That helped a little bit, and by the time Rikki got back on the phone, she was feeling a little better.
“Okay, I talked to Wil, and Wil called a friend of his, and long story short is that yes, what it sounds like you have there is not only a cryptid, but a fantastically endangered one.”
“How endangered–”
“Wil’s friend Dag said there are only four breeding pairs in the world.”
“Oh. Oh wow.”
“Yup. There’s a story about how eating a gem found in their hearts means that you’ll live forever, and that hasn’t done them any favors. So yeah, do not call animal control. Dag has someone in the area who can be out to you in two hours or so. There’s just one catch.”
“Okay, I’m listening while also reminding you that the city budget is–”
“Oh, nothing like that. He’s just going to need some childcare.”
CHAPTER TWO
∞∞∞
“Alexander James,” Luca tried.
AJ delicately plucked another raisin carefully from the plate in front of him and popped it in his mouth.
“Allen Jacob.”
He ate another one.
“Aaron… Aaron John.”
AJ looked up at that, which gave Luca a hopeful moment, but then he picked up another raisin and offered it to Luca hesitantly.
Sighing, Luca accepted the raisin with a polite thank you, eating it and trying to come up with some other plausible things his sister and her wife might have named their kid.
It wasn’t his fault. He’d been in New Mexico when AJ was born. He’d showed up when AJ was eight months old, and Luisa and Allison had been calling him AJ. AJ was a great name, one of the best as far as Luca was concerned, and he had never considered that there might be a time when he was babysittinghis nephew and realizedhey, maybe I better know what his full legal name might be.
He supposed he could have asked Luisa, but that would mean calling her at the Northwoods cabin where she and Allison had gone, and from their last encounter when he had picked up AJ from their house in Evanston, that would be a really, really bad idea.
“We need this,” his youngest sister had said, looking directly into his eyes. “I don’t think you understandhow much we need this.”
“Er, I understand that you’ve been under a deadline, and the pipe bursting, and AJ had that cold for a while–”
“You understand nothing, Luca Reyes,” his sister hissed. “If I do not get three full days without something going wrong, three days where I can have a conversation with Allison that does not involve laundry, plumbing, our kid, or DoorDash, I will spontaneously combust. Do you want me to spontaneously combust?”
Her jade green eyes, twin to his own, were wide, hard, and unblinking, and Luca found himself shaking his head.
“I do not want you to spontaneously combust.”
Luisa broke into a sunny smile that was somehow more alarming than her direct stare had been, and Luca’s panther rumbled uneasily.
“Good,” she said. “We understand each other. Now all of AJ’s stuff is in the suitcase, you have our numbers and where we’ll be staying, and we’ll be back on Monday. AJ, come here, give Mama a kiss!”
AJ had sniffled a little when his mothers had taken off, but his stuffed banana toy was enough to distract him while Luca got him buckled into the car seat for the ride back to his place a half hour west. They were almost home when he’d started whimpering, and Luca realized that he probably needed some food.
Without thinking he’d pulled into a drive-through before he realized that a cheeseburger was probably the size of AJ’s head, and then he’d parked in the lot to get a moment to figure out what to do.
“You’ll figure it out, she says,” he muttered, pulling up his phone while AJ’s whimpering got progressively louder. “I really hope there’s care sheets for two-year-olds online.”
As a matter of fact, there were, and five minutes later, they were seated at one of the outdoor tables, a half cup of raisins from Luca’s forgotten lunch poured into AJ’s favorite dinosaur plate. He watched tensely until AJ poked the raisins, deemed them acceptable, and started eating. He relaxed a little, seeing AJ take nourishment. He figured Luisa would have told him if the kid was a picky eater, and even if he was, it wasn’t like he was a baby snake, which might actually not eat for weeks after hatching.
