“I was just… picturing…” She was having trouble articulating between fits of giggles. “…a tree of dads… dangling from stems!”
A hot tide of embarrassment began to engulf him, then he too pictured it. The image was irresistibly funny. He also began to laugh. “With long… gray… beards! Like the Spanish moss.”
She seemed to find this hilarious. “They could wear T-shirts with dad jokes!”
“You’d know they’re ripe when the jokes are only funny if you’re over forty.”
She laughed so hard, she had to lean against the tree. He’d never seen her laugh like that. He’d never imagined that she was capable of laughing like that. And athisridiculous joke, too.
It’s a release of tension, that’s all,he thought.Because of the incredibly stressful situation we’re in.
She reached up, prodded a pawpaw, picked it, and tossed it to him. “Here. Have a dad.”
He laughed as he caught it, and that didn’t feel like a release of tension. The great and terrible Fenella Kim was unexpectedly funny.
He broke the fruit open. It came apart easily. Inside, it was yellow-white and smooth as an avocado, studded with shiny black seeds the size of almonds. It smelled tropical and intense, like a non-alcoholic daiquiri. He handed one half to Fenella. “Cheers.”
The flesh was soft as custard and very sweet, with flavors that reminded him of banana, mango, and birthday cake. Without a spoon, he felt like he was eating a crème brulee by plunging his face into it. But he was hungry and tired and stressed out, and if he’d been served a crème brulee without a spoon, he’d have done exactly that.
He finished the pawpaw and looked up. She was polishing off her half in what he suspected was a slightly more dainty manner, but the bar was low. She looked up, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and said, “If they squish when you poke them, they’re ripe. But they only keep a few days.”
“Fenella Kim, you’re a genius,” said Carter. “I don’t know what I’d have done in this swamp without you.”
“You’d have been forced to hunt bullfrogs or starve.”
“Then I do know what I’d have done. I’d have starved.”
They shared another pawpaw, then took another few days’ worth back to the boat. Now that he’d eaten something, he felt more clear-headed and less like he was running on adrenaline and fumes.Get in boat and paddle, hopefully away from enemies rather than toward them,was a perfectly reasonable strategy under the circumstances, but he could improve on it. As he paddled north, he pulled his thoughts together and considered what he knew about their enemies.
Several months ago, he’d helped his team—theteam, he corrected himself—to rescue Ransom and his mate Natalie from a wizard-scientist named Elayne and her minions. And that hadn’t been his first encounter with the wizard-scientists. By now he knew way more about them than he’d ever wanted to know.
Both the wizard-scientists and their minions were shifters who could transform into extinct or mythic beasts, the weirder the better. One of Elayne’s crew turned into a giant armored prehistoric fish! And just to make it more fun, they all had special powers of some kind; the fish guy, for instance, could also induce vertigo.
Carter didn’t have to worry that Elayne and her crew were after him; they’d been defeated and hauled off to shifter jail. But it gave him the general idea of what sort of enemies they’d be up against.
If they catch up with us, I’ll have to defeat a wizard shifter leading a gang of assorted magical beasts and prehistoric animals, all of them with powers,he thought glumly.The experiments that were done on me were supposed to give me powers, but they didn’t. And I can’t shift with Fenella around, so it’ll just be one man armed with an oar.
And Fenella,a monster growled.
She can fight,a monster hissed.
For once, his monsters had a point.
And one woman who can throw a mean can of soda,Carter agreed.
Fenella too seemed wrapped up in her own world. She paddled steadily, her dark eyes fixed on the horizon, her attention clearly turned inward. Even covered in mud, she was dignified and in control. She seemed like a very self-contained person.
If he’d imagined being lost and hunted in a swamp with Fenella Kim, he’d have pictured her refusing to go anywhere without her cell phone and makeup kit, while berating him about the time he’d tried to take over Little Bit and gloating over how she was going to take over Howe Enterprises. The last thing he’d have expected was a woman who fought like a snow leopard, remembered everything she’d learned when she’d been ten years old, had a whimsical sense of the absurd, and had never thought the worst of him, even back when they’d been enemies.
Back when we’d been enemies,he thought.Does that mean we aren’t anymore?
Enemies don’t feed each other,a monster put in.
Enemies don’t make plans together,gibbered a monster.
Carter hated to admit that the monsters once again had a point, but he had to admit that being hunted in a swamp with Fenella Kim could have been a whole lot worse. Lots of people would have panicked or teased him for caring that his favorite coat was ruined or demanded that they do something stupid or refused to believe that the note meant what it said or screamed at him about the radio. She’d taken everything in stride, gotten over the radio incident, and even found them breakfast.
He vowed that once they stopped, he’d catch some fish and build something useful, since so far he’d done nothing but ruin their chance to call for help and freeze at the worst possible moment. If only Fenella hadn’t charged out of the cargo bay, he could have shifted and then maybe they wouldn’t be here now.
