by Dixie Lyle
“And it is. Too romantic. I mean, I like romance as much as the next gal, but at heart I’m a practical person. All I can think about here is, What happens if I drop my underwear?”
“Ah. Well, I’m not really sure. I guess I was pretty much just going on instinct. I seem to do that more and more, these days.” Now he looked a little troubled, which was the last thing I wanted.
So I grabbed him and pulled him closer and kissed him, instead.
It’s funny how much can be communicated in a kiss. This one was supposed to be me saying It’s all right I still like you, but there was a certain flavor of desperation to it instead of reassurance. And his kiss was trying to say Okay everything’s fine let’s forget what just happened but had an unmistakable undertone of Dammit she’s right maybe this was a mistake.
And so, when it ended far quicker than it should have, we both looked at each other anxiously for a moment—and then burst into laughter.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Maybe we should do this with ground under our feet.”
“Oh, it’s probably down there, somewhere.” I was giggling like a maniac. “Might be a couple miles down, might be made of green cheese, but it’s there. Isn’t it?”
“Hell if I know,” he laughed. “I just take dates here, it’s not like I’m an expert or anything…”
And then we were both clutching each other and howling. You can only stack so many ludicrous details on top of one another before the whole ridiculous tower falls over, and then all you can do is laugh. To make matters worse, apparently the only thing keeping us stable in midair was our own focus; when we cracked up, we lost that focus and started to slowly, randomly rotate. This, of course, made everything twice as funny.
“This,” I sputtered, trying to get myself under control as the world slowly went topsy-turvy, “is not an imporvement.”
“Imporvement!” he howled, and we were off again.
We finally managed to get ourselves reasonably level, our mirth slowing to chuckles. Both of us had laughed so hard we had tears running down our cheeks, and I noticed that when one ran off Ben’s chin it dropped straight downward. Water paid attention to gravity here, anyway; a teardrop was just rain in another form, and this was weather’s domain.
His domain.
I looked him square in the eye. “Thank you,” I said.
“For what? The kiss or the hilarity that ensued? ’Cause I’m starting to think I should have just settled for the Um and kept my mouth shut.”
I touched him gently on the lips with one finger. “It was a great kiss. And I’m thanking you for all of it. Taking me here, showing me this amazing place, the kiss—everything.”
“You are welcome. Very.”
“We should continue this. But—”
“Someplace else.”
“Yes. Or maybe just sometime else. When things aren’t quite so crazy.”
He nodded. He also looked disappointed, which made me happy, which made me guilty, which made me think I overanalyze things and I should just go back to being happy.
“All right, break time’s over,” he said with a sigh. “Back to the real world?”
“I suppose. We still need to talk to Waghai Devi, but we should check in with Eli first.”
“Gotcha.”
He took his hands off my waist and raised them above his head. The clouds beneath us began to swirl and rise in a funnel around us. Lightning crackled from his fingertips.
The vortex formed and the stars vanished. The graveyard reappeared around us, the bright morning sun shining down on our heads.
“About time,” said Eli. “We’ve got another problem.”
“And what would that be?” I asked.
“I can’t locate Augustus. He’s not within the boundaries of the Great Crossroads anymore.” The white crow sounded more annoyed than worried.
“How about Whiskey and Tango? I told them to keep an eye on him.”
“They’re not on the grounds, either. I need you to find them, now.”
“Go ahead,” Ben said. “I’ll give Eli the lowdown on what happened with the Lion King.”
I nodded my thanks and strode quickly away. I didn’t waste time calling for either of my two partners; though the metaphysical environment of the Crossroads amplified psychic communication, ensuring they’d hear me if they were within brainshot, I knew Eli must have already tried that. I figured that they either were on the grounds of the estate, or had found a way to leave me a message there.
As I walked, I tried to think like a liger. Where would he go? What would he—
Ah. Of course.
I found them poolside. Whiskey, Tango, Augustus … and Oscar.
Augustus was staring down at the water with a perplexed look on his face. Tango sat beside him, her tail curled around her body, while Whiskey sprawled on the tiles, panting.
Oscar lay on a chaise longue, wearing a pair of tasteful khaki shorts, designer sunglasses, and a great deal of tanning butter. He had a tall, chilled glass of something brown on a table beside him, and I was willing to bet it contained more than iced tea.
“Foxtrot,” Oscar said without looking at me. “Good morning. Your furry cohorts are behaving even odder than usual today.”
I glanced at said cohorts—Oscar couldn’t see Augustus, of course—and back at Oscar. “Oh? What have they been up to?”
“They seem inordinately interested in the pool. The cat keeps staring at it like she’s considering jumping in, and the dog seems to be waiting for her to make a decision. It’s almost as if she lost a bet.”
It wasn’t Tango who was thinking about jumping in, of course.
[Only he’s having some trouble with the mechanics,] Whiskey added.
I could see that. Augustus would extend a paw toward the water, dip it in, then take it out and examine it. It would be dry, of course; since he was a ghost, the water had nothing to adhere to. I wondered what would happen if he dove in.
“I’m glad you’re here, actually,” said Oscar. He took a sip of his drink. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”
Dealing with Oscar is, unfortunately, part of my job. It’s not that I dislike him, exactly—he can be very charming—but his ethics are slippery at best and criminal at worst. I’m the one in charge of doling out his allowance, which ZZ curtails anytime he gets into trouble—which is often. You’d think he’d know by now he can’t sweet-talk extra money out of me, but he refuses to give up.
“Can it wait?” I said. “I’ve kind of got a lot on my plate—”
“Don’t you always? Honestly, this will only take a moment—and it is time-sensitive.”
I sighed, but only in my head. “Okay. Hit me.”
“Do you think it right that Augustus was the only one of his kind?”
Not the kind of question I expected from Oscar. I couldn’t help but glance in the direction of the liger’s spirit, who was now pawing at the water like it was a giant litter box. “He wasn’t, Oscar. There are other ligers in the world.”
“Yes, but not white ones. It makes him a true rarity.”
“Don’t you mean made?”
Oscar smiled and took off his sunglasses. “No, Foxtrot, I do not. In a very real sense, Augustus is still with us.”
Uh-oh.
“What do you mean?” I asked, carefully not looking in Augustus’s direction. “Are you talking about his body?”
“Not precisely. No, I understand that particular item is being hotly contested at the moment, and that Mother has already made her decision in that regard. I’m talking about something else.”
“You’ve lost me.”
I risked a quick glance in the liger’s direction, which to Oscar would seem like I was looking at Whiskey and Tango. The liger chose that moment to leap into the pool.
There was no splash. He simply disappeared under the surface of the water.
“What I’m talking
about,” said Oscar, “is something that is, to all intents and purposes, invisible—yet extremely valuable. Something all living creatures possess.”
Both Whiskey and Tango were peering into the water with great interest. I casually strolled closer to the edge of the swimming pool myself. “It almost sounds as if you’re talking about his soul.”
I stared into the water. I could see a ghostly white liger down on the bottom, prowling around as if he were moving through air and not water. It created the disturbing illusion that the swimming pool was an enormous 3-D TV with a liquid crystal display made of real liquid.
Oscar gave an annoyed snort. “Soul? Don’t be ridiculous, Foxtrot. I’m talking about the liger’s DNA.”
I looked away from the liger in question and up at Oscar. “What? Like you said, his body’s already been spoken for.”
“Yes, but there’s an awful lot of body, wouldn’t you say? So much that if an insignificant amount went missing, no one would even notice.”
“And what would you consider an insignificant amount?”
“A few cell samples taken from someplace unobtrusive would suffice. Of course, the absolute best case would be an ounce or two from his reproductive organs.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Oscar. You’re talking about stealing sperm from a dead animal. I think you just invented a whole new category of crime.”
He waved away my comment. “Oh, please. It’s hardly a crime at all. After all, it’s not as if he has any use for it, and we wouldn’t take it all. Really, we’d be doing the world a favor.”
“I can’t wait to hear how you justify that remark.”
“Isn’t it obvious? Augustus’s DNA could conceivably be used to clone more animals like himself. Once Yao’s zoo gets ahold of the body, they’ll guard it jealously; any future white ligers will belong to them and them alone. Is that fair to the rest of the world?”
“So you want to do this for purely philanthropic reasons.”
He smiled. “There is a certain monetary aspect, of course. But really, it’s more the biological equivalent of making a duplicate of a computer file in order to share it with the world. If this is a crime, it’s one with no victim; nobody owns the copyright on Augustus’s genetic code.”
“The Wuhan Zoo might disagree with you on that.”
“The Wuhan Zoo hasn’t formally taken possession of the liger body yet. The remains exist, at this precise moment, in a sort of limbo. Legally speaking.”
Augustus chose that moment to leap from the bottom of the pool to the lip, causing me to take an involuntary step backward in surprise. I did my best to cover it up by sitting down quickly on a deck chair.
“Are you all right, Foxtrot? You’re usual laser-like focus seems a bit scattered.”
“I’m fine. Just considering the implications of your generous but oddly profit-motivated philosophy.”
Oscar took a sip of his drink and studied me over the rim of his glass. Augustus, not a drop of water on him, padded over to Oscar’s chair. “The thing is, Foxtrot, this is a win–win situation for everyone involved. The Wuhan Zoo gets the body, the scientific community gets access to unique and valuable data, and we are compensated financially for our own humble contribution.”
He spread his hands expansively as he talked. Augustus sniffed at his glass of iced tea and tried to lap some out of his glass. His tongue passed right through the container and Oscar’s hand.
“We, Oscar?”
Oscar glanced at the hand holding his glass with a puzzled expression, as if he’d just felt something odd. “Of course. I wouldn’t dream of excluding you from this venture; I thought we could go fifty-fifty on the proceeds. In return for which, all I require is the briefest of access to the body itself—”
I cut him off by raising my hand. “Hold it. First of all, you know there’s no way I would ever allow that. Second, even if I did, I wouldn’t take any of the money. Third, what are you really up to?”
He sighed. “Simply trying to do a good deed for posterity. But in light of the attempted break-in at the veterinary clinic, I wanted to assure you I had nothing to do with it.”
I frowned—and then I got it. “Wait a minute. You’ve already collected some of Augustus’s DNA, haven’t you? Bits of fur from the cage, probably. That’s the kind of thing you could sell and maybe even get away with. But if ZZ finds out about it afterward, she’ll assume you were the one who tried to break in—and that, she won’t forgive so easily.”
“Mother does have a tendency to assume the worst when it comes to me. But surely you can see my innocence—can you not?”
I already knew Oscar hadn’t broken into the clinic—Abazu had. And burglary wasn’t really Oscar’s style in the first place. I pretended to consider what he’d just told me. “I don’t know, Oscar … you know what this sounds like to me? Like maybe you tried to break in, messed it up, and now you’re offering up a half-assed explanation to cover your own exposed derriere. Sneaky, but I’m not falling for it.”
To his credit, he didn’t panic. “Oh, dear. Well, I realize circumstances do make me look somewhat suspicious—but come now, Foxtrot. Not every underhanded deed that occurs on the grounds can be attributed to me, can it?”
“No,” I admitted. “Just the profitable ones.”
He gave me a rueful nod of acknowledgment. “But not in this case. Please, don’t go to Mother about this—my allowance is anemic enough as it is. Do you know I’ve actually had to make do with domestic caviar?”
“No.”
“Oh, yes. So believe me when I say I’m highly motivated to prove my innocence. What would it take to convince you?”
Now, this was a first. Me in a position to ask for something from Oscar, as opposed to the other way around. So what was the best way to put his particular underhanded skills to good use …
“I need a spy,” I said.
“What sort of spy?”
“The kind that wears classy dinner jackets, drinks a lot, and uses charm to get away with asking nosy questions.”
“Ah. A natural fit, as it were. Do I automatically get a license to kill, or is there some sort of probationary period and a learner’s permit first?”
“The only thing you’ll be killing is liver cells, and you’d be doing that anyway. I need you to talk to the guests and see what you can dig up.”
Oscar considered this. “Anything in particular? Are we looking for blackmail material, or just a little something to give us an edge?”
“We’re looking for answers. Specifically, I’d like to know why each of them is so interested in Augustus’s body.” Augustus himself picked this moment to wander off, followed by both my partners. I let them go. “They’ve all given legitimate reasons, but it doesn’t quite add up.”
“I know what you mean. I can practically smell it.”
“Smell what, Oscar?”
He smiled at me. “Money, my dear. It’s an aroma I’m intimately familiar with, and it wafts through this affair like the smell of roasting beef. I shall ply my fellow diners with both drinks and affable conversation, and see what I can uncover. Is this arrangement suitable to you?”
“It is. Thank you, Oscar.”
“Not at all. Now, if you’ll excuse me—I require privacy to prepare my considerable intellectual prowess for the ordeal.” He closed his eyes and took another sip of his drink.
I grinned and left him to it. Good management means getting out of your experts’ way and letting them do what they do best—no matter what it might look like.
* * *
I found Augustus, Whiskey, and Tango on the grounds of the zoo. Augustus was in the honey badger pen, studying its resident curiously. The honey badger either couldn’t see him or just didn’t care—honey badgers are like that.
Tango peered at him anxiously, pacing back and forth in front of the pen.
[Tango, please. Augustus is a ghost. They don’t even speak the same language. Wha
t’s the badger going to do, offend his delicate sensibilities with his mere presence?]
“Uh, that’s not really necessary,” I said.
She told him anyway. It involved what the badger wanted to do to various body parts that I currently owned, using his claws, teeth, and other body parts of his own. The words “rotting,” “penetrate,” and “devour” were used, sometimes in the same sentence.
[Oh, my. That’s … extremely disrespectful.]
“And a little embarrassing. Can we not bring it up again, please?”
The badger wasn’t paying any attention to Augustus, but he was studying me with intent, beady eyes.
“And I, unfortunately, remember him. Tango, do you think you can convince Augustus that he should—”
I was interrupted by a series of snorts, whuffs, and grunts by the honey badger. “I don’t want to know,” I said. “Really. I don’t.”
I thought about it. The last time we talked, the honey badger had provided some useful information, and it was possible he’d do so again in the future. Cultivating contacts is important, and courtesy is free. “Tell him my name is Foxtrot, and thank him for being so helpful last time.”
“What do you mean, uh-oh?”
“What did he say?”
“Tango. What. Did. He. Say?”
“What’s so terrible about that?”
[That seems an unlikely coincidence.]