Free Pocket Apocalypse: InCryptid, Book Four by Seanan McGuire

they’re anything like my family, ‘he breathed’ might be considered a good reason.”
    “Don’t worry so much.” She elbowed me amiably before going back to filling out her own customs form. “Besides, if they really get to be too much, you can always hide behind Gabby. She’s as bewildered by the lot of us as you are.”
    “She’s the one who’s going to school to be an opera singer, right?”
    Shelby nodded. “Right. See? You have a sister who’s a dancer, I have one who plans to be a singer. It’s going to be just like taking a nice long trip home.”
    I sighed deeply. “That doesn’t make it any better. I’ve
met
my family.”
    The sound of the engines roaring drowned out Shelby’s laughter. We were in our final descent, and one way or another, I was going to Australia.

Four

    “I have never seen any place on Earth as beautiful, improbable, and beautifully ridiculous as Australia. Whatever god or devil first conceived of the place deserves some sort of award, and possibly a smack in the head.”
    —Thomas Price
    Brisbane Airport in Queensland, Australia, international arrivals terminal
    S HELBY AND I WERE walking along the concourse toward customs—she looking tediously awake and alert, like she hadn’t just spent far too many hours in midair, me looking like a houseplant that hadn’t been watered in far too long and was thus on the verge of terminal wilt—when a short, tan, pleasantly plump woman with a riotous mop of red-and-brown curls darted out of a door marked “staff only” and cut us cleanly from the rest of the crowd.
    “Hello hello hello,” she said brightly, her cheerful Australian voice cutting through the hubbub like a knife. Our fellow travelers picked up their step, getting away from what sounded like the start of something they didn’t want any part of. “What are you traveling for, then? Business or pleasure?”
    “Bringing the bloke to meet the folks,” said Shelby airily. I gave her a sidelong look. “Bloke” might be the most common Australianism in American popular culture, but it wasn’t a word I heard Shelby use very often—or really ever, except when I dragged her to Outback and she returned from the bathrooms with a scathing critique of using “Blokes” and “Sheilas” to distinguish the genders. “There a problem, officer?”
    “Could be, could be,” said the woman. “If you two would just come with me, I’m sure we can have it all cleared up in a jiffy. So if there’s nothing the two of you need before we see to the all-important business of keeping this grand nation safe from all threats foreign and national . . . ?”
    It was like being confronted with a human border collie. I blinked, too disoriented from the flight and too well trained about making a fuss in airports to know what to do.
    Fortunately, Shelby wasn’t so confused. “Lead the way: anything for Australia.”
    “Anything?” asked the woman pointedly.
    “Life, limb, and love.”
    “Very good. Follow me.” She turned on her heel and stalked back to the staff door, clearly expecting that Shelby and I would follow her. Shelby did, and so I did the same, dragging my roller bag and praying the mice wouldn’t start cheering without getting permission from me first.
    The door slammed shut behind us. Welcome to Australia.

    The woman with the riotous hair led us down an empty hallway that could have been lifted out of any airport in the world—or any soundstage designed to look like an airport, for that matter. There’s something remarkably artificial about a certain type of bureaucratic sterility, like even it can’t make up its mind whether or not it actually exists. Her boots thudded against the tile floor like she was personally affronted by its reality, and punishing it one slammed-down heel at a time.
    “We’ll be heading for one of the main screening rooms, where you and your belongings will be thoroughly reviewed,” she said, without looking back at me or Shelby. Her