“She took me on a tour of her lab,” Norris went on. “It was amazing. So advanced! I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of her or her research group. And then she told me her secret: she was using magic.”
Fen glanced up, fascinated. “How’d she convince you it was real?”
“She turned into a harpy,” said Norris. “That was very convincing. Then she offered me a deal: if I worked for her in her lab, and also did some, um, other types of work for her, she’d give me the power to turn into the dinosaur of my choice. That is, of my choice from the ones she had available. She needed DNA to make it work.”
“Youchoseto be a Dunkleosteus?” Fen asked.
Simultaneously, Carter said, “So you could’ve been a T-rex or a pteranodon or anything, and you picked afish?”
Loftily, Norris replied, “She didn’t have a Dunkleosteus available as an option at that time. I had to work for her for years before we got a good enough sample to use on me. And even then, she made a big fuss about it not being practical. But I pointed out that she didn’t have any marine shifters and you never knew when you might be able to use one, and she finally gave in. So yeah, my finding power isn’t the most practical and I don’t like using my vertigo power—it’s kind of mean—but who cares? I wasn’t in it for the powers. I just wanted to be a Dunkleosteus!”
“You just wanted to be a Dunkleosteus,” Fen murmured. She was clearly about to get the giggles again.
“They’re my favorite dinosaur,” said Norris. “It’s so amazing to be able to turn into one!”
As Norris rhapsodized about the coolness of the Dunkleosteus, Carter couldn’t help being jealous. Norris loved his shift form as much as Carter had once loved being able to turn into a snow leopard.
“Anyway, I got what I wanted, but I didn’t realize exactly what sort of other work she meant for me to do,” Norris went on. “I’d assumed it was stuff like locating underwater fossils—things that would make sense for a Dunkleosteus to do. But no. Out of all the marine paleontologists she could have approached, she picked me because I’m a big guy and she assumed I’d be good at pushing people around. Just because I’m big doesn’t mean I’m a bully!”
“I get it, Norris,” Fen said unexpectedly. “From the opposite direction. People look at me and think, ‘Skinny Asian woman, she must be a pushover.’”
“I would never think that,” Norris assured her.
She gave him a remarkably sweet smile. “I believe you.”
“The very first mission she sent me on, I got punched out and arrested,” Norris went on glumly. “Honestly, I deserved it. I should have walked out once I realized what Elayne wanted me to do. But she’d threatened us all that she could take away our shift form, and I—” he shot a guilty glance at Carter. “I love mine so much.”
He kept a tight grip on his feelings, hiding them behind an expressionless mask and an impatient gesture at Norris to get on with his story. He didn’t look at Fen; he didn’t think he could bear to see her sympathy.
“So there I was, in shifter jail,” Norris continued. “They separated Elayne’s group so we couldn’t plot together. I was relieved. I didn’t much like any of them, and I especially didn’t want to hang out with Elayne. One day, this weird-looking guy showed up. He was dressed like a guard, and he had a long, scraggly gray beard and long, scraggly gray hair. He said his name was Balin and he was a wizard-scientist and a colleague of Elayne’s, and he’d break me out if I’d work with him on just one job. I asked him what it was, and he said it was sort of a continuation of my last one. I told him there was no way I was going up against that hellhound again, and he said he wasn’t interested in the hellhound. He asked me if I knew the name of the man who’d defeated me. I said yes, of course!”
Turning to Carter, Norris said, “The guards had already told me who you were. I mean the real guards. I feltterrible.So I thought, I could tell the guards—I mean the real guards—about this guy, so they could warn you. But then I thought, what if this guy Balinisone of the real guards? What if there’s a vast wizard-scientist conspiracy to infiltrate shifter jails? What if any warning I try to send from within the jail gets lost? So I said sure, I’d do anything for him as long as he broke me out.”
“Great,” Carter muttered. “Let me add this to my list of things to do as soon as I get out of this swamp: warn the Defenders that Elayne’s whole gang is out.”
“I don’t think they are,” Norris assured him. “Balin said I was in the lowest-security wing, so he was starting with me. He magicked my cell open, and all these alarms started going off, and there was this bright flash, and I was outside. I asked myself, ‘Where is Carter?’ And I ran straight to you! Apart from the parts where I drove and swam.”
“Huh,” said Carter. “And that was the last you saw of Balin?”
Norris nodded. “I assume he expected me to wait for him.”
Fen gave an inelegant snort of poorly suppressed laughter.
“I bet he did,” Carter muttered.
As they rowed on, Norris made light conversation mostly consisting of praising their products (Carter did enjoy that) and telling them marine dinosaur facts, and Fen alternated between stifling laughter, petting Sugar, and egging on Norris.
Carter had time to think. Much too much time to think. His main thought was,There goes any chance of Fen and me having sex again.
Chapter 11
By the timethe three of them (five if you counted Precious and Sugar) stopped at an island with a pawpaw tree for a lunch of pawpaws, Fen felt distinctly punchy. In the last twenty-four hours, she’d had the greatest sex of her entire life, thrown a flask holder at a giant prehistoric fish, acquired the greatest pet of her entire life (also the first, but she couldn’t imagine anything topping her darling Sugar), and involuntarily attended a college seminar on marine paleontology.
She’d spent the first half of the boat ride trying not to burst out laughing every time Norris opened his mouth, and the second half being painfully conscious that Carter wasright thereand there was absolutely no way they could have sex now that they had a third wheel present.
That is,she thought,a third fin.She barely managed to gulp down a howl of laughter.
Carter picked up a pawpaw with an air of grim resignation. “Norris, didn’t it occur to you to bring any food into the swamp?”
