It was Saturday, for which she was grateful. It meant she could hide in her room until the usual hairdresser opened up and she could secure an emergency appointment. Of course, it wasn't very usual yet; she'd only lived in Destiny City for a few months. Usual hairdressers and favorite ateliers would come when she'd been around for a year or so.

The point was, she had to go get the singed part of her hair cut out. No one could have any reason to associate her with any arsonist roaming the streets, especially one she already had a ridiculously strong resemblance to. Well, she WAS the senshi in question, of course. It wasn't a resemblance so much as she was herself, you know? So anyway, she definitely had to get that part of the hair removed anyway, just for appearance purposes. Disguise was only part of it.

After the appointment, she was heading home just to check on things--she had to go do some research at the library, after all, and she really wasn't all that fussed about anything else. After all, there wasn't much to be concerned about. All her properties were in a broker's safe hands until she turned twenty-one no matter what. There were some minor concerns she had to deal with, like making sure taxes and such were paid on the house where she lived, but it--again--wasn't that big of a deal. Mostly she just wanted to check on the progress of dinner, and make sure her clothes from her latest shopping binge had arrived.

They had. Or some kind of boxes had. The name on them was familiar and greatly, greatly detested.

"Cousin Kreszant," she said, straightening up and turning to look at the dark-haired man as he entered the hallway. "I see the family did decide to send you to look out for me, huh?" Kreszant shrugged nonchalantly. He was a tall man, attractive in a classic German way--he had black hair cut to his chin, wore a mask over half his face to hide some scars from an unfortunate accident as a kid. But he had great proportions, good muscles--toned, anyway--and she'd had a little-kid crush on him for the longest time. It was embarrassing to think about it now, and annoying that her stomach still hopped weirdly when he focused gray-blue eyes on her outfit disapprovingly.

He put his hands in his pockets and toed a box along the wall. "Well, yes. You're causing all kinds of trouble, so of course I couldn't remain and let the leetle gorl live by herself, accumulating burns, falling asleep in class. Are you secretly a pyro, little Cat?" His German accent was not entirely faked; it was hidden, mostly, behind a lovely American accent that seemed to mix up with an almost British cant sometimes. Only on some words--little and girl being the two he messed up most often--did he really come out with an accent from his native tongue. "Pyromania would not be an uncommon personality trait to have, of course, Grandmother Elizabeta had it in what the Americans call spades, but I thought for certainly Uncle Jan would have taken the switch to any of those tendencies..."

She brushed her corkscrew curls over one shoulder, set her hands on her hips. "Which room are you staying in? I want to have a sleepover soon, so it'd best not be the one to the left or the right of mine." The eyebrow twitch--just the corner of the right brow, a tic he'd had since they were children together--revealed the answer. "You took the one on the left, didn't you." That was her favorite guest room! Honestly! "Kres. Move to the room on the north end. Next to the master suite--which is mine even if I keep my own room. That way I can pretend you're not here. Okay? Remember. This is my house, and I am not going to deal with being treated like a little kid."

"That's what you are," he countered as she stomped away; her footsteps lightened considerably as she hit the stairs, because she didn't want to get Andrews mad at her. The man was an excellent and discreet employee--and it wasn't his fault the school kept calling her emergency contacts out in ******** Germany. Ugh. This was why she had left the dorms in the first place!

The crack of her door slamming behind her was comforting, as was the squeal of springs as she threw herself face-down on her bed. "I am never leaving my bed again," she said, but of course in the next second she was rolling over, reaching for her Kindle and BlackBerry. She didn't feel like going to the library, but she could still get some reading done.

Her question was, what to read first?… She'd been reading a lot of zombie stories lately, for a project in her Contemporary Media Studies class. They were doing a section on horror and disaster movies…

She clicked through to Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies, then settled in for a nice, quiet afternoon.