“NICE.” GINGER TSK-TSKED AS SHE WATCHED LOGAN FALL
onto the sand, then she turned to stare at the brown liz-ard sunning himself on the guesthouse’s eave. “You re-ally performed a public service this time.”
The lizard didn’t say a word.
Ginger sighed. “You do know I can see you, right?”
He still didn’t respond, but one of his eyes rolled her way.
“Don’t you go rolling your eyes independently of each other at me.” She undulated her neck. “I call it like I see it. And you blew it, buddy. Big time.”
The lizard turned even darker brown. That was such a neat ability, being able to change color. Too bad the only way she could do it was by giving up her favorite food in the world, shrimp. And even then, it took a while and she only turned white. White. Big flappin’ deal. Thank goodness Roger adored her in pink, but still… It’d be nice to change for a change.
She took a step closer to the house. “Stewie, I really think—”
“It’s Stewart.” The lizard turned green with indignation.
Wonder what color he turned in envy? Ginger shook her head. She was stuck with pink, even in envy. “All right, Stewart. What were you thinking sending a child to the beach? Alone? Anything could happen. Take,
for instance, that overblown hammerhead out there. He actually talked the kid into going along for a ride. What do you think is going to happen, hmmm? Didn’t think about that, did you? Now you’re going to have that kid’s death on your bony little prehensile fingers. I hope you can live with yourself.”
Stewart’s tail twitched, and his hind legs bunched beneath him. “Hey, I can’t help it if he’s as bright as a gecko. He wanted to know, and he was waking the entire neighborhood. Do you want all the other Humans to find out about her? What do you think would happen when his father found the kid bawling his eyes out? The story would have come out.”
“Look, you undersized dinosaur, the story already did come out. Logan found out about her last night. Was quite nasty about it, if I do say so myself.”
Not that she’d been listening or anything. Well, okay, yes, she had been listening. But they’d had their little tell-all right next to her roost. She hadn’t gone out of her way to listen in. Really, no one could have avoided hearing what they were saying.
That was her story and she was sticking to it.
Not that it was any of Stewart’s business.
“You know, Stewart. If you’d kept your big ol’ dew-lap shut, Logan would have calmed the kid down and that would have been that. But, no. You just had to get involved, didn’t you?” Ginger rotated her neck to get the kinks out. She really hated when animals did stupid things; it gave Humans the right to think all animals were stupid. “Now he has to go after her, and the entire Mer world is going to know that she let the catbird out of the cage, and all of Atlantis is going to be up in fins. Not
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to mention, you know how Humans are when it comes to their young.”
“Something you obviously don’t have a clue about.” Stewart, the little smart-ass, leered at her. “Besides what do you care? I didn’t know you were a member of the Angel Tritone Fan Club.”
“Look, you komodo wannabe, just because I don’t want to sit at home on any guy’s roost doesn’t mean I don’t like kids. Or have a conscience. You just sent one off to his death. How can you live with yourself?” When would the dinosaurs stop trying to take over the world? They’d botched that job millions of selinos ago—had gotten them¬selves extinct to boot. Now their upstart ancestors were trying to do it again. Would the reptiles never learn?
“There’s only one thing left to do.” Seriously, birds were so much better equipped to deal with these kinds of emergencies—which was why they’d survived and the dinosaurs hadn’t.
“You’re quite right. There is.” Stewart turned to face the other way, a co-mingling of brown and green over-taking his scrawny little body. “Go back to sleep.”
On second thought, perhaps that color-morph thing wasn’t the most attractive trait. “If I were you, Stewart”— perish the thought—“I might want to find another spot.” “What are you talking about?” Stewart asked, doing that independent eye-rolling thing again. That wasn’t attractive either. Yes, she was very glad she’d been hatched a beautiful, lithe, seductive flamingo. “You
don’t eat lizards.”
Heh. Let him sweat it. Well, only figuratively, since reptiles were physiologically incapable of that—another reason she was glad she was a bird.
“Correction, genius. We aren’t known to eat lizards.
That doesn’t mean we don’t.”
Not that she’d come near him with a ten-foot beak, but he did deserve a little angst for the big angst he’d contributed to.
And now he turned so light brown that he was almost white. Ah, blanched with fear. She’d heard the term be-fore but had never seen it put into practice. And it soooo wasn’t attractive either.
Yes, Ginger, ol’ bird, being a flamingo is where it’s at.
That’s why she was going to do what she was about to do. After all, the lizard caused it, but she got to be the heroine. Let those Orlando chicks eat their shriveled, old, gossipy hearts out.
She took a step forward, hiding her smile when he took a step back. “Listen up, Stewie. You need to fix this. Go find a storm petrel or someone who knows one. Get that bird in the air after Angel. She needs to know what’s going on.”
Hmmm… Who would play her in the movie? There weren’t many Hollywood-ified flamingos.
Hey, she could do it. After all, who better to play her than her?
She’d show those Orlando babes a thing or two. There was a big ol’ movie studio there. She didn’t have to hang out at the marine park with them. Nuh-uh. Not her. She was headed for the bright lights and the big time.
Giving the lizard one last look, Ginger straightened the feathers on her crown, fluffed her back and then her breast to glam up for her trip, and took off down the beach to give Logan the low-down.
She just hoped he’d listen.