaustion. “Let’s get inside where it’s warm.”

As they walked back across the deck, Trez couldn’t shake the feeling that the mood had been broken.

And he didn’t know how to get it back.

* * *

Therese entered the house feeling foolish and a little sad. As she stomped her boots on the mat just inside the slider, she hated thinking about her brother and all the good times they’d had together—so to escape all that, she replayed her brilliant, second-story-bathroom-window escape plan… and started laughing again. Ducking her head and trying to pull it together, she went over and stood in front of four carefully folded Hannaford paper bags—