There’s another knock, and then a stern voice shouts, “Open up! On the authority of Governor Claybourne, we have the right to search this house!”
Cedric’s face goes paler than it already was, making him look even more sick.
“Paladins,” Amelrik whispers, jumping up from the couch, wide awake now.
Leif glances around at all the junk, then gives Cedric a worried look.
I don’t know how Cedric’s going to explain all this stuff to them. And from the expressions on his and Leif’s faces, I’m guessing some of it’s incriminating. I mean, they’d have to actually find the incriminating stuff amongst all the junk first, but still. And if they figure out that Cedric’s a dragon… Maybe Leif would come out of it unscathed. Maybe they’d believe he had no idea. But there’s no mistaking the resemblance between Cedric and Amelrik, and it wouldn’t take a genius to piece together that they’re related. And maybe you can date a dragon without also being one—which I know firsthand—but you can’t really be related to one and have the same thing still be true.
“If you don’t open up this instant, we’ll have no choice but to break down the door!”
Cedric tries to smile as he opens it for them. “Can I help you?”
Three paladins stand outside the house. Two of them are the same ones we saw at the inn last night—Blackarrow and Elmhurst. The other one… I’ve never seen her before, but her insignia marks her as a Carver.
A shiver runs down my spine.
The Blackarrow pushes his way in. “We have orders to search the… house.” He falters as he actually looks around and sees all the junk everywhere.
“Holy…” The Elmhurst shakes her head. “What is this?”
“It’s nothing,” Cedric says, scowling at them. “How I keep my house is none of your business.”
All three of them are standing inside now. The Blackarrow looks to Joanna Carver in a silent plea.
She keeps her face stern and unwavering. “The order still stands. Search the house.”
Cedric takes a deep breath. He opens his mouth to protest.
“Wait,” I say, interrupting before he can get a word in. “I’m a paladin, and I can vouch for everyone here.”
The Elmhurst raises her eyebrows. “You’re a paladin?”
I grit my teeth. “Yes.” Why does everyone always have to sound so skeptical about that? “My sister is Celeste St. George, and I’m telling you, there are no dragons here.”
Dropping Celeste’s name gets their attention, even though she’s going to kill me for it if it ever gets back to her. The paladins converge together, whispering for a moment.
Then Joanna Carver shakes her head definitively at the other two. “He’s on our list. We can’t just leave.”
“But we don’t have to actually search this dump, do we?” Blackarrow says. “Let’s just bring him in like the boss wants. Send someone else to finish up here.”
She hesitates, making a disgusted face at the state of Cedric’s house, like she’s actually considering it.
My heart races. I can practically feel the fear radiating from the dragons in the room. “You can’t do that. I mean, this is ridiculous. I’m telling you he’s innocent.”
“And I’m telling you we have orders. Grab him.”
The other two paladins move forward, toward Cedric.
He backs away, looking terrified. “I-I haven’t done anything!”
Amelrik and Leif look this close to attacking them, though they hold themselves back. Because even if they won this fight, it would just make things worse. And with the town on lockdown, there’s nowhere to run to. But I can’t see either of them letting these paladins actually haul Cedric away, either.
“Stop!” I shout, putting myself in front of Cedric. “You don’t need to bring him in.”
Blackarrow rolls his eyes at me. “But we have—”
“Orders. I know. But do you really want to bring in another innocent man? How incompetent is that going to make you look?”
“Er.” He looks over his shoulder at the others, then back at me. “It’s not really up to us.”
“Use your magic.” I gesture at Joanna. “Prove right now that he’s not a dragon.”
I hear Amelrik suck in a breath. Leif fidgets, scratching at his arm through his sleeve where I know the dragon ring’s hiding. And Cedric holds perfectly still.
“Come on,” I tell Joanna. “You’re just going to have to do it anyway after you haul him to Rosewood. Save yourself the trouble and get it over with now.”
“Sounds good to me,” Blackarrow says.
Joanna chews her lip. “And if he transforms?”
“You’ve got a St. George right here to change him back,” I tell her.
“Well…”
“Let’s just do it,” Elmhurst says. “She has a point. The boss might want us to bring him in, but the people of East Westford are only going to stand for so many false arrests.”
Joanna nods. “Alright. Stand back.”
The other paladins move well away from Cedric, but the rest of us stay in place.
Cedric looks like he’s going to throw up. His eyes meet mine, and it’s all I can do not to look away. Because I’m not a hundred percent certain this is going to work. But I do know that if they haul him in for questioning, they’ll for sure find the bracelet. And then they’ll know the truth. And they’ll bring in Leif, and Amelrik, and even me, though at least I’ll probably survive. But the others?
I swallow down my fears, praying that my magic holds. That it’s strong enough to counteract a Carver’s magic—one way more experienced than me.
She raises one hand, all her focus on Cedric.
I feel Amelrik move closer, his hand finding mine, though I don’t dare look away from the scene in front of us.
Joanna casts the spell. There’s an orange flare and the smell of burnt hair. Then a quick bzzt sound as the magic fizzles out.
Cedric’s still human. My lungs burn, and I realize I’m holding my breath.
“That was odd,” Joanna says, staring at her hands in confusion. “Did you hear that?”
Blackarrow shrugs one shoulder. “I didn’t notice anything. Did you?”
“Probably just my stomach growling,” Elmhurst says. “I slept late and missed breakfast.”
“No.” Joanna raises her hand again. “I think something went wrong.”
My stomach clenches. I have absolutely no idea if the bracelet will hold out a second time. “What went wrong,” I tell her, trying really hard to keep my voice steady, “is that he’s not a dragon, just like I told you.”
“Come on.” Elmhurst nudges her with her elbow. “This whole lockdown’s got everybody paranoid. We checked him out. The boss can’t ask for more than that.” Her stomach suddenly growls super loud, and it does sound kind of like magic fizzling out.
Enough that Joanna lowers her hand. “Alright,” she says. “Let’s get out of here.” She glances over at us one more time before heading for the door.
Elmhurst leaves with her, but Blackarrow hangs back for a second. “Sorry,” he says to Cedric, keeping his voice down, like he’s ashamed to say it. “I never really thought it was you, yeah?”
Cedric just nods, not saying anything, his expression numb.
As soon as the paladins are gone and the door is closed, Leif puts his arms around Cedric. “I can’t believe that just happened.”
“I can’t believe that actually worked,” I tell them.
And then I think that was maybe the wrong thing to admit, because all three dragons are staring at me now.
Cedric’s eyes go wide. “You didn’t know?!”
“They would have killed you if they’d taken you in! It was the best option.”
“Yeah, but—”
A frantic knock on the door silences him. My heart speeds up. The paladins must have changed their minds. Did they hear what we just said? Even if they did, it doesn’t prove anything. Though it would be reason enough to bring us
all in for questioning.
The knock comes again, this time followed by a voice. One that definitely doesn’t belong to any of the paladins who were just here. “Cedric! It’s Tom from down the road—I’ve got news!”
Cedric opens the door for him.
Tom looks about my age. His face is flushed, and it’s clear from his expression that whatever the news is, it isn’t good. “We just heard, and Mother sent me to tell all the neighbors. There’s been another attack. Only this one’s not like the others. This time, they survived.”
The vibe around town is different today as me and Amelrik make our way to the victim’s house. People are out doing their shopping like usual, but there’s an edge of suspicion in everyone’s eyes. Especially when they look over at us, two people from out of town they don’t recognize.
Because the fact that Henrietta Thorpe survived isn’t the only thing that’s different about this attack. She’s apparently been saying that it wasn’t a dragon that did it, though she didn’t actually see her attacker, either. But it means the killer might somehow be human. And it’s one thing for everyone to blame the attacks on a dragon, believing that between the paladins and the lockdown, they’ll get results. But thinking they might have a human serial killer on the loose is a whole different story.
Henrietta’s house has flower boxes on all the windows, though they’re covered in snow now. There’s an elaborate wreath on her door, decorated with tiny pinecones covered in glitter and cinnamon, and little knit wool ornaments in vibrant colors. A couple of people are leaving when we get there, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s had a bunch of visitors already today. She’s probably had to tell her story a million times just this morning. Hopefully she won’t mind going over it again with two complete strangers.
Amelrik knocks on the door, and a few seconds later an annoyed-looking girl opens it. She looks maybe thirteen or fourteen, and I’m guessing she’s Henrietta’s daughter.
“Hi,” I tell her. “We were hoping—”
She doesn’t let me finish, rolling her eyes and shouting over her shoulder, “More vultures here to see you!”
A much more pleasant-sounding woman calls back, “Let them in, Jeanie!”
“You heard her,” Jeanie mutters, leaving the door open for us as she stomps back into the house.
I exchange a look with Amelrik, and then we step inside. The house is nice and warm, with a fire blazing in the hearth. There’s a Christmas tree in one corner, decorated much like the wreath on the door. A plump woman with round cheeks is propped up on the couch with a blanket, a steaming mug in her hands.
“Don’t mind Jeanie,” she says, waving us forward. “Come in, come in.”
“Do mind Jeanie!” Jeanie shouts from the kitchen. “The doctor said you should be resting, not having the entire town over for tea!”
Henrietta clucks her tongue in dismissal. “I’ll be the judge of who I have over for tea, young lady.” She smiles at us, then frowns a little. “We haven’t met before, have we?” She squints at Amelrik.
“You might know my cousin, Cedric,” he says. “He hangs out—”
“At the Ram’s Head. Yes, Leif’s lover.”
“Mother!” Jeanie shrieks, her face red as she brings over two little plates of pie and shoves them at us. “Could you not say it like that?”
“Why not?” Henrietta says. “It’s what they are.”
“He’s his boyfriend. Talk like a normal person.”
The pie is blackberry, still warm, and Jeanie’s poured a little bit of cream over it.
“Go ahead,” Henrietta says when she sees me staring at it. “The neighbors have been bringing food all morning. We’ll never be able to eat it all.”
I don’t need more encouragement than that. I stuff a forkful of it into my mouth. Maybe kind of a large forkful, which makes it hard to talk, and I might spray crumbs all over when I say, “Can we ask you what happened?”
“It was early this morning—the sun was barely up—and I was just on my way to pick up a few things before breakfast. It was cold, and I didn’t want to be out any longer than I had to, so I took a shortcut through one of the side streets—”
“The one you’re always telling me not to go down,” Jeanie mutters.
“You can make bad choices when you’re an adult. Anyway, I didn’t think anything of it. There wasn’t anyone there, and it didn’t look big enough for a dragon. And it really wasn’t that far from the market, you know? So I didn’t think… Well, I was hurrying through it, at any rate, and then I heard footsteps—”
“Footsteps?” Amelrik says, a tiny bite of pie just sitting on his fork, uneaten.
“Heavy, like a man’s. They were suddenly right behind me, and I was terrified. I thought it was the dragon come to kill me. I thought it—he—was going to transform right there. But then…” She pauses, her face strained.
Amelrik finally eats his tiny bite of pie. Then, seeming to realize how good it is, takes another, much larger bite.
“I don’t know how to explain this next part.”
“That’s funny,” Jeanie says, “because you’ve been doing it all morning.” She folds her arms across her chest. “There was a claw.”
“Just hold on. I’m getting to that.” Henrietta sighs. “I thought I saw a claw swiping at me, out of the corner of my eye.”
Amelrik hurries to swallow down his food. “A claw? How big?”
“I don’t…” She blinks. “You know, no one’s asked me that yet. I only saw part of it, and I’m not even sure what I was seeing, really.”
“If you had to guess, though?”
She holds her hands out shoulder-width apart, then widens the distance between them, then brings it in again. “I don’t know. It all happened so fast. There was this blur of purple scales, and then something sharp stuck me in the back.”
Me and Amelrik exchange another look. Purple scales, like the one we found at the other crime scene.
“If you saw a claw,” I ask her, “why do you think it wasn’t a dragon?”
“The footsteps sounded human. Though I suppose it could have transformed right then.”
She doesn’t know that she would have heard it if it did, but I don’t point that out to her.
“But…” She presses a hand to her forehead. “The claw was only about shoulder height. I would have thought a dragon would be bigger than that.”
“And then there’s your wound,” Jeanie says. “The one you’re supposed to be healing from.”
“I’m fine, really.” She huffs at her daughter’s concern. “But yes, there’s the wound on my back. There’s only one, not… Well, I don’t know how many claws dragons have, but I’m certain it’s more than one. And it’s more of a stab wound, like from a sword.”
“A sword,” Amelrik repeats.
“And then I screamed bloody murder, and Portia’s husband, Neal, was on his way to work at the forge and heard me. He shouted and came running, and my attacker fled.” She pauses, then adds, “And they were definitely human footsteps then.”
“Did Neal see anything?” I ask.
“No. He came from the opposite direction, and the attacker had already disappeared when he arrived. Luckily, the wound wasn’t too deep. The doctor says I should be fine.”
“If you rest,” Jeanie says. “He was very clear on that point.”
There’s a knock on the door.
Jeanie sighs as she goes to answer it, muttering, “More vultures.”
“We should probably get going.” I set my empty pie plate on the coffee table, but only after I lick all the cream off of it. Discreetly, of course.
Amelrik isn’t quite finished with his. He takes another bite of it, then sets his plate down.
And then I look over as Jeanie opens the door and my stomach clenches. There’s a man at the door, a paladin. But not just any paladin—it’s Warwick St. George.
I don’t know why he’d come here himself instead of sending his underlings, but I do know h
e’s going to see Amelrik. And he must know who and what he is. Panic claws at my chest as I consider how feasible it would be to make a run out the back door, if they even have one. And what if Amelrik sees him and transforms?
But then it’s too late, because Warwick enters the house.
“Come in!” Henrietta says, just as welcoming to him as she was to us, even though he has a sour look on his face.
I can hardly breathe, dreading what’s about to go down. My mind races as I try to come up with ways we might still make it out of this.
But nothing happens.
Warwick gives us a disdainful look—no, wait, he gives me a disdainful look. His eyes flick over Amelrik, but that’s all. There’s no recognition in them. He doesn’t say anything.
Amelrik maybe eyes him a little suspiciously, but nothing out of the ordinary, considering he’s a paladin. Still, I practically push Amelrik toward the door, just to be safe. “We’d better be going! It was lovely meeting you! And thanks for the pie!”
Once we’re outside, I breathe a little easier. Well, except for the way the cold burns my lungs, but that’s beside the point.
Amelrik raises his eyebrows at me. “Do you know that guy?”
“Do I know that guy? You’re the one who… Well, at least you didn’t freak out this time.” I rub my hands together for warmth as we make our way down the street, in the direction of Cedric’s house.
“Why would I freak out?”
“Because. Last time, when you heard his voice, you—”
“That was him?” Amelrik stops, turning to look over his shoulder.
He stops so suddenly that a woman walking by almost runs into him.
“Yeah,” I say. “I thought you knew him or something.”
“No, I’ve never—”
“He’s their leader, Warwick St. George.”
His eyes go wide, and his nostrils flare as he takes quick, shallow breaths.
“So you do know him.” I try to ignore the way my heart’s pounding.
“He’s the one who tortured my mother! He’s the one who made me like this!” He stares at his hands, curling his fingers, and I wonder if he’s wishing they were claws right now or if he’s trying not to transform. He takes a step toward the house, then another back toward me again.
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