Patty beamed and held up her half-completed blanket. “Bobbi’s turning one in November. She’s been babbling up a storm. She’s a talker, that one. Just like her daddy.”

I smiled and headed through another set of doors into a large, open space that smelled of hay, fur, and animal droppings. We’d converted most of the ground floor into a kennel for everything from rats to rabbits to monkeys, even a Galapagos turtle with a cracked shell who’d been shipped in two weeks ago from the Toronto zoo. And, of course, Vince’s favorite crow, Kerling.

Smudge smoked as we passed the rat cages. He didn’t mind the other animals, but I suspected the rats were close enough to his size for him to see them as potential competitors. Or maybe potential meals, though I couldn’t remember the last time he’d hunted anything bigger than a grasshopper. I really needed to get him out more while I was here. Parts of the desert were barren enough for him to roam and hunt without setting the land ablaze, and he needed the exercise.

I found Vince Hambrecht at a stainless steel table, next to a mobile desk with three computer monitors. He and an NIH doctor named Jeremy Dishaw were examining a six-foot-long boa constrictor. “Hi, Boss! How was D.C.?”

“Eventful.” Where Dr. Dishaw wore a shirt, tie, and lab coat, Vince was dressed in his favorite blue robe over a too-tight T-shirt. Knee-length shorts and Birkenstock sandals completed the image. The robe was part of his ongoing effort to cultivate a magical fashion style. An effort which had so far failed to take off. His attempt to grow a “wizardly” beard had been equally unsuccessful, resulting in thin, scraggly patches along his cheekbones and chin.

I looked past them at the snake. “How’s he—she?—doing?”

“He,” said Vince. “His name’s Olaf. He likes warm hugs. He came in with IBD eight days ago. That’s inclusion body disease. It’s like AIDS for snakes. He’s good as new, now. But Doctor Dipshit here wants to reinfect him to see if our cure created immunity.”

Dishaw glared at Vince. “You’ve proven you can cure the virus, so there should be no long-term risk to the animal, even if it’s still susceptible to IBD. We need to know how magic affects the immune system, both in the short and long term.”

“He also wants to feed Olaf some of our rats.”

Dishaw flushed. “You’ve done zero work to see how consuming magic will affect the food chain. What if it works like mercury poisoning, where the harm ends up concentrated in the apex predators?”

“That wasn’t in the original research plan,” I said mildly.