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.

“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?”