Half-Off Ragnarok

by Seanan McGuire

  “Where can we find you if we need to ask additional questions?”

  “I’ll be at home,” I said. If I wasn’t, well. There would be one or more cuckoos at home, and that would keep any policemen who showed up from walking away thinking I’d been uncommunicative.

  “Your girlfriend, Shelby Tanner, works here at the zoo, does she not?”

  “Yes, in the lion house. She’s a visiting researcher from Australia.”

  The officer nodded. “You’re a visiting researcher yourself, aren’t you? California?”

  “Yes. I’m on loan from the San Francisco Zoo.” My credentials would check out. The reptile house there was operated by one of the rare dragons who had chosen to go into something other than professional money-making. The rest of her Nest tolerated her bizarre interest in research because it gave them easy access to heated sand for incubating their eggs. “I’m doing a survey of the native amphibians of Ohio.”

  “Fascinating stuff,” said the officer, flipping his notebook closed. “We’ll call you if we need anything.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and tossed another trout into the tank.

  The officer who had interviewed me walked toward the door, beckoning the officer interviewing Dee to follow him. My assistant stayed where she was, freezing with one hand still halfway in the timber rattler enclosure as she waited for the door to close behind the two blue-clad men. I was privately glad she hadn’t frozen like that until their backs were turned. There was something impossibly static about her stillness, a reptilian quality that screamed her inhuman origins more loudly than anything else about her disguised appearance.

  Only when we were alone did she relax and start breathing again. She replaced the lid on the rattlesnake enclosure, stepping down from the stool she’d used to reach the opening, and said, “Alex, I don’t know how much of this I can take.”

  “You’ll take as much as you have to.” I threw the last of the trout in with Crunchy and closed the hatch above his tank. Hopping down from my own stool, I grabbed it and carried it back toward the closet. “We’ll get through this, Dee. I promise.”

  “You don’t honestly think I had anything to do with this, do you?”

  I hesitated before shaking my head. “No. I admit, I had a few moments of doubt when we saw the puncture marks I showed you, but there’s no way you’d kill all these people. They’ve all been harmless so far. There’s nothing they could have done to you.”

  “They could have found out where my community was located and threatened to expose us,” said Dee. She opened her lips wide enough to let me see the fangs that had unhinged from the roof of her mouth. They folded again before she said, “Because anyone who threatened my family would find themselves between a rock and a bad place.”

  “I understand the sentiment,” I said.

  “Do you really expect me to come back to your house and talk about this in front of your girlfriend?”

  I allowed myself the thinnest stripe of a smile. “I think you’ll be surprised.”

  Ambulances and emergency response personnel clogged the front plaza of the zoo as Dee and I walked out and past them. No one looked our way. They all had their own problems to worry about and their own jobs to do; we were just so much moving background noise. I walked smoothly but with the appropriate amount of hesitation as I passed the place where I knew the body had been found, trying to mirror the normal responses of a human male in my situation. The last thing I wanted was for someone to remember me in this moment, or to remark upon my behavior as having been in any way odd.

  The upbringing I shared with my sisters didn’t make us monsters, any more than someone like Dee or Chandi was inherently a monster. It just instilled us with a different set of priorities and responses. The man I was pretending to be, Dr. Alexander Preston, had probably never seen a dead body. He worked with his snakes all day and went home to a normal life, a normal world, one that didn’t have anything nasty lurking in the shadows. I was normally pretty good at pulling Dr. Preston across me like a mask, but here and now, I itched to examine the body for clues that might have helped me determine my next move.

  Dee was parked across the lot from me. I paused before separating from her, asking, “You’re sure you remember the address?”

  “I’ve got it,” she said. “You’re sure you want me to come over?”

  “Trust me,” I said. “This is what’s best for all of us.”

  She didn’t look like she trusted me. She looked like she wanted to cut and run for the hills. But she wouldn’t have been my assistant if she hadn’t been too smart to pull a stunt like that. Looking uneasy, she nodded. “All right,” she said. “I’ll be there.”

  “Thank you.” I turned and walked toward my car, trying to show I believed her by not looking back. It was difficult, and not just because I was half-afraid she wouldn’t come. Another man was dead, this one killed in broad daylight, and I was allowing Dee and Shelby to run around without backup. It had nothing to do with gender, and everything to do with the fact that I didn’t know how good their training had been. Dee was a gorgon. They’re not immune to basilisks, so what about a cockatrice? Would she even know how to handle one? And Shelby—she’d said there were no petrifactors in Australia. What would happen if she was attacked while she was alone?

  Those thoughts were bad thoughts, and they would only take me to bad places. I forced them out of my mind, got into the car, and drove.

  I waited to call Grandma’s cell until I was halfway home. She picked up almost immediately, greeting me with a cheerful, “Alex! How are things at work?”

  “Dee’s clean, or probably clean, and we have a problem,” I said. “One of the guards was found dead this morning. Killed by a petrifactor, after both Dee and I had checked in for work. The zoo’s closed for the day, and Dee and Shelby are planning to meet me at the house so we can discuss our next steps.”

  There was a brief pause before Grandma sighed. “You know, I want to ask you why you and your little friends need to have your meeting here, but since three humans are dead, I suppose discussing the situation in public would be a bad idea.”

  “Unless we feel like being accused of murder and maybe terrorism, since they’ve got that whole ‘unknown chemical agent’ angle, yeah.” Most of the time, events and issues relating to the cryptid world can be talked about virtually anywhere, since no one will believe you’re talking about anything real. Unicorns? Bogeymen? The thing in the closet? Whatever. Anyone who happens to listen in will assume that you’re a fantasy nut or talking about something from a television program.

  That changes when people get dead. It’s not that the fantastic becomes any more believable. It’s just that everyone starts listening differently, and that sort of thing can get you in trouble.

  “All right. I’ll get Sarah settled in front of the television. Have you kids had lunch?”

  “We were sort of distracted by the whole ‘dead man, closing the zoo, police interrogation’ thing.”

  “Swing by the Tim Horton’s on your way, then,” she said. “If Dee or Shelby beat you here, I’ll make them wait in the kitchen.”

  I laughed. “Are you asking me to do this because you need donuts to make up for the invasion of your home?”

  “I am,” she said. “Get double blueberry.” The connection died as she hung up on me. I laughed again, and kept on driving.

  Dee’s car was in front of the house when I pulled up; Shelby’s was nowhere to be seen, which concerned me slightly. I parked in my usual spot behind Grandma, balancing the bag from Tim Horton’s as I got out and walked to the front door. It was unlocked. The sound of laughter greeted me as I pushed it open.

  The voices were coming from the kitchen. I stuck my head inside. Grandma and Dee were sitting at the table, each with a mug of what looked like herbal tea (and technically was, if you took a broad enough view of the word “herbal”) in their hands. They looked over as I stepped inside. Dee was grinning, and her fangs had dropped, pushing little
indentations into her lower lip.

  “You really tried to hug a manticore? Alex, I never thought you had it in you.”

  “I was six,” I said, trying to recover my dignity as I put the Tim Horton’s bag down on the table. “It looked like a puppy crossed with a scorpion. Of course I wanted to hug it.”

  Something about my frosty tone struck them both as funny, because they started laughing again, even harder than before. Grandma reached out and freed the box of Timbits from the rest of my lunch order, popping it open to reveal the donut holes inside.

  “You’re my favorite grandson,” she cooed, popping one into her mouth.

  “I’m your only grandson,” I said sourly. Then I paused, looking around the kitchen in alarm. “Grandma, did you remember to bribe—”

  “HAIL! HAIL THE RETURN OF THE GOD OF SCALES AND SILENCE!” exulted the mice, emerging from behind most of the appliances on the kitchen counter.

  “—the mice.” I groaned, putting a hand over my face. “You asked me to bring home baked goods. You didn’t bribe the mice to stay upstairs. Are you setting me up for a musical number, or do you just hate me?”

  “If this Shelby girl is going to be involved with the family business, she’s going to need to handle whatever that involvement might entail.” Grandma took another donut hole out of the box and smiled at me. “Hence the mice.”

  For her part, Dee blinked, looking baffled. “Excuse me, but what’s going on?” she asked, in her usual calm, reasonably even tone. She’d been to the house before, and she’d met the mice, but that had been the mice in company mode: three of them had come politely to the kitchen, thanked her for her visit, and asked if she’d like to attend that night’s catechism. This was the mice in full-on celebration. It was a pretty daunting sight even for me, and I grew up with it.

  “Grandma doesn’t approve of Shelby, so she’s arranged for an Aeslin bacchanal to convince her to back off.” I pushed my glasses up, glowered at my grandmother. “This is dirty pool, you understand.”

  “All’s fair in love, war, and not inviting representatives of barely vouched-for cryptozoological organizations into my home.” Grandma flicked her donut hole into the ocean of mice, where it disappeared, accompanied by the sound of redoubled cheering.

  The doorbell rang.

  Grandma turned her face to me and smiled serenely. “You’d better get that,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to leave your little girlfriend waiting.”

  “We’re going to talk about this later,” I promised, before turning and heading for the door, fighting the whole way not to glower. Intellectually, I knew my grandmother was being reasonable. She was protecting her home. Shelby was a barely-known quantity, and until she could be trusted, embracing her fully was a terrible idea. Grandma had always been a little mistrusting. Being one of the few nonsociopathic members of an entire species had influenced her views of everyone else in the world, and having Sarah home and essentially defenseless wasn’t helping.

  At the same time, I needed the help. If Shelby was qualified—which she was—then having her on my side was the best thing I could hope for. I opened the front door. Shelby smiled at me, and held up her Tim Horton’s bag.

  “I stopped for donuts,” she said.

  I blinked. “There is a God.” I stepped to the side to let her in, and closed the door behind her. “Okay, look. I need you not to freak out. Can we agree on that? That you’re not going to freak out?”

  Shelby’s smile faded. “Why would I be freaking out? Has someone else been turned to stone?”

  “Not quite. Can I have the donuts?”

  “Um, sure?” Shelby handed me the bag.

  I took her hand. “Just trust me, okay?” On this confidence-building note, I turned and pulled her with me into the kitchen.

  As soon as we stepped inside, the mice began cheering again. It was sort of a reflex with them. “HAIL! HAIL THE RETURN OF THE GOD OF SCALES AND SILENCE!”

  “I have returned with company, and with donuts,” I informed them, after waiting for the cheers to die down. “I request a bargain.”

  “What bargain?” squeaked one of the mice, its identity obscured by the throng.

  “I will give you this bag of donuts,” I held up the Tim Horton’s bag, “the contents of which are a mystery even to me, if you will take it upstairs and stay there until such time as I give you leave or the evening meal arrives, whichever comes first.”

  There was a long pause while the mice consulted among themselves. I caught the words “holy,” “mystery,” and “towels.” I didn’t ask. The Aeslin mice were better at making decisions when no one tried to help them do it. Finally, the muttering stopped, and one of the mice stepped forward. “Your Bargain is Accepted,” said the mouse.

  “Thank you,” I replied, and placed the bag on the counter. The colony surged forward like a single creature, enveloping the promised treats, lifting the whole thing over their heads, and finally marching out of the kitchen with their prize. There was some singing involved. The whole process took less than a minute.

  Grandma took another donut hole from the surviving assortment. “Oh, well,” she said.

  Dee and Shelby exchanged a stunned look, briefly united by the sudden understanding that everyone else in the house was seriously weird. Shelby recovered first, asking, “What in the fuck was all that about?”

  “The mice have to be bribed if we want them to leave us alone once they’ve gotten interested in something,” I said sheepishly. I rubbed the back of my neck with one hand. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard of Aeslin mice?”

  “Those can’t be Aeslin mice,” Shelby said. “They’re extinct.”

  “Wait,” said Dee. “Why isn’t she freaking out?”

  “They’re not extinct,” I said. “They just don’t get out much.”

  “She’s supposed to be freaking out,” continued Dee.

  “That’s remarkable,” said Shelby. “Do you think I could talk to them later, see if they know of any colonies in Australia?”

  “I don’t see why not,” I said.

  “Can we focus on the important thing here, like why isn’t she freaking out?!” Shelby and I turned. Dee was standing, her palms flat on the table, her eyes wide and a little wild behind her tinted glasses. A faint hiss escaped her wig.

  I sighed. “I think we should bring everybody up to speed, don’t you?”

  Explaining the situation took about half an hour. It would have been faster, but everyone had a different understanding of what was going on, and piecing it all together took more work than I had expected. We ate our way through the donuts I’d picked up from Tim Horton’s. Everyone drank too much coffee, mine and Shelby’s mixed with milk and sugar, Grandma’s mixed with ketchup and pepper, and Dee’s spiked with rattlesnake venom. Since we hadn’t yet reached the “Dee isn’t human” bombshell, her coffee was prepared when Shelby wasn’t looking.

  But the bombshell was coming. I was trying to be respectful of Dee’s rights as a sapient individual and not go around blabbing her inhuman nature to anyone who looked like they might be open to a team up. (Discretion isn’t just my watchword: it’s a good way to keep myself from being punched by my friends.) At the same time, I needed help if I wanted to deal with this situation, and the only help I had readily at hand was Shelby. Dee would have to trust her eventually.

  Shelby herself was quite forthcoming about her history with the Thirty-Six Society and reasons for coming to this country, now that she knew it was okay for her to talk about that sort of thing in front of Dee. She took a mouthful of coffee and beamed at my assistant across the table. “It’s nice to know that there are so many cryptozoologists in the area,” she said. “Although I have to ask—why Ohio? I’m here because there used to be prides of manticore around here, and I know Alex is here to try and convince basilisks to get it on, but what brings you to the middle of the continent?”

  “I grew up in this area,” said Dee vaguely.

  “And your husband, is he
a cryptozoologist, too?” Shelby continued. “I’ve seen that charming photo in your office. Did you meet through work?”

  “Oh, no,” Dee said slowly. “Frank’s a doctor. We didn’t meet until he . . . that is . . . he was the best husband my parents could find, and normally I would have been sent to join him, but he didn’t like the overcrowding where he grew up, and we needed a doctor, so he came out here.”

  “Arranged marriage?” Shelby blinked. “I didn’t know that was an American tradition.”

  “Not . . . quite.” Dee worried her lip between her teeth, glancing at me. I nodded encouragingly. She looked back to Shelby. “There’s something I should show you. Will you please promise me that you’ll stay in your seat, and not make any sudden or hostile moves?”

  “Unless you make sudden or hostile moves toward me, sure,” said Shelby.

  “All right,” said Dee, and reached up, and removed her wig. Freed of their confinement, the snakes growing from her scalp uncoiled, stretched, and settled into a loose halo around her head, their tongues scenting the air. The rest of us turned toward Shelby to see what she would do.

  Shelby blinked. Then she blinked again, and finally, looking somewhat nonplussed, she asked, “Is anyone in Ohio human?”

  “I am,” I said.

  “You’re a Price, you don’t count,” Shelby shot back. She returned her attention to Dee, or rather, to Dee’s snakes. “They’re beautiful. Do they bite? Have they got minds of their own? Does this make you a gorgon, then, or is there another species that comes with snakes in place of hair? Do you have any hair? You draw your eyebrows on, and your eyelashes have always looked fake to me, so I suppose not . . .”

  Now it was Dee’s turn to blink. “You seem pretty relaxed about all of this.”

  “I’m from Australia. I see stranger than women with snakes for hair when I look out my bedroom window.” Shelby shrugged. “Besides, Alex trusts you, and I trust Alex, at least for the moment. So if I’ve already decided to trust you, I may as well focus on the natural marvel which you represent.” She broke into a broad grin. “Evolution is so cool.”