His look dared her to make fun of him, so she only nodded and said, “I’d want to add a protein instead, but the whole thing smells yummy. Maybe we can all have some kind of joint food evening? Start with a base that works for all of us, like the caprese thing, and then have other things to add?” She started to say venison, realized that wouldn’t be polite with Toby in the room, and said, “Beef or maybe kangaroo, or I guess pork if we can’t get kangaroo here. And then other things for the herbivores who don’t eat a lot of meat.”
“We do that, actually,” Maren said. “Two huge slow cookers with chili — one with various animal meats, the other with tons of veggies. Honestly, I usually have a bowl of each. The same and yet different.”
Something outside caught Emmy’s attention, and her head swung to see a huge grey owl perched on a branch forty yards from the kitchen window. Her peripheral vision told her everyone except Maren had turned to see it.
“Great Grey Owl,” Rhea said. “Fucking beautiful.”
“And one of the many reasons I don’tchangein the yard,” Felix said.
“You’re a little big for the owl,” Rhea said, “but I occasionally see an arctic fox hanging around, so yeah, best not to risk it.”
“I’d outrun an arctic fox, and most everything else on land, it’s the whole death-from-above thing that worries me.”
“You can outrun a fox?” Emmy asked. “They’re pretty fast.”
He turned, and his scent clearly told her he was about to issue a longstanding rant.
“You know how fast a fox is, and you probably knowALLabout how fast the damned greyhounds, lions, and cheetahs can sprint, but what about the wildebeest and the ostrich? Why do only the sexiest predators get listed? I can zig-zag as fast as a greyhound can run straight, but we don’t make the lists becauseapparentlythat’s only for the sexy predators.”
Rather than enter his argument, Emmy decided to deflect. “Oh, you’re cute. I can soar at around one-fifty and dive at well over two hundred miles per hour when I’m hunting, but you just keep bragging about your faster-than-a-fox panicked dash for safety. Lucky for you, the chase wouldn’t be worth it to my dragon. You’d just get hung up in my teeth. Not even a tiny little appetizer.”
He stared at her a few seconds, and finally asked, “How big are you, exactly?”
She lifted a brow. “A few years ago, the last time someone measured me, I was twenty-seven yards long. I won’t reach my full size for another couple of decades, likely somewhere around thirty to thirty-five yards.”
“Oh, wow,” Rhea said. “Any chance we can get you inside someplace big enough to hold you, so I can have an hour to document your physiology? My specialty is raptors, but I’m fascinated by all flying creatures.”
Emmy blew out a breath. “The Dragon King will have to approve that, and I’m not asking him. If you have the connections to get the okay, I’ll be your willing specimen — assuming you don’t prove to be a horrible bitch.”
Rhea laughed. “Oh, I’m absolutely a horrible bitch, but only occasionally to my friends, and I’m hoping we can be friends. I like you already.”
Emmy’s assigned security showed up as Emmy finished her omelet along with a biscuit drenched in honey. Delaney wasn’t dressed as security, but wore low-cut jeans, a hoodie, and a pair of lime-green Docs. “Okay, sexy chick, you ready to dazzle the mortals?” she asked, tugging her own hair into a ponytail.
“I’m fully covered. No tits showing. Not even cleavage.”
“Right. It’s like Jessica Rabbit in painted-on clothes. Let’s go, genius.”
They took a coterie SUV, and it wasn’t lost on Emmy that the others attending the summer session were all taken together with a shared guard, while she was assigned one of her own.
And she knew damned well Delaney was more babysitter than security guard, but she figured she couldn’t bitch about it too much. The goal was to get her out of here with a postgraduate degree that would let her do actual genome work. She figured a decade working on human stuff,and then she could start working on shifters. How much of her mother’s ability to be human, swan, or dragon was magical, and how much was biological? And could Emmy find the biological pieces and replicate them in others? If she could, what would happen without the magic? Or would having the biological pieces in there actuallycallthe magic?
She’d pre-registered for five undergrad classes to prove she could show up, behave, and pass before Zander pulled strings to get her back into a post-grad program. Also, because you need two professors to vouch for you and mentor you through it. She’d have to convince two of them to write letters nominating her into the program and accepting responsibility for seeing her through it.
She had three classes today. First up was Molecular Biology, with only around a dozen students in the classroom when she walked in. The professor was brisk and succinct, and she appreciated his approach. He treated everyone like adults and assumed they could keep up.
Next up was her least favorite class of the semester, but Spence had told her this professor was more likely than the others to help her into the post-graduate program. Still, she detested statistics. It was another of those classes she’d taken several times though, so she’d be okay.
And then lunch with two people she met in statistics class, who told her about a Korean BBQ food truck parked a few blocks over. She checked the coterie’s app and was pleased to see a selection of foods on the truck she could order.
Lunch was enjoyable — glorious spicy meat while the three discussed DNA errors in the whole Jurassic Park franchise. Also, all the stupid mistakes they made in how they thought they’d keep fuckingdinosaursin what amounted to zoo enclosures.
She also spent the last of her cash. She’d have to pack food or bring protein bars from the coterie house for lunch the following day. Apparently, she’d awaken Wednesday to an auto deposit in her checking account, meaning she could use her debit card to eat lunch.
Next up was History of Scientific Thought, this one in a lecture hall with about sixty students. The professor wore elbow patches unironically and had a speaking cadence like a bedtime story, but Emmy found herself genuinely interested. The course textbook was in ebook form on her tablet, and she jotted on it with her stylus, highlighting sections she figured would be on the test.
Delaney was close all day without being a pain in the ass, and when they got into the SUV to go home, she told her, “Thanks for not being annoying.”
“Thanks for not trying to ditch me. You try to get along with me; I’ll try to get along with you. You become a pain in my ass? I’ll repay it in triplicate. You’re an okay bitch. I like you.”
