Half-Off Ragnarok

Two

The reptile house of Ohio’s West Columbus Zoo, visiting researcher’s office

EVEN AFTER STOPPING AT home to drop off Crow and change my clothes, I still made it back to the zoo in time for the afternoon shift change. Technically, as a visiting researcher, I didn’t have to come in unless I was giving a talk or shepherding a school group through the wonderful world of venomous snakes. In reality, I did the bulk of my research in my small, borrowed office. It wasn’t completely secure, but the door locked, and all the really sensitive work was done at home. I’d learned to sleep soundly despite the smell of formaldehyde.

Between Dee, Crow, and myself, we had managed to collect specimens representing three of the fricken subspecies known to be native to Ohio: the common swamp fricken, the greater swamp fricken, and the Midwestern spotted fricken. I’d spend all evening after dinner dissecting their bodies. Hopefully, that would give me enough data to let us stop killing the harmless little creatures.

I was typing up a completely fabricated report of our trip to the swamp—which had supposedly been focused on looking for copperheads, trying to assess the local population density—when Dee stuck her head in from the main office. Her wig was now firmly back in place, and she looked the very picture of the modern administrative assistant.

“Hey, boss, did you see the time?” she asked. “I ask because you told me to, and not because I’m nagging. Please remember the distinction at my annual review.”

“You’re technically employed by the zoo,” I said. “I don’t think I get to do your annual review.”

“You have a real gift for focusing on the inconsequential part of a sentence, don’t you?” She crossed her arms, leaning against the doorframe. “Time. Look at the.”

I blinked before glancing to the clock on my computer, which showed ten minutes to four. “So?”

“So you promised you’d attend the tiger show today? The one that a certain Miss Shelby Tanner is in charge of?” Dee uncrossed her arms in order to inscribe an hourglass shape in the air. “Unless you no longer care about keeping your hot Australian girlfriend happy . . .”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” I said automatically. I was already standing up. Dee, sensing victory, pushed herself away from the doorframe and plucked my jacket off the coatrack, handing it to me. I shrugged it on and smiled, a little wryly. “What would I do without you, Dee?”

“Date less,” she replied.

I snorted.

Dee—short for Deanna Lynn Taylor de Rodriguez, a mouthful she thankfully doesn’t insist on in casual conversation, or ever—is a Pliny’s gorgon, which puts her in the middle range of “potentially deadly cryptids with snakes in place of hair.” Lesser gorgons are more common, greater gorgons are more dangerous, and Pliny’s gorgons are, as Dee says, just right. She lives with her extended family somewhere outside of Dublin, Ohio. I don’t ask her where, and she doesn’t offer to tell me. Being a Price might make me a cryptid ally, but at the end of the day, I was still a human. Humans have a long history of chopping the heads off of gorgons who are just trying to get by.

Pliny’s gorgons usually have one or two members of their community working in the local human settlements, where they can keep an eye out for any possible mobs with torches, or anything else that might be bad for the family. Always females: most male Pliny’s gorgons are more than seven feet tall, which can be difficult to explain, while the females are more human-normal in height. Dee was right around five-seven, making her about four inches shorter than me. She’d been my assistant since the day I arrived at the Columbus Zoo, and I couldn’t have done it without her.

“Is there anything else you need, boss, or can you take things from here?”

“I think I can manage.” The report to zoo management was essentially finished; all I needed to do was check my grammar and hit “send.” I’d write up the encounter with the lindworm and email it to my parents later this evening. Maybe Dad could find something in the family records about lindworms in Ohio—or maybe I was right, and this really was a new species. Either way, I had plenty to get done tonight.

“Good boy,” said Dee, and left the office, her hair hissing softly beneath her auburn wig.

I chuckled, shrugged my jacket on, and followed her out.

The reptile house was mostly empty when I emerged from my office. The late afternoon was always our slowest time. The more interesting shows—which we were supposed to call “interactive exhibits,” according to the latest flyer from the head office—always took place after lunch, and most people were happier watching koalas or performing tigers while they tried to digest their processed cheese food sandwiches than they were wandering through the dark, snake-infested building where I worked.

Individual heating lamps lit the various enclosures, and hooded lights on the ceiling lit the rest of the room, although not very brightly. Many of the species we had living there were more active at night, and so we tricked them into thinking this was nighttime. They slithered and skittered around their artificial environments, exploring the boundaries they had explored a thousand times before. Crunchy, the aptly-named alligator snapping turtle, hung in the water of his tank like a floating, bad-tempered boulder, his mouth hanging open in silent invitation. It was an invitation I had no intention of accepting any time soon.

An old fellow like Crunchy can weigh in excess of three hundred pounds, and can take off a human leg in one bite. Two boys I judged to be about eleven years old were standing near his tank, watching him with rapt fascination. I paused, raising an eyebrow.

“You boys need something?” I asked.

“He moved last week,” said one of the boys. “He might do it again.”

I smiled to myself. There was a time when I would have been the one standing patiently outside the big turtle’s tank, waiting for that split second when he would close his jaws and the world would be awesome. “Here’s hoping,” I said, and walked on, heading for the front door. If I hurried, I could make it in time for the show.

As much as I loved the reptile house, it was always a sweet relief to step out of it and into the zoo proper. Inside, the air smelled of snake, a hot, musty, dry smell that never quite went away. The air outside smelled like freshly cut grass and a hundred types of blooming flowers, many of which had been imported solely to make the zoo seem wilder and more exotic. Tigers looked more realistic, somehow, when they were framed by flowers that didn’t come from the grocery store florist’s department.

Tourists and school groups milled listlessly on the paths, slowed down by their recent meals, while the diurnal animals did basically the same thing inside the open-air habitats. The African wild dogs were barking again, their strange, yodeling cries splitting the air. I sped up, until I was walking at a pace that was just shy of a run.

The big cats had their own private corner of the zoo, with multiple outdoor enclosures spreading out around the main building like the petals on a flower. A small amphitheater of sorts had been constructed between the lion and tiger enclosures, providing a space for the zookeepers to show off their animals. Cheers and applause were coming from that direction. I abandoned the pretense of walking, and ran the rest of the way.

Shelby’s tiger show was packed, leaving only a few seats at the rear of the amphitheater. I murmured apologies to the people already sitting on the benches as I sidled past them to get as close to the center as possible. People cast glares and irritated looks in my direction, but no one paid attention to me for long. There were better things for them to focus on.

The stadium-style benches of the amphitheater extended down to ground level, where they gave way to an eight-foot median, followed by a four-foot wall topped with a chain link fence. On the other side of the fence was a grassy lawn spotted with super-sized cat toys—and with super-sized cats to boot, in the form of five orange-and-black–striped tigers. They prowled and lounged just like their smaller cousins, and I couldn’t help thinking that Crow would be fascinated.

Three zookeepers in khaki and white moved around the edges of the enclosure, keeping the tigers under close watch, while the woman I’d come to see strutted at the center of the enclosure. Shelby Tanner.

I wasn’t the only one in the audience who was watching her rather than the tigers. The tigers were beautiful, but Shelby . . . Shelby was gorgeous. She was pleasantly tall, with long legs that only looked longer in her khaki shorts, and the kind of figure that comes from manual labor and good genetics. Her wavy blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail, keeping it from becoming tangled in the hands-free microphone that was clipped over her left ear.

“Now this big beauty is Mitya, one of our Siberian tigers,” she said, her Australian accent slathered so broadly across the words that it was almost difficult to understand her. “Isn’t he a looker? Come on, Mitya, give us a kiss.” She tapped her thigh with one hand. The largest of the tigers in the enclosure responded by rearing up onto his hind legs, putting his forepaws on her shoulders, and licking her cheek like a dog. The audience applauded and cheered. I shook my head, wondering how many of them could tell how nervous the rest of the zookeepers were. This was grandstanding, pure and simple. But grandstanding gets butts into seats, and we needed that. As long as Shelby didn’t actually get eaten during one of her shows, management would let her decide what happened.

Hell, even if she did get eaten, management would probably let the show go on according to her notes. Anything to keep ticket sales up.

Shelby Tanner and I had arrived at the zoo at the same time, me as a visitor from California, no, really, we swear, and her as a visitor from Sydney, Australia. It was only natural for the rest of the staff to shove the two outsiders together. She hadn’t known what to make of me at first, and the confusion was mutual. Shelby was boisterous, enthusiastic to a fault once she had decided on a course of action, and prone to leaping before she looked. I was a man of science, and science was always going to be my first love, no matter how attractive the alternatives might be. And Shelby was a very attractive alternative. She didn’t carry a hunting rifle on a regular basis, but aside from that, she was everything I’d ever wanted in a woman, and I’d been very careful not to pursue her. I don’t make promises that I can’t keep.

Our first date had happened three months before, and it had almost certainly been a dare. She’d marched up to me after a staff meeting, looked me up and down, and informed me I was taking her out for a drink that coming Friday night. I said no. She laughed and said this might be fun after all, and somewhere in the discussion that followed, my no turned into a yes, and one date turned into two, then three, and then four.

All we really had in common was our work with animals, although I was more on the pure research side, while Shelby was a trainer—as she was showing off even now in the green space beneath me, putting a Bengal tiger through his paces by throwing a medicine ball for him to chase. She was a big cat specialist, and had come to Ohio for the opportunity to study them in North America, where there were more specimens available than in her own cat-free homeland. (Big cats turn out to be surprisingly popular in Australian zoos, maybe for the same reason that kangaroos and koalas are so popular in North America: they’re so weird they’re unbelievable, if you didn’t grow up with them.)

The Siberian tiger reared up behind Shelby, putting its paws on her shoulders. The audience gasped. Shelby reached back and calmly scratched the tiger under the jaw, saying, “These big fellas aren’t domesticated, but as you can see, they’ve got a lot in common with the cats you may have at home, or the ones you love to watch on the Internet.” Nervous laughter answered her. “They deserve our respect, and they deserve to be protected, because our world would be a lot poorer without them. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time we got back to work. These beauties will be back in their enclosures and ready for their adoring public in about fifteen minutes! Thank you all!”

Thunderous applause greeted her announcement. I stood and hopped over the bench I’d been sitting on, heading for the nearest exit before I could get swept up in the crowd. They’d be thronging to the tiger enclosures, trying to get a good spot to gawk at the performers up close. I was doing something similar. I just had a different performer in mind.

The amphitheater was a stand-alone structure, but the green space where the tigers were displayed backed up on the main cat house, allowing the staff to discreetly move the animals back into their individual runs, and then on to their proper places. While the crowds formed around the outdoor enclosures, I slipped into the main building and made my way to the door marked “Staff Only.”

The hall on the other side combined industrial tile floors with glossy white walls. It shared certain traits with hospital halls, like the fact that it had obviously been designed to be cleaned with a power hose. There were even drains in the floor. A few interns passed me as I walked toward Shelby’s office. They waved. I nodded. We all went about our business.

The door to Shelby’s office was standing slightly ajar. I stopped outside, rapping my knuckles against the wood under her nameplate. “Can I come in?”

“That depends,” replied Shelby, yanking the door open and glaring at me. Her hair was out of its ponytail, falling to frame her face in disheveled waves. “Are you going to demand I talk like Crocodile Dundee to amuse the tourists?” Now that she was no longer on stage, her accent had faded, becoming more common and less cliché.

“I wasn’t planning to,” I said. “I just wanted to let you know I actually made it to the show today.”

“Really?” Shelby stepped back, making room for me to come into her office. It was the same size as mine, but contained what seemed like ten times as much stuff. I was constantly afraid of an avalanche when I came to visit. “Do you want a medal?”

“Not particularly.” I moved into the office. “I was doing the copperhead survey this morning in the swamp.”

“Mud and venomous snakes. Sounds like the ideal date.” There was a sharp edge to her words, and she still wasn’t smiling. I managed not to wince. Shelby was one of those people who looked miserable, almost funereal, when she wasn’t smiling. When she did, it seemed like she could outshine the sun.

She hadn’t been smiling much at me recently.

“I’m sorry I didn’t invite you,” I said. “I knew you had a show this afternoon.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” she said, after a pause that left me squirming. Finally, the corners of her mouth tipped upward, and she asked, “How’d you like it?”

I grinned. “I thought it was fantastic.”

“Good, because I thought we had some pacing issues during the conservation section,” she said, and began chattering rapidly about the structure of the tiger show, leaving me free to listen and enjoy being back in her good graces.

Shelby was possibly the most dangerous opponent I’d ever faced: brilliant, beautiful, and a biologist who knew how to wrestle a mountain lion without hurting either herself or the animal. She hit all my buttons at once. And she didn’t even know my real name, or anything else about my real life. That was part of why she was annoyed at me—I kept pulling away every time she got too close, and I was pretty sure she was getting tired of my crap.

Her talk about the tiger show was winding down. I watched her carefully, trying to decide what the appropriate next move would be. Shelby answered the question for me by crossing the room, leaning forward, and kissing me. I reacted without thinking, sliding my arms around her waist and kissing her back, pulling her against me until I could smell the faint wild traces of tiger on her skin.

When she pulled away, her smile had become something sweeter and darker, like cherry cola syrup. “Come on, Alex, what do you say? Take a girl to dinner after work?”

“I’d love to,” I said, allowing my honest regret to come through in my voice, “but I can’t. I have two school groups coming tomorrow, and I have a lot of work to do on the samples that I collected today. I’m really sorry.”

Shelby’s smile faded, replaced by a look of profound sorrow. The first few times I disappointed her, I thought I’d broken her heart. It took weeks before I realized that she was just one of those people who looked like the world was ending every time she was a little unhappy. “You and science have the best relationship. I’m not sure there’s really room in it for me.”

“Shelby—”

“You’ve canceled six dates on me, Alex, and that’s in the last month. I know we’re not official or anything, but a girl likes to know that the man she’s seeing actually wants to see her once in a while.”

“He does! I mean, I do! I’ve just been busy lately, that’s all.” My words sounded hollow even to my own ears. Maybe Shelby had a point. Maybe it wasn’t fair to either one of us for me to keep stringing her along like this. If I was just willing to admit that it was never going to work, I could save us both a lot of pain in the long run. (In the short run, however, I would be dealing with an angry Australian woman who had access to a large number of predatory cats for the rest of my tenure in Ohio.)

And I couldn’t do it. I liked Shelby. I liked feeling like there was someone in the world who didn’t give a damn about my family or our mission, and who just liked me for me. It would all fall apart eventually, but for now . . .

For now, I just wanted to enjoy it.

Shelby frowned. “You’re really sure you can’t come out with me tonight? There might be ice cream in it for you . . .”

“You have no idea how much I wish I could,” I said, shaking my head. “Can I maybe get a rain check?”

There was a brittle edge to her laughter as she said, “At this rate, we’d need a monsoon for you to pay back all the rain checks that you owe. Come on, Alex. Give me a date. I’m begging you here. Have mercy, and tell me when I’ll need my rain gear.”

I grimaced. It would take most of the night to dissect the frickens. The next night, I was supposed to be watching my cousin so that my grandparents could have their date night. But the night after that . . . “How’s the day after tomorrow?” I asked. “If you say it’s good, I promise you nothing will interfere. I’ll be all yours for the whole evening.”

“You know, I’m fairly sure I’ve heard that one before,” she said. “What can you offer to sweeten the deal?” Shelby stepped close enough to poke me in the chest. “Well?”

“Um . . . no biology homework?”

“Aw, and see, I was hoping for a bit of biology homework. The practical sort.” Shelby leaned up and kissed me, long and slow and with the kind of promise that made me truly regret the fact that I couldn’t go home with her immediately. She smiled again as she pulled away, a languid expression that she could almost have borrowed from the cats she cared for. “I’ll see you then. Don’t you dare be late. And now, you’ll be going. I need to change.”

She pushed me out of the office and into the hall, where I stood, gaping like an idiot, as she closed and locked the door behind me.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a flurry of school groups and the usual questions about the denizens of the reptile house, many of which were some variation on “can’t you make it be less boring?” Reptiles are fascinating things, but you have to be willing to spend a lot of time waiting for them to move.

The kids who passed through the reptile house would probably have been a lot more interested in my private research projects—frogs with feathers and winged lizards that could turn a man to stone. Hopefully, with a little luck and a little more time, we’d be able to bring things like the frickens and the basilisks into the protected valley of mainstream science before they went totally extinct in the hinterlands of cryptozoology.

I was in a rotten mood by the time we closed. I didn’t like abandoning Shelby and her interesting notions of biology homework just to spend another night alone with my microscope. I know I’ve already said that I sometimes envy my sisters, but nights like these are the ones where it gets hard to deal with. Verity chose a field of specialization that regularly brings her into contact with sapient cryptid species who could explain what they were and where they came from. I chose something that looks a lot like traditional biology. Just a little more likely to turn you to stone or melt you or mutate you if you’re not careful about what you’re doing.

Basically, I chose the specialization that means spending an awful lot of time alone. I drove along the tree-lined streets of Columbus and cursed myself for poor career choices, poor wardrobe choices, poor choices of pet . . . basically, if I could curse myself for it, I did. It made me feel a little bit better, paradoxically; after all, if I was doing absolutely everything wrong, I was at least consistent. That was something, right?

My grandparents live in one of Columbus’ older housing developments, a place the locals call “Bexley,” which was designed back when they still allowed multiple types of homes in every neighborhood. You have to pay close attention to realize that the same six frames repeat over and over again as you drive through the area. If you don’t, you could easily mistake their neighborhood for something that occurred organically, rather than being planned by some canny developers out to make a buck. Even if you weren’t paying close attention, though, you’d probably realize that there’s something a little bit . . . off . . . about my grandparents’ place. It’s the only three-story house on the block, for one, and the only house with a widow’s walk. But most of all, it’s the only house surrounded by an eight-foot fence with spikes on top.

My grandparents have been practicing “blending in with the neighbors” for a long time. Maybe someday, they’ll actually be good at it.

The gate was already open, in anticipation of my arrival. Grandma’s car was in its customary place by the door, and Grandpa’s car was parked behind it. I pulled up behind him.

“Home sweet home,” I said, turning off the engine. The porch light was already on as I walked up the pathway to the door. I smiled at that small gesture of hospitality, pulling my house keys out of my pocket.

I didn’t start my stay in Columbus by moving in with my grandparents. I originally had an apartment downtown, right in the heart of the city, where I’d be able to experience the nightlife and see the sights. Only after six months, I figured out that all the nightlife did was make it hard for me to sleep, and the only sights I was seeing were either through a microscope or out in the swamp, which was nowhere near where I was living. And then my cousin Sarah got seriously hurt saving Verity’s life, and it suddenly seemed like a really good idea for me to take my grandparents up on their offer of a place to stay. We’re family. We stick together.

“Grandma, Grandpa, I’m home!” I called, dropping my briefcase next to the coatrack and peeling off my light jacket. Not that I needed one for Ohio in the spring, but I grew up in Oregon; I feel naked without a coat. Crow appeared at the head of the stairs, croaking once in greeting before disappearing again, off on some obscure griffin business that didn’t involve coming down for scritches.

“Alex!” My grandfather emerged from the kitchen. He was grinning widely, and had a frilly apron that read “Kiss the Cook” struggling to remain tied around his waist. “You made it in time for dinner!”

I smiled. “That was the goal. I have a lot of work to do tonight, so I figured I should spend some quality time with my family.”

“Good,” said Grandpa. “I look forward to hearing about your day. Now come give your grandmother a kiss.” He motioned for me to follow him. Being an obedient grandson, I did as I was bid, and stepped into the warm, homey-smelling air of the kitchen. Sometimes it’s good to go where everybody knows your name . . . and your species.

My grandparents have what could charitably be referred to as “a mixed marriage.” Not in the sense that they’re of different religions or races, but in the sense that they’re actually different species, and neither of them is a member of the species commonly known as Homo sapiens. (Their daughter, my mother, is human. She was adopted.)

Grandma Angela is a cuckoo, a form of hyper-evolved parasitic wasp with annoyingly strong telepathic abilities. They look like pale, black-haired humans, for reasons that only nature can explain. Nature’s not talking, possibly because even nature realizes that giving perfect camouflage to apex predators is sort of a dick move. Grandpa Martin is a little closer to human—or at least, he started out that way. He’s what we call a Revenant, a construct of formerly dead body parts that has been successfully reanimated through one highly unpleasant mechanism or another. In his case, it was your standard mad scientist bent on denying the laws of God and man in favor of obeying his own twisted muse. The result of that long-dead scientist’s tinkering was my grandfather, a six-and-a-half-foot–tall man who looks, charitably speaking, like he’s wrestled one too many bears in his day. He’s one of the nicest men I’ve ever met, maybe because he doesn’t feel like anything is worth getting too worked up over.

Grandma married him because he was the first man she’d ever met who wasn’t affected by her telepathy. This is the sort of thing that Internet dating sites never have a field for. Anyway, they’d settled in Ohio and adopted three children: my mother Evelyn, my uncle Drew, whose room I was currently occupying, and my cousin Sarah, who was my age. (Technically, this makes Sarah my aunt, but “cousin” is a better match for our respective ages and actual relationship.)

Speaking of Grandma, she was taking dinner out of the oven when Grandpa and I walked into the kitchen. She raised her head and smiled. “Alex! You’re home early.”

I glanced at the clock. “It’s almost six. I need to work on my definition of ‘early.’”

“But you can’t argue with me, now, can you?” She handed the covered casserole dish to my grandfather, who didn’t need oven mitts to transport it safely to the table. “Give me a hug and wash your hands before you put your nametag on. We’re having shepherd’s pie for dinner.”

“I love your shepherd’s pie.” I obligingly hugged her before moving to the sink. I couldn’t stop myself from glancing toward the dining room door as I turned the water on. “How is she?”

Grandma sighed. “It’s not her best day,” she admitted. “She’s still having trouble remembering who I am. But she’s up and moving around under her own power, and she picked her own clothes out this morning. So that’s a good sign.”

“Grandma . . .”

“I know, I know. But it’s not like there’s a manual for this, all right, Alex? There’s no one I can ask. Sarah will get better at her own pace.”

“Or she won’t.” I tried to keep my words gentle. I didn’t quite succeed.

My cousin Sarah is a cuckoo, like Grandma, even though they’re probably not biologically related. Like all cuckoos, she manipulates the memories of the people around her as a sort of natural defense, making them feel like she belongs. Well, a few months ago, the Covenant of St. George managed to corner my sister, Verity. If they’d been able to take her back to Europe with them, they could have learned everything there is to know about our family, starting with the part where we still exist, despite being officially wiped out after the Covenant branded us as traitors to humanity. (The Covenant of St. George: assholes with a cause. They want to wipe out all the “monsters” in the world, and the definition they use encompasses most of my family. Oh, and that thing about us being traitors to humanity? That’s because we used to be members of the Covenant. Hell hath no fury like a centuries-old organization of zealots scorned.)

Verity couldn’t let that happen. Sarah couldn’t let that happen, and so she stepped in and used what’s supposed to be a passive defense in an active fashion, revising the Covenant’s memories of what they’d seen in New York. The result was a bunch of brain-blasted operatives . . . and one brain-burnt cousin.

Grandma went to New York to bring Sarah home. I moved in with them three days later.

My grandmother looked at me silently for a moment, processing my contradiction. Then she nodded, very slightly, and commanded, “Dry your hands, put on your nametag, and bring the biscuits.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I’ve always found it best to do as I was told when dealing with my grandmother. Both my grandmothers, really. Dad’s mom isn’t any less terrifying when crossed.

The nametag was preprinted, large block letters on a white background. ALEX. Without her telepathy, Sarah—whose species didn’t evolve with the need to recognize faces, thanks to their habit of reading minds—couldn’t tell one person from another. That included her family. She could normally have told us apart by voice, but as bad as she’d been lately, that was by no means a guarantee. Nametags made things a little easier on her, and hence a lot easier on the rest of us.

Grandpa had already dished out the shepherd’s pie when we got to the dining room. I put down the biscuits at the center of the table and took my seat across from Sarah, pulling my plate closer to me. Her plate was conspicuously empty. That meant this wasn’t one of the days when she could be trusted with a fork. This was going to be a fun dinner.

“Hi, Sarah,” I said.

She kept her eyes fixed on the table as she mumbled something I couldn’t understand. A brief pressure at my temples informed me that she was trying to make contact. I was once again grateful for the anti-telepathy charm Grandma insisted I keep on me until Sarah’s recovery was finished. Sarah no longer remembered enough about her own strength to watch her volume, and I didn’t need another migraine from her screaming inside my head.

“Here you go, sweetheart,” said Grandma, placing a biscuit on Sarah’s plate. It was liberally smeared with ketchup. Sarah didn’t react. Sighing, Grandma kissed the top of her head. “Just eat when you feel like it, Sarah. That’s all we need from you right now.” She took her own seat, shoulders slightly slumped.

I know Sarah did what she did of her own free will. I know Verity didn’t ask to be captured by the Covenant. But sometimes, when I saw my grandmother looking so defeated, I just wanted to scream at both of them for having been so careless.

Instead, I stuck my fork in my shepherd’s pie, and asked, “Have either of you heard anything about lindworms in Ohio?”

“Not in a long time,” said Grandpa. “Why?”

I smiled, trying to make the expression seem sincere. Maybe I couldn’t make Sarah better or figure out how to balance my duties and my social life, but I could do this. I could be there for my family, and I could help them remember that they weren’t alone, no matter how bad things got. “Dee and I went out into the swamp to gather fricken samples today . . .” I began.

This was dinner with my family. Everything else could wait a little while.