“Franklin Javier Lusczando de Rodriguez,” said Frank, drawing himself up to his full height and looking haughtily down his nose. He had a lot of height, which made the gesture more impressive than pretentious, although it was a narrow margin.
“Ah, so you’re Dee’s husband.” I stole a glance at Dee, who wasn’t looking at me at all. This was probably not the top of her list of “ways I want my boss to meet my husband.” I looked back to Frank. “Anyway. Dee has been a huge help since I came to Ohio, and I want to help her in return. I know it would be devastating for you if a Covenant purge were to get started over all this silly cockatrice business.”
As I had expected, saying the word “Covenant” in the middle of a gathering of gorgons was like dropping a lit match into a barrel full of salamanders. Hissing filled the air as people turned to their neighbors, talking in quick, panicked voices. I held my ground, watching Frank. His snakes were still mostly calm, although they were twisting together in a way that could have indicated anything from confusion to guilt.
Finally, he frowned. “Silly cockatrice business?”
I blinked, glancing toward Dee again. She still wasn’t looking at me. “Well, this is going to be fun,” I muttered, and turned back to Frank. “I can see we have a great deal to discuss. Is there someplace we can go to talk about this, preferably where we won’t start a panic?”
Frank kept frowning as he studied me. At long last, he nodded and said, “I have a place. Come with me.”
Frank’s “place” turned out to be one of the larger mobile homes, set off from the rest by almost fifteen yards—unheard of privacy in a community where everyone shared the same open space as both a common area and a means of getting from one place to another. The reason for the privacy was apparent as soon as he opened the door to reveal the gleaming operating table and state-of-the-art dentist’s chair. There was even a maternity area, with several large incubators and a comfortable bed for mothers recuperating from their labor.
“This is your hospital,” I said, looking around with a practiced eye. Everything was clean and well-maintained. If more than one person was sick or injured at a time they would need to share the same room, but apart from that . . . “This is fantastic. You could give my parents tips on how to maintain a private emergency room.”
As I had expected, Frank preened a bit, walking past me to stand in front of the operating table. It came up to his waist. “It can be hard, getting equipment that’s large enough for us to use here,” he said. “It doesn’t help that we need two sets of everything. My apprentice and both our nurses are under six feet tall.”
“Did you go to medical school, then?” asked Shelby.
Frank nodded. “I was young. I still fit in the desks.” The snakes atop his head made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snicker.
“Good for you,” said Shelby.
“Apprentice?” I asked.
“Yes. Our physiology isn’t exactly like yours, and as you need a license to practice human medicine if you want to get access to most of the stronger painkillers and antibiotics in this country, he and I both went to human schools. Now he’s studying with me to become a proper doctor. When his training is done, he’ll be able to move to another community, and be a great asset to them.”
Given the way Pliny’s gorgon communities handled their families, “great asset” probably meant “attract a better wife.” I nodded. “It’s a good arrangement.”
“We think so. Now.” Frank’s expression turned grave. “What do you mean by ‘silly cockatrice business’?”
“Two men have died at the zoo where Dee and I work, and another died near my home,” I said. “All have shown outward signs of petrifaction. I was able to gain access to the man who died outside the zoo. There was internal petrifaction as well, although it didn’t continue much past the point where it would have been fatal.”
“Then it could have been any number of things. Stone spiders—”
“There was a cockatrice in my backyard last night.” That stopped him. I shrugged as I continued, “We locked eyes; petrifaction began. If I hadn’t had someone with me, I wouldn’t have survived long enough for the solution to be assembled. I’m not going to be able to pull off a trick like that again. Keeping me from losing my eyesight—or my life—meant using most of the cockatrice antivenin we had in stock.”
Frank blinked. “You saw the cockatrice.”
“Yes.”
“Forgive me if this seems a bit . . . blunt . . . but are you lying to me right now? You’re human. You can’t have locked eyes with a serpent and lived.”
“He didn’t,” said Shelby. “He locked eyes with a cockatrice. I know. I was there. It would have been me, but he pushed me out of the way before the bugger could get close enough to do any damage.” She hesitated before she added, “I could have been killed.”
“Serpent is slang for both cockatrice and basilisks,” I explained. To Frank I said, “If Shelby hadn’t been there and able to follow my instructions, I would have died. Believe me, I have no reason to lie to you about this.”
Frank nodded slowly. “You’ll excuse my dubiousness.”
“Absolutely. I’d think you were full of it if you were the one telling this story. But there’s more.”
“More?”
“In examining the body we were able to obtain, we found fang marks.” I pulled out my phone, opened the gallery, and scrolled to the picture of the back of Mr. O’Malley’s leg. I held it out for Frank to see. “In your professional opinion, what bit this man?”
Frank frowned. “May I?” he asked, half-reaching for my phone.
“You may.” I let him take the phone, and waited as he studied the picture, his eyes darting from side to side as he took in the small cues to scale and perspective. His snakes even got in on the act, darting forward until their noses nearly brushed the screen, tongues flicking in and out the whole time.
“I want to tell you that you have no business here,” he said finally, and handed the phone back to me. “I want to tell you that you are not only wrong and misguided, but you are trespassing and possibly in danger of your lives.”
“But you’re not going to tell me any of those things,” I said.
“No.” Frank shook his head. The snakes curled back against his scalp with the motion, hissing and slithering against each other. “I can’t. These marks . . . they could have been made by my own fangs.” He paused, eyes widening as he realized what he’d said—and who he’d said it to. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” I said. “It can’t have been you. It’s literally not possible. Not only would your bite radius be substantially bigger, but there’s no way a man of your stature could have come into my neighborhood, bitten my next-door neighbor, and gotten away without being seen. Someone would have called the police about ‘that really tall guy,’ and we’d have more to talk about right now.”
“See, honey,” said Dee, sounding relieved. “I would never have brought them here if I thought there was a chance you were involved.”
I would have been annoyed by that announcement if I hadn’t understood it so very well. Family has to come first in this world. Sometimes that means making decisions that you really don’t want to make. “So the problem becomes clear,” I said. “There’s a cockatrice somewhere in Columbus, and we don’t know where it’s going during the day, or how it got there. I think someone brought it there, and is recapturing it somehow. There’s no other reason it would have been at both my place of work and where I live.”