Dee caught my eye, nodding toward my office door. “Go,” she said. “The first official tour isn’t for an hour. Get started on what you need to finish today.”

I brightened. “You sure?” I liked watching the kids, but I’d like knowing that my paperwork for the week was finished even more.

“I’m sure.” Dee flashed me a quick smile. “If they get out of control, I’ll just take off my wig and remind them that sometimes, a trip to the zoo means you get the opportunity to feed the animals.”

“Right.” I laughed. “You have fun with that, and if you need me, I’ll be in my office.”

“Sure thing, boss-man.” She saluted mockingly. “I will do my best not to burn the building down while you’re sequestered in your chamber of scholarship.”

Past experience told me “saying good-bye” could last upward of fifteen minutes if we kept going, and by that point, my escape would doubtless be blocked by some group of teenagers who wanted to know whether we ever used Crunchy to dispose of human bodies. (Answer: yes, but it was an emergency, and the guy really, really deserved it.) I answered her salute with one of my own before turning and fleeing the room, heading for the questionable safety of my office.

I had no sooner ducked inside—easing the door carefully shut behind me, since slamming was both immature and likely to draw attention—when I heard a sound that seemed to have been dredged up from the deepest pits of hell. It was a combination of diamond fingernails scraping across a blackboard and the yowling of an angry cat, and it says something about my life choices that I recognized it instantly.

“Shit,” I said, turning toward the window. “Crow.”

My Church Griffin was clinging to the outside of the windowsill, wings flapping wildly as he struggled to maintain his balance, and forelimbs pressed against the glass. When he saw me, he redoubled his yowling, and his flapping, until I was genuinely afraid that he was going to hurt himself.

“Crow! Calm down!” I scrambled across the office, knocking over a stack of paperwork that should have been filed a week ago, and opened the window. Crow slammed through the opening, scolding loudly as he flew a lap around the office. Then he dove into the cat bed atop the desk hutch, becoming a lump of sullen-looking black feathers and banded brown fur.

I sighed and closed the window. “I’m sorry, Crow. It’s been a hectic morning.”

No response from the sulking griffin.

“If you’d let me leave you home once in a while, we wouldn’t have to worry about you getting locked out.”

Still no response from the sulking griffin.

This was the sort of thing that could go on all day, and I didn’t have time for that if I wanted to get anything done before the tour groups began to arrive. I picked up the jar of dried liver cubes I kept as treats for Crow, shook four of them out, and set them carefully next to the cat bed.

“When you’re speaking to me again, let me know,” I said. “Right now, I have work to do. I’m sorry I left you outside.”

Maybe talking to a pet like it was a person was a sign of loneliness, or stress, or my inevitable impending status as the male equivalent of a cat lady. Whatever it was, I felt better after leaving Crow the treats. I sat down at the desk, reaching for my keyboard.

I was typing the last of my emails to the administrative office—this one listing my supply needs for the next month—when someone knocked on my office door. The sound was followed by the door swinging open just wide enough for Dee to stick her head inside. “One of the teachers reported, quote, ‘a horrible racket outside the snake house, I think somebody’s being murdered in there,’ end quote,” she said. “I told security that one of the kids threw a tantrum when we wouldn’t let him hug Crunchy.”

“Quick thinking.”

“You didn’t give me much choice.” She looked to where Crow was still curled tightly in his cat bed. “Is he asleep or giving you the cold shoulder?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you should have gotten an iguana.”

I laughed, glancing at the clock. Then I grimaced. “Is that really the time?”

“Clocks don’t lie,” said Dee, stepping fully into the office. “Your first tour group will be here in a few minutes. Time sure does fly when you’re having fun, huh?”

“Oh, is that what I’ve been doing?” I pushed my keyboard away. “I thought it was paperwork.”

Dee laughed. “It comes for everyone. Chandi is still in my office with her fiancé. They looked so peaceful that it seemed best not to disturb them.”

As long as no one from zoo management showed up wanting to show off the spectacled cobra, that should be fine. I nodded. “Good plan. Have we heard from Andrew yet?”

“No. I tried his cell phone, but there’s no answer.”

I sighed. “Great.”

“Okay. I have made small talk, I have asked after your griffin, and I have told you what’s going on with our resident wadjet.” Dee planted her hands on her hips, painted eyebrows arched high. “Well?”

I looked at her blankly. “Well what?”

“This is where you explain to me what you’ve learned from the frickens we collected yesterday.”

“What? Oh!” I grimaced. “Sorry, Dee. I was distracted.”

“I know. You don’t usually wander around rocking the absentminded professor look for fun.” She leaned against the doorframe, effectively blocking me inside the room. “So come on. What’s up, Doc?”

“I drafted the Aeslin mice into helping me last night. Full examination of the subspecies of fricken encountered during our most recent swamp expedition showed that they were healthy, with no outward signs of illness. They all seem to be eating a varied diet, which is actually odd for two of the subspecies—they’d normally be hunted out of certain food sources by larger frogs.” If not eaten by the frogs. Nature doesn’t play favorites. “Two were females of breeding age and size, only one was carrying eggs, which means the other must have spawned recently.”

“Fungal infection?”

“Yes and no.”

Dee paused. “Okay, science boy. Try that again, using words of more than one syllable.”

I smiled a little. “See, if more girls had made that request in high school, I might not have been forced to take my sister to prom. Just four frickens showed signs of fungal infection . . . on their feathers, and only on their feathers. What’s more, three of the four had molted recently, and showed very little fungal growth.”