“We’ll have to work on that impulse management of yours a little more, but I think you’re on your way to earning your concealed weapons permit.”
He gazed at me a moment longer, considering his decision. “And your freedom.”
SEVEN
I finished sorting the pile of books on the library table and headed for the register. Lucky for me Kevin quit after only a few days, and I got my job back after Greer certified me stable and in control of my powers.
Katie admitted that she’d gone out of her way to find a good reason not to hire anyone who applied after that, an unfair—not to mention illegal—tactic to stall the hiring process while I recovered from my “illness” and came back to work.
Greer’s definition of freedom didn’t include me getting my job back, but I reminded him that I wasn’t the same girl who left Shakespeare’s Library a couple of weeks earlier, and if he didn’t give me some breathing room we’d both be miserable.
I’d been back at the shop for a week, and we quickly got back into the rhythm of working as a team.
“Afternoon, ladies.” Apollo walked in with a box in his hands and headed straight for the library table. He pulled the top flap open and reached in to retrieve a tiny orange and white moving object.
“What is that?” Katie asked.
“What does it look like?” He held the kitten out so we could all get a good look.
I instinctively reached for it. Babies were fine, but puppies and kittens had a way of making my heart flutter.
“Oh. My. God!” I took it from Apollo’s hand without asking, because there was no doubt in my mind that it belonged in mine.
“The guy said it’s a male.”
“Where did you get him?” The kitten purred as I rubbed the spot between his shoulder blades.
“Some guy on Seventy-Ninth Street had him in a box with a sign that said KITTENS FOR FOOD. I assumed he didn’t mean I should take the kitten home and cook it.”
“Was he homeless?” Katie asked.
“Looked like it. I gave him ten bucks for the last one.”
I put the kitten on the floor so he could work off some energy. No telling how long he’d been in that box.
“What are you planning to do with it?” Katie asked. “You’re never home, so I doubt you’re going to keep it.”
He grinned at her and then looked at me. “Alex will take him. Won’t you?”
My smile faded as I looked up from the kitten pouncing around the floor. Even though I knew I was the only one in the room who was even remotely qualified to take care of him, convincing Greer to let me bring an animal home would be a stretch. And then there was Sophia. I doubt she’d be thrilled with a litter box in the house.
“Yeah, Alex,” she smirked. “You can take it.”
“Quit calling him it. He’s a he.” I watched him climb a pile of books left on the floor. “I’ll talk to Greer, but Apollo will have to keep him temporarily.”
“He can stay in the back room until you convince your daddy to let you have a kitty,” he teased. “Everyone needs to pitch in with his care until then. Agreed?”
Katie frowned at the thought of scooping a litter box, but she agreed to feed him as long as it only required dumping dry food in a bowl. Apollo and I agreed to do the dirty work.
“You’re going to love this place, Katie. They’ve got all kinds of weird stuff.”
It was her day off, and I had the early shift. She met me at the shop at five o’clock and we headed down to Den of Oddities and Antiquities. I figured if anyone could figure out what Katie was, it was Ava.
As soon as we walked through the door, Katie took a panoramic glance around the room. She stopped on the boar head with the third eye. “That’s real, isn’t it?”
“Yep. See all those drawers?” I pointed to the two-story wall lined with hundreds of small pulls. “Each one used to have a label. Isn’t it amazing?”
Her face brightened as she looked up at all the tiny drawers. She walked over to the ladder that rolled along the length of the wall and climbed the first few steps to reach one of the bottom drawers.
“Um…maybe you shouldn’t do that, Katie. I’ll never hear the end of it if you break your neck.”
She ignored my protest and reached for one of the small brass pulls. The wall was like a giant library index card cabinet. She opened the drawer and released the faded but permanently embedded smell of something earthy. Wrapped in several layers of tissue paper was a small petrified object.
“That’s an oak handle from a peat bog in Ireland. Someone dropped it there around four thousand years ago.”
We both looked at Patrick as he walked out from one of the aisles with a jar in his hand and a woman at his side.
“From a knife. Probably used for sacrifice,” he added.
Katie respectfully returned the ancient handle to its drawer and stepped off the ladder.
“Alex,” he nodded, stopping for a moment before continuing toward the register, “I’ll be with you in a minute.” His gaze shifted back to Katie and then to his customer as they proceeded to the counter.
He carefully wrapped the jar before putting it in a sturdy bag and escorting the woman to the door. “Good luck, Caroline. I hope it works for you.” He closed the door behind her and came back to the counter.
“That wasn’t an eyeball in that jar, was it?” Katie asked.
“Not just any eyeball.” His voice deepened. “A wyvern.”
I made a mental note to look up wyvern when I got home.
“I’m Patrick.” He extended his hand.
“Katie,” she replied, taking it.
With his bright hazel eyes and hybrid lilt, Patrick was almost as dangerous as Katie.
“Is Ava here?”
Patrick seemed to remember that I was in the room and pulled his eyes from Katie’s. “Yes. She’s in the back. I’ll get her.”
He disappeared toward the back room, and Katie looked at me with a blank face. “What?”
“Do you have to eye fuck every man you meet?”
Her eyes rolled. “It’s not my fault if they all fantasize about getting a piece of the dragon girl.”
She underestimated her beauty. Even Greer’s eyes walked all over her face the night he met her.
“This is one weird place, Alex. I dig it.” She browsed the items in the large glass display case. “No shit. Is that—”
“Yeah, it’s real.”
The vampire hunting kit was still there. With a price tag of twelve thousand dollars, I wasn’t surprised.
“I know someone who could use that,” she muttered.
Ava came out of the back room with a wide grin across her face. She wrapped her arms around me in a death grip. “It’s so good to see you.”
“I miss you, too.” I had to admit it felt good to forgive. I spent months resenting her when I found out she was alive and well and had faked her own death. It took me a long time to accept that she had her reasons for doing what she did, but I knew they were good ones, and one day she would tell me the truth. I had to believe that because she was the closest thing I had to a mother.
“This is my friend Katie.”
Ava ignored Katie’s extended hand and gave her an unexpected hug instead. But as soon as Ava touched her, the friendly greeting changed to a rigid impasse. She recoiled and stepped back several feet, glancing at Katie from head to toe as her warm smile turned icy. “What are you?”
“That’s why we’re here,” I explained. “We’re not really sure.”
Ava looked back and forth between us and then realized we weren’t kidding. “Well then, let’s find out.”
She headed for the bookshelf behind the register—the one with the books that weren’t for sale—and hauled one of the bigger ones onto the counter.
In my experience, all things mysterious and foreboding seemed to originate from very large and very old books. This one was almost as big as the book of magic that lived on the bottom shelf of the shop’s huge display case, t
he one with the hidden compartment where we found the stolen amulet.
She opened it to the table of contents and ran her index finger down the list. “You’re of Slavic blood, correct?”
Katie nodded. “I’m adopted, but my birth parents were from Russia. How does everyone know that?” she wondered aloud.
“Oh dear, it’s written all over you,” Ava replied. “Literally.” Her eyes went back to the book.
“You mean my tattoo?”
“Well yes, that, too.”
Ava’s finger stopped on a chapter titled “Slovenia.” She skimmed the first few pages and looked at Katie. “What do you do for a living?”
“I work in a bookstore…with Alex.” She looked back and forth between us. “Why? Is that important?”
“Possibly. Tell me more about yourself.”
“Take a look at me.” Katie spread her arms wide and smirked. “I kind of wear myself on my sleeve.”
“Are you educated?” Ava asked.
“Depends on what you mean by ‘educated.’ I’m an engineering student at Columbia, so I guess you could say I’m educated.” Her shoulders twisted awkwardly as her posture sank into a submissive slouch. “I’m a member of Mensa, if that means anything,” she mumbled.
“Really? You never told me that.” She just kept rolling out the surprises, impressing me more every time she opened her mouth.
“Well, I don’t broadcast it. It was my father’s idea. Thought it would look good on my college apps.”
Ava went completely still as her mind worked. She resumed her breathing a moment later and began flipping through the book to the chapter on Slovenia. She combed through the pages, meticulously scanning the captions below each paragraph.
“My parents were from Russia, not Slovenia.”
“I don’t think so.” Ava’s eyes ran over Katie’s face, examining her features for something. “If you were Russian you’d probably have three heads.” She turned the book toward us and pointed to the illustration on the page. “I believe you are a dragon’s child. The child of a Slavic zmaj, to be specific.”
Katie and I looked at the drawing on the page. It was an image of a dragon flying over a city with fire coming from its mouth.
“I don’t think I can do that,” Katie said.
“Probably not. Zmaj are usually male, but a half-breed offspring can be either. Most likely your mother was Russian and your father was…well, a zmaj. I guess you could say you’re a demidragon.”
“That is kind of what you looked like.” I winced at the memory.
Ava gasped. “You’ve seen it?”
I summarized the encounter with the black widow, and told her how Katie had shifted into her dragon to protect me.
“Well, that eliminates any doubt,” Ava declared. “Not only is a zmaj a brilliant creature—hence your academics—but it will do just about anything to protect its village. Alex, you are Katie’s village.”
“Huh, what do you know.” Katie laughed and shoved my arm. “You’re my village, Alex.”
She looked at the illustration again, and the reality of what she was seeing kicked in. “Do I really look like that?”
“Close. Your eyes didn’t change, though.” The one thing I remembered as clear as day was the color of the dragon’s eyes. It was how I knew I was looking at Katie Bishop when I was dragged out from under the table. “But you were kind of…green.”
“Can I control it? I’d hate to turn into that at the grocery store.”
“Oh, that’s a tricky thing,” Ava said. “I don’t have any practical experience with dragon children, or zmaj for that matter. Are you aware of it when you change?”
Katie thought about the question for a minute. The only confirmed change was in the shop the day the black widow showed up. She had her suspicions about other incidents but couldn’t be sure some of those blackouts weren’t from too much drinking. At least she knew that on each of those occasions there was good reason for her inner dragon to emerge, and if there were casualties, it hadn’t put her on the front page of the New York Times. In other words, her dragon was discreet. “Not exactly.”
“Well, now that you know what you are, you should become more in tune with it.” Ava shut the book and rubbed Katie’s arm. “You’ll get used to your talents. We all do, in time,” she added as her eyes shifted to mine.
It was nearly seven thirty when I got back to the house. Greer hadn’t made it home yet and Sophia was at her usual spot over the stove. I looked around the house, trying to come up with a discreet place for a food bowl and a litter box before broaching the subject at dinner.
I heard the familiar sound of keys hitting the porcelain bowl as Greer got off the elevator. He was heading up the steps when I walked into the foyer. He usually stuck his head in the kitchen before going up to change, but not today.
“Rough day?” I asked.
He stopped mid-step but didn’t turn. “Something like that.” Then he disappeared up the stairs.
Twenty minutes later, he came back down wearing dark gray sweats and a pair of running shoes. “Going for a run?”
I thought he’d given it up, but it turned out that Greer liked running when other people slept. I discovered that when I came downstairs around three a.m. one morning as he was coming through the back door. I almost had a coronary. Good thing I didn’t have a gun at the time because things might have gone very badly.
“No. I have business after dinner.”
Greer normally didn’t wear sweats for meetings, but I thought it wise to mind my own business and not dig for the details. He seemed a little tense and obviously wasn’t in the mood to share.
“Dinner is ready. Sophia made chicken curry.” As a native of Italy, Sophia made some of the best Italian food I’d ever eaten, but she also made a mean curry. In fact, there weren’t many cuisines she hadn’t mastered.
“Let’s eat, then.” He grabbed my hand as he strode past me toward the dining room.
Greer was unusually quiet as we sat across from each other, the only sound coming from the utensils hitting the china and an occasional creaking of our chairs.
“So,” I began, “how was your day?”
“Fine, dear. How was yours?” he replied.
I chewed my food longer than necessary, avoiding as much actual conversation as possible. Usually I rambled when nervous, but tonight I wanted Greer to do the talking because he was obviously hiding something.
“And what did you do today?” he asked. “Besides work.”
“I took Katie to see Ava.”
He swallowed his food and placed his fork on the plate. “And?”
“Apparently, Katie’s not a dragon after all.” It was rare to surprise Greer, so I was eager to see that subtle but discernable shock when I said the next thing. “She’s the child of one.”
“Really? What kind?” he asked before picking his fork back up and resuming his meal.
I put my own fork down. “What kind? I tell you Katie is a dragon’s child and you ask what kind?”
He ignored the sarcasm as his eyes rose to mine.
“A zmaj. Ava’s pretty sure her father was a zmaj.”
For a few seconds he remained perfectly still, taking in the information like it was the local weather report. The right side of his mouth twitched as he tried to suppress a growing smirk, and his shoulders shook from the wheezing under his breath that was growing louder by the second.
“What so damn funny?”
After a good laugh, he shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “If I had any doubt about your safety, that bit of information just alleviated it.” The laughter returned for one final shindig before he sobered up. “Zmaj are very protective creatures. I’m afraid you might get a little tired of your friend now that she’s adopted you.”
“Adopted? That’s just silly, Greer.”
“See for yourself,” he muttered.
This was as good a time as any to bring up the delicate subject of the kitten. “Speaking o
f adoption, do you have any objections to cats?”
“In general, no. Although I doubt there’s anything general about your question.” He expelled the contents from his lungs and leaned back. “Out with it, Alex.”
“There’s this kitten…at the bookstore…and it needs a home.”
“Sounds like it already has one—the bookstore.”
“The shop is temporary. He needs a real home.” I could see I wasn’t selling the idea. “He’s this tiny orange ball of fur.” My shoulders scrunched as I mimicked holding a delicate crystal ball with both hands.
“Why us?” he asked.
“Because someone’s got to give a damn, that’s why. He’s just a baby.”
Sophia interrupted our discussion to ask about dessert. “Why don’t we see how Sophia feels about this new roommate you’re proposing.”
She looked back and forth between the two of us, her eyes narrowing when they reached mine. “Roommate?”
“Do you like cats, Sophia?”
As the word cat registered, her head began to shake back and forth and both hands went in the air. “Oh, no. I take care of no cat!” She nervously started collecting the plates before we’d finished our meal. “Cat litter and hair all over the place. And who’s going to feed it? Me? Oh, no!”
“Calm down, Sophia,” I said. “I’ll do everything. I’ll even keep it in my room. It’s a he, by the way. I’ll keep him in my room.”
She grumbled as she headed back to the kitchen with an armful of dishes.
“I believe that’s a concession.” His breath rushed through his nose. “Please don’t make us regret it.”
I gave him a sincere smile. “Thank you. You won’t even know he’s here.”
We finished our dinner before Sophia had a chance to come back in the room and take the rest of the dishes from under our forks. And there was still this business Greer hadn’t yet divulged.
“You might as well tell me where you’re going tonight,” I said. “If it has anything to do with me, and I have a feeling it does, I’ll badger the hell out of you until you tell me.”
He didn’t argue as I’d expected. Instead, he agreed. “You’re right. It has everything to do with you.”
The Blood Thief (The Fitheach Trilogy Book 2) Page 7