He frowned. “I don’t know if that works for me, you know?”

She nodded. “I know. But you can’t sleep here.”

The young man scratched at the back of his head. “All right, yeah. That’d be a bit . . . Fine. Where?”

“The library. You can rent a room to study and they don’t mind if you fall asleep there. Just . . . pretend to study something. Or actually study something, I guess.”

“And what about our Clown problem? What are you doing about that?”

“Big Sister Emily doesn’t need to do anything about it, punk. It’s not her problem, it’s yours.”

“Athena,” Emily said. She couldn’t fault the girl, though; she was thinking something very similar. “I’m going to be . . . meeting someone tomorrow. I might have more by then, maybe.”

“That’s not enough.”

Emily glared. “It’ll have to be,” she said, then she cleared her throat and reined in her anger. It wasn’t like her to let that out of its bottle. “Sorry. But I’d really not be comfortable with you staying here.”

“You heard my sis,” Athena said. She gestured to the door. “Get out of here, punk.”

Jacob huffed, half exasperated and half amused, if Emily had to guess. “Fine, fine. I’ll go take a nap at the library. Maybe actually do some of my classwork. God knows, I’m behind already. I’ll call you tomorrow, all right? Just as soon as I find a phone.”

“Sure,” Emily agreed. She escorted Jacob out the door, then, once it was shut and he was gone, she leaned her head against the wall and took a moment to breath. “That was . . . something.”

“You were awesome,” Athena said without so much as an ounce of sarcasm. It helped, a little.

“We need to get ready . . . for tomorrow.”

Athena sat up. “Ready for what?”

“Trouble. Ready for a whole lot of trouble.” Emily moved to her bed, then sat on the edge so as not to disturb Teddy too much. She didn’t look forward to moving Teddy onto the mattress. The werebear was heavy, especially as dead weight.

Athena grinned, toothy and vicious. Then she adjusted her glasses with both hands and lost any semblance of being threatening. “I’m always ready most of the time. Are we going to go out in costume to kick butt?”

“Not quite,” Emily said. “And you don’t have a costume.”

“I have a cool jacket,” Athena said. “And I have some pants. We just need a mask.”

Emily patted Athena’s hair down. It was a nice, soothing gesture, for both of them, judging by the way Athena’s eyes fluttered shut. “All right. More help wouldn’t be amiss. And . . . do you have any points to spend?”

“Not yet,” she said.