He grunted. “I spent the whole time trying to see every direction at once, waiting for some idiot to take a potshot at you.”
“It’s not as if bullets are going to do much damage.” Oops. His face closed up. Shouldn’t have reminded him of my new dragon powers. I forged on, trying to keep my tone light. “You could have left the worrying to Luce. She does it so well.”
Luce gave me an unimpressed look, but said nothing. She was perched on the edge of a brocade-covered chair that had probably cost more than the average Australian earned in a year. It looked truly uncomfortable, like most of the furniture in this formal, high-ceilinged room. I would have swapped it all for the torn and faded lounge in the tiny suburban house I’d shared with Lachie. We’d spent every Friday night curled up on that lounge together with a bowl of popcorn and a favourite movie. I missed him so much it hurt.
“True.” He ran a hand through his curls, leaving them attractively messy. “But you’re not exactly short of enemies. I was surprised Thorne didn’t show up.”
“He’s probably planning something for the ball,” Luce said. She moved to the window, hands shoved in the pockets of the black jeans she’d changed into when we got back. “The funeral was too public, and there was too much security. He’ll pick a better time, when he’s on his own turf.”
She was such a little ray of sunshine. And now Ben would start with the arguments all over again. I braced myself but, though his jaw tightened, he said nothing.
We were sitting in what I thought of as the parlour. It was too formal to be something as cosy as a lounge room, but not as public as the throne room. It had the same high ceilings as the rest of the house, carved with ornate ceiling roses. The heavy velvet drapes at the window behind Luce were twice her height. Everything seemed larger than life and not meant for actual living. It was hard to imagine Elizabeth relaxing here with her feet up. Hard to imagine her with her feet up at all, actually. Though for most of her long life she’d looked as young as I did now, old was a state of mind, and Elizabeth had been old for a long time.
Dave came in carrying a tea service on a big silver tray, his usual cheery grin in place. That was one guy who was enjoying our move to bigger premises, despite the antiquity of the kitchen. He loved fussing around with beautiful china, and kept producing more and more elaborate cakes to display on them. Me, I liked my tea in a mug, made from a tea bag. It saved on washing up. And who had the time to sit around “taking tea” and eating cake?
Us, apparently, or at least Dave thought so.
“Mmm, chocolate cake.” Ben sat forward, an eager look on his face.
“You’re going to make me fat if you keep this up, Dave,” I said. Chocolate was Lachie’s favourite too. If only he were here I’d let him scoff as much as he liked.
Dave ran a critical eye over me. “You need to keep up your strength. Can’t fight on an empty stomach.”
“I couldn’t move if I ate all the food you keep shoving at me. You should have been a chef.”
“Almost was. Started an apprenticeship, but the hours were crap.” He set the tray down and began to pour. The cups were such a delicate white china they were translucent. I could see the level of the tea rising through their glowing white sides. Nothing but the best for Elizabeth.
And now it was all mine. I felt uncomfortably like I was housesitting for someone with much more money and better taste than me, and any minute now they’d be back, demanding to know why I had my feet on their antique Louis XIV furniture. If I was going to make this my home, I’d have to redecorate. Make it feel like a home instead of Buckingham bloody Palace.
Not that anywhere could feel like home without Lachie. Jason had better be taking good care of him. My stomach clenched in a familiar anxious knot. What was he doing now? Probably not drinking tea out of cups so delicate I could barely fit my finger through the handle. I hoped Kasumi was looking out for him. Jason would probably be too busy trying to worm his way into Daiyu’s good graces to have much time for his son.
And what was my loving ex up to now that his first assassination attempt had failed? Nothing that would be good news for me, that was for sure. More problems.
I sighed, and Dave glanced keenly at me as he offered the cake. “I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but there was a news report while you were gone that you should probably see.”
“What now? Another Muslim woman attacked because they thought she was a werewolf underneath her veil?”
“Worse. Someone’s been killed.”
Like a dog that’s just had bacon waved under its nose, Luce went from relaxed to instant alertness, though she didn’t move. “A shifter?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. But he was attacked in The Rocks.”
Oh, joy. I knew already where this was going.
“Any footage?”
“Steve has it ready on his laptop.”
Trust Steve. “Send him in, would you?”
He nodded and went off to find Steve, leaving the tea tray behind. Ben stole another piece of chocolate cake and munched absently, a frown on his face.
“Leandra’s place at The Rocks?”
“Bound to be.”
Mac came in, carrying a half-open laptop, her bright pink hair shocking against the tasteful muted colours of Elizabeth’s parlour. Maybe I needed some hot pink furniture in here.
She plopped herself on the lounge next to me and put her booted feet up on the coffee table. Elizabeth’s ghost would be having conniptions. I shifted over to give her more room, and Luce and Ben came to crane over her shoulder at the screen.
“Steve’s on duty,” she said, “but he left it all set up for you. He knew you’d want to see it.”
Smart boy, that Steve. If we all survived the next few days I’d have to give him a pay rise.
She had a news site open. A video sat in the middle of the screen, big Play button ready to go. She clicked it and a serious-faced reporter began to speak. Behind her was a very familiar streetscape.
“Just a few hours ago a man was killed here by an angry mob.”
Police tape marked off a section of the footpath that had only lately seen an even bigger crime. The road was still impassable, blocked with traffic barricades, the concrete broken and tilted at crazy angles, as if an extremely localised earthquake had burst the road open. In a way that was exactly what had happened, only the earthquake had been caused by leshies. The leshies had also destroyed the front steps of my house, and the door to my former residence hung bizarrely a metre off the ground in the left of the shot. Two good men had died in the attack. The anxious knot in my stomach clenched a little tighter at the memories of that night.
“The man is believed to be homeless and has not yet been identified by police. Eyewitnesses say a group of youths got into an altercation with the man around ten o’clock this morning. He then claimed to be a dragon and said he would burn them if they didn’t leave.”
The shot cut to a middle-aged man in a business suit, evidently one of the eyewitnesses.
“I was just coming out of the office and I heard all this shouting outside. I thought someone was drunk. But then a woman started screaming, and I saw this guy was on the ground and about a dozen people were kicking him. It was crazy. Everyone was shouting about dragons.”
“Police and ambulance services were called,” the reporter continued, “but the man died of his injuries in hospital. Police are appealing for anyone with information about the attack to come forward.
“It was only last week that this street was the scene of a dragon attack.”
Blurred footage of the same streetscape began to play, and I saw myself in dragon form light up the night with fire. I’d seen this footage before, as had probably every person on the planet with a TV or Internet connection. Opinion was fairly evenly divided as to whether or not it was genuine. Some bloke in England had proved conclusively that no real dragon would be able to project fire in such a thin and focused stream, and therefore it must be a hoax. Th
at suited me fine; I was more than happy to be a hoax. Others had dissected the footage practically frame by frame, demonstrating how it had been faked. The poor quality of the video was in my favour. Filmed by a terrified onlooker from some distance away in the dark, the footage lasted barely twenty seconds and shook like crazy. Except for when the flames lit my face, it was hard to make out anything except blurred shapes in the darkness.
“Is it possible that there is a connection between the man killed here today and the previous attack?” Not that I knew of. He was probably just some poor homeless guy trying to scare off a gang of teenage thugs by telling them he was a dragon. “Police say there is still no trace of the owner of this house behind me, damaged in the attack last week. She has been identified as Leandra Brooks, and police are anxious to speak to her in connection with their investigations.”
A picture of Leandra filled the screen, in all her cool blonde beauty. Her blue eyes were like chips of ice.
“It’s possible that she is the victim of foul play, but there is another possibility too—that she is one of these supernatural creatures. Anyone who has knowledge of her whereabouts is asked to contact Crime Stoppers.”
The clip finished and Mac closed the laptop. She looked me over with those big puppy dog eyes of hers and smiled. “At least no one can dob you in to the cops looking like that. If they said you were Leandra they’d just get themselves sent to the funny farm.”
True. With messy auburn hair and green eyes, I looked nothing like the blue-eyed blonde they were hunting.
“No shifter is going to involve the police anyway,” said Luce.
Ben didn’t look convinced. “I wouldn’t put it past Gideon Thorne and his lot.”
“No.” Luce shook her head. “What need does he have of human laws and courts? Police would just be an annoyance, getting underfoot and asking awkward questions. Anonymity has always been a shifter’s best friend.”
Well, until I came along and revealed dragons to the world. And managed to get caught on camera doing it. Twice. I was determined there wasn’t going to be a third time.
“Luce is right,” I said. “Thorne’s got his hopes pinned on this party of his. We just need to make sure that at the end of the night he’s the one getting the nasty surprise, not us.”
CHAPTER NINE
Gideon Thorne’s property near Bowral in the Southern Highlands was lit up like a Christmas tree for the Presentation Ball. He must have had a team dedicated to doing nothing but stringing up fairy lights for days. The sweet sounds of a string quartet drifted on the warm night air as we got out of the car, along with the clink of glasses and the hum of conversation. Security was respectful but thorough. We’d brought no obvious weapons, but they would have been found if we had. No one looked twice at the ring I wore, or the packet of cigarettes in Blue’s top pocket. They even made us walk through a metal detector as we entered the house. I had no doubt there were other less mundane precautions in place too.
“Check out the guys on the door,” Blue muttered as we crossed the foyer. The large double doors ahead stood open; through them we could see a colourful crowd of shifters milling in the ballroom. A guard stood on either side of the doorway, both goblins, and both wearing glasses. Precautions like that.
“Are they mages?”
Blue snorted. “Not bloody likely. No clan chief in his right mind lets a mage out of his sight. They’re too valuable. No, they’re just sniffers.”
“Sniffers?”
“Probably apprentice mages, or maybe just related to a mage, and got a little more talent than the average grunt. Checking for the presence of goblin magic.”
Fortunately Blue’s cigarettes were little more than trickery, and didn’t carry enough magic to raise an alarm. They were only meant to create a small diversion.
I glanced at Yarrow, glad that we hadn’t gone through with Garth’s idea of disguising him as Bear, since a full-on seeming would certainly have been a powerful enough spell to register with the sniffers. Blue had carried on as if making a seeming was the world’s most gruelling task, and insisted he couldn’t do it without returning to his cave. I hadn’t been willing to release him from his unofficial house arrest, even under guard. And in the end I hadn’t been able to come up with anything clever enough that Yarrow could do with his borrowed face to justify the effort.
I was certain we wouldn’t need Yarrow to get close enough to Thorne anyway. He’d brought me here to gloat, if nothing else, and I was bound to see plenty of him tonight. He’d want to enjoy my reactions when he paraded his queenlings in front of me. I only needed him distracted for a moment to give me the opportunity I needed to use the ring, and I was counting on Blue’s fireworks to provide that.
We were nearly at the head of the short line of people waiting to be announced. Luce stood very close on my other side, her gaze darting around, trying to watch everything at once. We reached the door and I handed my invitation to the herald there, as protocol required. As if he didn’t know exactly who I was. Already heads were turning in the ballroom.
A short flight of steps, no more than five or six, led down to the main floor, and we stood on the small landing at the top, Blue on my right and Luce on my left. Blue had actually scrubbed up all right for the occasion. He looked a different man in a tuxedo, with clean hair brushed neatly back from his forehead. Luce also wore a tux. Ball gowns were no good for fighting, and Luce always came prepared.
Behind me Yarrow escorted Corinne, the selkie woman. A distraction for Thorne, I hoped. Let him wonder what she was doing here, and whose side she was really on. Garth brought up the rear, looking even more delectable than usual in a suit, and that was the sum of our little party. Not much to bring down one of the domain’s most powerful dragons, but this was one case where numbers made no difference. If I’d brought every supporter I had I still couldn’t have matched the enemies ranged against me in this room.
“Leandra Elizabeth and her guests,” the herald announced in a booming voice, and an instant hush fell over the crowd. I paused for a moment, then strode down the steps as if I owned them.
A small round man rose from his chair at the far end of the long room. Not quite a throne, but his intent was clear. Like the ballroom at my own palace, this one opened onto a terrace, and many of the guests were outside, enjoying what little breeze there was. A swimming pool glittered behind them, its waters lit from below.
The quiet continued as I walked the length of the room under the eyes of the gathered shifters. The dancing hadn’t started yet: waiters were circulating with trays of canapes, and champagne in tall flutes. People opened a path for me, melting out of my way so that I felt like Moses parting the Red Sea. Like the sea, waves of whispers rose and fell as I passed. Thorne waited by his chair and let me come to him. If he thought that gave him any advantage in his power games, he was barking up the wrong tree. I didn’t play games. I was here to win.
There were streaks of grey in his dark hair, which was oiled and swept back from his forehead in a style that had gone out of fashion before the invention of electricity. Now that Elizabeth was dead, he was the oldest dragon in the domain, and certainly one of the most powerful. I’d been glad not to face him in trueshape last time we’d met. Kasumi had saved me then; I wished she were here now.
“Leandra,” he said, with an insultingly slight inclination of his head. His dark eyes glittered with malice. “So glad you could join us.”
“Actually I go by Kate these days,” I said. “How could I resist the opportunity to meet these so-called sisters of mine?”
He refused to rise to the bait, and looked past me at the others. “And I see you’ve brought some old friends. Good to see you again, Lucinda. You too, Corinne.”
Luce’s bow was as shallow as his had been. She’d been insulting shifters since before he’d been an egg, and had made it an art form. Corinne smiled but said nothing, her huge dark eyes downcast. She looked nervous, and her grip on Yarrow’s arm seemed tighter than necess
ary. Fair enough. I’d be nervous too in her place, surrounded by enemies, with no resources to call on. Selkies were sweet, but the ability to turn into a seal wasn’t something that came in handy too often.
I was pretty nervous myself, though the sight of Thorne’s smug face brought anger boiling to the surface, washing away the nerves. I’d never liked him, even before he’d turned traitor. Now he was standing between me and my hopes for a happily ever after with Ben and Lachie at my side. The ordeal of the proving had gone on long enough. It would be my pleasure to rid the world of him and his hopes for a second one.
His eyes rested on Corinne for a long, thoughtful moment, then he turned back to me.
“I thought you might like to meet your sisters in private before the official ceremony.”
“That’s a little unorthodox of you.”
He smiled. “This whole occasion is a little unorthodox, wouldn’t you say? Of course, if you’d like to proceed with the ceremony instead …”
“Not at all.” My smile was as insincere as his. “I’d love to meet them.”
He waved us forward, and led the way through an unobtrusive door guarded by two goblins. These ones wore no glasses. We followed him down a short hallway and up a flight of stairs into a large sitting room that overlooked the pool. Two merfolk splashed in the shallows, performing tricks for the other guests, and the party looked to be in full swing.
Thorne closed the door behind us, and all outside noise instantly cut off. Interesting. A soundproof room. My heart began to beat a little faster.
Though the room was large, there were so many people in it that it felt crowded. A log fire crackled in a massive hearth on the wall opposite the door. Even in summer, evenings in the southern highlands could be cool. The room was furnished in a “country manor” style, with large leather lounges planted on a scattering of deep blue rugs. The wall opposite the windows was filled with glass-fronted bookcases in a dark-coloured wood. There was even a stag’s head mounted on one wall.
Every head turned our way as we entered, and conversation died. Most of the people were standing, despite the number of empty seats. In fact, only seven were sitting, all women, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why. Six of them had blonde hair, piled high on their heads in a way that reminded me so much of Valeria I had to grit my teeth. The seventh had hair almost the same colour as mine, a rich deep auburn. Which was ironic, really, since my physical body was absolutely no relation to any of these women. Each had an identical hostile expression on her face and an aura that blazed dragon-red.
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