“Ohhh,” Marty cooed, clapping her hands together in delight. “What a lovely color.”
His eyes searched each woman’s. “Are you going to tell me that if I look in a mirror, I’ll see wings on my back? Wings?”
“Yeah. Just like the kind on those feminine protection commercials, only not,” Nina said on a cackle.
Before he had the chance to respond to this next batch of weirdness, Wanda began hopping around from one foot to the other, holding up her iPhone. “I know what you are!” she sang. “You, Mick Malone, are a dragon!”
Rawr.
“Wings.”
Nina helped Tessa out of her car, which she’d driven because Tessa couldn’t stop shaking, and onto the sidewalk facing her tiny stone cottage without saying a word.
Tessa looked up at this beautifully pale woman who’d lifted a car with one hand and said again, as though Nina hadn’t heard her, “Wings. Mick has wings.”
Nina took her by the hand as one would a child and pulled her toward her mint green door. “Bet he can fly, which I’ll give you, is crazy cool.”
Tessa stopped dead in her tracks. Fly?
Nina clamped a hand under her chin and forced Tessa to look at her. “You’re not ready for that, are you? Apologies. It’s just like I said back at your bonfire—er, I mean store. I hate this part of the whole deal. It’s a lot of whining and crying and sometimes thinking you can change shit you just can’t. Marty and Wanda call me a bitch because of how impatient I get, but I prefer realist—because I know the GD score.”
Tessa stared up at Nina and shivered. “I would never call you a bitch.” Not ever. This woman would probably eat her face off.
“That’s because you’re afraid of me right now.”
No point in lying. In fact, she’d read somewhere that if you gave your alleged captor personal information, relayed your particulars to them, it sometimes made you less a victim in their eyes—it humanized you somehow.
So if admitting she was petrified of this woman who really was a vampire would keep Nina from stealing her soul, Tessa had no shame. “I am. I’m terrified.”
Nina cackled as though that brought her great satisfaction. “Then we’re off to a healthy start. As long as you stay terrified, we’re golden. Now gimme your key so we can get you inside and you can take a shower. You look like a weenie roast gone sideways.”
Tessa gripped Nina’s hand, clinging to it. A stranger’s hand. Someone she didn’t know, let alone trust, but she couldn’t let go. “Why are you being so nice?”
“Didn’t you just call me a bitch?”
Her eyes went wide in fear. “Oh, no. I said I’d never call you a bitch because I’m terrified you’ll eat my face off.”
Nina patted her icy hand. “Nah. Faces are overrated. But I would chew your arm off. Clean off.”
“I’ll make a mental note. But can you do me a favor?”
“Depends on the favor.”
“If I ever incite you enough to want to chew my arm off, can you at least give me a warning sign? Because that would just be awful if you blindsided me. I can be pretty irritating. Just ask Mick.”
“Yeah, so he says. You two fight like that all the time?”
All the time. It was her defense mechanism to keep herself from begging him to see her as anything other than his dead best friend’s little sister. “It goes back a ways. We grew up together.”
“It’s goddamn annoying.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just what we do. It’s how we communicate.”
“Maybe you should learn sign language? You know, out of respect for the people around you who have sensitive ears?”
Her shoulders sagged. “He burned my store down.”
“He did. He’s the shittiest shithead-shit ever. But you two have much bigger problems than your store right now.”
Horror filled her once more. “He has wings . . .” Mick had wings. He could breathe fire, and he had wings. Wings—beautiful, mythical, shiny, scaly wings. Just like in a storybook.
“That was some shit, I tell you. I’ve seen a lot, but can’t say I’ve ever seen wings on a dude like that. My kid, Charlie, would love him. She’s a big unicorn/Pegasus fan.”
Tessa gasped in more horror, then slapped a hand over her mouth to muffle it. When she recovered, she asked, “You have children?”
“Just one. Why does that surprise you, Chicken Little?”
Because you’re a beast? Because you swear like a drunken sailor? Because? Tessa hid her shock fast. “No. It doesn’t surprise me. I’m sorry. I just thought that vampires—”
“Couldn’t have kids. Right. They can’t. She was a gift from a friend.”
Tessa yanked her hand away from Nina’s grip, a cold chill washing over her. “Like a sacrifice gift? A kidnapped gift?” she squeaked.
“No, moron. I have a genie friend. She gave her to me.”
A genie friend gave Nina a child? That’s what all good genie friends did. “Is this legal in the vampire world? Because I don’t think it’s legal here in the mortal world.”
Nina popped her lips, pushing the fabric of her hoodie away from her face. “It is now.”
This was like a train wreck she couldn’t look away from—couldn’t stop herself from probing—gawking. “How?”
“Do you really want to get into how I managed to have a kid now? Or do you wanna figure out why your man’s got wings?” She began to push her way past Tessa, but Tessa put a firm hand on Nina’s arm to prevent her from going any farther.
“You can’t come into my house.” No. No. No. No vampires allowed.
Nina frowned. One of those frowns that said the vampire was displeased—heartily. “Say again?”
“Can I be honest with you?”
“Are you gonna do it confessional-style where you cry and carry on while you spew your guts?”
“I hope not. I know you don’t favor sensitivity.”
Nina motioned for her to continue.
“I’m afraid of you. Straight up. Yes, I’ve watched more than my fair share of vampire movies and television series. They don’t always portray your, um, kind as accommodating. In fact, you guys are really aggressive, bordering on vicious. You suck souls out of people. You drink their blood. Try and look at this from my perspective. You know, your prey? What if you’re trying to get me inside just so you can eat my soul—or drain me dry? This could all be a ploy.”
Nina threw her head back and laughed, the cackle echoing against the backdrop of the snow-covered trees, startling Tessa. “I don’t want your fucking soul, and I already fed for the day.”
“Phew. I feel so much better. Wait. Fed?”
Nina’s eyes gleamed, amusement in them. “Yeah. Drank the blood of a mortal. Had my yum-yums—whatever.”
Tessa froze, her feet wanting to run but incapable of movement. “That’s exactly why you can’t come in.”
Nina let her chin drop to her chest before she lifted her eyes and captured Tessa’s gaze. “First, I don’t drink blood from people. It’s synthetic. Second, don’t you think if I wanted to drink from you I could just do it right here—outside in the mountains of snow?”
“Maybe you like the game. A cat-and-mouse fetish?”
“Give me your fucking key, Tessa. Give it to me now. You’re pissing me off, and you won’t like when you piss me off.” She held out her hand, waiting.
“I have to stand by my earlier reasoning and say no. No inside vampires allowed.”
Bad, bad move, she thought just two seconds later when Nina picked her up, flung her over her slender shoulder, and gripped the doorknob. With a hard yank, she twisted the metal before bracing her unoccupied shoulder against the wood door and jamming into it, jolting both of them into Tessa’s small entryway.
Nina unceremoniously dropped her on her puffy couch and scuffed her hands together. “Take note. Vampire on the inside.” Then she grinned.
God, she was so beautiful. How could someone so beautiful be such a beast? Tessa’s teeth
chattered so hard she thought her jaw might break. “That didn’t make me any less afraid of you. You broke my door. It was an antique.”
Nina flopped down in the lounger just opposite the couch and nodded, pulling her phone from her hoodie’s pocket and scrolling the screen with a lean finger. “Like I said, we’re off to a healthy start. Go take a shower while we wait for your boyfriend and the rest of my nutjob friends to get here.”
“I’m not leaving you alone—out here—while I’m in there.” She pointed to the bathroom just behind the couch.
“Are you afraid I’ll steal your silver? Maybe some of your old musty crap?”
“No. I’m afraid you’ll eat my dog.”
Nina’s entire expression changed. She went from dour to light and smiley in mere seconds. “You have a dog? Dude—where?”
“He’s probably in my bedroom, asleep. He’s deaf. Wait! Please don’t eat my dog. Please. Joe-Joe’s the only man in my life who doesn’t make me miserable.”
Nina didn’t bother to listen to her; she was up and out of her seat in one of those fast-forward movements Tessa still had trouble processing. She stalked her way to Tessa’s bedroom and sat down on the bed, her hand reaching cautiously for Joe-Joe, letting him sniff it.
As Tessa rose from the couch, scrambling to get to her bedroom to save Joe-Joe’s soul, Nina was already resting her cheek on Joe-Joe’s head and stroking the white and black fur of his hindquarters.
“Pit bull?” she asked, scratching behind Joe-Joe’s ears to the tune of his delighted moans.
“Ye . . .” She cleared her throat. “Yes. A rescue. He was a fight dog.”
Now Nina’s face was back to frowny and angry. “Assholes. If you wanna see me chew somebody’s arm off, they oughta let me at one of those pricks.” She waved a dismissive hand at Tessa. “Now go take a shower and let me and Joe-Joe get to know each other. Promise I won’t eat him—or his soul.” She chuckled to herself before returning to Joe-Joe, giving him belly rubs.
Voices coming from her living room made both Tessa and Nina turn their heads. “Gang’s here. Time to start figuring this out.” Giving Joe-Joe one last pat on the head, Nina cooed, “Come on, buddy. Let’s go see how they managed to fit fireman Mick’s wings into Marty’s ugly, pretentious SUV.”
To Tessa’s surprise, normally shy and sometimes nervous Joe-Joe jumped off the bed and followed Nina out like the good cult member he was, never even acknowledging that Tessa was in the room with him.
Nina must have some sort of glamour magic or something. That was what they called it on TV, right? Vampires had the ability to play with your mind—put you under a spell? That had to be it. Joe-Joe took a long time to warm to strangers, and he never warmed like this.
Staying far behind Nina, Tessa watched Mick, now wingless, enter her cottage, his face still covered in sweat-smeared soot, with Marty and Wanda right behind him.
“Your wings are gone,” Tessa mumbled.
“Yeah. Strangest thing,” he said. “They just went away.” He moved closer to her and smiled. “So all better, right?”
“Wrong,” Marty chirped. “Our experience tells us that this isn’t over. You don’t just sprout wings and breathe fire and it all goes away. This isn’t like a twenty-four-hour flu, Mick. This is a problem.”
“A problem we need to get right on,” Wanda said. “We need to know who bought that spice from you, Tessa. You did say they paid ten grand for it, right? That’s a lot of money for a rare spice. So why don’t you go grab a shower, because you’re going to make an utter mess of such lovely furniture, and then look through your records. We need a name—a contact—something.”
Mick grabbed Tessa by the arm and led her to her kitchen. A kitchen she loved to spend hours in since she’d restored it. It was shiny and clean, and had an old farmhouse appeal she’d managed to add modern touches to. “I know you were worried about the store, and what the guys back at the firehouse would say, but Marty says Nina has it all handled.”
“Handled? Have you seen how she handles things? She can lift a car with one hand, Mick!”
He waved his big hands at her. “Yeah. She said she’ll mess with their minds and plant an idea in there about how the fire started, so they won’t dig too deep. I’ll make sure she puts the right suggestion in their heads so this won’t spin too far out of control. She said she’d deal with the insurance carrier, too.”
Tessa’s mouth fell open. “Do you hear yourself, Mick? She’ll mess with their minds?”
His eyebrow rose. “Did you see what I saw? Do you disbelieve she’s capable of it?”
Fair. Joe-Joe was proof. “Okay. You have a point. Maybe she can bend minds. But do we want her to bend the minds of the guys at the station?”
“Do you want to explain how I incinerated your store by breathing fire?”
She gave a resigned sigh. “So what now? How do we get rid of them?”
He frowned. She knew that frown. It was the one that said she was spouting crazy. “We don’t. We need their help, T.”
“But your wings are gone, Mick. It’s over.”
“Did you hear what that woman Marty said? She said it’s not over.”
“Okay, maybe it isn’t. But what do we know about these people that would make us believe them? Maybe they’re from the government. So say maybe you really did take something that gave you wings—”
“Dragon wings. I think I’m really a dragon.”
Tessa slapped a hand to her thigh in disbelief. “Right, Puff. And maybe they’ve been watching us because I had the packet of pricey spices, and they know what the so-called spices are capable of. Maybe they’ve been watching me this whole time, hoping the guy who ordered them would show up and they could catch him in the act of taking the alleged spices from me.”
He rolled his eyes at her in that very irritating way he had—just like when they were kids and he thought she was stupid. “Right, Paranormal Activity. Maybe they have been watching you all this time. Maybe they’re on some covert mission, and we never noticed them in a town of only just over four hundred people,” he said sarcastically.
“Maybe they’re part of some special group of people—like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., or an X-Files kind of thing. Maybe, now that you have what they came for, they’re going to want it back!” she hissed.
Nina poked her head over Tessa’s shoulder. “Scully here—we’re not fucking government or FBI or CIA or paranormal investigators. We’re people who were once weak humans like you who had something crazy-ass happen to us. Now we try to help people who have the same problem we do. That’s it.”
Marty rushed over to intervene, placing a hand on Nina’s back and grabbing her hoodie. “Stop getting pushy, Mistress of the Dark. They’re speculating, hashing it out. They should. We did, didn’t we?”
Nina pulled away, swatting at Marty. “I’m just trying to save them some time. Save us some time. I want to go tobogganing. Not play with dragons and their girlfriends.”
Tessa narrowed her eyes. “I’m not his girlfriend.”
Mick bristled, too. “What she said.”
“Nina, go play with Joe-Joe.” Marty pointed to the living room, where Joe-Joe sat at Wanda’s feet while she cooed and stroked him. “Tessa, we need the name of that client now. Maybe he’s someone the people in our world know, and if they do, they can offer us insight. If you don’t want to freshen up, then make yourself useful so we can figure this out. If you don’t want to be a part of this, give us the client’s name, we’ll take Mick back to his place, and you can process this alone.”
In other words, shut up, Tessa. You’re thwarting progress here. Besides, what choice did they have? These women appeared to at least understand the elements of an event this scary. Who else could they trust for now? “I’m sorry.”
Marty’s pretty face softened immediately. “Don’t be, honey. It’s natural to try and rationalize, but our experience is the faster we figure this out, the faster we can get Mick acclimated to his new life. And
if he’s not your boyfriend, then you really don’t have much of a stake in this. So it’s essentially not your problem.”
“She likes him—it is so her problem,” Nina called from the living room where Joe-Joe now sat on her lap as though he’d always known her.
Tessa stiffened. How could she possibly know that? Had she been fishing around in Tessa’s head? “He’s my brother’s best friend,” she offered lamely. “We’ve known each other all our lives. Of course I want to help him.”
Marty’s smile was as warm and as pretty as she was. “Then the client’s information?”
That was a problem. A huge problem. “Burned to a crisp.”
“Don’t you keep backup of some kind, T?” Mick prodded, condemnation sprinkling his tone.
She squirmed, plucking at her burnt sweater. Of course she did. Just not today. “I didn’t have time to put it in the computer before the store caught on fire. It just came in this afternoon.”
There was a collective resigned sigh from all parts of the house.
Marty tried again. “Can you remember anything about him, Tessa? His initials, when he made the inquiry, where you got the stuff in India? If it was even a man?”
She took a deep breath, pressing her thumbs to her temples. “It’s been a pretty busy time at the shop, lots of orders and . . . and stuff.” She couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t get past vampires and werewolves and genies that gave you babies.
She didn’t know all her clients’ names by heart—especially the ones who were one-time customers. She got orders from all over the world—shipped merchandise as far as China.
Forget that. Think, Tessa. Think hard.
Mick clamped a hand over her shoulder and squeezed—a familiar gesture she hated and lived for all at the same time. “Listen, go clean up, okay? Take a shower. Maybe it’ll jar something. I’ll dig around for some food. Think about it while I do that, all right? Don’t stress.”
She looked up at him—the man she’d loved all her life without him ever having a single clue—and nodded. “Okay.”
He gave her shoulder a final squeeze as she pushed past him and went to her bedroom, closing the door behind her and locking it.
The Accidental Dragon Page 4