Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus by Mira Grant Page A

lot, and yet sometimes I’d like to be able to hot tub without tinting the water beige.”
    “This is a fascinating conversation, and I’m just thrilled beyond words to be able to be an unwilling participant, but can we please get back on track?” I asked. “I need to know about the Monkey’s girls. I understand that he had two. Can either of you describe them for me?”
    “The Cat was tall, thin, brown hair, cold eyes. She did a lot of the grunt work for him. I get the feeling she was a computer genius, but I didn’t get details,” said Maggie.
    “Her name was Jane,” said Alaric. His voice was much more subdued. “We dated for a while back in college. She was always a little cold, but I figured that was just the sort of person she was, you know? Not everyone is physically demonstrative.”
    “The sex was apparently amazing,” said Maggie. “Seriously transcendent. I did get details about that, but to be fair, I asked for them. The woman should’ve written a book on fucking, instead of going into the business of fucking people over.”
    “I am thrilled to be learning more about the intricacies of your marriage, and will send you my therapy bills,” I said flatly.
    “I’m good for them,” said Maggie.
    “Yes, I know,” I said. “So that’s the Cat. Jane. I’ve heard reports that she didn’t make it out of the Monkey’s compound alive.” Even if she had, she wasn’t the woman in my observation room. My guest could have been a natural brunette, and she could have had cold eyes when she wasn’t drugged to the gills, but no one, however charitable, was ever going to call her “tall.” I’d met taller teenagers. “There was another woman, though. Tell me about her.”
    “You mean Foxy?” asked Maggie. “She was little. Red hair. Blue eyes. Violent as all hell. She seemed like she was only really happy when she was hurting something—although she was the one who really got upset when we found out that the Cat had betrayed us. The Monkey was angry when he found out. But the Fox was sad. She was disappointed. It was sort of like she was a little kid in some ways, and she didn’t want to believe that the people who were important to her could actually do anything that was really wrong.”
    “There’s more.” Alaric’s interjection was soft enough that I almost missed it.
    Good thing I have good ears. “What do you mean, there’s more?”
    “I mean…do you keep up with the site at all? The articles, I mean, not the op-ed columns or the updates from the Masons.”
    “Not as much as I should,” I admitted. “Running a lab is a full-time job, even when you can do it legitimately. Under these conditions, it’s a full-time job for three people, and there’s only one of me. My reading for pleasure has sort of fallen by the wayside.”
    “Okay. I wrote an article a few months ago that I really think you should read. Send me a currently valid e-mail address, and I’ll send it over to you.” Alaric sounded hesitant—more hesitant than normal. “It’ll explain a lot about the Fox.”
    “Okay,” I said. “Can I show you a picture?”
    “Sure,” said Maggie. “Send it to my submissions account. We both have access.”
    “On it.” Cradling the phone between my cheek and shoulder again, I pulled up the video of our mystery guest—who was growing less mysterious by the second—and clipped a single frame that showed her face in cool, silent repose. The lighting was good, highlighting the pallor of her skin and the purple shadows under her eyes. I attached it to an e-mail, sent it off, and waited. The connection was good. I didn’t have to wait for long.
    “Mother of God,” said Maggie.
    Alaric, who had spent more time in my lab than she had and knew exactly where that room was in the facility, was less restrained. “Dr. Abbey, what the fuck is the Fox doing in your observation room?”
    “So you’re both identifying her as the woman from the Monkey’s compound?” I asked.