Merlin made a lip-zipping gesture. As Carter dialed, Blue spotted a stray leaf on the table and lunged for it, sending Ransom’s coffee mug flying. With astonishing speed, Merlin caught it in mid-air.
Carter strode to the corner, followed by Fen, and turned his back on everyone else. She squeezed his free hand. He squeezed back hard.
“Hello?” It was an elderly lady.
“Hello, is this Kerenza Couch?” Carter asked. He pronounced it like the sofa.
“If you knew me, you’d know it’s pronounced Coach,” snapped the lady. “If you’re a telemarketer, take me off your list or I’ll put a curse on you. If you’re a scammer, you’re already cursed. I have my phone set up to do it automatically.”
With a grin at Fen, Carter said, “Neither. I want to get a curse reversed.”
“Oh, that’s more like it,” said Kerenza Couch. “What sort of curse?”
“Well… Do you feel a special kinship with wild animals?”
“No need to beat around the bush, young man. I’m a porcupine shifter.”
Very appropriate,Fen thought.She’s prickly.
“Okay then.” Carter proceeded to tell her a short version of the story. She didn’t seem particularly surprised at any of it. He concluded, “So I need to get Norris de-fished, and I need to stop myself from turning into a monster. Do you think you can help?”
“Hmph,” said Kerenza Coach. Fen didn’t think she’d ever actually heard a human being say that before, though she’d read it in novels. “I can’t make any guarantees over the phone. I’ll have to examine you both in person.”
“But it is the sort of thing you theoretically could do?”
That seemed to annoy her. “Young man, my great-great grandmother only escaped getting burned at the stake because she turned into a porcupine and waddled off into the woods. I come from a long line of porcupines with power. I’m a Couch!”
Carter determinedly didn’t look at Fen, which was just as well. She had the same urge to throw herself on the floor and howl that she’d had when Norris had been going on and on about the Dunkleosteus.
In a somewhat strangled voice, Carter said, “Yes. Excellent. Thank you.”
Slightly more graciously, Kerenza Couch said, “Come on over and I’ll see what I can do.”
“I’ll fly you to Georgia,” he said. “In my private plane. Or I can get you a ticket on a commercial plane if you prefer. Business class.”
“I said ‘come on over’ and I meant come on over. I’m eighty-nine years old. I don’t fly.”
Fen didn’t think she’d ever seen Carter look so flummoxed. His eyes turned from aqua, which she figured meant “pleased and relieved,” to an unflattering shade of bubblegum pink. “I don’t think I quite explained what a Dunkleosteus is. It’s not a goldfish I can carry in a bowl on my lap. It’s a prehistoric armored fish the size of a bus.”
“Transporting your fishy friend is your problem, young man,” snapped Kerenza Couch. “Transforming him is mine.”
She gave him her address and hung up. Carter leaned against the wall and groaned. “How do I get a Dunkleosteus in a swamp in Georgia to a witchy old lady’s house in Iowa?”
Fen squeezed his hand. “On the plus side, she did think she could help.”
“It’s simple,” Merlin said brightly. “Rent an aquarium truck and drive him. My circus had an aquarium truck for a while. It was when we had a shark shifter underwater dance act. My mom said just driving it around was the best advertising we ever did. Unfortunately, one of the shark shifters got in a fight with one of the flying squirrel shifters, and the sharks left in a huff. It all began when a very pretty lady shark—”
Carter gave him a withering look, his eyes flaring gold. “I am not driving an aquarium truck containing a giant prehistoric fish from Georgia to Iowa.”
“Why not?” Merlin inquired.
“Because! It’s dangerous and it’s absurd.”
“Do you have a better way to transport him?” Pete inquired.
Carter scowled and didn’t reply.
“I guess you could fly him,” said Natalie. “But there’d be a lot of questions if you did it commercially. And I don’t think your own plane is big enough.”
