Discount Armageddon: An Incryptid Novel (26 page)

Still in that semilegal sublet in Greenwich Village

G
ETTING MY FAMILY OFF THE PHONE
was simplified when Dad got an email from Uncle Ted. Uncle Ted was following reports of a basilisk sighting off I-5, and really wanted some backup. (Basilisks are no laughing matter. Not unless your idea of “funny story” involves the phrase “and then the lizard turned my wife to stone.”) After delivering a few more hurried admonishments about checking in and not letting myself end up alone in a room with Dominic, Dad hung up. Mom and Antimony were right behind him—the last thing I heard was Antimony shouting, “Just let me get my crossbow!” before blessed silence descended.

Well, blessed silence aside from the horns honking in the street outside, the pigeons on my windowsill, and the distant, ecstatic cheering of the mice. I wasn’t feeling picky. My family was staying in Oregon, and I had the possible dragon all to myself.

I paused in the act of plugging my phone into the charger. I had the possible dragon all to myself. Perversely appealing as that thought was, it also wasn’t fair.
If there was even the slightest chance that the dragons weren’t extinct, there were some people who needed to know about it.

The dragon princesses.

I wasn’t actually scheduled to work until the next day. My job at Dave’s Fish and Strips may be about as intellectually taxing as watching paint dry, but it’s still exhausting, and I always try to take the days on either side of a major dance competition off. It’s safer that way, and reduces the odds of my becoming so tired that I lose my ability to deal with idiots. Knocking someone’s teeth out because they didn’t tip well is not a swift route to job security.

After a quick shower and an unhealthy meal of leftover pizza, spray cheese, and corn chips, I changed into clean clothes, put on a new pair of running shoes, packed a few replacement throwing knives, and jumped out the kitchen window. The pigeons were getting used to me. There were a few ruffled feathers, and I got my share of irritated looks, but none of them actually took flight as I plummeted past them, grabbed the fire escape rail, and slung myself across the courtyard. It’s amazing how quickly and completely the natural world can adjust. People forget that pigeons aren’t hatched from cracks on the sidewalk; they’re wild birds that have simply learned to exist in symbiosis with the human race. Their adaptation is proof that it can be done. We should applaud the pigeon as a survivalist totem, not call them “rats with wings” and shoo them off our windowsills.

The muscles in my thighs and shoulders loosened up as I ran, finding a rhythm that allowed me to compensate for the lingering stiffness in my left knee. My injuries hadn’t been as bad as they could have been. The bruises didn’t even slow me down much, although I felt them every time my heels made impact. I really hit my
stride about halfway to Dave’s, and finished the journey at full-speed, almost laughing from the sheer joy of feeling the wind against my face and the city beneath my feet. I felt like one of those spandex-wearing superheroes in the comic books that Sarah and Antimony swap back and forth when they think the rest of us aren’t looking. I felt like I could fly.

Even Superman has to land eventually, even if it’s just to talk to somebody who doesn’t have super powers. I started slowing down as I got closer to Dave’s, dumping speed by throwing needless tricks into my progress, so it would be less jarring when I finally touched down. I finished with a half-cartwheel that left me in a crouch, the remains of my inertia bleeding out through the sole of my right foot. I glanced at my watch. Decent speed, especially considering my injuries.

“Guess I’m going to live after all,” I said, and straightened. Dust from the rooftops clung to my jeans and the palms of my hands. I took a moment to dust myself off before walking over to the rooftop door, testing the knob, and—upon finding it unlocked—letting myself inside.

The dressing room was deserted except for Carol, who was engaged in her usual mortal combat against her own hair. The tiny snakes covering her head writhed and snapped at her fingers, dodging frantically in their efforts to avoid the wig she was trying to clamp down over them. I couldn’t entirely blame them. My hair was always sticky with sweat and matted in weird patterns when I had to wear my Valerie wig for any length of time, and my hair isn’t independently alive. I knocked on the doorframe. She looked up, turning her head fast enough to give her bangs the opportunity to sink their fangs into her thumb. They did so, with gusto.

“Ow!” yelped Carol, dropping her wig and shoving
her injured thumb into her mouth, going cross-eyed with the effort of glaring at her own hair. The snakes, sensing danger, promptly withdrew into hissing clusters. “’toopid ’air,” Carol mumbled around her thumb.

I winced. “Sorry about that. Are you going to be okay?” A lesser gorgon like Carol can’t actually turn people to stone—their gaze doesn’t work on anything much larger than a guinea pig—but that doesn’t make them harmless. The bite of their serpentine hair (and yes, I realize exactly how that sounds) can kill.

Carol shook her head, pulling her thumb out of her mouth. She squinted at the rows of tiny puncture wounds. “We’re immune to our own venom,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Hi, Verity. I thought you weren’t on duty tonight.”

“I’m not. I’m here to see Candy—is she here?”

That got Carol’s attention. She turned to blink at me, even her hair standing at attention and directing all of its several hundred eyes in my direction. “Seriously? Is this one of those ‘if I tell you where to find her, you’ll walk out of here with her head in a bag’ situations? Because I don’t like Candy very much, but I’m still pretty sure I’m not allowed to sell her up the river.”

I rolled my eyes. “Gee, Carol, way to tell me what you really think of my loyalties. I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t even particularly want to call her nasty names. I just want to talk to her. So is she on duty or not?”

“Sorry. It’s just, well … if anyone around here could inspire you to homicide, it would be Candy, right?” Carol shrugged, looking sheepish. “Yes, she’s on duty. She should be taking her break soon, if you just wanted to wait here. You’re not exactly, um, what Dave would call ‘projecting a professional image’ right now.”

“You mean I don’t look like a Playboy Bunny? My poor heart breaks.” I walked over to perch on the edge of the dressing table, turning to peer at myself in the mirror. I was developing a pretty nice shiner around my right eye—I didn’t even remember getting hit there—
and one of the only really visible scrapes ran down the same cheek. I looked like I’d been letting my boyfriend beat me up for fun. “You should’ve seen the other guy,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Never mind.” I hoisted myself up to perch on the makeup counter, careful to stay out of range of Carol’s hair. “So what’s been going on around here for the last couple of days? I am experiencing a drought of gossip, and demand the sweet rain of information.”

“Well,” said Carol, as she picked up her wig and resumed her efforts to stuff her hissing hair beneath it, “Kitty called from the road, and it turns out her boyfriend’s band isn’t doing quite as well as she expected, which
I
don’t think is surprising in the least, but she, of course, thought they’d be the next big thing. Anyway—”

I leaned back against the mirror, listening to Carol talk, careful to nod at the right places and make the correct exclamations of surprise when prompted. Bit by bit, she coaxed her snakes under the wig, settling them one row at a time, like a general trying to control the world’s most disobedient army. “You should get a beehive wig,” I said, without really thinking about it. “One of those huge bouffant hairstyles. Then you could just hollow out the center, so you wouldn’t have to squash your snakes when you put it on.”

Carol’s hands froze, eyes going wide and startled. “I never even thought of that!” she said. “Big hair is in again, isn’t it?”

“Not quite
that
big—” I protested, but it was too late; the seed was planted. Carol resumed stuffing snakes beneath her wig, smiling bright as sunshine.

“I’ll go to the wig shop after my shift. Thanks, Verity. You’re the best.”

“You’re, uh, welcome,” I said, unable to keep myself from thinking of those old urban legends about girls whose beehive hairdos turned out to be full of spiders, or earwigs, or other horrible things. How long before “
and her hair was full of
venomous snakes
” joined the roster?

Oh, well. If you can’t actually be an urban legend in your own right, I guess inspiring one is just about as good.

“Slumming in the bestiary again, Price?” asked a snide voice from the doorway. I glanced over. Candice was standing just inside the room, arms crossed defensively across her chest, model-pretty features drawn into a scowl. Her shoulders were set like she expected a fight. Maybe she did. I
had
told her the Covenant was in town not all that long before, and now here I was with another bombshell.

I slid off the counter, keeping my body language as open and nonthreatening as I could manage. “Hey, Candy,” I said. “I actually came to talk to you, if you could give me a few minutes? It’s sort of important.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What could
you
possibly want to discuss with
me
?”

I glanced unobtrusively toward Carol, who was trying to look like she wasn’t watching this little drama in the mirror. “It’s sort of private. Would you mind coming up to the roof with me?”

“Why, so you can throw me off?” Candy demanded.

I bit the inside of my cheek and counted to ten before saying, very carefully, “I have no intention of throwing you off the roof, and if you’d rather we talk here, I’m perfectly willing. I just thought you might like to have the chance to decide whether or not to tell the Nest, rather than risking this getting into the rumor mill and reaching them some other way.”

Carol rolled her eyes. “Thanks for putting such trust in my discretion.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about.” I jerked a thumb toward the air vent. “You really think Dave doesn’t have this place bugged?”

“Good point.” Carol turned in her chair, half her
snakes still exposed and snapping fiercely at the wig. “Candy, go up to the roof with her. If you’re not back down here in ten minutes, I’ll get Ryan and come looking for you. Promise.”

Candy still looked unsure. I sighed. “If you don’t think my information was worth your time, I’ll give you fifty dollars,” I said, picturing my groceries for the week growing wings and flying away. I could always make do with leftovers stolen from the kitchen at Dave’s. That was mostly what I’d been doing anyway.

“One hundred,” countered Candy.

“A hundred—Candy, I make the same amount of money you do! Less, even, since you get better tips.” She had an ice princess demeanor with a Playboy Bunny’s looks. I’m no slouch in the looks department, but my tendency to break fingers that “accidentally” touch my ass means I don’t tend to get the tables with the repeat customers.

“One hundred, or I don’t go with you,” said Candy, lifting her chin in an imperious gesture that telegraphed exactly how serious she was. Only the promise of money—all but irresistible to a dragon princess—was getting her to the rooftop, and fifty wasn’t going to cut it.

I sighed. “One hundred,
if
you think my information isn’t any good.”

“Deal,” said Candy, and unfolded her arms. Moving with quick efficiency, she untied her apron, placed it in her locker, and padlocked the whole thing, protecting her tips. She went through that ritual every time she took a break, and it had long since stopped being insulting; it was just another part of being who she was, a dragon princess surrounded by creatures that looked like her, but really belonged to another species altogether.

Sometimes I think evolution
really
didn’t do the totally human-form cryptids any favors. It’s so easy to forget that they aren’t like the rest of us—geeky, like Sarah
or Artie, or maybe a little spaced-out, like Uncle Ted, but still essentially just folks—and start judging them by human standards. You can’t do that. It isn’t fair.