Half-Off Ragnarok Read online

  “My grandparents believe that a healthy mind begins with a healthy environment.”

  Shelby paused with her mug half-lifted to her mouth, expression turning skeptical. “This isn’t hot carob with a soy-based ‘whipped cream’ on top, is it? Because I’m afraid I’ll have to pour it on you if you say it is.”

  “Not that kind of healthy, I promise.” Grandma had no arteries to clog, and Grandpa regularly flushed his circulatory system with acids. “Health food” wasn’t a risk in their kitchen. “I meant more that they really think a home should be a home, and not a house where you’re temporarily living.”

  “They sound like clever folks,” said Shelby, and finally sipped her cocoa before asking, “Is that why you agreed to move back home? I remember you used to have an apartment, even though I never saw it.”

  “That was part of it, yeah,” I agreed. Back in Portland, the house was always full of people—my parents, my sisters, my paternal grandmother, and whoever among our allies and extended family had followed us home that week. In Columbus I’d lived alone, in a one-bedroom apartment that didn’t allow pets. Its layout made it essentially indefensible. I hadn’t slept well once while I was living there. “And then there was Sarah. My grandparents couldn’t take care of her on their own, so they asked if I’d come and help them out.”

  “Family first,” said Shelby.

  “Yes, exactly,” I agreed. “Family first.”

  Shelby took another sip of her cocoa. For a moment, it felt like she was watching me over the top of the cup. The hairs on the back of my neck rose. Then she raised her head and smiled, and I knew that I was just being silly. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

  “Me, too.” I reached across the table and took her free hand. “I was really worried when the cops shooed me off and kept on talking to you.”

  “They mostly just wanted to know if I thought you might be a serial murderer.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I hope you told them that I was your beloved boyfriend who would never murder anyone.” Without good cause.

  “I told them you were a bastard who canceled dates and refused to let me see his home and probably had a wife hidden in the attic, but that you weren’t the type to commit murder in cold blood,” said Shelby sweetly, before taking another sip of cocoa.

  “Hey,” I protested. “I haven’t canceled that many dates.”

  “Any woman in the world will tell you that one date canceled is one too many,” Shelby said, and took a cookie. “I told them you almost certainly were not a serial killer, and that they were being horribly sexist by assuming that of the two of us, only you were capable of committing murder. That may have been a tactical error—it got me rather a lot more questioning that I hadn’t exactly been planning on.”

  “Well, yes. It’s usually unwise to tell the police you could be a serial killer if you really, really wanted to.” I took a cookie of my own, dunking it in my cocoa. “But everything is okay otherwise?”

  “You mean beyond the dead man in the bushes and our ruined lunch? Yes. Everything is fine. How was your staff?”

  “They’re not technically my staff. I don’t run the reptile house.”

  Shelby snorted. “Come off that, Alex. You run Dee, and Dee is the force that holds that place together. Before they hired her on to keep records, it was like a bunch of children playing at being a serious research institute.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “And you would know this how? We arrived at the zoo at the same time.”

  “Yes, and you brought Dee with you, and while your staff may have been too grateful to go telling tales, the rest of the zoo wasn’t so restrained. If you stuck your head outside the snake box every once in a while, you might have heard a thing or two.”

  My cheeks reddened. “I was busy getting settled into my new position.” Rearranging the labs so that no one would notice my basilisk enclosure had taken months, shifting things one piece at a time while Dee adjusted the paperwork and kept the rest of the staff distracted with her streamlined schedules and improved feeding processes. She wasn’t a zookeeper, but she knew her reptiles.

  “I know; the gossip had died down before you stuck your head aboveground, and by that point, it seemed a little silly to tell you everyone basically assumed you were in charge. Where’s the harm? Means no one’s monitoring your lunch hours, unlike me.” She grimaced. “I’m thirty seconds late and it’s another lecture from the head keeper on punctuality and pride and lots of other words that start with the letter ‘P.’”

  “Still. I didn’t know.” And I didn’t like it. I was supposed to be keeping a low profile, not setting myself up as the new god-king of the Columbus Zoo reptile house.

  “I know. That’s part of what made you so interesting.” Shelby grinned.

  After a pause, I grinned back. She started to lean across the table toward me. I did the same—and froze, pulling away just before our lips could meet. Shelby blinked at me, smile fading into a puzzled frown.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”

  “I’m sorry—I was going to give you something. Hang on just a second.” I bolted from the table before she could argue with me, running back into the front hall. The kitchen door swung shut behind me. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I chanted, wrenching open the drawer on the hallway table and digging through the mass of protection charms, rope, and old batteries that had built up over the years. (Why the old batteries, I don’t know. Maybe there’s some sort of natural law that says every drawer without an exact defined purpose has to contain a certain number of batteries.)

  I knew Shelby needed an anti-telepathy charm if she was going to be in the house. I’d planned for it. So how was it that the second I saw her standing there in her pretty blue dress, I forgot about everything important?

  The TV in the living room was still on, and Sarah was unlikely to have moved as long as her show was playing. That was something, anyway.

  The anti-telepathy charm was wedged into the bottom of the drawer, next to an anti-hex charm and a basilisk’s claw. I grabbed the thin cotton cord of the charm I’d been looking for and slammed the drawer, running back to the kitchen. I slapped a smile across my face and pushed the door open.

  “Sorry about that, Shelby; I just didn’t want to risk forgetting—” I stopped mid-sentence.

  Shelby was no longer at the kitchen table. She was standing near the sliding glass door to the backyard, frowning out into the darkness. “I think I saw something moving out there,” she said, stepping closer, so that her face was practically pressed up against the glass. “It didn’t look like a raccoon . . .”

  I didn’t think: I just moved, racing across the room and shoving her out of the way just before the creature she’d seen lunged toward the door. I caught a glimpse of madly flapping wings and a tail like a whip before a searing pain lanced through my eyes.

  The world went gray.

  Eight

  “The natural world has a place for everything. It’s just that some of those things make me think that Nature isn’t very fond of people.”

  —Martin Baker

  In the kitchen of an only moderately creepy suburban home in Columbus, Ohio, trying not to collapse from the sudden intense pain

  “ALEX!”

  Shelby’s shout snapped me out of my shock. I clapped my hands over my face—too little too late—and kicked the door, sending reverberations through the glass.

  “Shoo!” I shouted. “Go on, get out of here! You’re not welcome!” I kicked the door again. The pain in my eyes was immense, burning and freezing at the same time. I kicked the door a third time before staggering backward, bellowing, “Sarah!”

  I had asked her to be good. She had promised. Being good meant staying out of sight, and Sarah kept her promises. She didn’t answer me.

  “It’s gone, Alex, whatever it was, it’s gone.” Shelby grabbed for my elbow, trying to find purchase on my moving arm. “What’s wrong? Let me see.”

  “No.” I close
d my eyes tightly, gritting my teeth against the urge to shout for Sarah again. “Can you please get me to the kitchen table?”

  “Alex, this really isn’t the time—”

  “Please!”

  She went momentarily silent before she said, “All right, Alex. There’s no need to shout.” Her hand caught my elbow. “It’s this way.”

  “Thank you.” The pain was like nothing I had ever felt before. It was definitely something I never wanted to feel again.

  “What’s going on? What was that thing? What’s the matter with your eyes?”

  “I don’t know what it was, but you’re going to need to trust me for a minute, okay?” If only the backyard had been better lit. I hadn’t been able to see the thing that got me well enough to tell whether or not its wings had feathers. Feathers would mean basilisk; lack of feathers meant cockatrice. “My cousin is in the other room. She can’t hear me with the TV on. Go get her.”

  “Alex . . .”

  “Please.” The pain in my eyes wasn’t getting better, and in this situation, that was a good thing. Stone doesn’t hurt.

  There had been a thick pane of glass between me and the creature, even if it wasn’t properly polarized, and petrifaction is known to be less effective at a distance. Those factors combined might be enough to save my vision.

  “I don’t understand any of this.” Shelby sounded more irritated than frightened. Good. Irritation was easier to work with.

  “Just go get Sarah, please. She’ll be able to get the first aid kit.”

  “All right—but you’re going to explain everything,” snarled Shelby. I heard footsteps as she moved away, followed by the sound of the kitchen door swinging open. I slumped in my chair, resisting the urge to rub my eyes. That would just cause me more pain, and might result in structural damage.

  Everything was dark. I tried to focus on the last thing I’d seen, the creature on the back lawn with the wildly flapping wings and the serpent’s tail. Feathers or no feathers? The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that its wings had been more like a bat’s than a bird’s, but that could have been wishful thinking, me refusing to acknowledge that this could be my fault. If its wings weren’t feathered, it wasn’t one of my basilisks.

  How would one of the basilisks get this far from the zoo? The thought was compelling. Basilisks aren’t fast movers, and they’re extremely territorial, especially when the females get broody. If the zoo basilisks had managed to escape, they should have gone to ground on the spot, refusing to be budged.

  The door banged again as Shelby returned. “Alex? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Did you find Sarah?”

  “This is a positively appalling way to make an introduction, but yeah, I found her,” said Shelby. “She’s getting that first aid kit you wanted. Now are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Can we take this one step at a time for right now? Can you go to the fridge, please? There should be a bunch of bottles of water with different colored caps on the second shelf. Get one of the green-capped bottles. Please.”

  “I know they say ‘please’ is a magic word, but it doesn’t actually control the universe, you know.”

  “Shelby! I’m trying to not freak out right now, so please, can you go along with my seemingly irrational demands until we reach the point where I am capable of explaining myself in a calm and rational manner? Please?”

  There was a pause. Finally, Shelby said, “The green lid, you say?”

  “That’s the one.”

  The kitchen door swung open again, followed by the soft sound of bare feet against the floor. “I found the first aid kit. It was not in the land of talking bluebirds, although they’re very loud right now. Alex, what did you do?”

  “I locked eyes with a petrifactor,” I said. “Sarah, can you read right now?”

  There was a momentary pause before she said, “Not reliably. Numbers are easier.”

  “Okay. We can work with this. Shelby, give the bottle of water to Sarah and take the first aid kit. I need you to look for a vial labeled ‘belladonna.’”

  “What in the world would belladonna be doing in your first aid kit?”

  The pain in my eyes was starting to fade. I couldn’t tell if that meant my nerves were becoming overloaded, or if it was a sign that the damage was getting worse. Either option was bad. “Hopefully, saving my vision. Once you’ve found the belladonna—it should be a clear liquid—look for a jar of bilberry jam.”

  “You keep jam in your first aid kit. Alongside the belladonna.” Now Shelby sounded outright skeptical. That wasn’t good. I wanted her to help me, not call the authorities to report my nervous breakdown.

  “It’s a very specialized first aid kit,” I said, as patiently as I could. “Once you have the belladonna and bilberry, you need to mix them into the water Sarah’s got. Then—”

  “What, there’s more? Should I be getting a cauldron?”

  “A cauldron would be lovely,” said Sarah.

  “We’re getting off track here,” I said sharply. “There is a small refrigerator in the pantry. Open it. On the second shelf you will find a rack of antivenin. Get the vial labeled ‘P. cockatrice’ and bring it here.”

  “Alex, this is madness. If you’re really hurt, we need to get you to a hospital, not sit about playing chemistry lab with your cousin.”

  “A hospital wouldn’t help me,” I said. “Now please.”

  Something about my voice must have gotten through; maybe it was the desperation. There was a pause before Shelby sighed and said, “Oh, what the hell. It’s not like I had anything better to do this evening.”

  I groaned, and stayed where I was, hands clapped over my face, as I listened to my girlfriend and my cousin mixing the substance that might—if fate was kind and I’d been correct in my split-second taxonomical classification—save my eyesight. It was the longest five minutes of my life. Sarah occasionally offered murmured corrections, equally divided between “useful” and “complete non sequitur.” It would have been entertaining if I hadn’t been in so damn much pain.

  “How much jam?” asked Shelby.

  “Three large tablespoons full.”

  “And how much belladonna?”

  “The same.”

  Shelby muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “moron” and kept rattling around the kitchen, the clatter of her shoes followed by the softer padding of Sarah’s bare feet. I heard the pantry door open. “Second rack?”

  “That’s the one. Be careful with the vial. It’s all we have, and there’s none back at the reptile house.”

  “I can’t see why you think you need antivenin, you only looked at the thing—”

  “Please.”

  Shelby sighed. “I’m a fool for not loading you straight into my car and rushing you to the emergency room,” she said. There was a soft thud on the table in front of me. “The gunk you asked us to mash up is near your right elbow. Mind you don’t spill it, although what else you’re going to do with it is a mystery to me.”

  “I’m going to apply it to the affected areas,” I said. I lowered my hands. The unyielding darkness that had replaced the room did not change.

  Shelby’s gasp was followed by Sarah saying serenely, “Don’t worry, Alex, I caught the antivenin before it could hit the ground.”

  “Well, that’s my nightmares sorted for the next week,” I said sourly as I began feeling around the table for the jar of jam, belladonna, and purified unicorn water.

  “Alex, your eyes,” said Shelby.

  “I know.” My right hand found the jar. I picked it up, sticking the first two fingers of my left hand into the thick goop that it contained. Scooping out a generous dollop of the stuff, I began smearing it on and around my eyes. It didn’t sting, but the pain was still there, burning and freezing deep inside. I kept scooping and smearing until I had practically covered the top half of my face. Gingerly, I set the near-empty jar aside.

  “The antivenin, ple
ase,” I said, holding out my left hand.

  “Oh, Alex . . .” whispered Shelby. The familiar shape of an antivenin vial was pressed into my hand. I unscrewed the cap with my right hand—the one without sticky fingers—and said, as cheerfully as I could, “Let’s hope this works, okay?”

  Then I drank the contents of the vial in a single long gulp that burned all the way down.

  The trouble with many cryptids—the trouble, and the reason we cryptozoologists sometimes resist allowing them to be reclassified as part of the so-called “natural world”—is that their capabilities defy many of the things we currently pretend to understand about science. How can anything turn flesh to stone? No one knows, but the petrifactors still manage to do it. Why do bilberries counteract petrifaction? Again, no one knows, although there were some fascinating rumors about bilberries improving eyesight during World War II. (They weren’t entirely false. Eastern Europe has a terrible basilisk problem, and anyone who wanted to avoid being taken prisoner behind enemy lines needed to be prepared for a few unpleasant encounters. Bilberries could save your life, if you swallowed them while you still had a throat made of flesh.)

  Unicorn water isn’t actually the cure-all that legend claims it is, but it’s the purest thing known to man, cleansed down to the molecular level. That makes it the perfect sterile solution for something like this, since there was no chance of contamination before the seal on the bottle had been broken. I had applied the topical ointment. I had used the right ingredients. Now I just had to hope that I was as good at this as I thought I was.

  If I die this way, Antimony is going to decorate my statue for the holidays for the rest of time. I could practically see myself turned to solid gray stone, standing on the front porch of the family home, with tinsel and Christmas lights wrapped around my neck. The thought was horrible and hysterical at the same time. I laughed.

  It hurt.

  That was a good sign. I kept laughing, and it kept hurting, until I figured out where in the pain I had left my hands and used them to push myself upright. Peeling my cheek away from the kitchen table took some doing; I had been slumped over long enough for my jam-based facial mask to start turning sticky and trying to gum me down.