Seanan McGuire - Half-Off Ragnarok

Dee had kept her job at the zoo, thankfully. Shelby had been bedridden for several weeks after I brought her home, and I wouldn’t have been able to take the time off to care for her if Dee hadn’t been at the reptile house, keeping things running smoothly. I was glad she’d decided to stay. I would have missed her.

Lloyd’s cockatrice was still out there somewhere. It hadn’t shown up in any urban areas, and we were all assuming Lloyd had taken it back to the woods with him when he abducted Shelby. A cockatrice loose in the woods near the gorgon community was nowhere near the threat that a cockatrice loose near humans had been. As long as we didn’t see any further signs of it, we were willing to live and let live.

Shelby leaned forward and kissed me slowly. I slid my arms around her waist, shutting out Crow’s angry squawks as I focused on the business at hand. When she finally pulled away, I was a lot less interested in basilisks, and a lot more interested in her.

“Lunch?” she asked again.

“As long as it’s not in the tiger garden, that sounds good to me,” I said, before kissing her again.

I had my work; I had my family; I had my friends; and I had Shelby, who was a distraction from everything else, but only in the best of ways. Things were changing. I was changing with them. That was all right, in the balance of things; after all, people have paid a lot more to come away with a lot less. As I tightened my arms around Shelby’s waist and sank into another kiss, I couldn’t help thinking I was a very lucky man. I was a very lucky man indeed.