Precious flew back to his shoulder, where she flapped her wings and hissed at Fen.
“Is she defending you?” Fen asked incredulously. “Just how smart is she?”
“I don’t know if she understood that you were calling me a liar, but she could tell you were mad at me. She obviously didn’t get what I was trying to do with the note, but she does seem to understand feelings.”
“Figures.” Fen sat down on the grass and fed more sticks into the fire. “I get dumped in a swamp, and you get a beautiful little empathic dragon.”
“I got dumped in the swamp too,” Carter protested.
He sat down on grass that squished unpleasantly. She pointedly scooted away from him. The moment when they’d kissed kept replaying in his mind. It had been one of the very best moments of his entire life, and now she was furious with him again and he had to lie to her again. And not only did he have to lie to her, but she probably wouldn’t even believe the true parts. And they were still lost and hunted in a swamp.
And she'd never let him kiss her again.
That’syourfault,hissed a monster.
We told you to be honest,screeched a monster.
[guilt-trip purple]
“Okay. I’ll start at the beginning. This is going to be hard to believe, but keep in mind…” He indicated Precious. “Dragonette.”
Fen impatiently gestured to him to get on with it.
“Magical animals exist. Dragonettes. Bugbears. Kittens with wings. All sorts of strange little creatures… and sometimes not so little. They’re very rare and hidden, and the people who know about them keep them secret for their own protection. They don’t want them to get locked up in secret labs and experimented on. With me so far?”
“Sure,” said Fen, a little grudgingly. Then, softening a bit, “Kittens with wings sound adorable. I’d love to pet one.”
“They’re unbelievable nuisances,” said Carter. “Like toddlers that will never grow up, and can fly. Nothing’s safe from them. And bugbears are even worse. Remember in the plane, when you saw blue hairs on my coat and asked if I had a blue cat, and I said they were from a carpet? You were right, they were animal hairs. Only they were actually from a bugbear.”
“And a bugbear is…?”
“A hairy thing the size of a Saint Bernard, but blue. It steals chocolate, breaks things, and sheds. A guy I know has one.” He paused, watching her for a reaction. “Do you believe me?”
In a perfect mimicry of his gesture and inflection, she indicated Precious and said, “Dragonette.” Returning to her own voice, she said, “How did you get involved with the magical animals, though?”
He took a deep breath. This was the part he wished he could avoid. Choosing his words carefully, he said, “Because cute little animals like Precious aren’t the only magic in the world. There’s also shifters—people who can shapeshift into animals. It runs in families, usually. Shifters live alongside regular humans, but they keep their abilities absolutely secret from non-shifters. It’s for the same reason magical animals are secret—no one wants to get locked up and treated like a lab animal.”
Fen looked deeply suspicious. “Uh-huh. And this relates to you how?”
Here goes.His stomach was tied up in knots. He struggled to keep his breathing under control. “I was born a shifter. My whole family can turn into snow leopards. When I disappeared for a year, it was because I’d been kidnapped and experimented on by a black ops agency. When you’re a shifter, it doesn’t just mean you can become an animal. There’s a part of you thatisthat animal. It’s a voice in your mind, a place in your heart. It’s the deepest, most primal, mostyoupart of you. That was my snow leopard. And they killed him. I’ll never become a snow leopard again. I can’t prove any of this to you.”
He waited for her to say “How convenient” or something along those lines. But she didn’t. She kept still, looking at him with those dark eyes of hers. They were wells of emotions he couldn’t understand.
Unable to bear the suspense, he said, “Go on, get it over with. Call me a liar. Just don’t scream it.”
He was bracing himself so hard for it that when she leaned over and put her hand over his, he almost jumped out of his skin. “What’s that for?”
“It’s a thing humans do to express sympathy, you weirdo.” She squeezed his hand. “I’m not going to call you a liar. I believe you.”
“Why?” he blurted out.
“Because when you said they killed your snow leopard, you didn’t sound like you were lying or fucking with me. You sounded like it broke your heart.”
Carter felt like he’d been punched him in the gut. He’d tried so hard to keep his emotion under control, but either he’d done a terrible job or sharp-as-a-tack Fen Kim had seen right through him. “Yeah. It did. Let’s talk about something else. I mean, I’ll explain the rest of it, but let’s table the exact details about what they did to me.”
He felt equal parts guilty and relieved when she nodded. “No problem. Believe me, I have lots of questions that have nothing to do with that.”
“I bet you do. Okay, you asked how I knew about the magical animals. A while back I helped some other shifters break into another secret lab that was experimenting on people. It also had a bunch of magical animals in cages. Some of them got adopted by the team I was with, and some of them escaped. I’m pretty sure Precious is one of the ones that escaped. I really did meet her today. They have a way of finding people they want to attach themselves to.”
