“Someone burned down Shelby’s apartment building,” I said, stepping inside. Grandma was right there to help support Shelby’s weight, and suddenly walking seemed, if not easier, at least a lot less hard. “We had to jump out the window to get away. How did you know we were coming?”
“I told her,” said Sarah. I looked past Grandma to the stairs, where Sarah was standing, pale in her blue nightgown, eyes glowing even more brightly than my grandmother’s. “I heard the screaming from all the way down the block.”
Sarah shouldn’t have been able to hear anything from that far away; we’d both grabbed our anti-telepathy charms along with our weapons. That Sarah had heard me anyway said something, both about how attuned we were as family, and how badly hurt I really was.
“We’re here now,” I said, trying to project reassurance and calm. “Go back up to your room. Grandma will get us patched up, and then we can have breakfast in the morning, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Listen to your cousin, Sarah,” said Grandma, and began pushing us toward the kitchen. “Look at you two. Martin!”
The kitchen door opened, revealing my grandfather. “I’m almost ready for them.”
“Good.” She half-led, half-shoved us through the kitchen door and to the table, where the first aid kit was already assembled and waiting. There was a straight razor next to the stack of bandages. “Who’s hurt worse?”
“Shelby,” I said, grabbing a piece of clean gauze and using it to wipe the soot off my glasses. The world suddenly became a lot easier to see. The realization that I’d driven through downtown Columbus while half-blinded followed, and I fought back the urge to be sick. There would be time for that later. “Her arm’s worse than any of my injuries.”
“Let me see,” said Grandma.
Thankfully, Shelby didn’t argue. She turned, showing Grandma the red, raw skin of her right bicep.
“We can deal with that,” said Grandma, and picked up the straight razor. She flipped it open before neatly slicing open the back of her own hand.
Shelby shrieked, too startled for composure, only to calm and stare as she realized Grandma wasn’t really bleeding. A thick, viscous fluid was leaking from the cut, virtually clear, with only a hint of blue. “What in the . . . ?”
“Cuckoos don’t have hemoglobin, dear,” said Grandma.
“Do they feel pain?”
Grandma laughed. “Yes, but sometimes we have to work past that,” she admitted, and put down the straight razor before dipping her fingers into the “blood” and beginning to lather it onto Shelby’s wound. Shelby squawked again, only to subside, looking puzzled, when there was no pain. Grandma smiled. “As I was saying, we don’t have hemoglobin. What we do have is a natural antibiotic, with preservative and painkilling properties.”
“They’re very popular with the kind of men who like building men like me,” said Grandpa. “Alex, let me see your feet.”
I stuck them obediently out, managing not to wince when he pulled off my shoes and started examining my blisters. “It’s all right, Shelby, honest. Cuckoo blood won’t heal you, but it’ll make the pain a lot less immediate, and we have drugs to help with the rest.”
“It should reduce scarring, though, and that’s a good thing, as Martin tells me you’re a very pretty girl,” said Grandma, finishing her finger-painting and reaching for the gauze. “You should both have showers, but I want you to leave this on for at least an hour before you wash it off, and I’ll make up a kit for you to use after you get dry.”
“She means she’s going to bleed into a jar,” said Grandpa. “Don’t sugarcoat it for the kids, Angie.”
“I got that, thanks,” said Shelby, closing her eyes. “Alex? You all right?”
My feet looked mostly intact. “I’m fine,” I said. Judging by the tightness in my back and shoulders, I might not stay fine, but right here and now, I could give the reassurance. “Grandma . . .”
“Yes, she can stay here.” Grandma began to wrap gauze around Shelby’s arm. “I don’t want either of you sleeping somewhere undefended until this is taken care of. Do you have any idea who may have attacked you?”
“No,” I said grimly, “but we’re going to find out.”
Grandpa’s hand landed on my shoulder, heavy enough to keep me in my seat, even if my feet hadn’t already been giving me good reason to keep still. “In the morning,” he said. “You need sleep, both of you.”
I thought of my room, where the mice were probably preparing a grand celebration to commemorate my getting set on fire. “About that . . .”
“I already bribed them to relocate to the attic for tonight, and leave you alone,” said Grandpa. “It was the second thing I did after Sarah woke us.”
Curiosity demanded to be satisfied. “What was the first thing you did?”
“Arm the exterior traps. Nothing’s getting through any of these windows tonight.”
It was the exact right thing to say. I smiled. “Thanks, Grandpa.”
“Any time, kiddo,” he said, and patted my shoulder one more time before he took his hand away. “Any time.”
We didn’t shower before we went to bed; we didn’t do anything but peel off our smoky, ruined clothing and collapse onto the mattress, with Shelby on the inside, and me closer to the door, so that anything that tried to attack would have a slightly harder time of it. She was already half-gone, thanks to the Vicodin my grandmother had left out for her. I had refused to take anything but a few aspirin. One of us needed to be aware of our surroundings.
That was a foolish fantasy. My eyes were closed before my head hit the pillow, and the last thing I remembered was the warm, familiar weight of Crow settling on my chest. He cawed once, tone inquisitive, and then there was nothing but the dark and my own exhaustion pulling me under.
Nineteen
“Playing fair is for people who don’t mind playing to lose.”
—Kevin Price
A nice, if borrowed, bedroom in an only moderately creepy suburban home in Columbus, Ohio
I WOKE TO THE sound of shrieking. I was out of the bed and on my feet in less than a second, already reaching for the gun that I kept in the nightstand. The fact that I was stark naked hit me mid-motion, followed immediately by another shriek. This time, I identified the voice as Shelby’s. It was coming from the floor on the other side of the bed.
“I’m coming!” I shouted, and ran around the bed, already searching for a target . . .
...only to find my girlfriend, who was wearing my bathrobe, lying on her back with Crow sitting proudly in the middle of her chest. His wings were half-mantled, and when he moved them the tips of his primary flight feathers dragged against her arms, tickling her. He moved them as I watched, and another shriek was the result. I lowered my gun, blinking in bemusement, and wished I’d thought to grab my glasses before coming to her rescue.
“Er?” I said.
“You!” Shelby sat up, performing a complicated maneuver with her arms, so that Crow wound up in the classic feline “forepaws on shoulder, hind legs resting on arm” position. He turned to look at me over his own shoulder, and I swear the feathery bastard actually looked smug. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Shelby, there is a list of things that can be used as answers to that question. It’s annotated. There’s even an index. How’s your burn?”
“Hurts like a bitch and a half, but I’ll live; hope you like girls with interesting scars. You’re moving away from the point.”
“I’m naked, I’m sore, and I just woke up. I don’t know what the point is, ergo, I cannot be moving away from it on purpose.”
“This fellow!” Shelby shifted her arms again, presenting Crow to me like he was an adoption drive puppy. He put up with it admirably, telegraphing his mild annoyance at being held that way with nothing more than a swishing of his tail and a ruffling of his feathers.
<
br /> “When he pecks your eyes out for manhandling him, I’m not going to be as sorry for you as I should be,” I said. With that, I turned around and walked back to my side of the bed, where I sat down, stowed my gun in the nightstand, and finally put on my glasses. The room snapped into blessed clarity. I’m not blind without my glasses, just nearsighted, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy everything being blurry around the edges.
The mattress jolted as Shelby pulled herself up from the floor and plopped down on the edge of the bed. “Did I wake you?”
“Given the last few days, not only did you wake me, but I thought you were being murdered.” I twisted to scowl at her. She was still holding Crow, and her torso was mostly concealed by the mass of black feathers and tawny fur.
“Sorry,” she said. Giving Crow’s head a scritch, she added, “But you could have told me about this big fellow. I woke up with him sitting on my chest, trying to sort out who I was and what I was doing in bed with his monkey.”
“Oh, hell, I didn’t warn you about Crow? I’m sorry.” Anger transitioned to contrition in an instant. “It was late, and I was crashing so hard, I didn’t even think. I hope he didn’t freak you out too much.”
“If by ‘freak me out’ you mean ‘absolutely delight me,’ he did that in spades.” She kept scritching Crow’s head. He let his beak hang open, eyes closing in bliss. “I had to leave my poor Flora back home in Australia. There was no way I’d have been able to smuggle her through customs, but I’ve missed her every day since, you’ve no idea how hard it’s been on me.” Crow’s purring was loud enough to be audible from across the bed.
I blinked. “You have a miniature griffin?”
“No, they’re not native to Australia, and while they’re certainly handsome creatures, they threaten the ecosystems of several of our indigenous species.” The subtext was clear: if miniature griffins were spotted in Australia, and couldn’t be relocated or contained in private collections, they would be destroyed. I couldn’t find any fault with that. There’s a cost to maintaining an island ecology, and sometimes that cost can be unpleasant.
“So Flora is . . . ?”
“She’s a garrinna. A very pretty one, too.”
“I’d love to see her.” Garrinna are sometimes referred to as “marsupial griffins,” even though the title is completely inaccurate and doesn’t describe anything about them beyond their shape. They’re about the size of Welsh corgis, which makes them larger than most species of miniature griffin, and they’re very social creatures. As in “a flock of them can and will dismantle a car, given the opportunity.” They’re virtually extinct, for much the same reason. Well, that, and the part where they look like bright pink parrots crossed with stripy cats. Not much in the way of natural camouflage, there.
“What’s this one’s name, then?”
“Crow. He’s a pest, aren’t you, Crow?”
Crow opened his beak and made a self-satisfied churring noise, seemingly content to remain in Shelby’s arms all day long, if that was an available option.
Sadly for all of us, it wasn’t. I stood, more slowly this time, and winced as my ankles and knees took this opportunity to object to the way I’d treated them the night before. “What time is it?”
“Half-seven. I called the zoo before I settled in with this fellow. They know not to expect us today. I think the fact that the fire was on the news last night made my story just that little bit more believable.” Shelby grimaced. “That does take away any chance there might have been that the management doesn’t know we’re sleeping together, though. Sorry about that.”
“It’s not a problem. I wasn’t really trying to hide it, and what are they going to do, fire us when the rest of the staff is dropping dead?” I stretched, trying to make the muscles in my lower back release. “I need a shower. I smell like forest fire and antiseptic.”
“Mind if I join you? I don’t mind you running about naked, but I feel like a trash heap.”
“Not if you promise to remember that while my grandmother may not be a receptive telepath, my slightly scrambled cousin is, and she’s likely to come into the bathroom and start asking inappropriate questions if we make any mental noise that interests her.”
Shelby wrinkled her nose. “That’s a libido killer, but no, I promise, I just want to clean off right now, and I’m not much in the mood for being on my own. Something about my apartment combusting around me has rather put me off solitude.”
I paused in the act of reaching for a pair of clean sweatpants to stop and look back at her. “I guess things have gotten a little exciting, huh? I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. I’m a big girl; you didn’t drag me into anything I didn’t force you to allow me to be a part of.” Shelby put Crow down on the bed, where he wrapped his tail around his feet and croaked in irritation. “I wouldn’t be a cryptozoologist if I didn’t like a bit of excitement every now and again. I just didn’t expect the excitement to be quite so flammable, that’s all.”
This time, I managed to swallow the marriage proposal before it could escape. “Okay, then. Let’s go shower.”
Twenty minutes, a lot of soap, and only two accidentally poked bruises later, we were clean and semi-presentable. Shelby scooped Crow off my bed before following me downstairs to the kitchen, where Sarah was attempting to eat a bowl of oatmeal, under the watchful eye of my grandmother. At least, I thought it was oatmeal. Oatmeal isn’t usually that red, but the color could be explained by the ketchup bottle that was sitting off to one side.
Grandma looked up as we entered, and smiled. “Good morning, sleepyheads. Shelby, how’s the robe?”
“Quite good, thank you, but er . . . where are my clothes?” Shelby shrugged, expression sheepish. “I got up this morning and my suitcase had gone.”
“Your clothes are at the dry cleaner’s, along with Alex’s. You’d never have been able to get the smell of smoke out otherwise.” Grandma stood, patting Sarah once on the shoulder, and crossed to the stove. “There’s toast and oatmeal, if either of you are hungry.”
“I’m starving,” I said. “Shelby?”
“I could eat. But er, if the clothes are at the dry cleaner . . . you didn’t just hand over the suitcase, did you?”
“Your knives are in the box on Alex’s dresser,” said Grandma, beginning to dish up two large bowls of oatmeal. “Didn’t you have a gun before?”
“It’s upstairs with my clothes. I put it on before we left the apartment.” Crow squawked. Shelby obligingly put him down, and he began twining around Grandma’s ankles, churring to be fed.
“That was probably wise of you.” Grandma ignored the begging griffin as she turned, holding out the bowls. “Brown sugar, raisins, and curry powder are on the counter, butter and ketchup are on the table. Can I get you anything else?”
“Er . . . is there coffee?”
“I’ll take care of coffee,” I said. “I’ve never heard you say ‘er’ so many times before.”
Shelby glared at me. “Shove off,” she suggested. I laughed.
Things were calm for a little while after that. Shelby and I doctored our oatmeal—neither of us added ketchup, although she did add a pinch of curry powder—and sat to devour our breakfasts. Sarah ate about half her oatmeal before pushing the bowl aside and leaning back to stare at the ceiling. I paused with my spoon halfway to my mouth, waiting to see if she was going to do anything else. When several seconds passed without her moving, I shrugged and went back to the food.
I was finishing my coffee when Grandma said, “I think it’s about time we started talking about what happened last night, don’t you?”
“Do you mean the visit to Dee’s neighborhood, or someone deciding to burn down Shelby’s apartment while we were still inside?”
“Both, if you would be so kind.” Grandma took the seat next to Sarah, folding her hands primly on the table. “I would have as
ked last night, but it was clear you needed to sleep. So you’re going to tell me now. And then you can call your parents.”
“This day just gets better and better,” I muttered. “We started by following Dee to the local gorgon community . . .”
Twenty minutes seems to be the most common interval in human experiences, because that’s also how long it took me to explain the situation to Grandma, including the fight with the lindworm and our dinner with Hannah. From there, Shelby and I took turns relaying what happened at the apartment—slightly edited, of course, since I had no interest in discussing my sex life with my grandmother.
When we finished, Grandma nodded, and then looked to Sarah. “What do you think?”
“They’re telling the truth, and four times four is sixteen,” said Sarah, still looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “My head hurts. You were hurting a lot last night.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I said.
“You aren’t a candle.” She lowered her head, fixing me with an accusing stare. “You can burn and burn, but you’ll never give any good light. And I don’t think it would smell very good, either.”
Shelby snorted laughter. “She’s got your number down to rights, Alex. No playing candle.”
“You got burned worse than I did,” I said defensively. Then, to Sarah, I said, “I promise to do my best not to get set on fire, but I can’t promise it’s never going to happen again. We have dangerous jobs. You know that.”
“Knowing that and knowing it aren’t the same thing, even if they use the same words,” said Sarah. She sounded frustrated. Pushing back her chair, she stood and walked out of the kitchen.
I sighed. “Grandma, I’m sorry. I—”
“Alex Price, I could kiss you right now.”
“What?” I blinked at her. “What are you talking about?”
“Haven’t you noticed that’s Sarah’s making a lot more sense these days? You just had a whole conversation with her, and yes, it was unsteady in places, but she knew who you were. The whole time, she was talking to her cousin Alex, and not to some college professor whose class she audited or a character from one of her PBS shows.” Grandma beamed. “She’s coming back to us. She’s putting the pieces of herself back into the order they’re supposed to be in, because she knows you need her. This is wonderful.”
Half-Off Ragnarok: Book Three of InCryptid Page 26