“Great, I should have arranged for someone to start trying to kill me sooner.” I stood. “I need more coffee. Shelby?”
“I’m good, thanks.” She looked at my grandmother, expression uncharacteristically earnest. “I know we didn’t meet under the best of circumstances, what with that whole ‘I came here intending to kill you’ aspect of things, but I hope you do understand that I’m genuinely sorry about all that.”
“It’s a common reaction to my species,” said Grandma. “Since you didn’t start dating my grandson just to get access to the house, I’m not angry. Now, if you’d actually shot me, it might be a different story.”
“If I’d actually shot you, I think Alex would’ve shot me immediately after, and my story would be finished now,” said Shelby. “I’m not in a hurry to wind up in a shallow grave.”
“Hey,” I said, stung. “I’m a professional. Shallow graves get discovered. No one would ever find your body.”
“Oh, yes, that’s very reassuring,” said Shelby. “Anyway, Ms. Price, what I’m trying to say is . . .”
“It’s Baker, actually,” said Grandma. “I’m Alex’s mother’s mother. His father’s mother is Mrs. Price. We didn’t get along at first, and I think calling me by her name might convince her that we’re not getting along now. Alice can be a little . . .”
“My paternal grandmother is about as stable as the San Andreas fault right after it’s been ripped open by a rock elemental,” I said. “Love her. Love her lots. But, yeah, we try not to push her buttons when there’s any possible way to avoid it, because she habitually carries a backpack full of grenades.”
Shelby blinked. “That doesn’t sound safe.”
“And now you’re starting to understand Grandma Alice.” I stood and walked over to the counter, where I refilled my coffee cup.
“I . . . see.” Shelby shook her head, almost as if she was trying to physically force the weirdness away. Sitting up a little straighter, she looked at my grandmother, and said, “To return to an earlier topic, I would greatly appreciate it if you would accept my apologies for the way we met, especially as you’ve been so hospitable during what could have been a genuinely trying time. Well. Is a genuinely trying time. I think my apartment burning down counts as a trying time.”
“So does everyone else, dear,” said my grandmother, cutting Shelby off before she could begin another round of awkward apologies. “You’ll be staying with us until the police have finished their investigation of your building, of course. Maybe longer, depending on how bad the smoke damage is.”
Shelby’s eyes widened. “Oh, I couldn’t impose, it would be—”
“The sensible thing to do, under the circumstances.” Grandma shook her head. “Maybe whoever burned your building was after Alex, and you simply had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He usually stays here, after all, and only a fool would approach this house with malice on their mind.”
Shelby, who had done exactly that, reddened.
Grandma was polite enough not to say anything, for which I was profoundly grateful. She continued calmly, saying, “But it’s also possible that whoever burned your building was trying to kill you.”
“Me?” squawked Shelby. “What in the world would someone have against me? I’m just a visiting zoologist. And I’m quite charming; ask anyone who’s met me. I’m not the sort of girl who inspires murder attempts, not unless I’m really working at it.”
“You did go with me to the gorgon community,” I commented, as I returned to the table. “Someone could have seen you, and decided you were a threat. Maybe they would have tried to burn the building even if I wasn’t there, and getting us both was just two assassination attempts for the price of one.”
“You’re an optimistic lot, aren’t you?” Shelby crossed her arms, slumping in her seat. “So maybe whoever torched my place was trying to kill me, not you, or me and you, or just you. Regardless of how you slice this, you’re looking at someone trying to kill someone I’m fond of.”
It took me a moment to untangle her sentence. Then I smiled. “I’m fond of you, too. And there’s a way we can find out whether someone is trying to kill one or both of us.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
“First things first. Hey, Grandma, do we have anything Shelby can borrow?”
Slowly, my grandmother began to smile.
“I’m going to kill you.”
“You look fine.”
“I’m quite serious. I’m going to murder you. I’m going to murder you to death. And then, after I’ve finished doing that, I’m going to kill you again, just to be sure you got the point.”
“Shelby, honestly, you look fine.”
Shelby sank deeper into the passenger seat of my car, folding her arms, and glared at me. I had enough of a sense of self-preservation not to snicker, but it was a close thing. It wasn’t the outfit, either. Sarah’s clothing might not fit Shelby’s sense of style—somehow, I couldn’t picture Shelby ever voluntarily donning a knee-length green skirt and a white peasant blouse that looked like it had been stolen straight out of the 1960s—but it was clothing, it was clean, and I’d seen stranger, usually on one of my sisters. Being the only male in my generation has made me very flexible where female fashion is concerned. (Artie doesn’t count. Artie divides girls into three categories—“terrifying,” “related to me,” and “Sarah.” Near as I can tell, the only category he actually looks at is Sarah.)
No, it was the sulking. My sisters, again. Having two of them, both younger than me, meant I’d learned that the only way to survive a sulk is to mock it: a sulking sister, rewarded for her efforts, will proceed to push her sulking to ever-greater heights, until an entire platoon of pigeons could perch on her out-thrust lower lip.
“I look like a first grade teacher from the pioneer days,” said Shelby.
“I don’t think they had machine stitching in the pioneer days,” I said, turning onto a narrow residential street lined with attractive brick houses, each on its own privately landscaped stretch of land. Even the air smelled like money. It was something of a relief to see a few fallen leaves clogging the gutters in a distinctly un-artistic manner. If not for that, I would have been afraid we were driving into a completely fabricated community, and started looking for signs that we’d discovered a new form of ambush predator, one that looked like a pleasant suburban neighborhood right up until it slammed its jaws closed on your car.
“Fine, then, I look like a first grade teacher from the 1970s.”
“Your sense of history is very brief.” I consulted my GPS before pulling to a stop in front of one of the attractive brick houses. “We’re here.”
Shelby forgot her sulk long enough to peer past me at the house. “Are you sure?”
“What did you expect? A hole in the ground? Wadjet are civilized people. Chandi’s mother is a doctor.” And Chandi’s father was an impressively large spectacled cobra, which was why Chandi’s fiancé lived at the zoo. Male wadjet don’t coexist well.
“Are you sure she’s home?”
“I called first.” Never surprise any member of a venomous species with a home visit. It’s not only rude, it’s potentially hazardous to your health.
We walked up the narrow path to the front door, Shelby shamelessly gawking at the landscaping, me watching for signs that we’d been followed. No one drove down the street, but that didn’t mean anything; any tail smart enough to stay with us this far would probably be smart enough to park farther down the block and observe our activities from a distance.
There are times when I hate being as paranoid as I am. Life with my family makes paranoia a vital survival trait, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy it. It can be a lonely way to live. I glanced at Shelby out of the corner of my eye.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t so lonely after all.
I stepped up onto the porch and rang the do
orbell, which made a pleasant chiming sound before tapering off. Running footsteps replaced the sound of the bell, and a familiar voice called, “I’ve got it!” just before the door was wrenched open to reveal Chandi. She blinked at us, eyes wide and bewildered. Then they narrowed, and she demanded, “What are you doing here?”
“I came because I wanted to speak with your parents,” I said. “Ms. Tanner accompanied me because she needs to be formally introduced as a visiting cryptozoologist.”
Chandi wrinkled her nose. “Ew. Are you running a breeding program for those, too?”
I gaped at her, not quite sure how I was supposed to respond. I was still gaping when she turned and ran back into the house, leaving the door ajar.
“Mooooooo-om! Dr. Price from the zoo is here and he brought a girl!”
Shelby stepped up next to me. “Look at it this way,” she said. “That’s one little girl who’s never going to need the facts of life explained to her.”
“That’s one little girl whose explanation of the facts of life looks nothing like whatever you’re picturing,” I replied.
Fortunately, Shelby’s reply was cut off by the appearance of Chandi’s mother. Dr. Sarpa was a tall, slender woman with skin the same deep, rich brown as the scales on a spectacled cobra’s back. She had her long black hair pulled into a ponytail, and was wearing a pencil skirt and a flowing white blouse. Her shoes were three-inch heels that my sister would have coveted, but which made me wince in sympathy. She’d only dressed this fancily for me once, and that was the first time that we met; this was all for Shelby’s benefit.
“Alex,” she said, with considerably more warmth than her daughter usually managed. She even smiled at me in the human style, showing her teeth without baring them. “This must be Dr. Tanner from the zoo. I’ve heard so much about you. Won’t you both please come in?”
“Thank you for your hospitality,” I said, stepping over the threshold and bending to remove my shoes. Shelby nodded quickly, indicating that she got the hint, and copied my actions. There was a low bench near the door. We placed our shoes on it.
“Daksha is waiting for us in the back garden,” said Dr. Sarpa.
“Thank you,” I said again. “Kumari, may I please properly introduce you to the scholar, Shelby Tanner, who has come here seeking only knowledge?”
“You may,” said Dr. Sarpa, and turned her human-style smile on Shelby. “You are welcome in my home so long as you travel with Alex, who is known and beloved to us, and do not offer any harm or threat unto my family. Do you agree?”
“Yes, of course,” said Shelby, looking puzzled but still agreeable. I understood her confusion; I shared it, the first time I had to deal with wadjet in a social setting. Humans are primates, and primates generally wait to see whether something is a threat before inviting it into their homes. Wadjet are something different. For Kumari, bringing us inside put us within striking distance. If we were going to pose a danger to her family, she wanted to control the environment. She wanted us in her den.
“Good.” Kumari’s smile died, taking the implied threat with it. “This way.” She turned, heading deeper into the house. Her heels clacked sharply against the floor, while our bare feet made no sound.
Shelby paced herself to walk beside me, looking faintly ill-at-ease. That was a good reaction, all things considered. I followed her gaze and saw that she was looking, not at the artwork on the walls or the general design of the house, but at Kumari’s shoes.
“We can’t wear shoes indoors because we might step on something we shouldn’t,” I murmured. “People are heavy. You’re more likely to realize what’s happening and pull back before putting your full weight on someone’s tail if you’re barefoot. Kumari gets to keep her shoes on because this is her home. She’s demonstrating dominance over you.”
“Just me?”
“She demonstrated dominance over me a long time ago.” I paused, realizing how that sounded, and winced. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“No, but it’s what you said,” said Shelby, clearly amused. I decided to stop trying to correct her. Amusement was better—much better—than any of the alternatives.
Kumari was waiting by the sliding glass door to the backyard, which was already standing open. When we reached her, she calmly removed her heels, leaving them on the mat, and stepped through the doorway, onto the cobblestone path that wound its way through their lush rainforest of a yard.
The back fence of the Sarpa residence was high enough to brush up against the restrictions laid down by the local homeowners association. I knew that well, since I’d helped Kumari deflect three attempts to have her fined for building her fence too tall. It had to be the height it was in order to conceal their private greenhouse from prying eyes. Anyone flying over would realize the Sarpas were essentially maintaining a backyard hothouse, but as it was perfectly legal and all their building permits were in order, none of us were particularly worried.
I’m a herpetologist, not a botanist; I couldn’t have named any of the trees, climbing vines, or flowers that filled the enclosed glass box of their yard. A fountain chuckled quietly to itself in one corner, feeding into a pond filled with decorative fish. Birds flashed by in the canopy, as captive as any denizens of the zoo. And in the middle of it all, coiled on a large, flat stone intended for that very purpose, was the master of this household, a spectacled cobra fully seventeen feet in length. As we approached him, he lifted the first third of his body into the air, looking down his nose at me as he opened the great flare of his hood. Shelby’s hand closed on my upper arm, fingers clenching convulsively tight.
I smiled. “Hello, Daksha. It’s nice to see you again. Your scales look remarkable. Did you shed recently?”
The massive cobra continued to study me, his tongue flicking in and out three times before he closed his hood, lowered himself back to the basking stone, and slithered down to the garden path. Moving fast enough to be the stuff of nightmares, he zigzagged to Kumari and twisted his way up her body, moving like the stripe on a barber pole. She held perfectly still, helping him along, until his head was resting on her right shoulder and his body gathered in a thick belt around her waist and torso.
“He greets you, and thanks you for your continued hospitality toward our daughter,” she said, walking over to take his recently abandoned place on the central stone. “As you ask, yes, he did shed recently, and is pleased with his pattern brightness in this current molt.” Daksha arranged himself around Kumari as she sat, moving with her to avoid any unpleasant accidents, like her settling her full weight on his tail. Her lips turned downward in something that was closer to a frown than I liked, and she said, “He wishes to know why you have brought your colleague from the zoo here, as he did not believe she was aware of our nature.”
“If you didn’t think I knew what I know, why are you telling me what you think I didn’t know but might have come here looking to find out?” Shelby paused. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure even I understand what I just said.”
“Dr. Tanner is from an organization with goals much like those of my family,” I said, taking a seat on one of the decorative benches. I tugged Shelby along with me, and she settled to my right. “She studies the cryptid world in Australia, and hopes to someday bring the human and cryptid populations of her home continent into a peaceful coexistence. This meant that when people at the zoo began dying of petrifaction, I couldn’t keep her from becoming involved with the investigation of their deaths, and she found out about a great many things. At this point, I feel that it is safer for all of us if she knows as much as possible about the local community. That way, no one can slip and tell her something she’s not meant to know.”
“I agree with Alex, husband,” said Kumari, speaking in a slightly more casual tone now that she was speaking for herself and not the great snake that she wore around her waist and torso. “He called before he came, and I agreed to this visit.”
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br /> There was a pause while Daksha adjusted his grip. She nodded, and said, once more in the formal tone that meant she spoke for her husband, “He knows what I have told him, but wanted to hear your reasoning for himself. It seems sound; he does not question your motives as much as he did before you came here.”
“That’s good,” I said sincerely. Wadjet are incredibly venomous. Having Daksha question my motives could end in my untimely demise. “I do trust Shelby with my life at this point: she’s saved it several times.”
“Bringing her here means you are trusting her with ours, and that you are trusting us with hers,” said Kumari, a faint edge on her voice. “It is not a trust to be cheaply given.”
“It hasn’t been,” I assured her. “There was, however, a motive for bringing her to meet you now, rather than waiting until things were calmer. I assume Chandi told you about what was happening at the zoo before I did?”
“She’s very put out,” said Kumari. “She was counting on spending more time with Shami before she had to resume her schooling at the end of the summer. If the deaths continue, her bond could be set back by a matter of years.”
Shelby sat up a little straighter. I put a hand on her knee, squeezing, and hoped she would read the touch as a request that she not say anything. She shot me a quick look, confusion writ large across her face, but nodded, and kept silent. I smiled gratefully before returning my attention to Kumari.
(For Shelby, and for most human beings—myself honestly included, when I didn’t make an effort—referring to the deaths at the zoo so casually was almost like erasing the suffering of the victims. For Kumari and her family, while the death of a few humans was sad, it was by no means a tragedy. The human population of Ohio was in no danger. For Chandi and Shami, however, failure to properly bond could mean they would never be able to have children. It could also mean she would fail to develop the appropriate adult physiological responses to his venom, which would make her vulnerable to him later in life. Wadjet biology is not forgiving of things like zoo closures, and they only had one shot at a happy ever after.)
Half-Off Ragnarok: Book Three of InCryptid Page 27