by Zoe Chant
But while Mikhail had little to do with humans, that was not true of his son. Fei Zhan was modern in ways that sometimes disconcerted Mikhail—like his dependence on cell phones. Mikhail knew what they were, of course, and had mastered their arcane and ever-changing technicalities with the same precise attention to detail that he had used to master the driving of automobiles. He carried a cell phone, as people could scarcely move in today’s world without one. But he tended to forget its existence until the rare times someone used it to call or text him.
However, Fei Zhan’s modernity might help Mikhail now. His son was currently in Los Angeles, dealing with the clan’s tea business. Mikhail landed on the beach and shifted back to his human self. He took out the cell phone and texted his son the name of his motel and a request to meet. Then, after a moment’s thought, he added, Important, need advice.
And then Mikhail could no longer delay his mission. He made his way inside the cave. It smelled of rotting seaweed and the trash left by negligent humans. As the light dimmed, he checked the entry, extending his senses for the least hint of danger, either physical or supernatural.
He found none. The place was wide open, beckoning him to enter.
That, by itself, seemed a touch suspicious. A trap, perhaps?
Mikhail began to shift to his dragon, but stopped the transformation before he lost his human form. His eyes were always the first to transform. His skin had not even begun to scale when he halted. Holding himself in this stage took energy, but he was used to it. And he’d need his dragon’s sight.
He made his way past old stone walls, pockmarked by seawater over the centuries. Graffiti marked everything within reach of human hands, sloppy images obviously scrawled by drunken teens. He worked his way deeper into the cave until he reached a huge pile of rubble. There the stone wall had cracked spectacularly into a forty foot high crevasse. He sensed a powerful ward there, still strong even though it must have been hiding... whatever it was hiding... for centuries.
The crevasse gave way into what had once been an enclosed room, its entrance now partially blocked by rubble. There was a magical ward barring the entrance, a compulsion that evoked fear and dread, no doubt to keep idle explorers away. But that was no barrier to Mikhail. He scanned carefully, but again sensed no imminent threat.
Mikhail stepped inside and looked around. The cave room appeared to be empty. One stone wall had a large mural full of busy figures. Here and there the paint had been worn away by moisture, revealing even older images beneath. They were mostly obscured, but he could both see and sense that they were ancient.
He turned away from the mural for now. It seemed less important than the fact that he sensed the presence of what he sought, like a single note struck on a crystal. He closed his eyes, hoping to home in on it. But he couldn’t trace it to a location. The presence seemed to be everywhere at once, which was to be expected for a magical treasure.
He could not tell where the object of his quest had been hidden, nor even what its form was. However, that crystalline note was unmistakable. The dragon empress, a seer whose awareness extended over the entire mythic plane, had seen this place in her dreams. But her dreams were symbolic, especially when she sensed objects obscured by time. It was his job to sort through the physical clues to find this treasure, and to guard it until the empress decided what must be done with it.
He stood still, breathing softly. It was rare that emotions such as awe caught him up, after a long life of soaring high above the northern peaks that never saw spring, and over vast golden deserts that seemed as endless as the sea. It seemed that meeting his mate, even for such a frustratingly brief encounter, was already changing him.
He savored the remembered image of Bird’s bright eyes and silver-touched hair, then remembered that he’d summoned his son. And though he was surrounded by darkness, he sensed the sun sliding west. He had spent a long time in the cave.
Mikhail hurried out and emerged into the bright afternoon sun. There he released the iron control and shifted all the way to into a dragon, wrapping light and air and water around himself as a cloak of invisibility to mortal eyes.
He spiraled upward on a slow current of ocean air, his senses stretched out for danger. Finding no signs of threat, he arrowed downward into the little town. With perfect control, he shifted to human form in midair and landed lightly on the balcony of his motel room.
Mikhail leaned on his swordstick and watched the sun sink toward the sea until he sensed what he had been waiting for. His son Fei Zhan could not fly as fast as Mikhail could, being an earth dragon. But he was a good, solid flier. Mikhail watched him soaring above the clouds and then dropping downward, visible only to those who could see the mythic plane.
Mikhail went inside to give his son space to land. He watched from the doorway as the earth dragon became a tall and handsome young man whose features showed more of his Chinese heritage than Mikhail’s did.
“Father,” Fei Zhan said.
“Son.” Mikhail held out a hand to invite Fei Zhan into the room.
Fei Zhan cast his eyes over the motel room’s disharmonious furnishings. The imperial dragons of the Tian-Long family kept to the old customs when in their human form, sitting on mats in their manors set in vast gardens designed by masters of feng shui. This motel room, with its cheap gray carpet and ugly brown couch, violated pretty much every principle of feng shui, and western design principles to boot.
Fei Zhan dropped gracefully onto the couch. The springs let out a depressed-sounding wheeze. Both father and son couldn’t help chuckling, which broke the formality.
“How have you been?” Mikhail asked.
“Well, thank you. But you didn’t yank me out of L.A. to ask how I’m doing. You need advice? From me?”
“I do.”
Fei Zhan grinned. “I trust it’s about the tea business. It’s not as if I could advise you on the best methods of fighting krakens, or how to defeat demonic grave robbers, or the any of your other regular chores.”
“I don’t need advice on fighting krakens.” Mikhail still hadn’t figured out how to approach the subject. But that was the point, was it not? He didn’t know how to talk about such things. So he said bluntly, “I have found my mate.”
Fei Zhan’s eyes widened with surprise. “What? Where?”
“Here. In this town.”
“I thought you were here on imperial order.”
“I am.” Mikhail gave a brief outline of what happened. Fei Zhan laughed silently, but he did not interrupt as Mikhail finished, “And so, here I am. I never expected such a thing to happen to me. Especially with a human. I do not know what to do.”
“With a woman?” His son’s voice rose in horror. “Dad, are you asking me—”
“I know what to do with a woman in that sense,” Mikhail interrupted testily. “You’re here.”
“Uh, right. Right. Right.” Fei Zhan once again began to chuckle.
“What I need to learn is how to . . . to . . .”
“Date?” His son crossed his arms, tipping his head.
“Yes. That.”
Fei Zhan let out a belly laugh, but when he saw his father patiently waiting, he hastily suppressed the rest. “Okay. Okay. Not really funny, just a surprise. But!” Fei Zhan held up his palms. “First. If she’s younger than I am, I’m out of here.”
Mikhail considered. “I cannot estimate age in humans, but there is no sense of a nestling about her.”
“Okay, well, that’s a relief. Next, she’s definitely human?”
“Yes. I am certain of it. You know we can always sense another of our kind. She does not have that sense. Not that it’s a problem! She is unique in herself, wondrous, beautiful . . .”
“Enough! Enough already. No one needs to hear their dad going on about a hot . . . uh, lady.” Fei Zhan’s head tipped the other way. “Although from the sound of it, you haven’t even gotten that far. Look, Father, it’s simple. That is, the dating strategy is simple. Let me put it in old-fash
ioned terms. You have to court her.”
“Court her,” Mikhail repeated, his right hand straying toward the hilt of his swordstick. But this was not a matter for dragon-fire and steel.
Fei Zhan grinned. “Let me put it in terms an old dragon knight can understand. The strategy is simple, but the tactical carry-through is where things might get interesting. First you need to conduct a recon mission. And then determine what logistical support you will need.”
“Recon,” Mikhail repeated, relieved. Put it in the terms of a knight’s military campaign, it began to make sense.
“Get to know her. Find out what she likes, and what her life is about. Go from there. And good luck!” Fei Zhan sketched the characters for double-happiness in the air. Then he went out the door, jumped off the balcony, became a dragon in midair, and arrowed up into the clouds.
Find out what she likes, find out about her life. Mikhail could do that. He very much wished to do exactly that.
In fact, he wished he could summon the local Guardian, an old campaign colleague named Cang, and dump his mission on him, so Mikhail could concentrate exclusively on courting his mate. If his orders had come from anyone but the empress, he would have been very tempted indeed.
But he didn’t need to spend all his time searching for the treasure. And the eldest of the four women had already invited him to an event at which his mate would be present.
An image of Bird sprang into his mind, vivid as life: her sweet face and its sudden smile, as bright and kind as dawn. The lushness of her gently rounded form. Her hands, square, experienced, honest. Even the peculiar garment covering her hair, the even more peculiar tie, and the red paint stains could not diminish her beauty.
Oh yes, it would give him great pleasure to find out about her life. He hoped that she might be interested in his.
But first he must discover something about his mysterious Bertie Wooster. Though his dragon could discover where she lived, he sensed that it would be wrong to suddenly appear there—not when she was unfamiliar with the mate bond. No, he must meet her in a place she would consider safe, a public place. The writers’ group would be perfect.
Whatever it was that the empress had sensed in that cave had waited for many centuries. It could wait another day.
THREE
BIRD
It was all Bird could do to keep herself from being distracted as her friends drank their coffee, and Bird her tea. Fresh tea. After these expeditions to create the murder scenes, Godiva always treated them. Otherwise Bird got hot water for free and dunked a tea bag from home.
The nice thing about a community, she thought as she sipped the excellent Osmanthus Green tea the coffee shop offered, is that people know all your quirks and still like you. But how would her quirks, like keeping tea bags in her purse, look to the eyes of a stranger?
There she was again, thinking of Professor Mikhail Long.
She wrenched her mind back to the conversation. The others chattered about Godiva’s latest murder plot, then moved to Doris’s next high school play, which Bird looked forward to seeing, and from there to high school football, a subject Bird could never scrape up more than a superficial interest in. Her eyes wandered to the seascapes on the wall, which had been painted by her landlord, Mr. Kleiner. Odd, how different times of day—different kinds of light—would pick out the shades in one painting over another. But they were all beautiful, each one well established in the Beautiful Things bank.
Bird glanced around the booths full of people chatting, texting, watching devices. Did no one else look at those gorgeous paintings? Maybe they had when they’d first come into the Strand. It was fun to see tourists come in and stare around in wonder. Bird always got a shiver of vicarious delight on dear Mr. Kleiner’s behalf. She found herself wondering what these paintings would look like through Mikhail Long’s silver eyes . . .
“Ack!” Doris yanked her watch closer to her eyes, as if that might change the time. “School! TGIF.”
“Time to roll,” Godiva declared. “Gotta get my daily pages in early, since we have group tonight.”
Bird blinked her mind back to the present, glad nobody had noticed her lack of participation in the conversation. She waved a farewell and biked the short distance to her tiny cottage.
When she walked inside, her thoughts arrowed stubbornly back the subject of her daydreams, and she wondered what her place might look like to a pair of silver eyes.
Oh, what an awful mistake.
She gazed around, appalled. Here she’d been smugly pitying the regulars who never glanced at the seascapes at the Strand, and somehow she’d never noticed how her comfortable nest had become . . . be honest, shabby. Her current batch of library books were piled on one end of the couch, and her knitting basket was on the other. The center, where she sat, had a noticeable sag, sad evidence that a single person had lived here long enough to wear a butt well into that one cushion. As for the rest of her furniture, not one piece had been new when she got it a quarter of a century ago, and now—
She clapped her hands over her eyes. No! She was not going down that road! Her place was fine. No one ever saw it. No one was ever going to see it. Definitely not a certain tall, handsome man who carried a dragon-head cane...
She got into her gardening sweats, wiped off a dab of stage blood she’d missed earlier, then went to her little kitchen garden to pick some green beans for dinner. The heavenly fragrance of roses drifted on the soft spring air.
Mr. Noko was hard at work among the fabulous roses in the garden of the big house, where their landlord Mr. Kleiner lived. Though perhaps landlord wasn’t quite the right word, considering that Mr. Noko worked for Mr. Kleiner rather than paying rent, and that the two of them were close friends. Mr. Noko had stumbled onto the property during WW II, a terrified, deaf teenager who’d escaped from a Japanese internment camp. He had lived in the second cottage ever since, transforming a wild mess of a garden into the living work of art it was now.
He wouldn’t hear a greeting, so Bird waited for him to glance up and then waved at him. He waved back. She went back inside to toss the beans into the crockpot, then cast a guilty look at her desk, as she did every Friday.
She really ought to at least try writing. She’d promised her agent, a faithful friend for all these years, that she would. But there was so much to do: laundry, cooking, cleaning, gardening. She could finish the blue and white afghan, which she could then throw over the loveseat to hide the faded cushions. Anyway, what the others at the book club truly appreciated most was an audience.
Besides, you’re nothing but a scribbler.
The thought came to her mind in Bartholomew’s voice. Whether he’d been right or not, it didn’t matter. Her stories had died inside her, there was no other word for it. There was no room in the world for silly stories about animals anyway. At least she could make local people happy by doing drawings for them.
She began to chop an onion as she considered her Professor Long drawing. He was so graceful and strong, a mere man somehow didn’t seem to be enough to portray him as he truly was. Perhaps he could be a . . . centaur? No, that wasn’t right. Well, half the pleasure of painting was creating an image in her head before she first dipped her brush into the watercolors.
Bird kept herself busy with chores until it was time to get ready for the writers’ group. When she got out of the shower, she caught herself eyeing her little closet speculatively instead of putting on her usual outfit, chosen for being sensible, long-wearing, and practical.
Annoyed with herself for expectations that could only get her hurt, she deliberately put on an ugly pair of stretchy pants that she usually only wore when everything else was dirty, and a boring print top that didn’t match. She added clunky sensible shoes, yanked a brush through her hair, refused to look at herself in the mirror, and started out.
It was raining. Lightly, but enough that she’d need a raincoat. She’d just turned back to get one when her phone rang.
“Bird!” Godiva sho
uted into the phone over a background of clattering noises. She always talked on speakerphone, as she was convinced that cell phones held next to your head scrambled your brains. “Doris and I will be there in five to pick you up.”
“Thank you,” Bird said gratefully. She loved watching the rain—and California needed it—but she wasn’t fond of biking in it, and her friends knew it.
She was about to hang up when Godiva yelled, “Bird!”
Startled, Bird nearly dropped the phone. “Yes?”
“What are you wearing?” Godiva demanded.
“I—I—”
“If you are wearing those butt-saggy sweatpants and that gray hoodie that’s older than God, you can damn well change before we get there.”
“Godiva,” Bird said, exasperated, “does it matter what I wear?”
“That pretty pink silk shirt. Looks great on you.”
“But that’s my dressy—”
“It’s high time you wear something you like!”
“Godiva—”
“I saw the way that hunk o’ burning love looked at you!” Godiva whistled a few bars of the Elvis Presley song, then cackled so loudly Bird had to hold the phone away from her ear.
“He won’t show up,” Bird started.
“We’re almost at the turnoff toward your street. Better be changed, or I’ll sic Doris on you. Remember, she wrangles high schoolers for a living,” Godiva warned. “She’s turning onto Estella Street right now . . .”
Bird laughed, giving in. “Okay.”
When the car pulled up, Bird was in a pink blouse over the teal floaty pants her daughter had given her a few months ago at their first Christmas together, which Bird adored but had never dared to wear.
Godiva opened her window, eyed her suspiciously, then grinned. “You look hot!”