Chaos Choreography (3 page)

“Please, we're not hurting anything,” said the second girl. “We didn't expect to see your flashlights, and we sort of panicked. Please, let us go.”

“Were you expecting to see the plesiosaur?” I asked.

“Nemo's not a dino—” protested the first girl. Then she caught herself, and blinked, and said, “Um, yes. He's ours.”

“I'm sorry. Maybe I got something in my ear when your friend here shoved me,” I said. “Did you just say the plesiosaur was
yours
?”

Dominic released the second girl, who rocked back and forth for a moment, torn between rushing to defend her prehistoric reptile and going to the aid of her much more modern, if not much more evolved, companion. In the end, the plesiosaur won, and she fled to stand next to the other girl, blocking “Nemo” from our deadly attentions.

“Yes,” snapped the first girl. “Nemo's ours, and he's never hurt anybody, and no one would believe you anyway, so you should just go. You hear me? Get out of here and go.”

“Since we weren't doing anything but being near the reservoir when Nemo decided to pop his head
out
and start trying to bite my head
off
, I think you may be wrong about whether he's ever hurt anybody,” I said. It was hard to sound gentle while I had their friend in an armlock. I leaned forward, murmuring in his ear, “Are you going to shove me again?”

“No, I swear,” he whimpered.

I let him go. He ran to his friends, cradling his arm and staring at me fearfully.

“You must have done something,” said the first girl. “Nemo wouldn't hurt a fly.”

“Nemo has a fifteen-foot neck, which means he's a pretty big boy,” I said. “Have you been dumping tadpoles in the reservoir to feed him?” They didn't answer me. They didn't need to. Their guilty expressions were answer enough. “There are a lot of frogs in there, so I'm
going to wager that Nemo doesn't eat frogs. They probably taste funny. So he ate all the fish in the reservoir—alas for the free-range goldfish population—and then he probably moved on to small mammals. There sure were a lot of missing pet fliers up at the mouth of the trail, did you notice?”

No missing kid fliers. Not yet. That was a small blessing. Things like Nemo were miracles of endurance and evolution, but they couldn't be allowed to go around eating children.

The newcomers blanched. The second girl looked faintly sick. She must have been an animal lover, not just a plesiosaur fan.

The first girl leaned up to wrap her arms around Nemo's head. The plesiosaur endured her affections surprisingly well for a prehistoric reptile. “I don't care,” she said. “He's not hurting anything, and we're not going to let you hurt him.”

I sighed. “We're not going to hurt him. But we might be able to help you save him. Or did you think you could keep him in the reservoir forever?”

The trio exchanged glances. Finally, the first girl asked, “Save him how?”

Girl #1's name was Kim; girl #2 was Angie. The boy was Charlie. All three were students at the local community college, and had gone on an archaeological dig in Kansas the summer before. They'd fallen through a false floor in one of the caverns, and into a moist, warm chamber, where there'd been a nest mounded with leathery, football-sized eggs. Being scientists, they had naturally been fascinated, and being primates, they had naturally dealt with this fascination by stealing an egg from the edge of the nest.

“We thought it would be an old fossil with a remarkably well-preserved eggshell, but when we put it through the X-ray, we realized it was alive,” said Kim, stroking
Nemo's snout, as if to reassure herself that it was okay to tell us this. “So we smuggled it home in one of the specimen cases, and at the end of the summer, it hatched into Nemo here. My beautiful boy.”

The plesiosaur nuzzled her cheek. Kim laughed. Angie gave her a look that made it clear that Nemo wasn't the only one who wanted to be nuzzling her. Kim didn't notice. I felt like I was seeing their entire relationship in microcosm, and I didn't want anything to do with it.

“When did you decide to put your pet in the reservoir?” I asked.

All three of them looked guilty. It was like I'd flipped a switch. Charlie spoke, saying, “It was my idea. Nemo was growing so fast, and we were afraid somebody was going to find him at the school. But nobody comes up to the reservoir.”

“Nobody except joggers, and teenagers, and homeless people looking for a place to camp, and birders, and whatever the ‘I like to look at butterflies' equivalent of birders is . . .” I let my voice trail off, looking at the trio. They seemed to be grasping the seriousness of their situation.

“Oh,” said Kim, in a small voice.

“Yeah, ‘oh.' You're lucky no one's been eaten yet. Which, let me tell you, is not a situation that's going to last. Between the way Nemo went for me, and the fact that
someone
is eventually going to tell the city about the reservoir being full of frogs, it's only a matter of time.” I folded my arms. “We don't even know how big he's going to get. You really want to see your pet on the news, being gunned down by a SWAT team? Because that's what's going to happen.”

“We didn't know what else to do,” protested Kim. “You startled him, he's never been aggressive with any of us, he wouldn't really . . . wouldn't really
eat
people.”

“And it's not like we can move him,” added Charlie. “We brought him here in the back of a pickup truck. He's bigger than my pickup truck now. We couldn't move him even if we had a place to move him to.”

“The reservoir is fresh water,” I said. “Can he handle saltwater, or is he purely a lake monster?”

I used the word “monster” on purpose, and was pleased to see all three of them flinch, Kim most of all. “He doesn't like saltwater,” said Kim stiffly. “It tickles his nose. But he can handle it if he has to.”

“What's his temperature range?”

“Good.” Kim continued to rub Nemo's snout as she spoke, apparently calming both of them. “He doesn't seem to mind the cold much, although it slows him down some. I'm sorry, but who
are
you people? Why are you asking us all these questions?”

“We're cryptozoologists, and we're here to solve your problem,” I said, and smiled.

They didn't smile back.

Six phone calls later—including one to Uncle Mike, who wasn't thrilled about being woken up in the wee hours of the morning just so I could talk to Aunt Lea—we had the solution.

“My dad's coming over with an old dump truck that can be filled with water,” I said, tucking my phone into my pocket. “Kim, you'll ride with Nemo. Dad's going to take you upriver to an isolated spot where you should be good for a week or so while we get some old friends of ours to turn around and come back to Portland. The Campbell Family Carnival has a tank large enough for an adult plesiosaur. They'll be able to transport him—and you, we're not leaving you out of this—to the Cascades, where you can find him a suitable lake. Something deep and full of fish and not popular with boaters.”

“Why are you doing this?” asked Angie. “What's in it for you?”

“One more plesiosaur in the world,” I said. “That's pretty cool. Can I get a picture? My brother's gonna be
pissed
that he missed this.”

“Sure,” said Kim, looking bewildered.

“Awesome.” I pulled my phone out again. “Dominic, hit the lights?”

He sighed and pulled out his flashlight, shining it on us as I backed up and held out my phone. “Say Cretaceous,” I said, and snapped the selfie.

All in all, not the worst night.

“Love what you do. Even if it's not what you thought you'd be doing when you were a kid, love what you do. Eventually, it's going to kill you, and it would be a real pity if you died doing something you hate.”

—Evelyn Baker

A small survivalist compound about an hour's drive east of Portland, Oregon

T
HE SUN WAS DOWN
and the house was dark when we pulled up to the gate. Dad was going to be out a lot later than we were: he was transporting Nemo the plesiosaur, Nemo's human friends, and a few hundred gallons of water upriver, and that took time. We'd be lucky to see him before lunch.

Dominic politely averted his eyes while I punched in the current security code. He's family now—he's even planning to change his last name to “Price,” since it's not like he can go around using “De Luca” without attracting Covenant attention—but that doesn't mean he's been cleared to have full access to the house. My argument with the parents is ongoing. If Dominic is going to be living with us, he needs to be able to get into the bugout room, almost as much as he needs to be able to go to the grocery store without an escort.

Dominic says he's willing to wait until he earns their trust. I say they're punishing him, and by extension, me,
for getting married by an Elvis impersonator in Las Vegas, rather than having a fancy ceremony for everyone in the family to attend and pass judgment on.

My parents have no respect for the classics.

(To be fair, they're correct in assuming that Dominic and I got married the way we did in order to make it harder for them to reject him out of hand. We also did it because we really wanted to get married, and we were passing through Vegas on the way to Portland anyway, so why not? No Las Vegas wedding is complete without a chupacabra dressed as Elvis asking if you're planning to love, honor, obey, and finish eating your banana sandwich.)

We slipped through the front door and crossed the living room to the kitchen, where not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. At this hour of the morning, most of the Aeslin were asleep, and the ones that weren't would be preparing the temples for the day ahead. Our family colony of polytheistic mice kept a very strict calendar of religious observances, one that included every day of the year, as well as a few days they had shoehorned in there, just to get a bit of extra worshipping in. It must have been exhausting, being an Aeslin mouse.

Once the kitchen door was closed, I sighed, sagged against the counter, and asked, “What are your feelings on breakfast? We need to eat something before we go to bed, or we're going to wake up gnawing on each other.”

“Waffles,” said Dominic, opening the freezer and producing a familiar yellow Eggo box. “No effort. No cleanup. Good delivery mechanism for peanut butter.”

“Sold.” I took the box and peered inside. There were four waffles remaining. Miraculously, that was also the number of slots on our family-sized toaster. I dropped them in. “We need something else. This is insufficient waffles.”

“Oh, no. This is not your territory.” Dominic's hands closed on my shoulders, pulling me back before I could start investigating the contents of the fridge. “Go sit down. I will figure out breakfast.”

“But I want to help,” I protested.

“The last time you scavenged for breakfast, we wound up with leftover pizza omelets.” Dominic pushed me toward the table. “That's not a meal. That's a punishment for bad behavior. I'll make something intended to be eaten by humans, and I'll bring it to you, and then we can go to bed.”

“Fine.” I grabbed a laptop off the counter and sulked away. Dominic watched me go, shaking his head fondly. He knew I hadn't really wanted to win; I knew he enjoyed the fight. Of such little understandings are a solid relationship built.

I dropped my butt into a seat and opened the laptop. Each of us in the family has our own computer—how else could we have ever felt comfortable looking at porn?—but there are always a few loaner machines floating around, courtesy of Antimony's constant equipment upgrades and Artie's equally constant glee at nuking their contents and turning them into helpful shells. We don't use the spares for anything secure. They're still extremely convenient when, say, I want to check my email without going upstairs to my bedroom.

(Not that my bedroom was particularly livable at the moment. We were in the process of prepping the guesthouse out back for me and Dominic. It meant we wouldn't be as well-equipped for actual guests, but I didn't care if it meant having a bathroom we wouldn't need to share with my younger sister. Half my things were in boxes, and the remaining half were strewn across the room like there'd been some sort of localized explosion. It was all going to be worth it when we didn't have to cram ourselves into a twin bed every night. I loved the man, but I was starting to feel like one of us needed to remove an arm before either of us would be able to sleep comfortably.)

Dominic muttered and rattled around the kitchen while the laptop loaded my settings. When it was done, I pulled up my email, skimming the subject lines to see if anything needed my immediate attention. Nothing did.
The thing about being in the family business is that you never really strike out as an independent contractor: you're always going to be running things through the central clearing house that is your older relatives. I'd been able to find problems that needed fixing without their help while I was in New York, but I wasn't in New York anymore. I was back in Portland, back in the place where people remembered me as a three-foot-tall moppet running to her ballet recital, and when they had problems, they took them to my dad or my Aunt Jane. Not to me.

I sighed and clicked over to Valerie's email. Valerie was my mundane alter ego, a redheaded Latin ballroom specialist who never had to worry about getting blood out of sequins or whether it was appropriate to go clubbing after beating the crap out of a ghoul. Valerie was half my imaginary friend and half my imaginary self. She slept in when she wanted to. She danced every day. Most importantly, she lived her life on her terms, with no one telling her who she had to be or what she had to love.

There was a time when all I wanted was to find a way to
become
Valerie, even if it meant leaving Verity behind. I would've missed my family, but I had every faith we'd have been able to find a way to be together, even once I was no longer considered a Price. I would have been dancing. For me, on some level, that would have been enough . . . at least for a while.

It could never have been enough forever, which was why when the choice was actually put in front of me—be a cryptozoologist, and
help
people, or be a professional dancer, and never do the work I'd been raised to do ever again—I'd made the only choice I really could. I'd put Valerie aside and become Verity for good.

That didn't mean I'd deleted Valerie's email account. For one thing, Valerie had been a beloved contestant on
Dance or Die
, one of the few reality competitions completely based on skill, instead of relying on how much drama the contestants could stir up to amuse the producers. If she'd disappeared completely, it would have been a scandal and something for people to investigate. The
official story was that she was taking a year off from teaching dance in Manhattan while she put her head back together. I maintained her Facebook fan page and answered her email. Eventually, it would all taper off, more than it already had, and Valerie would be able to rest in peace.

That was the idea, anyway. I skimmed the subject lines in her inbox, opening the messages that looked interesting. Most were reports from the fan page. A few pieces of spam, as always, had managed to slither past the filters. One of my old dance buddies was asking whether there was any chance I'd be attending a competition in Kansas, since he needed a partner, his having decided to get pregnant. Another dancer I used to compete with wanted to know if it was true that I'd snapped my leg like a twig doing one of my, quote, “stupid jumps.” And the producers of
Dance or Die
wanted to know about my availability.

Wait. What?

I opened the email again, forcing myself to read slowly this time. The producers of
Dance or Die
were interested in knowing whether I was in “fighting shape” and available for a project to begin in six weeks, and last up to two months after that.

“Two months,” I muttered. “That's the length of a competition season.”

“What?” asked Dominic.

“Uh.” I twisted to look at him. He was frying something on the stove; I sniffed the air. Bacon. He was making me bacon. My aggravating, wonderful, ex-Covenant husband, who had no real idea what the dance part of my life entailed, was making me bacon.

“I need to set the alarm when we go to bed,” I said. “I need to make a phone call.”

The
Dance or Die
production offices were located in Burbank, California, which meant we were at least in the
same time zone, even if Southern California should really be considered a whole other world. They opened at nine. The alarm went off at eight fifty-five, almost three hours after Dominic and I had finally crawled into bed.

Dominic made an unhappy noise and attempted to burrow deeper into his pillow, lacing his hands together behind his head like he could somehow convince the noise that he'd already surrendered and no longer needed to be tormented. I leaned over him to slap the alarm off, only to find myself facing a veritable sea of mice. They covered the floor beside the bed, looking up at me with wide and hopeful eyes.

“What?” I hissed. Realizing my mistake, I hurriedly added, “And do
not
hail me, Dominic is trying to sleep.”

“Failing,” came Dominic's woeful comment, voice muffled by his pillow.

The mice looked somewhat deflated. A small voice from the back of the crowd peeped a soft “Hail,” and was shushed by the mice around it. I raised an eyebrow. The leader of this merry band—identifiable by the fact that it was wearing a fancy cloak made of braided doll hair—stepped forward, motioning for the rest to be quiet.

“Hail to Verity, the Arboreal Priestess, bride to the God of Hard Choices in Dark Places,” it squeaked. “Today begins the great feast of Dammit, Enid, Where Is That Girl, I Know She Tells You When She's Sneaking Out. We have come to beg a re-creation.”

I was still partially asleep, and it took me a moment to remember which holiday they were talking about. “Wait—isn't this the one where Grandma Alice got lost in the woods for almost a whole day, and then wound up at Grandpa Thomas' house for the first time?”

The mice nodded vigorously, and this time there were multiple soft, forbidden “hails” from the center of the crowd.

“Sorry, guys.” I shook my head. “I normally like a good romp around the woods as much as the next girl, but I have some work I need to do today. Work that can't
be done from a tree. Go ask Antimony, I'm sure she'd be happy to.”

“The Precise Priestess said, upon your return home, ‘Oh, Thank God, At Least With Barbie Back In The House, I Won't Have To Do Every Single Ritual,'” said the lead mouse, fanning out its whiskers. “Was she so wrong?”

Aeslin mice have an eidetic memory for everything they see and hear, and it's against their religion to misquote their gods—i.e., us. Which meant Antimony was definitely at the end of her patience. Also that she had definitely called me “Barbie.” I wasn't sure how to feel about that. “She wasn't wrong, no, but I can't do it today,” I said. “I have to make some phone calls, and you know the cell service in the woods sucks. It's important. Sorry. I'll do the next one.” None of the rituals were actually
dangerous
for the humans the mice recruited to act them out. Sometimes slimy, and occasionally embarrassing, but the mice would never hurt us. They loved us too much for that.

“As you say, Priestess,” said the head priest, ears drooping.