“Your hair. When I first got here, it was all colorful.” Dragons wore their personal colors like warnings. “Now it’s bland and . . .”

“. . . on the morning drive.”

They turned together as Evan waved the damp remote, having gnawed the sound on.

“And now . . .” The anchor smiled at the camera. “. . . a story about our own local Doomsday Dan.”

“Come on, Evan. Give the remote to Charlie.”

“No, Cha Cha!”

“Wait!” Jack leaned forward and Charlie paused, one hand on the remote, the other holding Evan away from it. “I want to watch this. I know Dan. When he won’t go to a shelter, I make sure he doesn’t freeze.”

On the television, in a familiar corner of the park by the zoo, a familiar ragged figure faced the camera.

“It’s just down the road,” Jack added, aware Charlie’s attention was on him, not the television even if she was trying to pretend otherwise. “And that makes Dan . . .”

“One of yours?”

“That’s not . . .” Except it was. “Yeah. Fine.”

“It’s a Dragon Prince thing; you find subjects.” Charlie reached out, grabbed his leg, and shook it. Where most of the family would have looked condescending, she looked almost proud. “Go you.” As she turned her attention to the television, Jack patted out another small fire. “He’s really into that end is nigh thing, isn’t he?”

Dan had his toque in his hand, waving it wildly, the long gray tangle of his hair flapping around his face like greasy wings as he jumped up and down and shouted, “Bam! Bam! Bam! That’s how it ends! Bam! Bam! Bam! All the king’s horses! Bam! Bam! Bam! All the king’s men! Bam! Bam! Bam! Can’t put the sky together again!”

“You could rap that,” Charlie murmured, fingers tapping her thigh.

“Recently someone posted Dan’s . . .” The anchor’s smile broadened in the pause. Jack growled in reaction to all the teeth and gave Edward a hug as the larva growled with him. “. . . warning online, and in a very short time it went viral. We sent Kelly Ahenakew down to talk to Dan.”

Kelly had clearly explained the situation off camera—Jack doubted Dan knew what the internet was. When she pushed the microphone toward him, she said only, “So Dan, what do you think of your sudden notoriety?”

He snorted and Jack gave Kelly credit for not jerking back even though the spray was thick enough for the camera to catch. “I think we’re all going to die.”

“Because the sky is falling?”

Dan glanced up, took one long step to the left, and said, “Yes.”

“The actual sky?”

Dan nodded. “The sky,” he said solemnly, “is heavy.”

And that was the last thing Kelly could get him to say. This time, Jack didn’t protest when Charlie turned the sound off.

“How crazy is he?” she asked thoughtfully.

Jack shrugged. “He’s Human. It’s hard for me to tell.”