“You all have to be normal, okay?” Pip stood on the kitchen counter, glaring down at her siblings. Mai swatted at her, pair of chopsticks in hand. Pip sidestepped smoothly, turning her gaze quickly back to her siblings. This was the only way to be taller than all of them and really get her point across. “You won’t ask her any questions. You won’t tell her anything. You won’t look at her.”

  “That’s a bit absurd, don’t you think?” Athena asked, walking into the room. “And why are you standing on the counter?”

  Athena still held her centurion helmet under one arm, bare feet padding heavily against the tile floor. She must have rushed home from the tower if she was still almost entirely in uniform. Was dinner with Khione really that important that Athena would rush home from patrol without changing?

  Athena lifted a hand, holding it up to Pip. “Why don’t we get off the counter?”

  “I’m just telling them the rules,” Pip said.

  “What rules?”

  The voice made Pip freeze in her tracks. She rotated on the balls of her feet, peering over her mother’s shoulder to find Khione standing there, partially hidden in Athena’s shadow. She’d dressed up, put on a dress. Pip had never seen her in a dress, never seen her look so nervous, never seen down the front of her dress before—

  “Khione!” She sucked in a sharp breath. “I didn’t realize you were here.”

  “I can see that,” Khione said, eyes dancing as she stared up at Pip still standing on the counter.

  Pip took her mother’s hand, hopping off the counter. She quickly brushed herself off, wishing she’d put on something better than her around the house clothes. But Khione wasn’t supposed to be here so soon.

  “You’re here early,” Pip said, stepping around her mother to look at Khione.

  “I found this one pacing outside the gate,” Athena said, placing a hand on Khione’s shoulder. Already braced for impact, Khione looked shocked when the hand didn’t land as heavily as it looked like it would. “Didn’t think I would leave her out there in the cold.”

  “The cold doesn’t bother me,” Khione said, adjusting her hands inside the pockets of her jacket.

  “So I’ve heard,” Athena said, giving the girl a warm look. “It’s nice to meet you, Khione.”

  “Nice to meet you too,” Khione said. She nodded once at Athena before making eye contact with Pip and nodding at the rest of the Carter children. “And these are your siblings…?”

  “We’ve met already,” Dyiona said bluntly. She waved and walked off, calling Agamemnon after her. The scruffy wolfhound mix trotted happily after her, nails scraping against the wooden floor.

  “She’s eight,” Pip said helpfully.

  “I’m Emelio, and I’m ten,” Emelio said, stepping forward like a proper gentleman and holding out a hand. Bemused, Khione took the hand and shook it.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said. “I’m Khione, and I’m eighteen.”

  “Ooh, you’re older than Pip,” Emelioa said. “She doesn’t turn eighteen until December.”

  “It’s not like that’s far away!” Pip exclaimed. They were coming up on December now, she wouldn’t be seventeen for much longer.

  “I’m Amalia,” said Pip’s next sister. “And I’m fourteen.”

  “I’m Theo.”

  “And I’m Galen.”

  “And we’re sixteen,” they said together.

  “You two must have practiced that,” Khione said.

  “We haven’t,” Galen said.

  “They definitely have,” Pip said, ignoring them. “They’re annoying like that.”

  “Be nice,” Mai scolded, snapping the words off in Chinese. They all straightened up on instinct. If Mai was talking to them in Chinese, she meant business.

  Khione stared at them before turning her attention to Mai, dressed up like she was going to a fancy dinner but wearing an old, dirty apron over the outfit that Athena had bought her as a joke. “Dinner smells good, Mrs. Carter.”

  “Please call me Mai,” she said, and Pip groaned. “And thank you. Pip, stop that.”

  “You can call me Athena,” Athena added, only adding to Pip’s horror. Why did they want to be so familiar with Khione?

  “Stop, please,” Pip begged.

  “Why?” Athena asked. “Is this the wrong way to talk to your girlfriend? Pip has never had a girlfriend before, so we’re kind of flying blind.”

  “Mom!”

  Pip needed to get Khione away from this right now before her moms said anything else more embarrassing.

  “Oh, really?” Khione asked, hooked onto the information immediately. “Pip’s never dated anyone?”

  “No, no,” Mai said. “And I’d know if she had. She’s a terrible liar.”

  “I’m not!”

  “You are,” Khione said, patting her on the arm. “And I want to hear more. I had no idea I was your first girlfriend.” She leaned in, lips brushing against Pip’s ear. “Does this mean you’re a virgin?”

  “You can’t ask me that in front of my moms!” Pip screeched, pulling back before Khione could say anything else. To her horror, Athena started laughing, and even Mai cracked a smile.

  This was terrible. This was the worst possible outcome. Even her siblings started laughing. Why the hell were they still here?

  “Okay, I’m going to go show Khione my room!” Pip called out, grabbing her girlfriend’s hand and dragging her away from the kitchen counter.

  “Door open!” Theo called out after her, and if Pip wasn’t so intent on pulling Khione away, she would have spun around to wipe the smirk off his smug little face.

  “Shut up!”

  “You’re so sensitive,” Khione murmured. She allowed herself to be pulled along, making their way up the curving staircase to the second story and down the hallway to Pip’s bedroom. She opened the door and ushered Khione quickly inside, the stampede of footsteps behind them more than enough to let her know about her following siblings.

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  She slammed the door behind them, pointedly shutting it as loud as possible and locking the door. They would come out when and only when dinner was ready.

  “Your family is fun,” Khione said, smirking at her.

  “They can still hear you,” Pip whispered, pressing her ear up against the door. Despite the thick wood, she could hear her siblings shuffling around outside, failing at whispering to each other. “Go away!”

  “Now’s not the time to lose it, Phillipa!” Galen shouted through the door.

  “Lose what?” Dyiona asked.

  “Shut up and go away!” Pip shouted again, then pressed her back to the door, flashing a smile at Khione. “Can you take off your shoes?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Khione said. She bent over quickly, undoing the laces on her heavy boots and pulling them off her feet. It left a pair of fuzzy pink socks behind, sliding on the hardwood floor.

  “Nice socks.”

  “Don’t comment on my socks,” Khione said.

  “Okay, I won’t,” Pip said.

  Leaving her boots in the middle of the floor, Khione began to wander around the room. As she inspected Pip’s bedroom, Pip retrieved her boots and placed them by the door, neatly beside her own tennis shoes. No wearing shoes in the house, especially not in the bedrooms.

  “Your room is very… you,” Khione said, stopping beside Pip’s bed. She leaned herself against it, expression turning coy. “Nice bed. Very big.”

  “It is,” Pip said, still standing by the door. The noise from outside had stopped, one of her moms had probably shooed her siblings away, but she wouldn’t put it past them to try and come back.

  Khione hopped backward, landing on the bed. “Lots of room to stretch out.” She laid back, spreading out across the bed.

  “Sometimes I just sleep under all the pillows,” Pip said, nodding to the head of the bed. A pile of pillows and stuffed animals covered the top of the bed. Huge body pillows. Small, round pillows covered in hairy fluff. Old stuffed animals worn from time and love and abuse. New stuffed animals that weren’t nearly so beaten up. If Khione wanted to do what Pip thought she wanted to do, she would have to get all the stuffed animals off the bed. They couldn’t see that.

  Not that they could do that, right now.

  Khione propped herself up on her elbow, peering across the room at Pip. “Why are you still standing by the door?”

  “We don’t have that long til dinner,” Pip whispered. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, exactly, but she didn’t want to be interrupted by her moms.

  Khione rolled her eyes and sat up. “I know,” she said. “You look cute in that, you know.”

  Pip glanced down at her outfit. A pair of silk sleep shorts and a sports bra she’d thrown on to be able to get a bit of exercise done before dinner. Failed, so far, but there was always after. She needed to work on her armor more, but since Mai decided they needed to have dinner with Khione, that would have to wait.

  “I didn’t have time to change,” Pip said.

  “Because you were too busy lecturing your siblings on how not to talk to me.”

  “Because you were early,” Pip said. “You know you could have texted me that you were here, and I would have let you in.”

  “I needed some time,” Khione said, no longer meeting Pip’s eyes. “And then your mom found me, and did you know your mom is terrifying?”

  “Yeah,” Pip said, smiling widely. “She is, isn’t she?”

  “You’re so proud of that.”

  “My mom is an awesome hero,” Pip said. She turned her back to Khione. “I’m going to change now, look away.”

  “Look away?” Khione demanded. She hopped off the bed, stomping across the floor loudly despite the thick socks. “That’s ridiculous. I’ve already seen you naked.”

  “No, you haven’t— Oh, you have.” Heat suffused her cheeks as the memory returned. She’d almost forgotten about that, the reason they’d started dating in the first place. “Still.”

  “What are you changing into?” Khione asked, trailing a finger down the bare skin of Pip’s midriff.

  Pip shivered, pulling away from her touch before it could start to tickle. “Jeans and a tank top, probably.”

  “Boring,” Khione declared. “Do you mind if I look through your closet? I’m going to look through your closet.” She opened up the closet doors, not giving Pip a chance to protest before digging into the dark depths of Pip’s walk-in closet. With her favorite clothes living in the wardrobe, she rarely opened the closet, and dreaded having to step inside. Last time she’d opened it was to hang up the dress she bought, and then of course Mai got into it to help her find an outfit for her date, but there were probably at least six years worth of clothes Pip didn’t wear anymore in there.

  “You have so many clothes,” Khione said, flipping on a light switch inside the closet, revealing packed hanging rods and shelves full of old toys, knicknacks, and awards from elementary and middle school, before she put all her focus into hero training. “Oh, what’s this?”

  She grabbed a white gift bag from the floor, one Pip didn’t recognize at first. It had been sitting there for almost a year, a year on her birthday, and in a flash she remembered exactly why she hadn’t touched it.

  It was too late to ask Khione to put it down. She’d already opened the bag and pulled out the silky mesh dress and matching lingerie Thalia had bought her for her last birthday as a gag gift. Or, knowing Grandma Thalia, maybe not a gag gift.

  “Who bought you this?” she asked, eyes wide and a hint of jealousy in her gaze.

  “My grandma,” Pip admitted.

  “Your grandma? What the hell kind of grandma do you have?” Khione stared at the clothes, wide eyed. “Because I think mine would whoop my ass if I so much as owned a piece of clothing that looked like this, and she’s ninety-three.”

  “I don’t remember how old Grandma Thalia is,” Pip said. “She’s the one who picked me up last meeting though.”

  “Wait, that’s your grandma?” Khione asked, eyes wide. “She doesn’t look any older than your mom!”

  “Well, she’s a hero, Khione,” Pip said. “You know supers live a lot longer than normal humans, especially if they’re good at cultivating their core.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Really?” Pip blinked. Wasn’t that common information? Khione didn’t know a lot about the hero world, or super world, but still.

  “All right, put this on,” Khione said, shoving the dress and lingerie at Pip.

  “What? I have to wear this to dinner. With my family!”

  “Your family is the one who got this for you,” Khione said. “Put it on.”

  “Okay,” Pip said, snatching the dress away from Khione. “But you don’t get to watch me change.”

  “Really?” Khione asked, pouting.

  Pip clutched the dress to her chest, staring at her girlfriend. “No.”

  “Okay,” Khione said, smiling widely. She sat back down on the bed, eyes never leaving Pip. “You better be quick about it. I bet dinner is almost ready.”

  ******

  Pip shifted in her seat, the lace of the black lingerie scratching at her skin under the soft silk and mesh dress. Across the table, Khione still hadn’t stopped smirking, eyes locked on Pip as she squirmed.

  Why had Khione chosen this stupid dress? Everyone was staring at her, and everyone knew she’d changed in front of Khione. It was mortifying, in the absolute worst way. Her parents didn’t need to know that she’d been naked in front of a girl.

  “Nice dress.”

  “Shut up!” Pip snapped, slamming her hands onto the table. “You shut up, and you shut up!” She pointed from one sibling to another, glaring daggers at the twins especially.

  “Phillipa.” Athena said the word as an order, and Pip immediately snapped her mouth shut. She crossed her arms over her chest, shifting the mesh overlay over the silk slip beneath. “Boys…”

  “I was being polite,” Galen exclaimed.

  “No, you weren’t,” Athena said. “You were being smart. Being smart is not encouraged at this table.”

  “Since when?” Amalia piped up.

  Athena turned her gaze on Amalia, and the girl looked away, pressing her mouth firmly closed.

  “Where did the name come from?” Khione asked abruptly. “The nickname. Pip. Where did it come from?”

  “It is a pretty natural nickname for Phillipa,” Pip pointed out.

  “Sure, but is that the reason?”

  “No,” Mai said, making eye contact with Pip from the other end of the table. “It started off as Pipsqueak, because she was so little, compared to the twins. Then it got shortened to Pip. Then she insisted on being called Lip for a bit.”

  “Lip?” Khione raised an eyebrow.

  “Phil-LIP-a,” Pip said. “And also because I have a smart mouth.”

  “And yet I’ve never heard you come up with a good comeback,” Khione said.

  “I do!”

  “You didn’t there.”

  Athena’s laugh shook the table. “I like you, Khione.”

  “Thank you,” Khione said, smug as she looked across the table at Pip. “I think I could fit in well here.”