by JD Ruskin
When they were little and their parents were alive, Arthur and Kate used to go hiking in those woods with their family, though Kate had enjoyed it far more than he ever did. Arthur missed his family more than he missed the thought of walking for hours through the dense trees, but he did wonder for a moment about the werewolves, and if they were anything like dragons, as some said they were.
Dr. Jones most likely could have afforded to live somewhere else, in one of those bigger, pricier estates, but this was still a wealthy neighborhood: clean streets lined with orange and brown oak trees that were losing their leaves, a place where doctors and lawyers and intellectuals with family money lived.
He would never have thought it was a house full of treasure from the outside. Perhaps that was why Dr. Jones didn’t ever seem to lock his door. After knocking for a few minutes, Arthur tried the doorknob and frowned when it turned. It was even stranger to get inside and notice the alarm system keyboard next to set of wrought iron hooks for keys and to read the note: Here is your key, Arthur, and the code to the alarm, in case I ever turn it on. It was as if Bertie was daring people to rob his house.
Arthur shoved the note and key into the pocket of his jeans before edging in past the entrance hall. The probably antique, probably very valuable Art Deco brass lamp above him was on, as was every light inside, though there was no fire in the fireplace. It didn’t affect the heat any; it was just as warm inside the house as it had been yesterday. Arthur unzipped his jacket and then paused to listen for Dr. Jones, but there was no dragon on the upstairs landing and no man by the wide table. There were no sounds at all to indicate he wasn’t alone.
There was, however, another note on the table, and next to it, held down by the silver chest filled with those hand-rolled herbal cigarettes, a stack of money.
Arthur, the note read—and the cursive had enough turns in it to look like calligraphy—please be a dear and buy me more printer paper and a few packets of things from my herbalist. There was a card for the herbalist on top of the note and a scribbled blur that looked like a printer’s serial number.
Arthur stared at the money, certain it was too much as much as it was a test. It had to be a test. He wished he had the kind of money to throw away on tests of his employee’s virtue. But after a second, he sighed and zipped up his jacket again before grabbing the cash and the card with the herbalist’s address on it.
He stopped to take a long look around, but there was no one, no Bertie. It wasn’t exactly how Arthur had thought his first day would go. He glanced upstairs with a frown, just in case, and then sighed before turning and heading back out.
He locked the door behind him, for the sake of those books if nothing else.
ARTHUR’S SMALL backpack normally held a cup of instant noodles and books from the library, but now it was packed tight with printer paper and a large, wrapped bundle of herbs. The herbal place had turned out to be an occult store, the kind of place with premade-purpose candles in the front for magic hobbyists, and serious items for witches and wizards in the back, behind a curtain. The employees obviously knew who the herbs were for when he asked for that combination, because Arthur was suddenly treated to wide smiles and even given his choice of a free candle. When he chose a protection one for his sister despite the array of wealth and fortune candles right in front of him, the old man who must run the place patted his hand.
He was certain the scent of the herbs clung to him as he unlocked the door and slipped back inside the house. He only realized that the scent wasn’t coming from him after all when he heard that voice and swung his gaze around until he found Dr. Jones, lying on his sofa in front of a blazing fire and spinning a small yellow globe in his hands.
He looked the same as he had yesterday. Arthur hadn’t been imagining how attractive he was or letting the adrenaline go to his head. The only change was that today the man was dressed in jeans and wore a white shirt unbuttoned at the throat. His feet were still bare.
Arthur quickly looked at the globe, which had the faded colors and faint scrawl of an old map, the kind of map that might have had a terrible sea creature or dragon drawn on it as a decorative warning. He had the feeling that Dr. Jones would find that very entertaining. “Here be dragons,” indeed.
He knew he was right when Dr. Jones saw him studying his toy and winked at him. Arthur didn’t jump, but he could have.
“Hullo, Arthur,” he was greeted playfully.
“Hello, Dr. Jones.” Arthur stopped with his hand on the zipper of his jacket, without thinking why except that slowly easing down any zippers didn’t seem like a good idea given how hot those few words had him feeling. He was flushing again, sticky beneath his clothes, and he blamed the fire. “I have your things.” He paused. “And your change.” He didn’t fail tests.
But if it was a test, it wasn’t a harsh one. Dr. Jones nodded, waved it off, and didn’t seem even a little interested when Arthur came in and set his backpack down on the table.
“I have to say, Arthur, you are looking scrumptious today. Perhaps it’s the color that being outside gives you. And please, call me Bertie. Or Jones. Anything but Doctor.”
“I’m….” It wasn’t the fire. Arthur’s face was stinging now. He was burning up but still wasn’t sure he could take unzipping his jacket with Bertie teasing him like this. He raised his head to meet the man’s gaze. There were things he could have said to that. Comments about it being hot in here, maybe, but Arthur had never had any practice at flirting, and anyway, Bertie’s grin clearly meant it had been a joke. Arthur was cute, but he wasn’t scrumptious.
He cleared his throat. “I’m pretty sure that’s not appropriate coming from an employer.” For a moment when the doctor didn’t respond, Arthur thought he’d sounded too stern or rude, which made no sense until he remembered what he’d said to Kate about Beings and humans speaking different, if similar, languages. He offered a small smile just in case, though he couldn’t quite bring himself to look over and see if Bertie was watching him shrug off his jacket.
There was only the sound of fire consuming wood for a few seconds while Arthur reminded himself that for all he knew, dragons were just this flirty with everyone, and it had been too long since he had anyone but Kate to tease him. He took a breath and turned back.
The doctor’s eyes looked almost black, shining and wet. Arthur’s mouth was suddenly dry.
“Unless you’re planning on eating me,” he pushed out, since, judging from yesterday, Dr. Jones liked things out in the open. Arthur barely kept his voice from trembling and licked his lips when his remark made those eyes grow hooded.
“I make no promises.” Bertie took his time responding, as if he was thinking about it after all, and then made a low noise, as if he was pleased by something. He set down the globe, stood up, and either didn’t see Arthur’s eyes go wide or was pretending not to. He rolled one hand and sighed. “Have you read my books, Arthur? I gather from that comment that you have not.”
Arthur hadn’t realized his shoulders were tense until he let out a breath at the subject change. He shook his head.
“Not yet. I got copies from the library this morning.”
There was something different in Bertie’s smile at that. It made him look less dangerous and more like a kid at Christmas. Arthur had to stop himself from scuffing his shoe on the floor or smiling back at him.
“How sweet of you.” Bertie nodded to himself. “And thorough. As I was saying, as you may have noticed, I’m something of a historian.” Arthur nodded too in order to keep the man talking. “Sadly, I am not a very organized historian.” He didn’t seem to appreciate the small sound of agreement that Arthur couldn’t hold back. Bertie pursed his lips and spent a moment considering Arthur, and Arthur had the strange feeling that now Bertie wouldn’t eat him because Arthur was beneath him. He surprised himself by feeling insulted and lifting his chin.
He supposed criticizing a dragon to his face wasn’t the wisest idea. Most people probably wouldn’t dare.
/> Arthur wanted to apologize yet couldn’t do it. There were inches of dust and no order to those books at all. “I thought I was here to organize things for you.” It was as diplomatic as he could get.
“So you are, Arthur. So you are.” Bertie, a name Arthur couldn’t seem to stop thinking though it was somehow too cute for a man like this, let out a small huff and then nodded. “You’re correct of course, but you might have thought of my feelings.”
Arthur’s jaw went slack. Thankfully he kept himself under control when he saw the sparkling glint enter Bertie’s eyes. A second later Bertie grinned. It was a joke. Bertie hadn’t been angry at all.
That’s what Arthur got for being so obviously wary of him. Bertie was making fun of him. He crossed his arms. Bertie instantly lost his grin.
“Once again, Arthur, you’re right. Back to business. I have a bad habit—” When he paused to inhale, Arthur realized his eyebrow was arched. Bertie only sailed on with another low, pleased sound at Arthur’s effrontery. “—or two, and one of them is that I write notes about things I want to put into my books as I am researching them, and I tend to leave those notes everywhere. I tuck them into things. I’ve found them on the floor, under rugs, even in the refrigerator. But mainly I leave them in books as I’m reading them.”
Arthur instantly got what the man was saying. He looked wildly around the room, for a second anyway, before focusing back on the supposedly brilliant dragon in front of him.
“Part of your job will be finding them. Now, granted, I don’t always use every idea in them—they’re usually things I want to add to keep the text from becoming too much boring prose—but I do like having them, and trying to find them once I’m ready to write can slow me down considerably.”
Arthur waited until he was sure Bertie was done talking and glanced around the room, the mess, again. That his heart was racing at the idea of straightening all those books, looking at them, reading them, and classifying them, didn’t matter. It was hardly the work of a research assistant. Or even a personal assistant.
“You’re serious?” Arthur didn’t move as Bertie came around to get himself a cigarette. He didn’t light it, just let it touch his lips.
“You don’t want to do it?” The unbearable sadness in his voice reminded Arthur that he promised to do his very best work. Stupid though it was, he’d offered up his services to Dr. Bertie Jones—crazy, flirty dragon—just yesterday.
He inhaled and considered it. It wasn’t exactly like having his own library, but it was as close as he might ever get. He swallowed.
“Can I dust while I look? Or open a window? It’s stuffy in here, and it’s not good for the books.”
Bertie’s head went back and he looked affronted at the word “stuffy.” This time Arthur didn’t go nearly as tense as he had before. Bertie looked too pouty again for him to feel too worried.
“But I can get so cold at times, Arthur.” It was the last thing Arthur expected to hear. He looked down at his sweatshirt—it was fall outside after all—and then over at Bertie’s thin white shirt and bare feet. He possibly spent more time studying them than he should.
Bertie’s lips were closing around the white paper of his cigarette when Arthur finally looked up. The tang of herbs and smoke filled the air, and Arthur felt about as hot as the burning red cherry.
“So wear socks.” He knew why his voice was rasping. The man had a tendency to make his throat go dry. He sucked in a long breath and thought about work, his job, looking through every page of every book in this house. “I can buy them for you if you like.”
“Socks? You unromantic soul.” There was amusement in Bertie’s rough, rumbling voice, and then Bertie took a drag from his cigarette with a flare of light and fire that was reflected in his eyes. Arthur waited, absolutely certain he was being teased, for Bertie to exhale and then lick his bottom lip. He was not disappointed.
He got his eyes up in time to await more instructions.
“Very well. Clean if you must.” The topic was dismissed as if it were nothing, and Arthur scowled because it ought to matter if the room, if these books, were taken care of or not.
“I must,” Arthur insisted, and Bertie’s eyebrows rose in surprise. He took another drag.
“But don’t disturb anything,” he warned a second later. Arthur angled his head at him.
“Could you even tell?” His disbelief was too real for him to worry about being rude. He got a grin for a reply.
“I will give you that hit, Arthur. It was a bull’s-eye.” He inclined his head graciously and spoke as formally as Arthur had the day before. “You may straighten to your heart’s content… straighten everywhere if it please you, Arthur MacArthur.”
“Everywhere?” Arthur immediately glanced up the stairs. He hadn’t seen any other rooms downstairs yet, but the rooms upstairs were going to be the ones considered more personal and private. Even if there wasn’t a treasure up there, it was where Bertie’s bedroom would be.
Arthur raised his hands before he looked back. “I just don’t want to end up an entrée.”
The lack of humor in Bertie’s expression made him freeze. He could see the brown of his eyes now, so much of it, with his pupils narrowed to slits like an angry cat’s.
Arthur’s stomach tightened. Treasure really was, in his sister’s words, srs bsns, to dragons.
“Sensible humans respect a locked door,” Bertie hissed quietly, but a moment later he dropped his head and heaved a sigh. Arthur bit back a comment about how he hadn’t known Bertie knew how to lock a door.
“Sorry, I…,” he started instead, and Bertie jerked his head up and waved at him to shut him up.
“I’m hardly Bluebeard, Arthur. Nothing behind any of my doors will be as interesting to you as what is out here. I’m becoming very convinced of that.” There was a half smile on his face and he seemed to have forgotten that he was smoking. Arthur put out a hand as a trail of ash fell to the carpet. Bertie’s smile only grew.
Swallowing while considering the lack of teeth in that smile, Arthur tried a subject change.
“So you’re working on a new book then? What’s it about?” That smile said Bertie thought the world, or maybe just Arthur, was delightful. Scrumptious. A pearl. Arthur was so hot he wanted to strip his sweater off—not that he would dare, not with those eyes watching him.
“The Welsh red dragon,” Bertie announced slowly, with a flourish of the hand not holding the cigarette.
Arthur snapped his gaze up to see if Bertie was joking.
“No, I’m not teasing you.” He was immediately reassured. Though now Arthur had to wonder if dragons could read minds. He hoped not, because then it was only going to take one stray thought whenever Bertie put anything near his mouth and Arthur was doomed.
“Arthur.” Just hearing his name on the heels of that thought made Arthur give a whole-body shiver. “I am a Being, and most importantly, a dracologist, and I’ve been researching the long lost red dragon of Wales for some time now.”
“Long lost?” Arthur could do this, he could focus even while in mild shock and with a dozen explicit fantasies about his new boss pressing on the edge of his thoughts.
“They haven’t been seen in centuries. Even by the standards of an often-reclusive people, that’s going a bit far.” The soft, serious tone brought Arthur back to his senses. Bertie turned away to stare at the fire. Even knowing it could be more teasing, Arthur didn’t think so. He stepped closer then stopped and studied the edge of black hair against Bertie’s neck, the faint gleam of hidden scales.
“Perhaps they are extinct,” Bertie spoke to the fire, then twisted to look over his shoulder, staring right into Arthur’s eyes. “Or perhaps they are hiding while they wait for Arthur’s return.”
“I… um.” Arthur licked the corner of his mouth and rubbed at his cheek because he knew it was flaming red now.
“I do shock you sometimes, don’t I? Sorry, Arthur.” Bertie’s laugh was quiet. He faced the fire again. Perhaps he reall
y was that cold. Arthur would have to think of something else to keep him warm while protecting the books. Socks definitely. Maybe those warmed ones; he didn’t care how unromantic it was.
“If you can make sense of my notes once you have them, it would be very helpful, but I am sure it’s impossible. Simply finding them will take up your time. Other than that, you will be doing odd errands and research. Keeping track of mail… and taking messages, should you find my phone. It’s around here somewhere. I don’t know what else to have you do,” he admitted, tossing his cigarette into the fire. “My publisher recommended an assistant. I’m afraid I’ve never trusted one before.” Bertie paused, going still, and Arthur didn’t think he’d reacted, didn’t believe he’d even thought anything out of the ordinary or suspicious, but when Bertie turned his lips were parted and Arthur caught a glimpse of his tongue.
“So,” Bertie mused a moment later, his eyes narrowing, “so I don’t know quite what to do with you.”
“We can work that out as we go,” Arthur murmured, though cleaning would take up any free time he had. Free time. He felt weak again. It had been a while since he had much free time, and to be spending it even in a small way, doing something he loved, felt like a vacation. “You’re already being more than generous, so really anything you want is fine.” He shut his mouth with a click and looked over. But Bertie apparently felt it was too obvious for his form of flirtation, or at least he left it alone and continued to speak with his usual smoky intimacy.
“You are going to be a steadying influence, Arthur. I can tell. You’re just what I’ve been waiting for.”
“Okay.” Arthur got the word out, that’s what mattered to his dignity. He shifted to one side. “Do you… want coffee or something?” Maybe he just was supposed to start going through books now, but Bertie continued to stare at him, even wrinkling his brow in a frown.