6. No matter what we do, it’s just not the same. #3
“Frighteningly well, actually. If we hurry up and get this over with already, I’ll tell you more in the car.”
Delaying would only make my plethora of problems worse, so I rang the doorbell.
A gorgon whelp, likely the male heir my cousin had mentioned, cracked open the door. A faint tingle of gorgon magic brushed against my skin, and I relaxed when Perkins showed none of the preliminary symptoms of petrification. “You’re not Papa.”
I showed the whelp my badge. “I’m Police Chief Samuel Quinn of the NYPD. Are any of your parents home?”
He deflated, and I tensed at the warning sign something was wrong. “He never came back.”
Shit. He? What had happened to the hive’s females? Gorgon whelps typically used ‘they’ or mentioned their mothers—however many they had. “May we come in?”
“Are you going to help us find him?”
Damn it, damn it, damn it. I couldn’t tell him no, and I hadn’t come ready to rescue the damned hive after my Bailey. “I’ll do what I can,” I promised. “Who is us?”
“Me and my sister. He left us home three days ago. He said he’d be back in a few hours.”
Shit. Even if I wanted to brush off the whelp’s concerns, when a gorgon male said a few hours, he meant it, which escalated the situation to something severely wrong.
No male would leave his whelps unattended for days.
I turned to Perkins. “Please contact my grandfather.”
“On it.” He strolled to our rental, his stride brisk without conveying any signs of panic.
“Your grandfather?” the whelp whispered.
“He’s a former king, and he’ll be able to help more than human law enforcement. Despite appearances, I’m a gorgon prince.”
He pointed at me. “Shapeshifter!”
“Yes, I am.”
His eyes widened. “That’s so cool.”
“Would you and your sister hood your serpents and put your glasses on, please? Officer Perkins isn’t a gorgon.”
“Yes, sir! Please come in? You can wait in the entry. We won’t come into the entry until we’re hooded and have our glasses.” He held open the door, and the hope on his face hurt.
Poor kid. I followed him in, and I left the door cracked so Perkins could come inside.
Careful to keep my expression neutral, I examined the foyer while he ran off to fetch his sister and prepare to interact with Perkins.
The shoe racks, empty save for two pairs of children’s shoes, worried me.
My grandfather’s hive had so many shoes that their entry often transformed into a maze. The coat rack told a similar story.
Where were the hive females? The hive females would have had spare shoes and coats for all seasons in the entry. A hive seeking a surrogate would have had evidence of females everywhere.
Perkins slipped into the entry, and he wore his sunglasses despite coming indoors. “Situation?”
“I’m concerned.”
“Why?”
I pointed at the shoe racks. “The male left his young completely alone, and he didn’t return for them.
” Gorgons were a lot of things, but they lived and died for their whelps, especially their sons, who were so rare.
In the male’s shoes, the only thing that would prevent me, my father, or his father before him from returning for his children, male or female, was death.
Within five minutes, the male whelp returned with his sister. The little girl, with the exception of her cobras, appeared to be human. She even had human hair flowing beneath her serpents, something so unusual I’d only seen it once before.
No wonder the Dover hive wanted Bailey. To have a son and a daughter like her in the same hatching, the hive’s breeding male likely hoped his children might one day rule the gorgon world.
Between the two, they might, as the young male had eleven king cobras. If he didn’t develop the Right to Rule, I’d be surprised.
“Before I ask any questions about your family, when was the last time you two ate?”
They stared at the floor, and in the following silence, two empty tummies gurgled.
“Officer Perkins, please bring Sunny inside. I’ll arrange for their care.”
“Sunny?” the little girl asked.
“My bride’s new puppy. An early Christmas present. She’ll become a police dog down the road. But first, let’s get you two something to eat. Can you show me to the kitchen?”
Perkins shot me a salute, turned around, and ventured back outside.
The whelps led me to a house in dire need of cleaning, exactly what I expected from a pair of children left alone. Every step deeper into the house worried me more.
Once upon a time, the hive had had females; pictures decorated the walls, promising the mansion had once been a happy home. I worried all that remained of them were loving memories.
Disaster waited for me in the kitchen, the evidence the children had attempted to feed themselves with no luck.
I could only assume the hive hadn’t begun teaching them how to survive on their own—or the females had passed away recently enough the male hadn’t been ready to rebuild his hive.
I checked the freezer to discover several frozen pizzas, which would be the safest and easiest option for feeding them.
If I could tolerate cooking in the filthy kitchen. I gave it five minutes before my tolerance for the mess faded to nothing. I’d think about feeding them pizza to tide them over.
One choice was clear, though. I wouldn’t be leaving without the whelps. “Until your hive is found, my hive, my father’s hive, or my grandfather’s hive will care for you. There’ll be no adoption match scheduled yet; this is a temporary arrangement while we look for your family.”
“Daddy wanted to find us a new mommy because our mommy died giving birth to us,” the little girl whispered. “We’re weird.”
“Weird?” Their entire story was weird. Gorgons didn’t become egg bound, and surrogates didn’t carry eggs to term.
“We were live birthed. Our eggs broke in our mommy. It’s not our fault,” the girl assured me. “But we kept petrifying her, and she died after we were born. Our little sister didn’t survive, but that wasn’t our fault, either. Mommy loved us.”
No wonder their father wanted Bailey. Broken eggs happened sometimes, but rarely in a case where the surrogate became pregnant with a human child at the same time. I’d never heard of any of the children surviving such a thing.
I beheld two miracles, the kind I doubted I’d ever see again. “Your mother must have loved you very much.”
“But we’re weird. We have big snakes. I’m the wrong color. I have to petrify people intentionally. It’s tiring. My brother, too. It’s really tiring. Daddy always worries someone will take us from him. But you’re going to help us find our daddy, right?”
All the anger I’d carried over the hive’s audacity of wanting my bride crumbled beneath the reality of their situation. I doubted their father still lived, and I didn’t want to be the one to tell them. I’d have to, likely within a few days, but they stared at me with such hopeful eyes.
“I’m going to do everything I can to help you find your daddy,” I promised. “What are your names?”
“I’m Beauty, because Mommy said I was beautiful before she died. My brother is Sylvester, because she told our daddy she liked the name.”
My grandfather would love the boy because of his name alone. “It’s a good name. What can you tell me about your daddy?”
Sylvester stared at his feet, and I recognized I’d have a lot of work ahead of me preparing him for life as a lead hive male.
“He’s lonely,” Beauty admitted.
“He is? Why?”
“Our other mommies got sick and died. Daddy took us to a fancy doctor, and we had to take a long nap, but we got better. Our mommies didn’t.”
Shit, shit, shit. Sometimes, I truly hated my job, and I hated myself for having to ask the pair more questions. “When did this happen?”