'Til Dragons Do Us Part (Never Deal with Dragons)

by Lorenda Christensen

  And when he started talking about Trian, I couldn’t help but be intrigued. I’ll admit to feeling a small sense of disappointment that Cameron was himself fully human. I hadn’t expected anything different, and it was stupid to feel somewhat let-down at the news, but I hadn’t realized just how much the existence of another dragon morph had awakened my deeply buried dreams of finding someone I could love without worrying about their reaction when they found out about my “other” life.

  I’d asked Cameron about his reaction to Trian’s secret, and while he confirmed his surprise and described the circumstances surrounding his friend’s first transformation, a guarded look had crept into his eyes, and the easy conversation lagged. It was clear to me that Cameron didn’t feel comfortable discussing something so personal about his friend. But the fact that they were friends and were still close enough that Cameron agreed to be in Trian’s wedding made me feel his reticence was more a reaction to the charged atmosphere surrounding human and dragon relations.

  I was itching to press Cameron further—it wasn’t every day I found the best friend of a dragon morph, but I hated to ruin our outing with talk that made him uncomfortable.

  The waitress stopped at our table, and I paid the bill before turning back to Cameron and stretching my legs out. “So we’re even now. One drink in payment for decoration labor.”

  He smiled. “Actually, I have an ulterior motive.”

  “For being my knight in shining armor? Anything.” I folded my hands under my chin and leaned across the table with a grin.

  “You remember those sisters I mentioned?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, one of those sisters happens to have a son who’s turning four next week. They live in a different part of the country, so I’m not going to be able to make the party. Your background check showed you have a niece a year or so older than that.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “My background check, huh? I see how this works. Your job at Relobu’s is just a thing you do on the side so you have a way to screen potential dates?”

  He gave me an expression of mock surprise. “Of course. How do you do it?”

  “Screen my dates? I generally ask if they want to meet my pet lizard, and if they freak, they’re gone.”

  Nevermind that my pet lizard was over twelve feet tall and weighed two tons. And lived inside of me.

  “I used to ask the same question about my pet snake. Got a lot of weird looks.”

  Cameron said this in such a bland voice that I’d ingested the last of my wine before his joke hit home. I laughed, choked and proceeded to disturb the entire shop’s population as I struggled for air.

  With a huff of laughter himself, Cameron gave me a couple of thumps on the back and a napkin.

  “I think that’s our cue to leave.”

  Still laughing, we stumbled out onto the mostly empty sidewalk. “I gotta hand it to you Cameron Shaw, you’ve surprised me. Based on my first impression, I’d have pegged you as a stick in the mud.”

  “No worries. At first glance I thought you were a thief.”

  I choked again, only this time it was surprise and more than a little guilt that had me gasping for breath. “I—”

  He waved me off. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve always been the suspicious sort.”

  The curiosity surrounding his old job was too much for me to handle. “You were in personal security?” Visions of Cameron standing grimly over the dead body of a former client flashed into my head.

  He must have noticed the careful tone of my voice when I asked, because he smiled. “Yes. But nothing so dramatic as whatever you’re imagining. I was working as head of security for a wealthy household. Property, not people. The experience made me a bit jumpy when strangers and valuables are in the same room together. Thus my impromptu interrogation over the Tofegaard.”

  I smiled back, but inside I felt...uncomfortable.

  Oh, grow up, Savannah. What are you going to do? Announce that he was right and ask him to escort you to the nearest police station?

  It’s not as if he’d be fired over the Tofegaard going missing. Myrna had made it clear that Cameron was hired to keep the wedding participants, and the event itself, safe from crazed terrorists working to maintain racial purity or whatever else it is that drives people to want a group of strangers dead.

  But someone would be held responsible.

  I cringed at the thought for barely a second, then brushed it away. Bright Seasons was just a painting. Relobu had effectively stolen it from a human museum. All I planned to do was give it back to the same species who’d owned it in the first place. Seriously, I was a modern day Robin Hood.

  Except Robin Hood didn’t charge ridiculous sums of money before he handed over the loot.

  “Oh, shut up.”

  I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud until Cameron turned his head. “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry. Not you. It’s my, ah, shoe. The right one keeps squeaking every time I take a step. So what exactly am I using my hard-earned auntie experience for this evening?”

  The frown cleared from his face and he held out a hand. “Ah yes. I am in need of a children’s toys expert to help me pick out an item that will blind my nephew to the fact that I am not present at his birthday party. And if I can find something that can blind my sister to that fact as well, I’ll be in your debt forever.”

  I took his hand. “What I can’t do with chair decorating, I make up for in toy selection.”

  I couldn’t help but squeal when he used my captured hand to yank me forward until I was pressed against his side. I really liked the playful Cameron.

  “In that case, lead on, oh wise and fearless toy expert.” I felt the warmth of his hand on the back of my thigh just before he deliberately tipped me off-balance and hefted me onto his back, piggyback style.

  Squeezing my thighs around his waist for balance, I pointed in the direction of the toy store Emma had discovered during our crusade for Amanda-approved business attire the night before I’d started at Bridal Visions.

  “Forward lies the answer to your problems. All-speed, mine trusty steed. We shall not rest until both mother and child are vanquished with delight.”

  I was still laughing as we went inside, Cameron allowing me to once again stand upon my own two feet.

  “How about a set of these?” I held up a child-sized bow and arrow for inspection.

  “Too violent.”

  “Or this.” A massive box full of molding clay, available in almost every color of the rainbow.

  “Too messy. You’re forgetting I have to charm his mother, too.”

  “Good point.” I strolled along the aisles, looking for something that would make a toddler boy go wild, but would leave a mother more grateful than horrified.

  The baseball set was out—I’d bought Emma something similar, and it hadn’t been even a day before she’d decided to take a swing at something in the house.

  “Pardon me, ma’am.”

  I looked up and snorted. Cameron had managed to locate the section of the store reserved for costumes, and he was currently wearing an absurd gray mustache and peering at me through a glass monocle.

  He leaned in close, pretending to leer down the front of my shirt.

  Pushing him away, I grabbed a glittery demi-mask from the top of the princess pile. “Now, sir. I’m going to have to ask that you treat me with respect. I’m a princess, you see.”

  I fluttered my lashes so hard I was having trouble seeing through them.

  Cameron swapped his monocle for a Sherlock Holmes-style pipe. “Well then, princess, it appears to me that we have a problem. Because all of my clues lead me to believe that you are not just any old princess. In fact, I believe you may be a murderer!” He dropped the pipe and snatched up a policeman’s badge.

  Giving him a dramatic sigh, I returned the demi-mask to the shelf and held my wrists out at chest level. “Then arrest me!”

  He laughed, and pulled on one of my hands to draw me closer
. “I have a much better idea. How about instead of jail, I let you off with a warning this time?”

  He captured my lips with his own, and suddenly my laughter disappeared, leaving only the urge to pull him closer.

  We separated far too soon for my taste, but for the rest of the outing, he held my hand, our fingers linked as we wandered the aisles together.

  The afternoon had been more fun than I’d had in a while. And the man beside me? More interesting than anyone I’d ever met.

  * * *

  Four hours, three toys and several smoking-hot kisses later, Cameron left me standing at Simon and Jeanie’s front door. It was late enough that I decided to let myself in rather than ring the doorbell and risk waking Emma, but once inside, I realized I shouldn’t have worried.

  “Hello?”

  Silence.

  No one was home.

  I wandered into the kitchen and glanced at the refrigerator door where Jeanie cataloged our lives on a monthly calendar. No note. No sign that anyone had been here all day. I crossed the room and opened the cabinet under the sink, pulling out the large metal wastebasket and removing the liner before turning it on end.

  Our lives may be recorded on the refrigerator, but our real lives—the ones involving high-end art theft—weren’t for display. Simon and I had long ago developed a system in which any career-centric messages were passed by way of sticky notes attached to the bottom of the kitchen trash. If our cover had been blown, and Simon hadn’t managed to find me, this was how he’d let me know.

  But the trashcan held no more answers than the fridge door. I thought back to my earlier attempt to reach Simon by phone.

  “Where in the heck are they?” I muttered to myself, walking through the house as I checked all hidden nooks and crannies that Simon usually filled with his projects.

  Everything was still in place. If someone had discovered who we really were, they hadn’t yet made it into the apartment.

  A scratch at the back window had me whirling around with a snarl, my hands grasping the nearest weapon I could locate, one of Jeanie’s jeweled letter openers.

  But it was just Emma’s puppy, Mr. Ruff, pawing desperately at the window as the rest of his body convulsed in canine delight. I released the air in my lungs in a relieved puff, and moved to open the door. Mr. Ruff bounded in on paws too big for his still-growing body, and promptly peed on the floor in ecstasy.

  It appeared he hadn’t seen anyone for a while either.

  I sighed. “Yeah, yeah. Good to see you too, you little water faucet. How long has the family been gone?”

  Completely unconcerned with my question now that he had a human to fawn over, Mr. Ruff dance-skidded around my ankles on the tile floor as I found a roll of towels and cleaned up his mess. Seeing that I actually planned on paying him some attention, Mr. Ruff then ran straight to his food bowl and perked up his ears.

  “That long, huh?” At his morose look, and in direct opposition to Jeanie’s orders, I scooped double his daily allowance of food into the bowl.

  “If I leave you here in the house by yourself for an hour or so, will you promise me that you won’t chew or pee on anything Jeanie won’t be able to replace?”

  Mr. Ruff gave me nothing but silence as he wolfed down his meal, pausing only to let loose a noxious belch before returning to the business of choking himself with food, his furry little tail wagging like a demented metronome.

  Leaving him to devour his dinner—and probably the rest of the house, once he’d finished—I stepped outside into the stamp-sized yard and looked around. The neighbors’ windows were clear, no faces or fluttering curtains to suggest I was being watched. I found the darkest corner of the yard, and proceeded to remove my clothing.

  While Jeanie had done her best to find apartments featuring private balconies, our move to Tulsa had happened so fast that she’d only managed to locate a single property that fit the bill. Since I was the one who usually needed the space, she’d given the balconied version to me, and she and Simon had moved into a small house with a fenced back lawn.

  Now I wished they hadn’t. Stripped down to my birthday suit, I stuffed my clothes into my leather satchel, adjusted the strap around my neck, and squatted in the corner, gritting my teeth and wincing as the familiar pain overtook my body. My worry wreaked havoc on my concentration, and by the time I was fully dragon, my bones and muscles felt like I’d just finished the Contortionists World Championship.

  I didn’t have any idea where to start my search, and I knew the odds of me finding them while in the sky were incredibly slim, especially since I had no real proof that they hadn’t just gone out for ice cream. But they weren’t here in the house, and this was the only alternative I had to just waiting around and hoping they came back. It just wasn’t like Simon to go without contact for this long. Besides, I’d been getting a little itchy stuck in my human body for such a long time. I needed the exercise.

  Several years ago, Simon asked me to explain what I meant by “itchy” when I stayed in one form for too long, and I couldn’t. The closest I was able to come to describing the feeling was when I compared it to being forced to sit in one position for hours at a time, or when I was told not to touch my face and suddenly it felt like someone was tickling my nose. It was just a restless, nagging sensation that I couldn’t shake.

  During my teenage years, parentless and desperate to fit in, I decided that I would simply ignore my dragon morph status and be a normal human girl. Two weeks into my “decision,” I’d looked down at my desk in third period calculus to find a scaled claw holding the remains of a mangled pencil. I’d completely freaked out and half ran, half stumbled out of the classroom toward the roof of my school. I’d made it there just in time to lose my lunch before the change completed, and I’d taken to the sky in a jumbled mess of misery.

  I’d hated calculus ever since. And from then on, I’d made a point to take “the itchies” seriously.

  Telling myself that getting a quick bird’s-eye view of the city would be better than sitting around worrying about something out of my control, I waddled out to the center of the yard and pushed off, careful to use my legs more than usual to compensate for my half-healed wings.

  The feel of nothing but air under my claws was always calming. Ignoring the slight pull of still-sore muscles around my wings, I gained altitude until I hovered about thirty or so feet above the tallest trees. I wasn’t surprised to see that the neighborhood was quiet at this hour of the evening. It occurred to me that even without the balcony, Jeanie had once again done a fantastic job of finding the perfect home for their family. Abandoned tricycles, T-ball stands and playground equipment made it clear that the surrounding houses were filled with playmates for Emma. The thought made me smile.

  Deciding that taking a slow and leisurely journey would do me more good than a panicked flitter through the air, I took an easy left turn and headed toward the downtown police station. From what Simon had told me, the local police were so friendly with Relobu they might as well be in his pocket, so I figured it was as good a place as any to start my search for my friends. The odds that Cameron and his staff had uncovered Simon’s real identity but hadn’t objected to me posing right under the dragon lord’s snout were slim but that didn’t mean it was impossible.

  After visiting the police station, which was reassuringly quiet and Simon free, I didn’t have any other ideas on where to look. I’d flown over Jeanie’s parents’ house, hoping that Simon had simply forgotten to tell me they’d headed over for a visit. But it was ten at night, and all the lights were off. Jeanie’s parents weren’t in on my secret, so showing up on their doorstep was out of the question.

  An hour later, my muscles were telling me it was time for a rest. After making a sweep to ensure there were no cattle in residence—farmers in these parts had been known to fight back against dragons attempting to poach on their land—I found an open expanse of acreage and glided toward the ground. I hit the dirt with both feet, and groaned when I r
ealized my left foot had found evidence that even if there weren’t cows on the property right now, they hadn’t been gone long.

  And they’d definitely been here long enough to give me something to remember them by. Cursing under my breath as I crow-hopped my way toward the bank of a small creek, I prayed there was at least a little running water to wash with. While I did enjoy the freedom of having my own place, the bad part about living alone was that I was the person who had to clean my floors when I inadvertently tracked in excrement after a night flight.

  And I really wasn’t in the mood for a midnight mopping session.

  Simon gave me perpetual grief about the weird physiology that allowed me to see perfectly well while flying through a night sky, but a horrible near-sightedness when on the ground. When in dragon form, my eyes lost some of their range of motion, due to the relocation of my orbital sockets from the front of my skull —great views of the sides of my body, but a loss of vision of things directly before or below me. I could see the ground at my feet, but it was more of a corner-of-the-eye glance than a real view.

  Unfortunately for my filthy claw, it was late summer in Tulsa, and the city hadn’t seen rain for quite some time. The creek was so small it was almost non-existent. There was no way my massive arches, not to mention my dragon-sized ankles, were going to fit into the tiny trickle of water. And, as usual, my T-Rex arms were useless.

  I was going to have to morph. Again.

  I scoped out a decent spot on the bank where the grass was somewhat short, and hunkered down in preparation. I closed my eyes and had just started to feel the burn along my fore-claws and another space on my back when my heart simply stopped in my chest. A voice. Right behind me.

  “You know, it doesn’t hurt as much if you pick a single body part at a time.”

  Chapter Eleven

  My girlish shriek came out in a dragon’s roar of surprise. Without even thinking about it, I took a swing in the direction of the voice, my human fingers looking ridiculously stupid wiggling out from a scale-covered dragon wrist. The stranger smoothly avoided my strike, his calm reassurance telling me more than anything that he’d been watching me for a while. And that he wasn’t afraid of dragons. Even dragons with grubby pink fingers for claws.