by Chant, Zoe
I could get big and block everyone’s view of him, his raptor suggested.
“I know!” Merlin raced back to the bedroom, where he dug around in his closet until he found the hairy yellow coat, which he triumphantly brought into the living room.
“What IS that monstrosity?” Dali asked. “It looks like someone skinned a Pokémon.”
“I’m not sure exactly. I found it in the closet when I moved in.”
“And you didn’t throw it out?”
“I thought it might come in handy some day. And I was right!” He whistled to Blue, who scrambled up and shook himself. Merlin tenderly draped the coat over the bugbear, placing the hood over his head, and buttoned the middle row of buttons under his belly. Blue shook himself, sending up a cloud of fake fur, but failed to dislodge the coat.
“There we go,” Merlin said triumphantly.
Dali’s eyebrows did not convey the confidence Merlin felt. “You know, Merlin, my mom told me that when I was a toddler, she shooed me out of the kitchen because she was boiling water. Five minutes later, a blanket with a toddler shaped lump started sloooooowly crawling into the kitchen. I guess I figured if I was beneath the blanket, she couldn’t see me.”
Merlin laughed. “It’ll be fine. It’s only a couple yards to the car. Anyway, it’s early. Probably no one will even be up yet.”
Shaking her head, Dali popped Cloud into her purse. Merlin called to Blue, and they went out.
Halfway down the walk, one of his neighbors came out, watering can in hand. She stared at Blue. “Is that a dog? In a fur coat?”
“Yes,” Merlin said. “He’s a Hairless Boxerdoodle. Very susceptible to colds.”
He had always thought his little MGB-GT was the perfect size, but when he’d bought it, he hadn’t anticipated having a bugbear the size of a Saint Bernard. Let alone a bugbear the size of a Saint Bernard wearing a thick fake fur coat.
Blue put up with Merlin’s attempts to cram him into the back seat with gloomy dignity, but he kept pouring bonelessly out of it. Merlin wrestled with him and also with the coat, which didn’t want to stay on. At one point the coat somehow transferred itself from Blue to Merlin, and then Merlin had to frantically try to put it back on Blue, now in a very cramped space, before anyone saw. When he was finally done, a visible cloud of yellow fake fur hung in the air.
When Merlin got into the driver’s seat, he found Dali laughing silently with actual tears running down her face. She wiped her eyes and said, “Wow. I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in years.”
If he had made it his life’s goal to get her to laugh until she cried, he couldn’t have done any better. And that certainly seemed like an excellent life goal. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright, and her damp black hair, which she’d left down, was tumbled around her shoulders and back.
“You’re beautiful when you’re laughing,” Merlin said, and kissed her, tasting the salt of her tears. “And also when you’re not, of course.”
She kissed him back, and said, “And you’re hilarious when you’re trying to cram a bugbear in a fake fur coat into the back seat of a tiny British sports car.”
“Only hilarious? Not sexy?”
She gave him a wicked smile that instantly reminded him of last night after dinner. And also this morning in the shower. “Men who make me laugh are the sexiest of all.”
“Speaking of that,” Merlin said. “I assume you don’t want me to tell the guys... or do you?”
“Tirzah may have already figured it out,” Dali admitted. “But to avoid any awkward conversations, let’s not mention it right now. Not that it’s a huge secret. It’s just... early.”
For once, they were on the same page about secrets. Much as he would have loved to share his happiness with everyone he met, it was early. And his team was guaranteed to make anything awkward. “Absolutely. My lips are sealed until you tell me otherwise.”
When he pulled into the Defenders parking lot, he saw that everyone’s cars were there, even Carter’s. Merlin was delighted. Now he could show off Blue to everyone!
I’m hungry, said his raptor. Forget the office. Let’s go to a candy shop.
It was only then that Merlin realized that in the excitement of Blue’s arrival and getting him disguised to go out, Merlin had forgotten breakfast. He’d even forgotten coffee.
“Are you starving?” he asked Dali. “Or jonesing for caffeine?”
She shrugged. “I’m all right. We can grab something on the way to the circus.”
“I can find something to tide us over at the office,” Merlin said. “We have food stashed all over.”
“Don’t you have a kitchen?”
“Yeah, but I was keeping stuff for the magical pet traps, and Roland brings food and then gives it Ransom and then Ransom doesn’t actually eat it, and Tirzah likes to stash cookies all over so she doesn’t have to go fetch them, and Pete stores MREs in weird places in case of emergency, and Carter hides fancy food because he thinks we’ll steal it.”
Dali gave the I can’t believe this slow head-shake that seemed to be her general response to his team. “You guys need help.”
“I try,” Merlin protested. “But they mostly don’t seem to want it. Anyway, I’ll scrounge up something for us.”
He ran around to open the door for her, then helped Blue out of the back seat. The bugbear came loose like a cork from a bottle, nearly sending Merlin over backward and leaving the fur coat behind on the seat. Blue shook himself, sending yellow and blue hairs flying, then ambled after them.
“Pete will be especially happy to see Blue,” Merlin said. “I can take down all the traps he keeps tripping over.”
Dali opened her purse, and Cloud flew out and perched on her shoulder. The only person in the lobby was Carter, who was bent over a computer. He glanced up, greeted Dali, and gave a pre-emptive glare to Merlin.
“Tirzah and I are installing a security patch on the office computers,” Carter said. “So don’t turn them off or unplug them. They need—what the hell is that?!”
Blue, a little way behind them, had poked his head into the room. He gazed sadly at Carter, as if he’d had his feelings hurt. Merlin stroked his head, then his neck and back as more of him emerged. Once he was all the way inside, he began wandering around the lobby, sniffing things.
“This is Blue,” Merlin said. “He’s a bugbear and he’s my new pet.”
“Good Lord,” exclaimed Carter. “Did you catch him in one of your traps?”
“Sort of,” Merlin said. “Isn’t he adorable? Hey, where is everyone?”
“Pete’s in the tech room keeping Tirzah company,” Carter said, not sharing his thoughts on Blue’s adorability. “Roland’s in his office, on the phone with a prospective client. I assume Ransom’s in his office too, but I haven’t seen him.”
Blue found some interesting scent beneath the coffee table and tried to crawl under it to get a better sniff. The table, which was not remotely low enough for him to fit, began to tip over. A bunch of magazines slid off, and Carter had to grab his computer to rescue it from the same fate.
Cater glared at Blue. “Shoo!”
Blue backed out hurriedly. His big blunt claws caught the power cord and yanked it out of the wall. The computer screen went black.
Carter’s howl of outrage could probably be heard in outer space. “MERLIN! Your beast just ruined hours of work!”
Blue clearly sensed that he’d done something wrong. With a distinctly guilty expression in his sad basset hound eyes, he rubbed up against Carter’s legs, snuffling and nuzzling him in apology. The expensive black fabric of Carter’s pant legs instantly acquired a layer of real blue hairs and yellow fake hairs, and Blue’s rapidly flapping dragonfly wings sent more upward to decorate his shirt and jacket.
“MERLIN!” Carter yelled again. “Get this creature away from me!”
Merlin glanced at Dali. She was leaning against the wall, and tears of laughter were again streaming down her face. Much as he appr
eciated the sight, there would clearly be no help forthcoming from that department.
“Stop yelling,” Merlin said. “You’re making him think he needs to show you how sorry he is.”
Carter subsided into seething silence as Merlin pried Blue off his legs. Just as he did so, Tirzah came in with her black flying kitten, Batcat, perched on her left shoulder, and Spike, Pete’s flying cactus kitten, on her right. “What happened to—”
Cloud arched her back and hissed. Batcat did the same, and spat for good measure. Spike let out a warning yowl. Dali and Tirzah snatched at their kittens, but they had already launched themselves and were zipping around the office, yowling and hissing and clawing at each other. Tirzah was too low, in her wheelchair, to catch a kitten in mid-air, so Dali went for Cloud and Merlin went for Batcat and Spike.
“Unbelievable,” Carter remarked to the room at large, making no effort to help. “Every time I think this place couldn’t possibly be more of a madhouse, someone proves me wrong.”
After several minutes of hot pursuit and a few broken coffee mugs, Dali held a flapping, spitting kitten by the scruff of the neck, and Merlin had one in each hand.
“I love your kittens,” Dali said to Tirzah. “What are their names?”
Tirzah beamed. “The black one is Batcat—she’s mine—and the green one is Spike—he’s Pete’s. Spike’s a cactus kitten, and he can—”
Spike lunged for Cloud, driving a cactus spine into Merlin’s wrist.
“Ow!” Merlin yelped.
Ransom flung open the door to his office. His auburn hair was disheveled, and he was shading his eyes with his hands as if the light hurt them. “Will you all be quiet?! I have a migraine.”
“Sorry,” Merlin said.
While some knowledge came to Ransom without pain or effort, he tended to get migraines—or worse—if he tried to learn a specific thing. Which made Merlin wonder what information Ransom had thought would be worth the price.
“What were you trying to figure out?” Merlin asked.
Ransom hesitated, then said, “Whether it’s possible for a shifter to give up their animal, and if so, how.”
“Oh, I know that,” Merlin said. “There is a method. It’s dangerous and difficult and painful, but it does get used sometimes on the absolute worst shifter criminals. Of course no one would ever do it voluntarily—who’d want to lose their animal? Anyway, you start by—”
“Now I know how it’s done,” Ransom said ominously. “My question is, how do you know about it?”
“I heard about it at the circus.”
The look in Ransom’s dark eyes could strip paint. “So I gave myself a migraine finding out something I could have just asked you about?”
“Er... yes,” Merlin admitted. He couldn’t see how this was his fault, but Ransom was sure looking at him like it was. “Anyway, why did you want to know?”
Ransom stalked back into his office without a word. He didn’t slam the door, but shut it in a manner which conveyed that under better circumstances, he would have.
“Merlin, what happened to your face?” Tirzah asked.
“A trapeze fell on me.”
Tirzah’s face scrunched up as she tried to parse this. “You mean you fell off a trapeze?”
“No, I mean the whole trapeze apparatus fell from the ceiling. On me.”
“Of course it did.” Carter stood up and tripped over Blue, who had again glued himself to Carter’s legs in an attempt to show how very very very sorry he was. “Will you get that creature off me?!”
Tirzah, who had evidently been too distracted by kittens to notice Blue before, nearly fell out of her wheelchair. “What is that?”
“It’s Blue,” Merlin.
“I can see that,” said Tirzah. “But what is it?”
“Blue is his name,” Merlin explained. “He’s a bugbear, and he’s my magical pet! Isn’t he a sweetheart?”
Blue sneezed on Carter’s thousand-dollar shoes.
“MERLIN!” Carter yelled.
Merlin saw Blue decide he must have done something wrong again. In a show of regret, he lay down on Carter’s shoes and rolled over, exposing his belly.
Dali cleared her throat. “Merlin, how about we go find something to eat?”
“Good idea,” said Tirzah. “That’ll give Carter and me a chance to start over without, um, interference. While you’re at it, can you lock the kittens in separate rooms?”
“Consider it done.” Merlin wanted to get out as fast as possible, but Blue didn’t do fast. He and Dali were forced to exit the room at Blue’s top speed, which was a put-upon slow trot. Once they were out the door, Dali kicked it shut behind her, and Merlin groaned. “What a disaster.”
“Carter seems a little high-strung,” Dali said. “So does Ransom. Good thing you’ve got steady, sensible people like Tirzah and Pete to balance them out.”
“Yeah,” Merlin said glumly, thinking of the many times Pete had gone ballistic on him. “Good thing.”
He deposited Batcat and Spike in Tirzah’s office and Cloud in his own, then showed Dali the break room.
“Merlin, this room has a complete kitchen,” Dali said. “Why is it buried under all this... stuff? Why are there files in the cupboards? And what on earth happened to the microwave?”
“Oh, Carter was tinkering with it and it exploded,” Merlin said.
That was fun, said his raptor.
“He has bad luck with stuff he didn’t make or program himself,” Merlin added.
He spotted Blue heading straight for a magical pet trap baited with salmon jerky, and hurriedly removed the jerky, gave it to the bugbear, and shoved the trap into the oven. Noticing Dali’s incredulous expression, he said, “It’s fine, no one ever uses it.”
“Do you have a bathroom?” she asked. “Or should I wait till we get to the circus?”
He showed her to it—she seemed relieved that it was the one thing in the office that was in perfect working order and not buried under a layer of junk—and returned to the break room, determined to find her some breakfast. He’d stashed some emergency granola bars somewhere in there, but he couldn’t recall exactly where. As he searched for them, he discovered a powdery gray-green ball that had perhaps once been an orange under the sofa, three MREs stacked atop the water cooler, and a box of fancy chocolate cleverly hidden inside the dead microwave.
Eat the chocolate, demanded his raptor. Eat ALL the chocolate!
Merlin’s stomach growled. He was frustrated with himself for failing to provide Dali with basic necessities like breakfast and coffee, for being unable to find the granola bars he’d hidden himself, and over his encounters with Carter and Ransom. Carter had warned him not to turn off the computers, and Merlin’s pet had made more work for him. He’d meant to tell Ransom he’d been right about the size of his magical pet, but he’d not only failed to do that, he’d ticked Ransom off in the bargain.
What was he even doing on this team where nobody liked him and he couldn’t seem to do anything right? Not everybody had been his friend at the circus, but a lot of people had, and he’d fit in so much better. And now that he was a shifter, he could go back.
But if he did, would he lose Dali? She wasn’t a shifter, which would definitely make it harder to fit in. She was so grounded and practical and down to earth, which were all wonderful qualities that were in distinctly short supply at the circus. Though maybe the Fabulous Flying Chameleons could use more people like that. And though he doubted she’d want to perform, there was plenty to do in terms of management.
On the other hand, she was honest and upright, and it was a crime circus. Or at least a circus that committed some crimes on the side. And even if it had been a completely law-abiding circus, it was still a circus. Dali didn’t seem the type to toss aside her entire life to join the circus.
Carter came into the break room, looking exasperated and holding a lint roller, with most but not all of the fur removed from his suit. “I need chocolate if I’m going to have to re-
do everything from the beginning,” he announced, seemingly to the room at large but, Merlin suspected, mostly to him.
Pete came in. He stopped dead at the sight of Blue, who was lying on his back in the middle of the floor, clutching the salmon jerky in two paws like an otter and gnawing on it blissfully.
“My God,” Pete said. “Tirzah described that thing, but somehow that didn’t actually prepare me.”
“He’s so much cuter than you imagined, right?” Merlin asked.
Pete did not deign to answer that.
“Hey!” Carter exclaimed. “Who ate my truffles?” He whirled accusingly on Merlin, brandishing an empty box of fancy chocolate. “It was that beast of yours, wasn’t it?”
“No—” Merlin began.
“He’s halfway between a dog and a bear, isn’t he?” Pete said, peering at Blue. “A bear can unwrap a chocolate bar and eat it without even tearing the wrapper.”
“Yes, but—” Merlin said.
“You need to keep that beast on a leash!” Carter exclaimed.
“He—”
“Chocolate is poisonous to dogs,” Pete said. “Is he enough like a dog that we need to call a vet?”
Dali and Tirzah came in, both with scratches on their hands and their hair disarrayed.
“Sorry,” Dali said to Merlin. “You must’ve thought I’d fallen in!”
“The kittens got out, and Cloud started fighting with Batcat and Spike,” Tirzah explained breathlessly. “We had to lock them in Merlin’s magical pet traps.”
“So they’re finally good for something,” Pete said.
Roland came in, holding a file. “Everyone, a client—” He stopped and stared at Blue. “What’s that?”
“It’s Blue,” said Merlin.
“I can see that it’s blue,” said Roland. “But what is it?”
“Not the ‘Who’s on first’ routine again,” groaned Carter. “Roland, his name is Blue and he’s Merlin’s chocolate-stealing menace of a pet!”
Before anyone else could speak, Merlin put in, “Carter, I ate your chocolate.” Everyone turned to stare at him, reminding him of an illustration in a children’s book of George Washington’s family standing around a chopped-down cherry tree. “I’m really sorry. I barely even noticed I was doing it. I was hungry and stressed and my raptor told me to—”
