Half-Off Ragnarok: Book Three of InCryptid (11 page)

“Your mother would never forgive me if I encouraged you to take any other course of action. There’s always the simpler answer, you realize.”

“I thought of that. A cockatrice would fit the situation as I currently understand it. It’s glance-based, it likes to hide in low bushes . . . it’s perfect.” And it wouldn’t be murder. Your average cockatrice makes an iguana seem like a super-genius. When animals kill people, it’s tragic, but it’s not malicious. “There’s just one problem with that theory.”

“Lots of things aren’t native to Ohio, Alex. You’ve just said that some of the frickens you’ve caught aren’t native to Ohio.”

“Yes, but there’s a big difference between something moving into an open ecological niche and something like a cockatrice showing up for no good reason.”

“So maybe there’s a good reason.”

That wasn’t the sort of statement that inspired confidence. I sighed, removing my glasses and putting them on the bedside table before pinching the bridge of my nose. “Maybe. Grandpa’s going to see about getting me access to the autopsy records. We should know more after that happens.”

“Keep us posted. You know we’ll be right there if you need us.”

“I do.” I also knew a family invasion of Ohio would mean things had gotten very bad. I wasn’t too proud to ask for help, but mobilizing the troops was the sort of thing that should only be used as a last resort. “Tell Mom I said hi and send my love when she gets home.”

“Any messages for your sister?”

“Tell her to stay out of my room.”

Dad laughed. We exchanged farewells and I hung up, slumping over backward onto the bed. Crow hopped down from the dresser to curl up, catlike, against my side. I stroked his wings absently, and he purred in response.

“It’s a mess, Crow,” I said.

He made a contented churring noise. I sighed and closed my eyes, continuing to stroke his wings. I had a lot of work to do, but other than preparing my notes on the situation, there wasn’t much that I could do
now
. I lay on my bed and listened to the joyful songs of the mice, trying to let my worries slip away, just for the moment, just for now. I needed to get some food in me like Grandpa had instructed. I didn’t want to move.

If this situation turned out to be as bad as I was afraid it was going to be, I wasn’t going to have any more moments like this one for a while. So I stayed where I was, and tried to enjoy the moment while it lasted.

I tried.

“Perhaps you misunderstand me. I am not afraid to die. Neither am I afraid to kill you. Now how about we put down the guns and discuss things like breathing men, rather than continuing this conversation in the afterlife?”

—Jonathan Healy

An only moderately creepy suburban home in Columbus, Ohio, waking up after an impromptu nap

C
ROW WAS CURLED UP
on my stomach when I woke up. I blinked at the ceiling, only gradually coming to realize that I’d been woken up by the sound of someone knocking on my bedroom door. I sat up, sending Crow tumbling, and rubbed my face with one hand while he squawked in irritation.

The knocking continued, now accompanied by my grandmother’s voice calling, “Alex? Are you awake?”

“I’m up, Grandma,” I called back, giving my face one more good rub before I swung my feet around to the floor and stood. I grabbed my usual glasses off the table as an afterthought. It wasn’t like I needed to worry about being turned to stone in my own home. “Crap. I didn’t mean to go to sleep. What time is it?”

“Seven.”

“Crap.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket as I walked across the room, and found a text from Dee telling me that she had made it home. That was a relief, at least. I opened the door to find my grandmother standing in the hall, still wearing her work clothes, a concerned look on her face. I forced a wan smile. “Did Grandpa tell you what’s going on?”

“He did,” she said, with a nod. “Are you all right?”

“I am. Andrew’s not.”

“Now, you don’t know that. He could be getting his afterlife orientation right now.”

My Aunt Mary used to babysit my grandmother, and she died decades before I was born. That doesn’t stop her from showing up at every family reunion and Christmas party she can get to. I shook my head. “Breathing people like to keep breathing. When you stop, you’re not all right anymore, even if you get to have a new existence as a semi-corporeal houseguest. Has Grandpa heard back from the morgue?”

“He has,” she said. “The autopsy is being performed locally, which is good news—”

My stomach sank. “But it’s not being performed until the morning, is it?”

Grandma shook her head. “They’ve already ruled out contagion—there’s nothing to indicate that turning into stone is something you can
catch
. So while it’s being treated as a chemical attack for the moment, it’s not urgent.”

“Then we have to break into the morgue. I need to see the remains.” I shook my head, wishing I was the telepathic one, so that I could make her understand why this mattered so much. “Petrifaction isn’t a thing that just happens in the human body. We need to know how it happened so that we can determine what did it, so we can stop—”

“Alex,
you
need to stop.” Grandma folded her arms, looking at me gravely. “I love you, but you have the same problem your father does. You assume we haven’t been fighting this battle without you for centuries. You’re not the only answer to every problem.”

Her words stung, but she was right. I frowned before allowing my shoulders to sag. “I’m sorry, Grandma. I just want to help. This could be my fault.”

“Because of your basilisks, or because it happened at the zoo where you happen to be working? Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence, you know.”

“And sometimes it’s the start of something very large, and very unpleasant. I can’t bank on one and ignore the other.”

“I know.” She smiled slightly. “You’re my grandson, after all. Come on down to the kitchen. We have a proposition for you.”

Grandpa was waiting in the kitchen. Grandma led me to the table and pushed me into a chair, and Grandpa set a tuna fish sandwich in front of me. “Eat,” he commanded.

“Yes, sir,” I said, and picked the sandwich up.

They waited until my mouth was full and I couldn’t protest before Grandma said, “You’re staying home with Sarah tonight while we go on our date. You’ll get your autopsy results in the morning.”

“And no, we’re not breaking into the city morgue,” added Grandpa.

I swallowed my half-chewed mouthful of sandwich, managing not to choke, and said, “But I need to see—”

“You need to learn patience,” said Grandpa. “There’s no good reason for us to see this as anything other than an isolated incident right now, and there are quite a few good reasons for you to stay home.”

“For instance, we only have two tickets to the theater, and I’m not going to buy another one from a scalper just because you don’t feel like waiting here,” said Grandma. “And there’s Sarah to be considered. Someone has to stay with her. That’s why we arranged this date night in the first place. I know you want to serve the cryptid community, sweetheart. Well, tonight, you serve the cryptid community by babysitting.”

“I don’t believe this,” I said.

“The autopsy isn’t going to happen any faster if we cancel our date,” said Grandpa. “He’s scheduled for the morning. Learn patience.”

“Can you at least promise I’ll get the file as soon as the autopsy is complete?” I asked. My head was spinning. Of all the possible solutions I’d considered, “you stay home and babysit because patience is a virtue” wasn’t on the list.

“Yes,” said Grandpa firmly. “As soon as he’s released to the city morgue, I’ll call you, and we’ll examine him a second time together. But tonight, we need you to stay home. Please, Alex, can you do that for us?”

“I
really
don’t believe this,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. Finally, against my better judgment, I nodded. “Yes, I’ll stay at home with Sarah so you can have your date night. But you have to
promise
I’m getting those autopsy reports.”

“I swear,” said Grandma.

I sighed and dropped my hand. “I guess I’m staying at home, then.”

“Yes, I suppose you are,” said Grandpa, and smiled.

An hour later, they were heading out the door, having delivered the usual list of instructions for the care and feeding of my cousin, most of which involved the word “don’t.” Don’t let her go outside, don’t let her answer the phone, don’t let her answer the door, don’t let her get into philosophical debates with the pizza delivery man, don’t let her eat chocolate chips. (To be fair, that last one was for medical reasons: chocolate is mildly poisonous to cuckoos, and she’d make herself sick before she remembered she wasn’t supposed to have it.) Sarah stood halfway down the stairs, clutching the banister and swaying slightly as she watched them go.

“Be good!” called Grandma, and closed the door behind her, leaving us alone. I turned to Sarah.

“What do you want to do?”

“Ignite the heart of a dormant sun and resolve the impossible fractions,” she replied.

“Well, since that’s not going to happen tonight, how about some television?” With her telepathy mostly blocked, TV was actually more soothing for her than live interaction. She knew she couldn’t read the minds of the people on the screen, and most of the time, the characters were easily distinguishable by hair color and wardrobe—two of the things she
could
pick up on.

“Television is good,” she agreed, descending two more steps. “What’s the menu?”

“I have season one of
Numb3rs
, or some downloads of
Square One
that Artie sent for you. Whichever you like.”

“PBS is better,” she said serenely, and finally walked to the bottom of the stairs, proceeding into the living room. I shrugged and followed her.

“
Square One
it is,” I said.

It didn’t take long to get her settled on the living room floor with a bowl of ketchup-covered popcorn in her lap and math-based edutainment programming playing on the television. Sarah stared raptly, swaying to the beat as two would-be rappers began singing about prime numbers.

“I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me,” I said.

She flapped a hand, dismissing me from her presence. I smiled.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said, and left, pulling my phone out of my pocket as I walked. I’d promised Shelby I would call her. Sure, it was originally going to be a little later, since I was hoping we might be breaking into the morgue, but I hadn’t specified an exact time.

Shelby picked up so fast that I wasn’t sure the phone had actually completed its first ring. “Alex? Is that you?”

“Caller ID probably says it is,” I said. Then I paused, and laughed.

“What?” she asked, tone turning suspicious. “What’s so funny?”

“I just talked to my father a little while ago, and I was making caller ID jokes with him, that’s all. What’s going on? I’m calling like I said I would.”

“What do you want, a cookie?” Shelby paused and sighed. “I’m sorry, that was nasty of me. I just don’t want to be alone right now. I keep waiting for something to jump out of the shadows at me, and it’s making me incredibly uncomfortable.”

I grew up waiting for something to jump out of the shadows at me. I sighed as I sat down at the kitchen table. “I’m sorry.”

“So I was wondering . . .”

“What?” I should have heard the danger in her tone, which had sweetened and taken on a faint wheedling quality. But I was worried about her, and anxious about the possibility of a cockatrice rampaging through Columbus, and I suppose I just wasn’t listening clearly.

“Could I come over? Tonight, I mean? I know I’ve never been to your place, but you can’t leave your poor sick cousin, and I won’t be any bother, I swear. I just . . . I really don’t want to be alone right now. Please?”

“Shelby . . .”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I keep thinking about Andrew.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, fighting the urge to groan. “Give me a second.”

“Of course.”

It wasn’t technically against the rules for me to have company—Grandma would have encouraged it if it hadn’t been for Sarah, since she really wanted me to have more of a social life. As long as I put away anything incriminating before Shelby arrived, and could convince Crow and the mice to stay upstairs for the duration of her visit, I wouldn’t have to worry about anything except for my cousin.

About that . . . Sarah was happy in front of the television, and lots of people eat strange things on their popcorn. One of my college roommates used to put baker’s yeast on his. Ketchup was nothing. I could give Shelby a telepathy blocker, say it was a piece of jewelry that made me think of her. The charms were pretty things, copper disks suspended in little glass balls filled with water. She’d probably believe me.

Shelby sounded honestly distressed, and I wanted to be a good boyfriend, no matter how bad at it I was. Certain that I was making a mistake—and less certain of exactly what it was—I said, “Come on over. I’ll text you the address. Just . . . give me twenty minutes to clean up?”

“What, disposing of the bodies, are you?” she asked, a bit of her normal playfulness seeping back into her tone.

“Something like that.” If she thought body disposal would take me twenty minutes, she’d clearly never watched me clean a snake cage. I could get rid of an average human body in ten minutes, tops.

...and maybe that would be a bad thing to brag about to the nice girl that I was dating. Clearly, “normal” was still a bit beyond my capabilities. I shook my head and quickly added, “Only a bit less gruesome. Mostly it’s just dishes and making sure Sarah understands we’ll be having company.”