Suddenly, an ice-cold hand grabs my ankle, sending me off balance. I scream, kick out, and slash at the black shadow crawling out from under the table with the scalpel all at the same time.

My foot makes contact, and the shadow lets out an unmistakably human ‘oof’. “Shit, Zoey. I think you broke a damn rib.”

I drop the scalpel to the table with a clatter and kick the not-shadow, but a black hoodie-wearing teenage boy. “Jacob! You scared the piss out of me! I could’ve hurt you! I could’ve fallen and gotten hurt!” I’m yelling loud enough to wake the dead, scowling murder, and threatening him with my foot again. “You’re lucky I didn’t slice your carotid or something!”

In response to my potential violence and his own potential death, Jacob is rolling on the floor, laughing his ass off. And people say I’m macabre. But my brother-slash-ward-slash-I’m not sure what to call him is just as dark in his own way, and maybe even weirder.

“Holy fuck, Zoey. You should’ve seen your face.” He mimes the apparent terror I felt a moment ago, his eyes wide and mouth stretched horrifically, seemingly unaware that my adrenaline has quickly morphed to anger. “I got you so damn good!” He licks his finger and then adds a tally mark to an invisible score board. “Winner . . . your boy, Jacob! And the crowd goes wild! Ahhhhh!”

“That’s it. Consider yourself evicted,” I warn. “Get. The. Fuck. Out!”

He isn’t cowed in the least, simply yawning dramatically with one hand covering his mouth and one arm stretching out wide, still lying on the floor. “You wouldn’t dare. You love me too much.”

I pout, arms crossing over my stomach as I glare at him. I hate that he’s right. I would never kick him out. Not after everything he’s been through. Everything we’ve been through.

Jacob is my brother from another mother . . . and father. Well, technically, not my brother at all, but he sorta is. After I went to live with Grandma and Grandpa, they discovered that they liked having some young life in the house again. When a neighbor mentioned a kid who needed a foster home, Grandpa opened up his home to Jacob before the state could swallow him into their impersonal system.

Back then, I hadn’t known how to push people away. My walls weren’t up and fortified like they are now, and Jacob had snuck right into my heart. Which honestly terrifies me even more than his pranks and antics. Because though he’s not blood, Grandma and Grandpa adopted him, which technically makes him my uncle. But after their death, I’d become his guardian, which makes him my son.

And twisted family tree aside, in truth, he’s my brother. Always has been, always will be.

So I give in and soften my glare by degrees.