I stared at the pictogram. “Not to mention the fire.”
“Fair point,” Matt said.
Constance had stopped between the three Phoenix pictograms and picked up the conversation. “The teams are all housed near each other along the hall, so you will always remain in close contact. If you don’t get along”—she shrugged—“hmm, it’s best if you get along. You are a team, after all.”
She gestured to rooms twenty-six and twenty-seven—they were across the hall from each other—and handed us each a key attached to a flexible elastic.
“You’re in Phoenix twenty-six,” she pointed to me, waving the keys in the air. “Until we get the geothermal power fully online, we’re stuck with old-fashioned methods. These fobs stretch enough to go around your wrist regardless of what shape you’re in. Well, unless you’re a Dragon. But a lot prefer not to lock their rooms at all. Only fools steal from a shifter.” Her eyes darted to me.
“Thanks, Constance,” I said.
She smiled uncertainly, and I wondered just how much she’d overheard from her spot outside Amadeus’s door. As soon as she’d disappeared around the corner, I turned to Matt.
“Listen, Matt. About what Amadeus said—I can do this on my own. You don’t have to protect me.”
“Bleedin’ good, Angel.” Matt grinned down at me, and my fool heart did a flip. “She’ll be apples. If it turns into a dog’s breakfast, you can watch my back. Okay?”
I needed a freaking Aussie-English dictionary.
He sighed. “We’ll watch out for each other, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
He set my bags down at my feet. Trix and I turned our backs on him and unlocked the door.
* * *
My dog took three strides into the room, and froze.
So did I. Because there was an ogre on one of the beds.
I was pretty sure she was female, though. For one thing, Amadeus had indicated as much. And she had what looked like breasts pushing up beneath her tunic.
The skin of her exposed arms and face was bright red and covered in tiny bumps, and her vivid-scarlet hair stood up from her head in unruly tufts. They remained aloft six inches away from her scalp.
Muscles bulged free from her tunic everywhere I looked. She was the living embodiment of the ogres I thought only existed in fantasies. Okay, the movie version had been green with much weirder ears, but the moniker still worked for me.
The only thing was, the movie version never sat in a lotus position.
I had no idea how she’d folded those tree-trunk legs like that—the joints looked weird, almost doubled—but she even had her huge hands resting palms-up on her knees. As I entered, she straightened her legs and stood up in a surprisingly fluid movement. I looked up to meet bright-orange eyes that hovered far too close to the ceiling. I gaped at her.
“Greetings,” she said in a strong voice that matched her physique. “I’m Mari.”
I swallowed as I pushed the door closed behind us. Her vertically slit pupils unnerved me for a moment. But when she smiled, revealing even, square, and very white teeth, I finally got my mouth unstuck.
“Anna,” I offered. “And this is Trix.”
At the mention of her name, Trix’s tail waved, but her gaze remained riveted on Mari, her nose twitching. My poor dog had far too many new things to assimilate, but she wasn’t hampered, as I was, by the concept of just how freaking strange all this was. To her, it was just another new experience.
“What is she?” Mari seemed captivated by Trix. “She is very cute.”
Her oddly accented English emphasized the wrong syllables, but I could understand her. Which was only a small part of what blew my mind over the last twenty-four hours.
“She’s a dog,” I explained. “My pet.”
“Pet?” Mari bent to wave fingers the width of twinkies at my dog.
When I took a step closer, Trix came too, stretching her neck to sniff the offering.
