Page 16 of A Malicious Menagerie
Ciara nudges Fionn again, and he sighs. “Best let you get back to it,” he says reluctantly. I should not find that charming, that he’d like to keep talking to me, especially knowing what I do about what he is. But, then again, thoseabs.Thataccent. He grins at me, and his teeth are normal again, blunt but for those slightly pointed canines. “Don’t be a stranger, Anna.”
“I won’t,” I promise, making sure to include Ciara in my goodbye wave as I finally follow John back out. The second I cross the threshold, John slams the door shut before hitting the switch to open the divider. Once the chain-link wall begins to retreat, the kelpies, both now in their equine forms, duck out and trot off into the trees.
“Don’t let them fool you,” John warns me. “That’s what they do—change shape to lure stupid little girls like you to a watery grave.”
Thenerveof this asshole. Ignoring him, I return to my previous point from yesterday. “Are you also going to try to convince me that Fionn isn’t a person?”
John crams the wheelbarrow back into its place beside the big fish tank with more force than necessary. “He’s an angler fish,” he grumps, “dangling a pretty light in front of desperate guppies to lure them between his teeth.”
Ignoring the dig, I insist, “Angler fish don’t talk. Or flirt. Or threaten menfor being bullies.”
John has the gall to look offended. “I’mthe bully? I was just trying to save you from getting eaten or, at the very least, making a fool of yourself.”
“I wasn’t going to throw myself at him,” I defend hotly, and I’m about ninety-five percent sure I’m telling the truth. “I was just curious. I had no idea he could turn into a man, maybe because youdidn’t bother to tell me.”
“Do you think the guy before me stopped to warn me about everything in here?” he asks scathingly.
“Why do you keep saying that like it’s justification for doing it to me? ‘I had to walk ten miles in the snow uphill both ways to get to school every day,’” I mock, deepening my voice to sound like the stupid, uncaring, ‘macho’ man in front of me. “Why does that mean I should have to do it, too?”
“Builds character,” he replies shortly, not rising to the bait. “Now, do you want me to show you how to feed the wolf, or do you want to figure it out for yourself like I had to?”
I grind my teeth to bite off whatever angry retort I might have made. “I would like you to show me, please,” I grit out, managing a semi-polite tone.
“Well, alright then,” John says, and with that, we leave the deadly water horses to their fishing.
9
The Soldier
Our next stop is the back of the wolf exhibit. I strain my senses for any hint that he might be nearby, but the only sound is the gentle rustle of leaves in the fabricated breeze. “Do we do the same as the kelpies?” I ask, noticing a switch beside the door similar to the last enclosure.
“Kinda,” he replies, but he flicks the switch without calling the wolf first. Like last time, a chain-link divider crosses the enclosure, but it does so straight across to divide off a rectangular portion of the back of the exhibit rather than only one corner. That done, John turns to a large box next to the door and levers open the heavy lid, releasing a waft of cool air from a freezer. Inside, there are massive racks of frozen ribs and chunks of meat larger than my head.
“Grab a rack,” John grunts. I comply, hefting the heavy slab of meat and bone as John picks up what looks like a haunch. Once again, John unlocks the door with a quick tap of his card against a sensor on the door. I follow him into the enclosure, where he turns and heads toward the far corner.
As we get closer, I notice a concrete slab set into the ground with a pile of bones on top. Oddly, the bones appear almost… neatly stacked. “He’s quite tidy,” I note curiously. John’s only reply is a grunt, and I roll my eyes at the back of his head as we both lean over the concrete. As I bend over to deposit the ribs on the slab, the sharp sound of a twig snapping draws my attention. I whip around to find the wolf standing on the other side of the divider, his glittering topaz eyes on me. A little wary, but mostly happy to see him, I give a little wave. “Hello again.”
The wolf doesn’t react except to turn his gaze from me to John and lift his upper lip in a corrugated snarl.
“He doesn’t seem to like you much,” I note, my tone wordlessly conveying that I agree with him.
“None of them like me much,” he says, not seeming overly upset about this fact. “Which is just fine since I don’t like any of them, either.”
“How can you be so blasé in the face of so muchmythology?” I ask, floored by his attitude.
The look he gives me is reminiscent of how he might look at a squashed bug under his shoe. “I’m guessing your parents read you fairy tales, and dressed you up in pretty princess dresses, and told you anything was possible if you just believed enough?”
“My mother did,” I agree grudgingly, thinking of all the books accompanyingThe Secret Gardenon my childhood bookshelf. “Though not to the degree that you’re implying.”
John snorts. “I hate to be the one to break it to you,princess, but life is not a fairy tale, and these things—” He motions with spread arms to the menagerie at large “—are not magical. They’re animals.”
“You watched a horse turn into a man and back again, and you’re going to tell me that you don’t believe in magic?” I ask skeptically.
“Animals do all sorts of weird stuff,” John replies with a shrug. “Frogs freeze and come back to life, salamanders regrow limbs… and don’t even get me started on platypuses.”
The comment gives me pause, and I mull it over for a moment. “Conservation of mass.”
John blinks rapidly. “Huh?”
