“I was going to make over a room so Carter could have his own office,” said Roland, his expression completely deadpan. “I could add some carpet to the wall. I don’t think they make scratching posts big enough.”
Fen was starting to glare at them, so Carter gave her a little head-shake. They were only teasing him because they knew it was longer a real sore spot. But he had to maintain his image, so he said, “You’re all just jealous because you can’t fly.”
“I can fly,” Natalie said.
“You’re jealous because you can’t breathe fire,” said Fen.
“I can fly, and Iamfire,” said Roland.
“You’re just jealous because you can’t change colors,” said Carter.
Roland raised his eyebrows, stepped back, and stretched out his arms. The flames that burst from his palms burned red, then orange, then white, and finally blue before they winked out.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” Carter said, intrigued.
Roland shrugged. “There’s not much call for it. I don’t normally need to make a fire hot enough to melt metal.”
There was a brief silence. Carter wondered exactly how hot Roland’s phoenix fire could burn.
Hotter than ours, said his inner chimera.Much hotter. Hot enough to burn the world.
Roland’s expression was unassuming, but he had to know that himself. Even in his new body that was part dragon, Carter couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have that kind of power contained within himself.
“How did you all know to come here, anyway?” Fen asked. “I was running to try to flag down a car and call the office, and I ran straight into Merlin.”
“This is going to sound odd,” said Roland. “But back at the office, things started falling out of thin air. Literally. A stone cell phone materialized in mid-air, fell on the coffee pot, and smashed it. Then Fen’s driver’s license.”
“My driver’s license?” Fen repeated, baffled. “But I have that with me. And I still had the stone cell phone when you got here—I threw it at Merlin.”
Carter laughed. “Of course you did.”
“Very accurately, too,” Merlin put in. “Lucky thing I shrink fast.”
Natalie snickered. “Not many men feel that way.”
“But what about your own cell phone, Fen?” Carter asked. “Did that turn to stone too?”
“It must have. My purse suddenly weighed more. But I don’t think it does now.” Fen opened her purse and felt around. “It’s gone.” She took out her wallet. “My driver’s license is gone too.”
“It was obvious that someone was trying to tell us that Fen was under attack by a gargoyle,” Merlin put in. “Carter put tracking devices on our phones and cars a while back, so we could look up where his phone was when it had stopped signaling. Then we came straight here.”
“Almost straight here.” Pete glowered at Norris. “We had an unscheduled stop.”
“You didn’t have to,” Norris said defensively. “I was doing fine.”
“No, you weren’t,” chorused the team.
“He was driving as a fish with a store mannequin sitting in the driver’s seat,” said Pete, glaring. “The first cop who wasn’t literally sleeping on the job would’ve pulled him over.”
“You tried,” said Fen consolingly to Norris. “It was a clever idea… sort of.”
It was one of the worst ideas Carter had ever heard, but he supposed it was clever compared to driving as a fish with nothing in the driver’s seat.
“So we stopped him and suggested that he come with us,” said Merlin smoothly. “Since he was very concerned about you both.”
“And since we all knew if we didn’t, he’d jump back in the tank the instant we left,” grumbled Pete.
Norris ducked his head guiltily.
