“Right.” I laughed. “You have fun with that, and if you need me, I’ll be in my office.”
“Sure thing, boss-man.” She saluted mockingly. “I will do my best not to burn the building down while you’re sequestered in your chamber of scholarship.”
Past experience told me “saying good-bye” could last upward of fifteen minutes if we kept going, and by that point, my escape would doubtless be blocked by some group of teenagers who wanted to know whether we ever used Crunchy to dispose of human bodies. (Answer: yes, but it was an emergency, and the guy really, really deserved it.) I answered her salute with one of my own before turning and fleeing the room, heading for the questionable safety of my office.
I had no sooner ducked inside—easing the door carefully shut behind me, since slamming was both immature and likely to draw attention—when I heard a sound that seemed to have been dredged up from the deepest pits of hell. It was a combination of diamond fingernails scraping across a blackboard and the yowling of an angry cat, and it says something about my life choices that I recognized it instantly.
“Shit,” I said, turning toward the window. “Crow.”
My Church Griffin was clinging to the outside of the windowsill, wings flapping wildly as he struggled to maintain his balance, and forelimbs pressed against the glass. When he saw me, he redoubled his yowling, and his flapping, until I was genuinely afraid that he was going to hurt himself.
“Crow! Calm down!” I scrambled across the office, knocking over a stack of paperwork that should have been filed a week ago, and opened the window. Crow slammed through the opening, scolding loudly as he flew a lap around the office. Then he dove into the cat bed atop the desk hutch, becoming a lump of sullen-looking black feathers and banded brown fur.
I sighed and closed the window. “I’m sorry, Crow. It’s been a hectic morning.”
No response from the sulking griffin.
“If you’d let me leave you home once in a while, we wouldn’t have to worry about you getting locked out.”
Still no response from the sulking griffin.
This was the sort of thing that could go on all day, and I didn’t have time for that if I wanted to get anything done before the tour groups began to arrive. I picked up the jar of dried liver cubes I kept as treats for Crow, shook four of them out, and set them carefully next to the cat bed.
“When you’re speaking to me again, let me know,” I said. “Right now, I have work to do. I’m sorry I left you outside.”
Maybe talking to a pet like it was a person was a sign of loneliness, or stress, or my inevitable impending status as the male equivalent of a cat lady. Whatever it was, I felt better after leaving Crow the treats. I sat down at the desk, reaching for my keyboard.
I was typing the last of my emails to the administrative office—this one listing my supply needs for the next month—when someone knocked on my office door. The sound was followed by the door swinging open just wide enough for Dee to stick her head inside. “One of the teachers reported, quote, ‘a horrible racket outside the snake house, I think somebody’s being murdered in there,’ end quote,” she said. “I told security that one of the kids threw a tantrum when we wouldn’t let him hug Crunchy.”
“Quick thinking.”
“You didn’t give me much choice.” She looked to where Crow was still curled tightly in his cat bed. “Is he asleep or giving you the cold shoulder?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you should have gotten an iguana.”
I laughed, glancing at the clock. Then I grimaced. “Is that really the time?”
“Clocks don’t lie,” said Dee, stepping fully into the office. “Your first tour group will be here in a few minutes. Time sure does fly when you’re having fun, huh?”
“Oh, is that what I’ve been doing?” I pushed my keyboard away. “I thought it was paperwork.”
Dee laughed. “It comes for everyone. Chandi is still in my office with her fiancé. They looked so peaceful that it seemed best not to disturb them.”
As long as no one from zoo management showed up wanting to show off the spectacled cobra, that should be fine. I nodded. “Good plan. Have we heard from Andrew yet?”
“No. I tried his cell phone, but there’s no answer.”
I sighed. “Great.”
“Okay. I have made small talk, I have asked after your griffin, and I have told you what’s going on with our resident wadjet.” Dee planted her hands on her hips, painted eyebrows arched high. “Well?”
I looked at her blankly. “Well what?”
“This is where you explain to me what you’ve learned from the frickens we collected yesterday.”
“What? Oh!” I grimaced. “Sorry, Dee. I was distracted.”
“I know. You don’t usually wander around rocking the absentminded professor look for fun.” She leaned against the doorframe, effectively blocking me inside the room. “So come on. What’s up, Doc?”
“I drafted the Aeslin mice into helping me last night. Full examination of the subspecies of fricken encountered during our most recent swamp expedition showed that they were healthy, with no outward signs of illness. They all seem to be eating a varied diet, which is actually odd for two of the subspecies—they’d normally be hunted out of certain food sources by larger frogs.” If not eaten by the frogs. Nature doesn’t play favorites. “Two were females of breeding age and size, only one was carrying eggs, which means the other must have spawned recently.”
“Fungal infection?”
“Yes and no.”
Dee paused. “Okay, science boy. Try that again, using words of more than one syllable.”
I smiled a little. “See, if more girls had made that request in high school, I might not have been forced to take my sister to prom. Just four frickens showed signs of fungal infection . . . on their feathers, and only on their feathers. What’s more, three of the four had molted recently, and showed very little fungal growth.”
Slowly, Dee nodded. “Okay. And one more time, in English?”
“We know that frogs and other amphibians are dying off. There are a lot of reasons, but fungal infection is a big one. The frickens are protected from the worst of the fungus because they’re amphibians with feathers. They’re enjoying a hitherto unknown supply of food, spawning pools, and unoccupied habitat. They’re spreading to fill the spaces the frogs are leaving in the food chain.”
“But isn’t that a good thing?” asked Dee, frowning. “I mean, there are a lot of things out there that rely on frogs as a food source. If they’re willing to eat frickens instead of frogs, problem solved.”
“Except that the frickens will breed. They’ll fill the open ecological niches.”
Dee looked at me blankly.
I swallowed a sigh. “What happens when some enterprising young biologist comes running in with the revolutionary news that frogs with feathers have been spotted in the swamps of Ohio?” Or any other state or province in North America. South America was a whole different ball of wax. I’d need serious funds to know whether the same thing was happening with the frickens down there.
Finally Dee’s eyes widened as she got my point. “Oh, hell . . . the frickens are going to get acknowledged by conventional biology.”
“Which takes them neatly out of the cryptozoological wheelhouse, yes.” That wasn’t the problem: more like convenient shorthand for the problem, which was, quite simply, that the formal discovery of the fricken would lead to a whole new school of scientific study. Technically, moving things from “cryptid” to “acknowledged part of the natural world” was something I wanted very much. The Covenant of St. George couldn’t exactly lead a campaign against cute little feathered froggies. But when people realized that amphibians could have feathers . . .
It would completely change the way the world looked at amphibians, which would, in turn, change the way we looked at reptiles. It was unavoidable, and becoming more so with every year that passed. That was what made my work so im
portant. If this was going to happen, we were going to try to control it.
“If you knew this was happening, what are you planning to do about it?”
“We didn’t know. We suspected.” I raked a hand through my hair, pulling it away from my face. “Now I’ve got proof, which I sent home last night. My father will copy and verify my research and send it off to the rest of the family.”
“And after that?”
“Since I can’t stop the frogs from dying, after that, we brace for impact.” I glanced at the clock. “The school group should be arriving. Let’s go teach some kids about snakes.”
Dee wisely didn’t argue. Crow was still curled in his cat bed when we left the office. I closed the door behind us.
I’ll say this about school groups: they can take your mind off practically anything. My concerns about the growing fricken population were forgotten the minute I had to haul two ten year olds away from the rattlesnake exhibit and lecture them for taunting the snakes. Dee hastened to cover the glass before the two snakes that had been goaded into strike position could work themselves up to actually striking. I didn’t want to deal with an injured rattler if there was any possible way to avoid it.
One of the chaperones came and whisked the boys away as soon as I was done with my lecture, probably to deliver another, far more “I’ll call your parents”-oriented lecture of her own. That was fine with me, and I had other problems, since one of the smaller, cleverer girls—who had equally small, clever fingers—was in the process of removing the lid from a tank of blue-tailed skinks. I raced to stop her. Dee was on the other side of the reptile house, explaining Crunchy’s diet to a rapt audience. As vigorous alligator arm gestures were involved, I wasn’t worried about her losing their attention any time soon.
I made my way to the door to Dee’s office, knocking once before cracking it open and sticking my head inside. Chandi was still seated on the beanbag chair with Shami wrapped around her waist, his head resting on her shoulder and his forked tongue contentedly scenting the air. She didn’t react to my presence.
“Ten minutes,” I said.
Now she reacted. Her head came up, dark eyes widening in surprise, and then narrowing in irritation. “You promised me three—”
“I promised you three hours. It’s been more than three hours. My lunch is in ten minutes, which will give us a chance to get Shami back into his enclosure without anyone seeing. If you’re willing to help with that, I won’t even deduct today’s extra time from tomorrow’s visit.” That was a bluff: I wouldn’t have done that, even if she’d refused to help me. There was trying to keep an enterprising young wadjet from breaking her venomous fiancé out of his tank, and then there was being mean to a little girl. All sapient species go through the period analogous to human childhood. It’s one of the things that unify us all.
“Oh.” Chandi’s lower lip wobbled a little before she pulled herself proudly upright and said, “We will be ready to part in ten minutes. I will see you tomorrow, for my full three hours.”
“Agreed,” I said, and closed the door.
Dee was finishing her alligator pantomime, and the school group teacher and chaperones were gathering their charges, herding them efficiently toward the exit. I sidled over to where Dee was standing.
“Where are they having lunch?” I muttered, sotto voce.
“Main courtyard.”
“Oh, thank God.” I was supposed to be meeting Shelby in the semi-private picnic garden near the tiger cages. It was small, mostly concealed from the casual eye, and didn’t have any vending machines, which you’d think would discourage school groups, but sometimes those were the very attributes that attracted harried teachers looking for a moment’s peace and quiet. And I absolutely did not want to cancel on her, or have yet another attempt at getting together interrupted.
“Did you talk to Chandi?”
“She’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
Dee eyed me suspiciously. “With no argument?”
“Miracles happen.”
Dee looked like she was going to quiz me further, but was interrupted by the arrival of the midday shift—Kim, an overly-earnest, extremely sweet girl with hair the color of butterscotch and a fondness for terrapins of all kinds (but especially Crunchy), and Nelson, who was nice enough, but terrified of anything that weighed more than fifteen pounds or so (again, especially Crunchy). Dee turned to bring them up to speed on the day so far, including Andrew’s ongoing absence. I took advantage of her distraction, waving genially to the pair and ducking into my office before I could be grabbed for any new, exciting emergencies.
Crow was finally out of the cat bed. That was a good thing, except for the part where he was standing on the counter, looking as guilty as it was possible for a cat/bird cross to look, with a dead rat from the refrigerator dangling from his beak. I sighed.
“Did you stop to consider that that might be someone else’s lunch?” I asked.
Crow swallowed the rat before turning his back resolutely on me and beginning to preen his left wing. I sighed again, harder this time.
“That almost certainly means no. You’re a flying vacuum cleaner, you know that?” No response from my misbehaving pet. I smiled fondly. I’d been wondering for a while if he could open the fridge. Now I knew that it was time to invest in a padlock.
I grabbed my coat off the back of the chair and moved to get my bag lunch out of the fridge, where it had been sandwiched between a sack of dead rats (for the pythons) and cubed raw chicken (for Dee’s hair). There was a hole in the sack of rats. “Be good, all right?” I said to Crow. “If you’re going to eat anything else, just try not to puke it back up on the rug.”
Crow continued to groom himself. Chuckling, I opened the office door and stepped back into the reptile house. It had been a long morning, and I was going to need to do something relaxing after I separated Chandi from her boyfriend. What could be more relaxing than having lunch with my own beautiful, blessedly mammalian not-a-girlfriend?
Things Shelby Tanner didn’t specialize in: relaxing. She was sitting atop the picnic table we had claimed as our own, waving a turkey drumstick like a conductor’s baton as she punctuated her own points.
“—so I said, Nicole, it’s lovely that you’re taking an interest, but do you think you could take a step away from the snow leopard enclosure? Possibly before you get your throat ripped out and make a bunch of paperwork for me to handle? There’s a good girl.”
“Nicole’s the new girl, right?” I asked, between bites of my ham-and-cheese sandwich. I was focusing less on her words and more on the way the sunlight glinted off the tiny golden hairs on the back of her knee, where I knew she was sensitive in all the best ways.
“Yeah, the really keen one.” Shelby said keen like it was a bad thing. From her perspective, it probably was. Being keen in the Australian sense—overeager, enthusiastic, and extremely hungry for praise—wasn’t what I’d call a survival trait when you’re working with large predators. “She’s been nothing but one problem after the other since the start of her assignment.”
“So did she get eaten? Because it sounds like that would solve the problem.”
Shelby laughed. “Not quite, but not for lack of trying. Mimi, our big female, was almost on her when I finally got her to move away from the bars. Poor kitty looked awfully betrayed, seeing her midmorning snack step out of range like that.”
I grinned. “I’m sure she’ll find the strength to carry on.”
“Don’t much care if she doesn’t; we’ve only got Nicole for another two weeks. Then she’s off to harass the keepers responsible for the elephants, and good riddance, too.” Shelby’s smile was fast, and showed far too many teeth to be comforting. “If she disappears after that, nobody’s going to be looking for incriminating evidence inside my kitty cats.”
“That’s fast. The transfer, I mean, not the murder plot. If we had someone that careless in the reptile house, I’d probably have fed them to the snapping turtle by now.” Tha
t was an exaggeration . . . but not by as much as many people would think.
Shelby shrugged. “What can I say? We’ve got a double crop of interns this year.” The big cats saw a much higher turnover rate than the reptile house, since working with the flashy carnivores was a plum position for trainees and interns. We could hold onto people for as much as a year before someone else wanted their slots. Shelby was lucky if she got to keep someone long enough for them to learn not to feed themselves to the lions. It wasn’t just the big cats, either. Pretty much anything mammalian was more attractive to your average aspiring zookeeper than a bunch of snakes and snapping turtles, even though I’d never personally seen the appeal.
“Earth to Alex, come in, Alex.” I turned to see Shelby leaning forward, elbows on her knees. She looked faintly annoyed. “I’ve been doing all the talking again, and you’ve been letting me. I thought we’d talked about this. I want you here when you’re here, or we shouldn’t even bother.”
“Well, you talked about it, mostly,” I said, trying to elicit a laugh.
It didn’t work. Her annoyance deepened. “If we want this to work out, Alex, we’ve both got to do our share of the heavy lifting. That means sometimes you’ve got to tell me about your day, even if you’d rather not.”
“Ah. Sorry—distracted.” It was hard to talk about my day when I had to constantly revise it to remove the feathered frogs, the supposedly mythological creatures, and the little girls who liked to cuddle cobras. Shelby was a smart girl. That was part of the problem. She could see the holes. “It was hectic at the reptile house this morning. Three back-to-back school groups, and one of the juniors didn’t show up, which meant poor Dee had to do half the feedings for me.”
Shelby blinked. “Your assistant? But she’s not even a zookeeper. Is that safe?”
“She’s been working here for a lot longer than the interns, and you hand them raw meat and put them in front of predators.”
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