The Dragon Keeper (20 page)

“Gemma, do you see this guy? It’s weird, like he’s—”

Gemma’s face had gone cold, and Ben looked as if he’d drunk at least five more glasses of bubbly at the bar, with that sloppy grin eating up his face. Both of them were staring at the same spot behind her shoulder.

“Hello, Ms. Yancy.”

Meg turned around to face Nicole Roberts. She looked exactly the same as she had eight months ago—eager and fake, wearing a black-skirted suit thing with little diamonds lining the lapels. Her hair burned orange in the reflected spotlights as she tapped a microphone against her thigh and nodded to her coworkers when they arrived from the other side of the room.

Some of the party guests hushed and stood back, which, oddly, made Meg feel even more surrounded. Ben, on the other hand, raised his glass to both of the reporters as if they were long-lost friends and rolled his shoulders in the tight suit jacket, loosening up.

“Congratulations on the dragon babies. You must be so proud.” Nicole’s eyes dropped down to Meg’s dress, as if she were checking for postpartum damage.

“Thank you.”

“Can we do a quick interview before the program? My viewers would love to hear what you have to say about them, for the record.”

“No.” Meg gulped the last of the champagne and crossed her arms.

Gemma chimed in. “Interviews should be handled through PR. They’ll be happy to help you.”

“But Ms. Yancy is the dragon’s keeper. She’s really been the one most affected by the birth.” Nicole spoke to Gemma but kept her eyes on Meg.

“We should all be affected by this birth, Ms. Roberts. Ben Askew.” Ben grabbed her hand, pumping it hard. Nicole flashed him a passing smile and turned back to Meg, but Ben shouldered into her line of view. “Do you realize that these virgin births are popping up in zoos all over the world right now? They’re rare, but they’re starting to happen. Where was it, Meg?”

“A hammerhead shark in Kentucky, a Mexican tree frog in Amsterdam, not to mention the three previous Komodo cases.” As she listed them off, she warmed up to the idea of talking to Nicole. This was exactly what Channel 12 viewers should be hearing about, not some stupid feeding frenzy over a water buffalo.

“That’s right.” Ben squeezed her shoulders. “Unfertilized eggs that turned into little sharks and frogs with no males in sight.”

“So it’s not just a story about Jata. This is happening with multiple species in multiple different locations,” Meg said.

“That’s very interesting, Mr.—”

“It’s not just interesting.” Ben interrupted Nicole. “Why do you think this is happening? Why now, in a sweeping global movement like this in these zoos?”

He leaned across Meg, tucking her into his side as he ramped up, his voice growing louder and more demanding.

Nicole shifted away. “I really don’t know. It’s not my job to speculate. I just bring the stories to the public.”

Meg glanced over at the guys on the Channel 12 team who were watching the whole thing like a tennis match. “Is eavesdropping part of your job description?” she asked.

“I consider it more of a perk.” The scruffy-turned-slick reporter smirked.

The other guy was adjusting the camera mounted on his shoulder, but Meg waved him off. “No, you don’t. This is none of your business.”

“Actually, it is,” the reporter said. “We’re invited guests here.”

“I didn’t invite you.”

She turned back to Ben, but he was still talking to Nicole, unaware of the camera pointing at the back of his head. “These births are the outliers that are going to start shifting the evolutionary paradigm, Ms. Roberts, and you can quote me on that. You can’t ignore the pattern. Why are they happening in zoos? Because the animals are cut off from their mates and the natural order, so they’re starting a revolution. An evolution revolution.”

Nicole and the other reporters started laughing.

“Ben.” Meg elbowed him in the side, but he ignored it.

“I’m no scientist, but it seems to me like the stories are coming from zoos because those are the animals that people have the opportunity to observe.” Nicole shifted the microphone from hand to hand, losing patience. “How would we know if this was happening in the wild?” she continued. “We aren’t exactly following—hammerhead sharks, was it?—around the ocean to monitor their sex lives, are we?”

Ben bounced on the balls of his feet, shifting his weight boxer-style. He nodded through Nicole’s speech, the flush of alcohol creeping above his collar. “That’s just like a reporter.”

“Excuse me?” Nicole said.

The laughter died instantly, and even though the room was louder than ever, the rest of the party seemed to fade off into the distance. Ben’s eyes reflected a manic glow. Oh God—Meg knew that look. There was no stopping him now.

“You concentrate on one little detail and blow it up like it’s the only possible truth, while completely ignoring everything else that doesn’t fit in to your little schema of the world. Think about it. Why would virgin births be happening in nature? There are mates out there, animals that aren’t under the human thumb of breeding schedules and survival plans.”

“Ben, we don’t know that.” Meg tried to interrupt, but he didn’t even hear her.

“Animals in zoos are trapped—that’s why—sucked out of their natural environment, taken from their homes, and plugged into little plastic boxes full of fake trees and synthetic suns. They’re forced up against a wall. It’s either die, or evolve. And they’re freaking evolving.”

Meg focused on breathing and threw a glance around the room, hoping to land on anything that would give her a reasonable excuse to leave this airless nightmare. The clock above the entrance read 7:32 p.m.

“You people—”

“You people?” Nicole’s mouth dropped open, but Ben kept plowing ahead.

“—have influence over the public, and you goddamn know it. You’re presenting these insignificant slivers of stories that are totally irrelevant to what’s actually happening. A Komodo attack? Yeah, that’s a headliner. The Virgin Mary dragon? Who gives a shit about the Virgin Mary when something this mind-blowing is taking place right here—”

Suddenly the lights went up on the stage, and the crowd broke into applause, drowning Ben out. Gemma took advantage of the interruption and jumped in between Ben and Nicole, loudly trying to usher the reporters toward the stage. In the confusion of shifting bodies, Meg ducked out from under Ben’s arm and did the only thing she could think of—she ran as far away from them all as she could get.

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.” A boisterous voice carried throughout the packed room. “My name is Gerald Dawson, and as the director of the Zoo of America it is my privilege to welcome you all to this truly extraordinary celebration.”

As Meg stumbled to the edge of the crowd, a gap opened up to reveal Antonio, still sitting in the same position in front of the hatchling exhibit. Automatically she darted toward him. Gerald’s speech had cleared everyone else from the exhibit, so when she arrived only the glass-fronted trees and rocks surrounded the three of them—Meg, Antonio, and Antonio’s date. One of the hatchlings wrapped himself around a tree branch and licked the air as Meg fell on the bench, shaking.

Antonio startled when she sat down, breaking out of his bizarre thinker pose. She barely had time to breathe before he grabbed her hands and pulled her across the bench. What the hell? A few days ago he’d avoided her as if she were rabid, and now he was squeezing her palms down to the bone and practically dragging her onto his lap.

“Meg! It’s impossible. It’s absolutely impossible, but I double-checked everything. We ran the tests twice—and they were expensive tests. I’m way over budget now.”

His eyes were huge, their irises surrounded by stark, glowing white. As he babbled on, his gaze roamed her face, the exhibit, the floor, seeming to ride the general wave of Gerald’s speech without landing on any stationary object. His hands were clammy.

“What the hell are you talking about?” She was only half paying attention to him, still trying to calm down from the confrontation with Nicole Roberts.

“A splice. Some kind of mutation. Frogs!” His hair fell into his face.

“He’s been like this all evening.” The blonde sighed. She sat on the other side of him, texting on her phone.

“Booze?” Meg asked, even though he didn’t smell like alcohol—more like cedar and cinnamon. The scent steadied her, focusing her overloaded senses in on him.

“Nope. Not with me, anyway.”

“Drugs?” Meg leaned in and tried to check his pupils. Odd, how she wanted to brush his hair back and get him some water. Help him concentrate and spit out whatever was eating him. As she hovered, Antonio’s head snapped up. Normal pupils.

“Drugs! Yes! Maybe there was some chemical reaction, something that caused her to … ” His hopefulness trailed off, but he seemed to register that she was sitting with him, that it was her thigh pressed against his and her gaze searching his face. He lifted a hand and brushed it against her cheek, watching the trail of fingers on her skin. When he spoke again, his voice was grounded. He was talking to her now, not some mysterious figment in his own mind.

“No, it couldn’t have been drugs.”

“Who’s got some drugs?”

Ben strode into the exhibit with two fresh glasses of champagne. The acid that had been digesting her guts for the last three weeks surged through her stomach.

“I got you another glass of champagne.” Ben stopped short of the bench, his offering arm freezing as he stared at the two of them. She looked down. Antonio dropped his hand from her face, but his other hand was curled in her lap, and somehow she’d laced her fingers through his without even knowing, just absorbing that clammy skin into her own flesh automatically, like osmosis.

“I’m not thirsty.”

She disengaged her fingers and scooted away from Antonio, crossing her arms to hide the tremors that suddenly shot through them. Every movement felt huge and guilt-soaked. Even with Ben and Antonio both here in the same room, breathing the same air, she’d never really believed that they’d come face to face. She never thought she’d be forced into this moment, stomach free-falling through her body, sweat breaking out on her forehead, heart racing, knowing absolutely, inarguably, that she’d finally been caught.

Nobody touched her like that, and Ben knew it.

“Who is this?” he demanded, pointing at Antonio. Another burst of applause drowned the room for a second, but Meg barely noticed. Ben’s stare trapped her completely; she couldn’t look away. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

Ben took a step closer, forcing her to look up. “Meg, I asked you a question. Why was he touching your face?”

“She had something on it,” Antonio offered quietly before burying his face in his hands.

Ben swung toward him, towering over both of them. “I didn’t ask you a goddamn thing.”

Meg jumped up, going toe to toe with Ben. Heads were starting to turn away from Gerald’s presentation on stage, a mixture of irritation and interest mingling on their faces. “Keep your voice down.”

“I’ll do whatever I want. What’s going on here?” he asked, anger starting to churn up to the surface.

She felt the welcome rush of retaliation and latched onto it. “Yeah, obviously you’re doing whatever you want, including trying to get me fired. What the hell was that back there with Nicole Roberts?”

“I was supporting you. And you—” Ben pointed at Antonio with the extra glass of champagne, sloshing it over the rim, but she cut him off.

“If that was your idea of support, take it somewhere else.” She tried to keep her voice as low as possible, but people near the back of the crowd were still shooting them sideways glares. “This is why I didn’t want you here in the first place.”

“Bullshit.” Ben looked through her to where Antonio sat. He shook his head in tight, heavy drags back and forth, and a spasm of hurt crossed his face as if the full weight of the knowledge were sinking into him. He knew what she was now.

The pain on his face hit her unexpectedly. She thought he’d be surprised and probably put out, but this was so much worse. It was enough to drain all the fight out of her, and she took a step toward him, desperate to make it better even as she knew there was nothing she could do or say to fix this.

“Ben.” She opened her mouth and closed it. Antonio started mumbling again, but she wasn’t listening. Ben shoved one of the glasses of champagne into her stomach, and she had no choice but to take it before it dropped to the ground. The liquid splashed onto her dress. He turned around and lunged into the crowd toward the exit. She stood there clutching the half-empty glass and watching until there was nothing left of him but a sour curl clogging her throat.

“I’m sorry, Meg.” Antonio’s voice sounded closer; he’d stood up behind her.

She swallowed, staring at the place where Ben had disappeared.

“I know I’m acting crazy, but it’s the hatchlings. I tested them earlier this week. Standard stuff, basic hematology with the DNA workup to confirm the parth, and that’s when we found it. I thought it had to be a mistake, somehow.”

That single word did it. It was the only word in the universe that could find her in this haze of pain and guilt and snap her back into the present. She forced Ben to the back of her mind and turned away from the crowd, toward the tiny black eyes that were peering out at her from under a palm leaf. Her stomach, already clenched, seemed to reach up into her throat and choke her. “What’s wrong with my hatchlings?”