by Amy Star
Besides, considering reasonably little had started regrowing and reasonably few creatures had moved back into the area at that point, it left the entire ordeal feeling dark and oppressive, as if they were sprinting through haunted lands, and whatever was haunting it was going to leap out of thin air and try to devour them without any warning.
When at last Sabine calmed down, she jabbed her nose expectantly at her bag still draped across Melissa’s chest and shoulders. Melissa pulled her jacket out of it with a questioning look on her face, and Sabine nodded her head once before she abruptly transformed. She was hardly even
human-shaped again before she held a hand out, Melissa handed her jacket over, and she shrugged it on and buttoned it.
She turned in a circle, her arms outspread around her. “Pretty sure you guessed that there was
another dragon around,” she stated, “but this is where the fire started. It smells like a meth lab. I mean, to me, it smells like a meth lab. I guess, to you, it probably doesn’t.”
“Why do you know what a meth lab smells like?” Melissa wondered dryly.
Folding her arms across her chest, Sabine stuck her nose in the air and returned as primly as she could, “I was very well-rounded in college.” As if that explained so much.
Mitch rolled his eyes. “So, other dragon in the area, definitely started the fire,” he summarized. “Can you figure out where this other dragon went?”
Sabine shrugged, an unenthusiastic, slightly helpless gesture. “Nope,” she supplied. “The smell’s too old. I mean, the smell of the fire itself is still pretty strong, but when it comes to the smell of the actual dragon, I can only barely tell that there was a dragon other than me in the area.
Following the smell would be something else entirely. I mean, yeah, my nose is good, but it’s not that good.”
Mitch sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, before he dragged his hand down his face. He didn’t get a chance to say anything else before Melissa pointed out, “It’s still more information than we had this morning.”
It was a fair point, and at least it prevented Mitch from spitting out whatever first occurred to him to a were-dragon who was fully capable of stomping on him or setting his hair on fire if he offended her.
“True,” he sighed, and he shoved his hands into his pockets. “You think the dragon would stick around?”
“To some extent, maybe?” Sabine replied, though it sounded more like she was guessing. “I mean, they wouldn’t really have a reason to return to this exact spot—it’s charred already—but they’ve been focusing on this area, clearly.”
“But why have the fires been so spread out?” Melissa wondered, shifting the bag’s strap on her shoulder. “If a dragon wants to burn an area down, then why not just…do that?” she asked. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that hasn’t happened, but it still begs the question all the same.”
Sabine waved it off. “We only have so much of the chemicals in our system at one time. If we burn through it all in one go, then we need to stop until we build it back up again. That can take a while, especially if we’re going from an empty tank and waiting until we have a full tank again.”
She began following a line of burned and cracking trees, each of which had shattered with the heat of the fire, so the broken trunks clawed at the air like greedy, blackened hands. It looked as if each tree had simply exploded with the intensity of the heat. She carried on walking for several moments, until finally she stopped a few yards away.
She held her hands up, gesturing grandly to the tree beside her. “This is where the starting point stops,” she shouted back, and as she jogged back in their direction, she added, “and I’m willing to bet it continues at least somewhat in that direction, too,” as she pointed a finger in the opposite direction along the line of trees.
“So, this other dragon wasn’t holding back,” Mitch supplied.
“Not at all,” Sabine confirmed, coming to a halt in front of them again. “Whoever they were, they wanted to burn this place down. Like, they could have coated the area in napalm and started blaring heavy metal music, and it would probably have been more subtle.” She snorted. “I mean, if they were being any more blatant about it, they would have stayed here to do a dance for you.” She wrinkled her nose slightly. “Honestly, you should be glad you can’t really smell it. It smells gross when it’s this concentrated, and that’s even after it’s had time to dissipate.”
Melissa sighed slowly. “Well, I guess that rules out a were-dragon accidentally starting the fires,” she sighed, though it sounded very much like it had simply been wishful thinking. If she had ever actually been under the impression that the fires weren’t deliberate arson, she had kept those thoughts very firmly to herself.
Sabine shrugged apologetically. “Sorry,” she offered, though it was a flippant apology, and it didn’t actually sound particularly apologetic. “I would offer good news if I had any, but so far, everything points towards another were-dragon deliberately trying to burn the area down.”
“At least now we have some idea of what we’re after,” Mitch sighed, running a hand through his hair. “That’s better than what we had this morning.”
Sabine offered two thumbs up in reply. “Now we’re looking on the bright side.”
“Will you let us know if you find anything out about this other dragon?” Melissa asked, dragging both of them back on topic in much the same way a parent might drag a child away from a toy by their ear. “I mean, we aren’t the only two looking, but you would probably hear more—or at least recognize more relevant details—than we would.”
Mitch was confused for a moment as he tried to recall who else was looking, before he remembered the friend Melissa had mentioned. She had assured him that Harry was harmless and wouldn’t mention anything to anyone, so Mitch had sort of let his existence slip from his head. He almost missed Sabine’s reply.
“Yeah, sure,” she offered simply, waving the question off with a flippant gesture. “I want to find this asshole just as much as you two, and more eyes and ears are always better.”
It seemed a bit odd to think that they were forming a miniature coalition to track down their wayward fire starter, but that appeared to be exactly what was going on. Not that Mitch was going to complain—it certainly made his life easier than if he was stuck working on his own—but when he had decided he was going to become a firefighter, he had envisioned a very different type of firefighting.
It was a better way to end the evening than he had expected, and soon enough, Mitch and Melissa were piling back into the car and heading away from the campground once again.
“How did you manage to instantly befriend the first were-dragon you’ve ever met?” Mitch asked finally, glancing at her sidelong.
Melissa shrugged pleasantly. “I have my ways,” was all she offered in answer.
Yeah, she was definitely going to make life interesting.
CHAPTER SIX
Melissa wondered if she and Mitch were dating. It seemed like a strange thing to question after everything that had happened and would most likely continue to happen, but even so, she couldn’t help but wonder. Were they dating? Was there something between them? Or were they simply two people who got along reasonably well and happened to kiss and have sex from time to time?
She supposed there was no real way to know by just pondering and guessing. If she wanted a
definitive answer, she was going to need to ask for a definitive answer.
Or at the very least, she was going to need to be a bit proactive about matters. And really, asking about that sort of thing could be awkward and messy, and it could lead to people not saying what they actually meant, so just being proactive and acting was probably the better option. It was also the one she was pretty sure she would be better at pulling off. As it was, she was already putting a lot of thought into what seemed like it should have been a simple question to answer.
She supposed, if she thought about it, sh
e did want to be dating him. She didn’t see why not. They liked each other. They got along well with each other. They both seemed inordinately
concerned with the other’s well-being. And there was something to be said for Mitch being large enough to carry Melissa to bed like she weighed no more than a memory foam pillow.
And while she would admit that Mitch wasn’t perfect, she knew she wasn’t perfect either, and his imperfections were…endearing. They were charming.
So, if she wanted them to be dating, then logically she should ask him out on a date. Because then, the answer would be that yes, in fact, they were dating. Granted, she could have been jumping the gun a bit, just assuming he would agree to it, but she felt like her odds were pretty good. Low self-esteem had never been much of an issue for her, and she had always considered herself reasonably good at assessing her own place in the world.
Melissa didn’t actually refer to it as a date, but she also knew that Mitch wasn’t stupid, even if he could be a bit thick in moments when his mouth got ahead of his brain. She had faith that he could put two and two together and come up with the right result, whether she used the word “date” or not.
She sent him a simple text message, telling him to meet her at her house that night. After all, they were both reasonably outdoorsy people, and her house was on a mountain and surrounded by trees in every direction. It stood to reason that they could both have a perfectly good time in those trees without needing to go out of their way or spend any money.
Besides, for all she knew, her trees were going to be burned down in the near future, so she should probably get as much enjoyment out of them as she could manage while they were still there.
(She got caught up for a moment, pondering how she would have that conversation with her parents, if such an occurrence came to pass. Logically, she knew they would just be happy she was alright, so they wouldn’t care much about the house, and it had been fully paid for, so it wasn’t as if they would really be losing all that much. But even so, it wasn’t the sort of conversation Melissa looked forward to having, if she did wind up needing to have it.)
She snapped back to the present when her phone beeped, signaling she had a text message. From Mitch, agreeing to come and wondering if he should bring anything with him. Melissa sent him a message telling him to bring dinner, and no, she didn’t care what type.
And then, she realized that it was only 11:00 in the morning, and Mitch wouldn’t be showing up until around 7:00, most likely. What was she supposed to do to keep herself busy until then?
Slowly, she looked around at her kitchen and her den, and to the stairs that led up to the loft, and then to the sliding glass door that led out onto the balcony. And she decided that it had been too long since the last time she had given her house a proper deep cleaning.
With that decision made, she nodded once with determination that was only about forty percent genuine and disappeared into the closet to gather up as many cleaning supplies as she could find.
If she was going to keep herself busy for eight hours on a day off, then her house was damn well going to be spotlessly, sparklingly clean by the time she was done, or else her name wasn’t Melissa Mun.
*
That night, they ate Chinese takeout on a pair of wicker chaises on the balcony, each chaise slightly overstuffed and awkwardly discolored from sun and rain. They didn’t bother with proper plates, instead simply eating out of the cartons by the light of the porch light and a bug zapper’s blue glow. Every so often, Melissa pointed into the distance with her chopsticks, explaining some tidbit of information about the area as she did, offering the trivia up as it occurred to her.
As she pointed to the west, she explained, “If you got far enough in that direction, you’ll find a lake, and if you look really hard, you’ll still be able to find a few bits and pieces of my old campsite left. Or at least, I can still find bits of my old campsite. Whether that’s because there are actually still bits to find or because I’m just seeing things where they used to be, I don’t actually know.” She shrugged one shoulder, unconcerned.
“Did you ever just sit still for a few days?” Mitch asked wryly. “At all?”
Melissa scoffed. “Here? No. I told you, this used to be our vacation home. When we were here, I was going to do all the shit I couldn’t do living in the city.” She paused to eat a few bites.
“Besides, I take my time to stop and smell the roses every so often,” she assured him. “Now, I’m just more concerned with making sure the roses are still around for other people to smell later, instead of just…passively appreciating them.”
It had always seemed like the best way to appreciate something, to her: making sure it would still be around for other people to appreciate it just as much as she had.
Mitch hummed a low, thoughtful note, as if to wordlessly concede, “fair enough.”
They lapsed into silence after that, instead staring into the woods. Melissa’s thoughts drifted,
recalling all of the things she used to do on the mountain when she was younger, and how many of those things she hadn’t done in years. It seemed almost criminal when she thought about it. But she had gotten caught up in…everything. School and work and daily life.
Sometimes, it seemed like just pausing to do something she enjoyed for no other reason than that enjoyment should be considered a guilty pleasure, but that didn’t feel right when she thought about it. She supposed she would just need to make more of an effort to have more fun.
She glanced towards Mitch, who seemed similarly caught up in his thoughts, though Melissa couldn’t tell just by the look on his face if his internal monologue had taken him in a pleasant or unpleasant direction. Finally, she asked, “Penny for your thoughts?”
Mitch snorted wryly. “About how close do you think you’ve come to exploring every inch of this mountain?” he wondered, and he gestured out over the edge of the railing with one hand.
“Not even close,” Melissa answered wryly. “It’s a lot of ground to cover. Besides, there are other houses on the mountain, with their own property and their own people living in them, and that would be trespassing, which I’m not that keen on.”
Mitch scoffed good-naturedly. “Who knew you were such a goody two shoes?” he sighed, feigning a lamenting tone. “What happened to your inner rebel?”
“She got run over by a police car at a ‘save the trees’ rally,” she deadpanned in return, and that seemed to make Mitch come up short, entertainingly, as he tried to figure out whether she was pulling his leg or if she had actually been to a protest.
Rather than letting him dwell on that—she had in fact been to several protests, but she wanted to keep the mystery alive—she instead asked, “You want to help me cover more ground?”
Mitch arched an eyebrow at her, before he shook his head minutely in amusement. “Yeah, sure,” he agreed. “It’s been a while since I had a good, old fashioned bushwhacking expedition.”
*
There was an abundance of space around Melissa’s house, and even if a lot of it didn’t actually belong to her—the house’s plot of land wasn’t actually that big, compared to what it looked like—it didn’t really belong to anyone else either, so they were free to wander wherever they wanted, so long as they didn’t wander onto any marked property.
Which meant they were free to head to the pond without any repercussions. It was small still. It wouldn’t be at its biggest until spring, when the snow melted, and the rains started. But even so, it was a pretty little area. And even if the pond was small and had shrunken away from its banks for the time being, it was still plenty big enough for Melissa to trip Mitch into the water. As he floundered in the water, Melissa turned and bolted into the woods before he could scramble back out of the water after her.
It turned into quite an impressive game of hide and seek after that. Mitch had speed and stamina, true enough, but Melissa had a head start and the home field advantage. She knew all of the best shortcuts and the best
places to hide, and she knew the quickest routes to get away.
It was late into the night by the time he finally caught up with her enough to actually catch her, looping an arm around her middle and scooping her off of the ground. She squealed as he slung her over his shoulder with ease and turned back towards the house. He had long since dried off from his unexpected swim in the pond.
“Do you plan every day intending to throw someone in a lake?” he wondered dryly as he made his way back up the driveway, Melissa still slung over his shoulder. She was comfortable enough, her legs crossed at the ankles and her elbows leaning against his back, so she could sort of prop herself up, even if she wasn’t anywhere close to upright.
“Not all of them,” she assured him. “Just the entertaining ones.”
“You have strange definitions of entertaining,” he informed her blandly, and he jostled her slightly as he adjusted her position. “Just so you know that.”
“I’ve been informed in the past,” she assured him placidly. “You don’t seem to mind too much.”