Silver Dragon

by Sarah Sarasota

  Chapter One - Cora

  Liz thought I was an out-and-out liar when she heard me remark, “I already feel at home here.”

  Her right eyebrow rose sky-high and she leaned heavily on the bar for support. “Bull,” she said, eyeing me close. “This isn’t exactly a warm and welcoming kind of town.”

  I dodged up and down the already-glossy bar and switched out the old, stained coasters for new ones. Feeling at home was a strange sensation and my thoughts kept tripping backward in time, wondering when I had last felt as if I was in the right place at the right time.

  Suddenly I was angry at Liz for not believing me. “What? Let me guess: no outsiders are allowed to love your town.”

  Liz’s left eyebrow jumped up to complete an expression of total surprise. “Well, I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve never heard anyone talk about loving Argo Heights. Especially not someone who has lived all over the country like you,” Liz said.

  I snorted. “You make it sound so romantic when you say it like that. You know I’ve basically been a homeless drifter. The apartment you helped me get is the first real address I’ve had in years.”

  Liz decided to take the hard edge off our conversation and laughed. “I’ve never seen Mr. Arbet so confused. Like a 6-month lease is some foreign custom he couldn’t even imagine.”

  I stopped slicing limes for the drinks station and smiled at Liz. Six months sounded like a heavenly long time to spend in one place. I wanted to know everything there was to know about Argo Heights and she was my best source of information. Liz James had grown up in Argo Heights and never left. Most of her family was gone but she still stuck it out, running the family roadside bar and keeping her grandfather’s old farmhouse from falling down.

  “What the hell kind of a name is Argo Heights?” I asked. The small town was surrounded by thick forest and some neighborhoods seemed to exist in permanent shade. “Seems more like a Shady Ditch to me.”

  Liz opened the register and waved at the first regulars that came through the door. “That’s right; you haven’t seen the outcropping yet. It’s this big rock plateau thing that sticks up out of the woods. Story goes the original settlers thought it looked like a ship and through the years people started referring to it as the Argo. Same ship as that legend about Jason and searching for the Golden Fleece.”

  I nodded and went back to wiping down the polished bar. “Did you know the word ‘argosy’ means treasure? Maybe there’s treasure here.”

  What was I saying? I didn’t own more than a pair of suitcases could hold and my savings account rarely had a positive balance. I had always been a paycheck to paycheck kind of girl so my sudden craving for troves of riches was strange to say the least.

  So was my drifting off in the middle of a conversation. I snapped back to reality and gave Liz an apologetic shrug. “Don’t worry. I’m not a gold-digger or anything.”

  “If you were, then you made a major wrong turn,” Liz said with a rueful smile. She shrugged herself. “I’ve got family here. That’s treasure enough for me.”

  I glanced over Liz’s shoulder to the single framed photograph propped in amongst the bottles of booze. Her son was a tow-headed angel with a shy smile and big, blue eyes. She struggled as a single mother but Liz’s son was her whole world and everything she did was devoted to him. It seemed unfair for her to carry the entire burden of parenthood herself but she never mentioned the absent father and it was apparent the subject was taboo.

  I left Liz lost in thought over Cameron’s photograph and went to the front tables. JJ’s Bar, named after her grandfather Joseph James, always did good business and most seats were already filled. I filled pitchers with beer, put in burger basket orders with Liz’s surly short-order cook, and smiled at all the customers as best I could while I thought about Liz’s son and his estranged father.

  Residents of Argo Heights were tight-lipped except when it came to old gossip and Cameron’s father was one of the great mysteries around town. Everyone had a theory, most involving irresponsible Romeos just passing by on the highway but it suddenly seemed crystal-clear to me: Cameron’s father still lived in town.

  That would explain why Liz was so carefully closed-mouthed on the subject. He lived a comfortable life in town, was aware of the child but ignored him, and remained happily married as he had always been.

  I felt so confident in my psychic insight that I turned right around to talk to Liz. How could I feel so sure? I had never put much stock in my intuition before but this felt different, as if I had always known how to perceive the truth in the messy patterns of people’s lives.

  “No one knows stuff like that,” I admonished myself.

  Maybe it was sleeping in the same bed for more than seven days but now my imagination had been running wild and it was starting to worry me.

  What really worried me was how I had almost ripped into the one subject my new friend wanted to keep private. Liz James was one of the kindest, most generous, and open-minded women I had ever met and I didn’t want to screw things up. She had listened to my long ramblings about the crisscrossed route that brought me to Argo Heights. It had been Liz that had introduced me to the landlord with a cheap apartment for rent. And it was Liz’s bar that felt more comfortable than all the restaurants and fast food joints I had been in for the last half-decade.

  What was so special about JJ’s Bar? It just felt so right, as if I was meant to be there. Liz was considered a bit of an outcast by her conservative neighbors: her roadside bar was on the outskirts of town next to the highway, and most of the customers were strangers passing through. All of those things brought my Bohemian soul a sense of peace, calm, and more belonging than I had ever felt before.

  Except the peace was wearing thin already. The party that had taken over the prime table in the front window was getting rowdy and I was in no mood for rudeness barely covered by crude flirting. I scowled at the taps as I pulled them a second round.

  “Want me to take that table?” Liz asked.

  I shook my head, trying to clear away my irritation. “No. It’s fine. I’m just sick of these side-hustling, secondhand shop wearing scumbags thinking they can stiff me on tips just because I won’t sit down and drink cheap swill with them.”

  “Oh, didn’t know we had a craft-beer girl with us.”

  I spun away from the beer taps to apologize. “I’m so sorry, Liz. I didn’t mean it! I don’t know what’s with me lately. I’m not really this judgmental. I mean, I’ve barely got two dimes to rub together so who am I to look down on anyone?”

  Liz gave me a quick hug and a light whack on the back of the head. “We all have our moods. And low-tippers get to me too.”

  My friend’s understanding was completely genuine but I could still feel her watching me. I concentrated on delivering the second round with my best smile, though I will admit the curtsy was sarcastic.

  “You ready for a full tour of all the best parts of our town?” The customer with a scruffy, brown beard grabbed his crotch and waggled his eyebrows at me.

  “Thanks, but I went to Stumpy’s Deli yesterday.”

  His friends guffawed but he glared at me. “That’s no way to talk when you work for tips.”

  “You keep your tip in your pants and we’ll get along just fine,” I said.

  His chair scuffed back as he jumped to his feet. Only one of his friends reached out to restrain him and even that was just a light hand on his arm. He towered over me but I couldn’t be bothered to move. I just glared up at him and dared him to come closer. After blowing a few heavy breaths in my face, that smelled of sour beer and pettiness, he finally spat on the floor and sat back down.

  I looked at the spittle, sighed, and glanced at the door. They wouldn’t all be like him, would they
? “Let me know when you’re ready for another round, boys.”

  Liz was staring at me as I returned to the bar.

  “Have I grown a second head?” I asked Liz sharply.

  She studied me even more carefully. “No, that’s not it. You just seem on edge. And you’ve checked the door about fifty times. Like you’re waiting for something. Or someone! Are you waiting for someone?”

  My irritation spiked and I couldn’t reply without saying something I would regret. While I struggled to get my ordinarily serene emotions back under control, Liz leaned on the bar and twirled her soft blonde hair dreamily.

  “I bet he did something idiotic. Something so stupid that you crossed state lines and then just kept going. And, even though you’re still righteously mad at him, he’ll show up here one day begging for your forgiveness.” Liz sighed, happy with the romance she was concocting.

  “You’ve been reading those trashy paperbacks someone left in the women’s bathroom again.” I grabbed a pint glass and started to wipe it dry with tight, strangling motions. “I’m not waiting. I don’t wait around for anything and especially not anyone.”

  Liz’s face grew serious and she reached out a hand. “I’m just glad you’re not running from anything bad, Cora. And aren’t we all waiting to see what life will do with us?”

  I yanked my arm back from her hand. “I decide what to do with my life and I’m certainly not going to waste it waiting.”

  Liz grabbed a bar towel and slowly began to help me dry the clean pint glasses. Her head was down lower than usual and I was stabbed with another painful insight: Liz was still waiting for Cameron’s father to come around. I don’t know how I came to that conclusion but I was so sure of it. And I could sense the heartache my careless words had caused my friend.

  “Maybe it’s the stress of moving,” I told Liz. “I’m just not feeling like myself tonight.”

  “I know. I get it,” Liz said. “And you’re right about waiting. It’s a total waste of time.”

  She brushed her wispy hair back out of her eyes and gave me her best resilient smile. Liz was the kind of woman that always dusted herself off and got back to work no matter what and I did my best to keep up.

  ***

  Another busy hour went by before I leaned on the bar desperately in need of a break. My shoulders throbbed and my whole body felt heavy with exhaustion, the same as I had felt the day after I moved all my thrift store furniture into my new second-story apartment. That had been a week ago.

  I rolled my shoulders and then stepped forward to stretch my calves. More than the aches and pains of moving cheap furniture, I felt as rough as I did the first night I had arrived in Argo Heights. After twelve hours on the road, I had been stiff from neck to ankles and dying for a long hot bath. Now I felt as if I had just arrived all over again.

  Then the dizziness came.

  My head spun and I saw things I couldn’t possibly be seeing: a wide hearth and bright fire, a lowball of bourbon the color of burnished honey, someone else’s hand swirling the ice in slow, perfect circles.

  I blinked hard and forced myself back to reality. So, I wasn't honest with myself or Liz. I hadn’t just stumbled across Argo Heights, I had been drawn there. It sounded ridiculous but I couldn’t think of any other way to explain it except a magnetic pull. Somewhere six hours north, I had tried to change directions but ended up with a migraine so severe I thought a rest-stop looked like an airport. Once I turned around, the feeling subsided and so it went until I reached Liz’s little hometown.

  Now the thought of going anywhere else made me feel sick.

  It turned out I wasn't honest about the waiting thing either. I had signed a lease and bought a kitchen table because I was determined to discover the cause of that magnetic pull, the dizziness and all the other strange feelings. Something in Argo Heights would make sense of it all and I was anxious for that thing to appear.

  “You okay?” Liz called down the bar.

  I jumped up and nodded too vigorously. The dizziness spun around the corners of my vision but I shook it off. Liz was genuinely concerned and I didn’t want to disappoint the first real friend I had found on the road. The best I could do was focus on work and show Liz how grateful I was for the job.

  Plus, something, maybe my newly uncovered intuition, was telling me that JJ’s Bar was the place I was supposed to be. I had the right place, now all I had to do was wait for the right time.

  Chapter Two - Maalik

  “You can stop prowling. I will come and tell you when the food has arrived.” Balor crossed his thick arms across his chest and glared at me.

  I had to meet his eyes and hold the stare until he looked away. Balor was my elder and advisor but also my servant. What he termed ‘our quarantine’ was an honored dragon custom for claiming the land. I had, much to my father’s disdain, chosen my first home to be on human land so it seemed even more important to follow the old ways before setting foot in town. Unfortunately, my servant’s fidgeting energy was doing nothing to help me feel grounded.

  “Are you done searching every corner and cupboard in the house? This is the stillest you’ve stood since we arrived and you’re accusing me of acting like a caged animal.” I laughed when Balor paced away.

  He turned and marched back. “Isn’t it about time you hired a cook? All this ordering in cannot be good for connecting with your new home. What you really need is a meal served from your own kitchen,” Balor reminded me.

  “If it’ll make you feel better we can eat in the formal dining hall.” I imagined my servant standing at the far end of the long, polished table. With the fire glowing behind him, I wouldn’t be able to see his dour expression.

  Balor scowled at me. “That food you ordered seems to be taking an awfully long time. Maybe I should drive into town and pick it up. Give the restaurant a piece of my mind.”

  I held my hand out to stop Balor’s impertinent exit. “We’re growing accustomed to our new surroundings so that we can be calm and peaceful when we first meet our neighbors.”

  “Fine. Then let me go and take care of the twenty-item list that still needs doing. Do I need to remind you that this mansion stood empty for near a decade? Every inch needs cleaning, all the wood needs a new coat of polish, and the electrical needs updating. There are dozens of light switches and outlets that make no sense.” Balor was growling again, his fingers flexing with the need to be doing something.

  “Too bad the locals aren’t that friendly. I fear it will take a while for them to learn to appreciate our presence.” I switched topics from our never-ending to-do list and touched on my servant’s other favorite topic for venting: the humans that resided in the small town of Argo Heights.

  “You’re the one that can sense people’s secrets, their intentions and all that nonsense. Even while you’re hiding up here you have to have sensed something. What is going on in this town?” Balor asked.

  I felt a spark of irritation. Instead of becoming grounded, I had been getting more anxious by the day. Something was different about Argo Heights and I couldn’t intuit what had changed since I had scouted the land myself. And now Balor doubted me. Had I made a mistake in my choice of first home? Would my smug father turn out to be right?

  Thoughts of my father heated my irritation up to a dangerous simmer. “First, I need order in my house,” I snarled. “Who are you to question me?”

  Balor sensed my change of mood but it only made him bristle. “I’m the one that’s done all the footwork for your high and mighty first move. Who got the electricity turned on? Who sorted out the plumbing and installed a new high-tech water heater so you can sulk in your baths?”

  The red dragon was starting to blaze and I could have made him blow his top, but I was bored with arguing. “Stop your nonsense before I think you are unhappy with your post.”

  Balor straightened up to his full height, just below my chin, and gritted his teeth. “We are the only dragons in town. I don’t need the heightened intuition of a sil
ver dragon to tell me that. So why are you dragging your feet?”

  “I’m not certain.” I turned away from my servant and walked to the wide window. We had been ranging up and down the great hall and landed in the ballroom. It had a spectacular view of the rocky outcropping that had once given Argo Heights its name. “Even your thick skin must be pricking with all the old magic around here.”

  Balor let out a heavy breath of relief. “I’m glad you said something. It’s been messing with me.”

  I had to tease him. “Is that why it took you so long to put the wards on the gates and grounds?”

  “You wouldn’t believe the pushback, the power from the forest itself.” Balor glared out the window next to me. “No wonder the people around here seem stubborn and solitary. The trees hold sway.”

  “More nonsense. It hasn’t been long enough of confinement for you to lose your senses completely.” I gave Balor a shove off balance.

  “It reminds me of the forests surrounding your father’s estate,” Balor said in retribution.

  It was my turn to scowl. On the outside of things, it looked as if I had defied my father, joined the human world, and turned my back on my laudable heritage. Only Balor could see closer to the truth. He noticed I had chosen land that mirrored my beloved home.

  I wanted the same kingdom as my father, except I wanted it built on my merit alone.

  “Remember, Balor, here the Devereux name means very little. The humans will judge us based solely on ourselves. We must show them our best side first.”

  “The food better arrive soon or the delivery kid is going to see a nasty side of me.” Balor pushed past me and prowled down the great hall to the front doors.

  I followed, unable to get the thought of my father out of my head. “Do you agree with him?”

  Balor stopped on the black and white marble floor of the foyer. He didn’t turn around. “I met many honorable men in the wars, Maalik, but even I don’t understand your obsession with living so close to humans. All of history shows that it has never been a good idea for dragons and humans to mingle so closely.”