“Did I hear someone at the door?”

“Mmm.” He didn’t want to rehash the visit with himself, let alone with his grandmother, so he ignored the question and tried de-growling his voice. “Mom called this morning. She reports she bought the prodigy-yet-to-be-born some sort of infant computer and educational software yesterday. Dad purchased a football, baseball mitt, and, his concession to the Midwest, an ice hockey stick.”

His grandmother sipped at her coffee. “No drum set?”

God, she knew how to get to him. He almost found himself smiling. “Now how did you know that was what I sent for my nephew’s first Christmas?”

“Your parents will be amused.”

“You think?” Finn doubted it. They’d likely shudder at the bad memories the gift would evoke. The fact was, he’d caused his family buckets of anxiety as an adolescent hellion. At thirteen he’d started smoking cigarettes and hanging out with a new neighbor who had a band, a van, and a fake ID. Finn had been big for his age and the other guy had probably thought him nearer his grade than he actually was-or maybe the guy just appreciated Finn’s talent with drums. He’d actually sucked…but then they all did, all of them who made up Corpses in Heaven.

At their wits’ end that summer vacation, his parents had sent him from home in Northern California to his grandmother’s to get him away from his older friend and Finn’s first brushes with the law. One dose hadn’t cured him. By fifteen, along with the local cops, he’d considered himself a regular Bad Ass and his folks starting sending him to his grandmother’s every summer and Christmas. They’d realized that even a Bad Ass had a soft spot, and Finn’s was his gram. He was named for her husband, his Grandpa Finn, and though he barely remembered the man, Finn and Gram formed a two-member mutual admiration society.