Half-Off Ragnarok: Book Three of InCryptid by Seanan McGuire Page B

brilliant, capable, uh, girlfriend.” I was going to pay for that label later. I could see it in her eyes. “But I’m supposed to look after Sarah tonight. I promised my grandparents I’d stay home with her.” I realized guiltily that I wasn’t lying. This was supposed to be their date night, and I was about to ruin it by coming home and telling them that we had a petrifactor loose at the zoo. “They’ve had these theater tickets for weeks. I can’t back out on them, and Sarah won’t tolerate a sitter she doesn’t know.”
    Shelby sighed. “Your dedication to your family is one of the things I love about you. Maybe if I keep reminding myself of that, my needing to go home and spend the night sitting alone in my apartment, right after I’ve seen a dead man . . . well, maybe it won’t sting as much.”
    It was a statement calculated to make me feel bad. It was sincere enough that I didn’t mind. She had every right to fling that particular arrow at me: if I was supposed to be her boyfriend, I was doing a shitty job of it. “I’m really sorry,” I said. “Look—I’ll call, okay? I’ll get Sarah settled with a video or something, and I’ll call.”
    “If you don’t, I shall hunt you down tomorrow in the parking lot and remove your kidneys with a spoon,” she said blithely.
    “Deal.” I kissed her cheek. Anything else would have required us to stop walking, and I wanted to get to my . . . I stopped in my tracks, hauling Shelby to a stop along with me. “Oh, hell. Shelby, I’m sorry, I forgot something back at the reptile house. I gotta go.” Whatever had rustled in the bushes would be long gone by now, if it had ever been there in the first place. My imagination was playing tricks, and I wasn’t properly equipped to do this on my own.
    She blinked at me. “That’s all right, I’ll walk with you.”
    “No!”
    She blinked again, eyes widening. Then they narrowed into a stubbornly murderous expression that I knew all too well, since I’d been seeing it from most of the women in my life since I was born. “No? What did you forget, Alex, your pet monster?”
    Considering that what I had forgotten was Crow, the guess was closer than I was comfortable with. “No, but you’re not certified for venomous snake handling, and I forgot to milk our tiger snake in all the excitement. We’re supposed to make a delivery to the local hospital tomorrow. We can’t do that if I don’t milk the tiger snake.”
    “I’m Australian, and you’re seriously telling me I’m not safe around snakes.”
    “I’m sorry, zoo rules, I’ll call you tonight.” I kissed her cheek again. Then I turned and ran, putting her behind me as quickly as I could. I didn’t want to see the betrayed expression I knew was on her face.
    Running through the closed zoo right after a man had been found dead might have looked suspicious. I was willing to risk it, since it could also just look like normal human discomfort over hanging out where a corpse had recently been. “Reacting normally around dead things” had been one of the hardest lessons for my parents to teach to my sisters and me, since frequently, after we’d reacted normally, we were expected to take the dead things home for further study. My being a scientist alleviates that somewhat; I’m expected to react oddly, and a little morbidly, when I encounter bodies. I’ve never been sure how Verity manages. As a ballroom dancer, she’s pretty much expected to flip her shit if she sees so much as a rat.
    I burst back into the reptile house. Kim and Nelson were gone. Dee was still there, turning off lights and peering anxiously into enclosures. She turned at the sound of my footsteps. “Anything?”
    “No,” I said. “The zoo is—”
    “Closed, I know. I’m just double-checking the cages.”
    “I came back for Crow.” I started for my office door. “Do you want me to walk you to your car?” I felt guilty as soon as the offer was made. I’d left Shelby