How to Date Your Dragon

by Molly Harper

  “I record mine in a voice recorder and transcribe it later. More precise that way,” he said.

  The corner of her mouth lifted as she examined the page.

  Bael asked. “What was he observing?”

  “I have no idea,” she said. “Everybody’s short hand is different, personal. Maybe if you had a handwriting sample from everybody in town and a crazy person conversion chart, I could help you, but I can’t decipher this.”

  Bael dropped into a kitchen chair and rubbed his hands over his head. Jillian breathed deeply and opened his files to look at the crime scene photos. It took a lot of pauses and patience, but she flipped through all of them.

  “Bael, were there any accidental deaths before Ted turned up dead? Any deaths that were attributed to drowning or animal attacks or just disappearances?”

  “I know how to do my job, Jillian.”

  “I know you do, I’m just wondering if there were any deaths that didn’t feel right to you. Where there was more damage to the body than there should have been. Because this just doesn’t feel like a serial killer.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Now that I can stand to look at them, I see that all of the cuts seem almost surgical. These aren’t angry crimes.”

  “So, what you’re a forensic analyst now? Not all serial killers are angry. I think you’ve been watching too much TV.”

  “I’m not a forensics expert. I’m a people expert. And when I’m learning about a culture, I look at commonalities. What keeps a group together? What do they have in common? Ted, Gladys, and Teenie, they were different types of magique. They were different ages and genders. They had different jobs, moved in different social circles. They believed in different gods. They had no family connections, which in itself is a miracle in this town. What do they have in common?”

  “They weren’t born magique,” he replied. “They were changed by the rift.”

  “And what if these killings aren’t murder for murder’s sake, but because this person wants to understand how the victims work, like they’re specimens? He doesn’t consider them murders. They’re dissections.”

  “That would be incredibly upsetting.”

  He pulled out a map of the bayou and marked the rift with a big red X.

  “Where was Ted Beveux’s house?” she asked.

  Bael leaned over the map and circled Ted’s house. It was one of the closest homes in town to the rift. “Gladys’s house is right here.”

  He circled another spot on the map, which was just slightly farther out from the rift. Without being prompted, he circled what she assumed was Teenie’s house, which was only a little bit farther from the big red X. He marked another spot, which looked to be just outside of the “magique only” line near the rift. “We had a boating accident a couple years ago right here. The bodies were torn up, but we thought they’d been picked at by scavengers. It was a pair of teenage brothers. They’d just started developing what we thought was lycanthropy. And here, we had a little girl who drowned in a creek. Sarah Winters, she’d been born a natural healer in a family where there were no magique.”

  “He’s working his way out from the rift, taking apart people who have turned.”

  Bael gathered his files back into the laptop bag. “I gotta go talk to Zed, see if there are any other cases we’re missing. I want you to stay here. Don’t leave. Don’t answer the door unless it’s for me, Zed or Clarissa. Don’t even answer your phone. I’m going to pull the van into the garage so no one knows you’re home.”

  “Bael, we just talked about this.”

  “You’re going to stay here with my guns and my heavily locked doors. I know you’re not a treasure to be hoarded. You’re a person. And I know things are messed up right now, but you’re my person. I’m asking as someone who feels for you. I’m begging you to stay somewhere it’s safe.”

  “Oh, that is not fair.”

  He kissed her, all fury and fear, and she sagged against him in relief.

  “Fine, I’ll stay here.”

  “Thank you. I’ll bring you home a pie.”

  “You know, pie doesn’t solve everything.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  15

  Jillian

  Jillian thought it had been stressful to present her doctoral thesis in front of some of the world’s foremost experts in her field. It turned out that was nothing compared to waiting around for your dragon-cop boyfriend to call and tell you whether he caught a serial killer.

  She did every bit of work she could conjure up. She organized her files. She cleaned the house. She even tried cooking, only to throw away the chicken she’d burned. Nothing would calm her nerves. So she took to pacing in the living room, running over all of the possibilities in her head and coming up with nothing definite.

  This didn’t make any sense. Why take apart your neighbors when you could just ask them questions? What could make you so unhappy that you committed murder for the sake of knowledge? That you killed children? Had the rift driven the killer crazy?

  She heard a car door slam and went to the window, expecting to see Bael. But instead of a squad car, she saw a large red pick-up truck parked in the driveway. Balfour was taking a bag out of the passenger seat and walking toward the house. She ran to the front door and double checked the lock. She watched Balfour move closer to the window.

  If Balfour really wanted to get in, he would. Bael’s boat was tied to the back dock. Could she pilot it away before Balfour figured out how close she was? Would he only shift into dragon form and chase her down? Regardless, running seemed better than staying, better than being cornered.

  Balfour spotted her through the front window and smirked. She grabbed her purse and slipped out the back door. She backed down the length of the porch, listening as Balfour jerked the door handle.

  The little fishing boat was only a few steps away. She just had to work up the nerve to take her eyes off of the house. She backed toward the dock. She heard a footstep behind her and didn’t even have time to turn her head before a great weight came crashing against her temple. Her legs folded under her and she saw the briefest flash of sky overhead before her eyelids fluttered closed.

  She woke up face down on a dirt floor in a shed, which was bad. Her hands were cuffed behind her back and there was duct tape over her mouth, which was worse.

  She wriggled, trying to get control of her limbs so she could pull up to an upright position. Her hands and feet felt numb. And there was a ringing in her ears that was distinctly unpleasant. Her head ached with a dull, gnawing throb. She’d been crying and her nose was stuffy, making it hard to breathe.

  The shed was small but meticulously organized. There was a surgical table in the corner. And she recognized several medical tools on a metal tray. There were anatomical sketches all over the walls and photos of dissections. She recognized several of the symbols from the notes he’d left at the scene, but she still couldn’t figure out what any of them meant.

  The corner of the tape at her mouth was loose. She nudged her face against her shoulder, slowly and painfully peeling it away from her skin. When she was finally free, she sucked in huge gulping mouthfuls of air.

  Bael. She wanted Bael. She just wanted to see his face again. She wanted to tell him she loved him and she was sorry she made him feel like he wasn’t as important as her work. Her eyes welled up and she couldn’t tell if it was from heartbreak or panic or the result of being knocked unconscious. It probably didn’t matter. She just wanted Bael.

  Also, she wanted her Swiss Army knife. But she couldn’t see her purse anywhere. The creep who bashed her over her head must have hidden it somewhere.

  She heard footsteps outside. Should she pretend to be unconscious again? Would it be better if she could surprise him in case he uncuffed her? She was still mulling over her options when Simon Malfater, the sweet unassuming science teacher from the joint school, walked into the shed.

  “Oh, for the love of fuck,” she muttered, shatt
ering any hope she had of pretending to sleep. She felt like such an idiot. Of course it was Simon. He was a scientist. He would have no trouble taking a life form apart to understand how it worked.

  Simon was with her when she’d spoken to Ted about their interview. He was at the grocery store when she ran afoul of Balfour, and even offered to drive her home. What would he have done if she’d agreed? If Bael hadn’t intercepted them?

  “I know. Surprise,” Simon drawled. “I sat outside the sheriff’s house for days, waiting for you to come out on your own. If I knew it would take Balfour approaching your door, I would have called him days ago.”

  “Balfour, is he in on this?”

  He scoffed. “No, he’s just a useful tool. All I had to do is ask him a few questions about you, make points about how interested Bael seemed in you. It was like winding up a little toy soldier, sending it after you.”

  “So, not a murderer, just a creep.” She sighed. “I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.”

  Simon snorted. “You know what I find insulting about all this? No one even considered me. Sheriff Boone hasn’t questioned me. No one asked me where I was when my subjects met their end. Hell, you never even followed up on your half-hearted offer to interview me. I don’t know why you even bothered pretending that you were interested.”

  “I was interested. I am, I am interested. I wanted all perspectives on what it’s like to live here.”

  Simon sneered. “You want my perspective? It’s bullshit. It’s all bullshit. A promise that never gets fulfilled. I grew up being nothing special in a town full of extraordinary. And I figured that was my lot, because I was human. And then all these other humans started getting gifts. And I wondered why not me? I deserve it. I wanted it more. And you, you just brought it all into focus for me. Ted was just wasting his life, scaring teenagers and tourists, stirring up trouble. Gladys secretly hated what she was, she didn’t appreciate it. She was trying to find a cure. Teenie could have helped so many people, but she kept it to a select few. They wasted the gifts that they were given. So I took them back, to earn mine. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t figure out why they were chosen. I was humane. I followed protocols. I knocked them out with chloroform before I started the dissections. But I didn’t get any reward for my efforts. No answers. Why them and not me? There is nothing special about them, nothing special inside them. All unremarkable. And that was what was most maddening of all. And you weren’t even born here, you just showed up. Why would you get chosen?”

  “I think there’s been some sort of mistake,” she told him. “I’m not a shifter.”

  Simon’s face flushed an angry red, his eyes darkening. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t treat me like I’m stupid. I’m just as smart as you are, even if I didn’t go to all those fancy schools. I’ve seen the glow in you, over the last few weeks, that magic that only comes from being a shifter.”

  She sighed, closing her eyes. If she lived through this, she was going to get Bael fixed. It would take a huge lampshade collar, but she could get one from the League. She pulled at the cuffs behind her, which felt pretty solid. Maybe if she kept him talking, it would give Bael time to find her.

  “Or it can be a sign that you’re sleeping with one. Apparently, having sex with a dragon leaves you with glowing skin. It’s a mating thing. It’s supposed to keep Bael interested in me.”

  “Liar. It’s a shifter trait.”

  “Look, I know it sounds like a cop-out, but dragons don’t share much about their culture. I didn’t know it was happening either until Bael explained it to me. I’m not a shifter. I’m not any kind of magie. I’m just like you, a human, a scientist.”

  He yanked her to her feet, pulling her toward the dissection table. “Is that what they taught you to do at the League? To find common ground with your subjects during interviews? Well, don’t bother. I tried finding common ground with them, too, and it didn’t work. They were nothing like me. And you’re not either.”

  He uncuffed her hands long enough to shackle her hands to the dissection table. While he was trying to close the cuff around her wriggling wrist, she reached toward the surgical tray and grabbed a scalpel. “Stop struggling,” he growled. “This is going to happen! You should feel fortunate. You’re the first one I’ve ever brought to my research facility. This time, I’m going to have all of my tools at my disposal. This time, it’s going to work!”

  “No!” she yelled, jerking her sore arm up and jabbing the scalpel toward his neck. Unfortunately, he moved his arm up to shield himself and she caught him in the bicep. But the pain was enough to get him to let go of her arms. Simon dropped to his knees, screaming, though a tiny blade to the arm couldn’t have been nearly as painful as what he’d put his victims through. She screamed, jerking her shackled arm away from the surgical table. The wooden strut holding the shackles to the metal table shattered and the shackle came swinging toward her head.

  “No!” Simon seethed. He grabbed a scalpel that had dropped to the ground and slashed it across her belly.

  Yowling in pain, Jillian brought the broken wooden strut down on his head, knocking him to the side as she ran for the shed door. She threw her shoulder against it and it gave way beneath the force of her adrenaline, leaving her in the purple twilight of the bayou. Gasping for breath, Jillian propped her hands on her knees and focused on staying upright. The shed was situated by a dock, both of them behind a perfectly nice, normal-looking house on the water. The lawn was neatly kept. There was a ceramic goose on the back porch, for Heaven’s sake.

  Simon lurched into the doorway, his head bleeding. “You bitch. I’ll tie you down and take you apart while you’re still awake.”

  “You snuck up on me once. It won’t happen again. You think Bael is scary? I deal with grant committees! I’ll destroy a little worm like you.”

  And in the distance, there came a roar.

  All of the blood drained from Simon’s face. Jillian turned to see a massive golden beast with green-gold wings and green ridges on his back. She screamed out of sheer joy at the sight of him. Bael roared, a ball of flame belching out of his throat and heading straight for Simon.

  Simon grabbed her shoulders and shoved her into the line of the fire, catching her shirt. The flames licked up her arms. She beat away the flames with her hands as she ran from Simon, heading for the house. Simon was running down the dock in the direction of his boat. She tripped, and decided to roll on the grass to extinguish the flames. Maybe it was the adrenaline, but she couldn’t even feel the heat. It didn’t hurt. It just smelled like burning cotton.

  Bael landed on two feet in front of Jillian, pulling her to her feet. He was naked, but there was a gun strapped to his ankle with a very stretchy elastic material. “Are you all right?”

  “What are you doing?” she cried. “Get back into your dragon form!”

  “Are you all right?” he asked again, checking her arms for burns. “Jillian, honey, are you OK?”

  “I’m fine!” she cried as he bent to take his gun from his ankle. “Just get him!”

  Simon’s boat engine roared to life. She watched as Bael ran down the length of the dock, his naked cheeks bouncing, as Simon’s boat pulled away into the swamp. Bael raised and emptied his gun, firing at the boat, hitting the outboard motor a few times, but only glancing Simon’s shoulder. Simon howled, clutching his hand at the wound.

  Somehow, that pissed Jillian off even more than the whole “tried to kill her” part. He’d cut people apart, nice people with lives of their own, and Simon couldn’t take a little shoulder wound.

  Jillian ran to join Bael as the boat pulled farther away into the murky waters. “Just turn into a dragon and burn him!”

  Bael sighed. “I can’t.”

  As the fuel poured out of the boat, the motor died, leaving Simon drifting across the black water. “No, really, I believe you can cross the distance. Look, he’s right there, ripe for the immolation.”

  Standing on unsteady feet, Simon leaned o
ver the motor and tried to start the engine. His hands were slick with blood and he made several false pulls on the cable, letting it slip from his fingers.

  “Jillian, that’s not the right way.”

  “What do you mean? You nearly fried the guy just a few minutes ago!”

  “That was the dragon seeing his mate in danger. Now I’m the sheriff and he’s a perpetrator who needs to face justice. I need to make an arrest, by the book. I can’t put, ‘And I decided to burn him alive because he hurt my girlfriend.’”

  “So, you’re going to do what? Send him to state prison, where he’s going to blab all of Mystic Bayou’s secrets to the other inmates? Do you really want that to be the reason your secrets are exposed to the world?”

  “Maybe. Maybe the state’ll decide that he’s too crazy to be held in the general population and send him to a hospital where he’ll get the help he needs.”

  “Now is not the time to debate the merits of the criminal justice system!” she yelled.

  “I just don’t want you to see me kill a man, okay?”

  She threw her hands up. “I’m telling you now, I’m okay with it!”

  Jillian watched a dark shape moving in the water, circling closer to the boat. Simon swayed on his feet, blood leaking down his arms. He leaned out over the water as he tried to beat life into the engine.

  “Bael, I really think you need to get over there.”

  “It’s fine. It’s not like he’s going to be able to start the boat with his engine all busted up like that.”

  Suddenly, a ten-foot alligator lunged up from the water, snapping its jaws around Simon’s head. His torso flailed pitifully as he was dragged under the water. A geyser of blood and bubbles exploded from the bottom, and Jillian covered her mouth with her hands, swallowing a scream.

  “Well, shit,” Bael muttered.

  Jillian’s mouth was still hanging open, unable to produce sound.