“I didn’t know what else to do!” I balled my fists, tightening myself against my tears. “You were dying. Aine was killing you.”
“And how the hell do you know the name of one of the Dragon Council?”
I fell to my knees beside him, the wet ground soaking through my jeans. “Mick …”
He studied me with scrutiny no less intense than his dragon’s. “Tell me.”
“This isn’t real.” I swept my hand to take in the clearing, the rain pattering on the fire-stricken trees, the receding storm. “We’re dreaming this. I’m dreaming it. Drake might be too—I don’t know.”
Mick’s eyes fixed on me, solid blue, the color I loved. “This feels fucking real to me,” he said savagely.
“I don’t know what’s going on. This mage, Emmett Smith—he’s doing his best to kill us, and this is one way he’s trying.”
“Emmett Smith,” Mick said. “Never heard of him.”
“No, you haven’t. Not yet. We have to wake up.”
The last time I’d come out of the dreaming, it had taken Mick, Coyote, Cassandra, Colby, and the mirror to do it.
I remembered fire in my hand, the shard of mirror cutting my skin. Mick’s healing magic had helped me too.
The Mick of the future hadn’t remembered anything I’d done in my dream—nothing from his past—so maybe this was true un-reality. Once I woke up everything would be fine. Mick would be dragon again, and the world would be back to normal. Wouldn’t it?
The mirror. “Mick, we have to—”
I was interrupted by a downdraft from dragon wings, hot wind rushing over us. I looked up in alarm, but it was Drake, settling in to the clearing. He transformed behind a cloud of darkness and made for us.
Drake’s skin was cut and dark with abrasions and bruises, but he seemed otherwise whole. He stared in shock at Mick, whose skin held no tattoos, his aura free of all things dragon.
“Is he well?” Drake asked abruptly.
“No,” I said.
“I can speak for myself.” Mick got to his feet as robustly as ever, fists balling as he towered over me. “What were you about to say, Janet? We have to what?”
“Find the mirror. It’s key to this …” I trailed off, realizing. “Oh gods, Emmett knows where it is.”
At this time in my life, the mirror was lying forgotten in the attic of my old hotel, waiting for me to come buy the place and then Mick and I to wake it up. If the Emmett in my dream went to the hotel, found the mirror, and woke it himself, would that change future reality? It shouldn’t, if my previous dream was anything to go by, but magic mirrors were powerful and unpredictable, and Emmett was one hell of a mage.
I tried to calm down. Emmett didn’t necessarily know where the mirror had been before I’d found it—he only knew I’d hung it in my saloon.
Then again, Emmett was thorough. He’d probably created a dossier on the mirror, knowing who’d made it and who’d owned it through the centuries.
“What mirror?” The hands Mick put on my shoulders were no less strong, and I felt a bite of magic in them.
I stared at his fingers then back up at him. I shouldn’t be feeling magic if Emmett split him in two, but then again, maybe dragon magic wasn’t the only kind of power Mick had. Some of the spells he’d shown me had been very close to witch magics and other powers of the earth.
“We’ll fix this,” I promised him.
“Janet is right,” Drake said. “We must go to the Crossroads and retrieve the mirror before Emmett does. The mirror has much power and responds well to you.”
Mick didn’t release me. “What mirror? What crossroads?”
“A magic mirror,” I said. “As powerful as it is obnoxious.”
“All magic mirrors are obnoxious,” Mick said. “And a shitload of trouble. What are you doing with one?”
“It belongs to you too. At the Crossroads—a hotel I bought in Magellan.”
Mick raised his head, finally letting go of me. “Magellan. Where the vortexes are.” It was a statement, not a question. When I nodded, he said, “The very place I’m trying to keep you from.”
“That’s the one.” The vortex that held my mother, at this time, had not been sealed and buried. It was lying there, like the mirror, waiting for me to come and open it.
Mick gazed at me a long time, his eyes shrewd and assessing. “Going there is the only way to make me whole again?”
“I think so,” I said. “I have no idea, to tell you the truth.”
Mick kept on studying me. He stepped to me and cupped my face in his hands, the tingle from his fingertips spreading through my blood.
We looked at each other. I realized that while I loved the blue of his eyes, I loved the black that sparkled through them as well. The dragon had always been part of him, whether I’d known it or not.
After a long moment, Mick lifted his hands from me and stepped back. “All right,” he said. “We’ll go.” He made a curt gesture. “Drake.”
Drake looked morose, but he loped away into the dark, his strong legs eating up ground. Not long later, a black dragon soared down to us, swept us both up in one talon, and flew us away.
***
I convinced Drake to let us ride back to the motel near Coeur d’Alene so we could fetch Mick some clothes. While the townspeople of Magellan embraced the weird, they drew the line at public nudity. Drake reluctantly agreed and flew after us, keeping himself out of sight, and waited for us just inside the woods beyond the motel.
In our room, Mick dressed without speaking, pulling on jeans, sliding a T-shirt over his torso and skimming it down his abdomen. He grabbed more clothes and tossed them into a duffel bag while I numbly watched.
“Mick,” I said while he laced his boots, “Are you all right?”
“No,” he said curtly. Mick slid on his leather jacket, slung his small duffel over his shoulder, and took up the motel room’s key. “Let’s go do whatever you think will stop this.”
I stepped in front of the door. “Do you believe me? About Emmett and the dreaming?”
Mick wasn’t going to look at me, then at the last minute, he sighed and flicked his gaze to mine.
“I learned a long time ago, sweetheart, that it doesn’t matter what I believe. A thing either exists or it doesn’t, no matter what I think about it.”
I gave him a shaky smile. “I wish I could be so wise.”
“It’s not wisdom. It’s age.” Mick brushed back a strand of my long black hair. “You are so bloody young, Janet.”
His touch was warm and sweet, and I leaned into it. Thoughts kept tapping at my brain, however.
“If you are several hundred years old as a dragon, why does your human body look exactly the same as before Emmett did the spell?”
Mick lowered his hand, giving me a look of regret. “I haven’t the faintest fucking idea,” he said, and led the way out.
***
Mick agreed that going to Magellan by dragon would be much faster than riding the twelve hundred or so miles between here and there on our motorcycles. He insisted we lock the bikes in a storage space in the town—he had the key, so I suspected it was one of his many stashing places.
It took Drake about five hours to go straight south, navigating mountains and deserts, and stopping to rest every couple hours. Not that I minded the time being squashed against Mick.
Mick held me in strong arms, steadying me against Drake’s sudden jerks and dives. He was warm in spite of the cold wind, and he cradled me as gently as ever. Mick had no idea what was going on or what I’d done to him or whether he’d misjudged me, but he was still protecting me.
Finally, Drake he dove out of the sky and landed in the desert beyond the abandoned railroad bed.
The sun was just rising. Light bathed the dry, flat land, so different from the deep green woods and mountains we’d left.
A lump rose in my throat. I loved this place, loved it deeply. The lands around Magellan had been populated by native peoples long, long b
efore the Spanish had reached the area. Anthropologists debated whether those native peoples had been the direct ancestors of modern tribes, but it didn’t matter. I was closer to them than to the Europeans who’d come a thousand years later. This was my place, a part of me, and a part of my blood.
As we crested the railroad bed Drake, in human form now and dressed in clothes Mick had brought with him, looked around nervously. He was well aware of the vortexes in the vast open desert behind us, which was scattered with blocks of sandstone, tinged red from the iron oxide in the earth.
Before us lay my hotel, a box of a ruin. Beyond it, Barry’s bar, unchanged, sat on the other side of the empty dirt parking lot.
I hated to see the hotel derelict, after I’d done so much work making it habitable. But the magic mirror was in there, waiting quietly for us in the third-floor room I’d made into a private office.
“There?” Mick asked me, gazing at the hotel.
“I hope so.”
Mick studied the building a moment longer before he gave me a nod and started down the side of the bed.
I realized that he wasn’t looking around to check out the landscape, which he always did in unfamiliar territory. He knew this place, even though he and I hadn’t been here together until we’d met up again after I’d started renovating. Mick had been here before he’d found me, I was starting to understand. He’d come to check out the vortexes before we’d even met.
The back door of the hotel was padlocked. When I’d come to check out the building the first time, I’d gotten the key from Barry. A guy in Winslow had owned the hotel and land around it, though he’d long since given up any attempt to do anything with it, and he’d asked Barry to keep an eye on the place. Barry wouldn’t be opening his bar for the day yet, and he’d have no idea, at this time, who I was.
Mick solved the problem by picking up a rock and breaking the padlock with one blow.
I made to dart inside, but Mick stopped me with one powerful hand. Giving me an admonishing look, he ducked into the dim interior then signaled me in behind him.
“Stay close to me,” he said. “Drake, you’re rearguard.”
Drake took the position without argument. We emerged from the back hall to the expanse of what would become the lobby. Crumbled brick and plaster lay everywhere, boards were strewn across the floor, and a few beams sagged from the ceiling. The staircase was a set of crumbling cement risers in the corner, which led to a wooden gallery half falling from the second floor. One post held up the balcony precariously from the first floor, but the rest of it sagged.
“Third floor,” I said, pointing. “The door at the end of the gallery opens to stairs that lead to it.”
Mick took in the mess, resigned. Of course it would be on the top floor, reached only via the unstable balcony.
He started up the stairs without a word. Mick paused after a couple of steps to trace a sigil on the wall, whispering a few words. The sigil glowed before vanishing, sinking protective magic into the building.
As I passed, I touched the rune he’d drawn, feeling the familiar tingle of his magic. My heart warmed. I added a spark to the ward myself and continued up the stairs.
Mick stopped every few steps and repeated the marking, putting his protection into the walls, which I then added to. The magic he was using was nowhere near his dragon power, but even so, the bite of it was intense.
“Where is the magic coming from?” I asked him hesitantly. “I thought …”
Mick reached the top of the stairs and swung around, sparks in his eyes. “I was born of earth magic, dragon long before I was ever man. Even if a spell took me away from the dragon, the earth magic is still in me. It can’t ever not be a part of me.” His eyes glittered, sharp with anger. “The same with you. It’s forever ingrained.” Mick turned away and gave a shrug. “Besides,” he rumbled. “I learn things.”
I turned to Drake, my throat tight, as Mick made his careful way along the gallery. Drake was incongruous in Mick’s clothes—jeans and black T-shirt. I thought he looked better in the informalwear, but by Drake’s dark stare, I knew he wouldn’t agree with me.
“What happened with Bancroft?” I asked him, to distract myself from the hollowness in my heart. “You survived, obviously.”
“I drove him off.” Drake looked unhappy. “Bancroft was injured and withdrew from battle. Needless to say, I am out of a job. I turned on my master, and that is unforgivable.”
I let my anger grow. “You turned on your master to save a friend.”
“That does not signify. Loyalty is prized above all else. I violated that rule.”
“He violated my rules of killing people I love,” I said hotly. “Besides, none of this might have happened in the reality we’re trying to get back to. You’ll return to your job as usual.”
Drake lifted his shoulders in a smooth, dragonlike shrug. “No, I will not. I thought Bancroft and Aine wrong tonight and even cruel. I might have to withdraw my services when we return.”
“Quit, you mean? You can do that?”
“I was never compelled to work for Bancroft.” Drake looked annoyed. “I applied for the job and took it of my own free will. Bancroft has had my full loyalty for many years. But now … I will have to think.”
“Can I point out that none of this is real? When I woke up last time, it was as though nothing in my dream had happened. I forgot the details pretty quickly.”
“Who can say what is real?” Drake asked, sounding mournful. “Bancroft and Aine behaved true to their natures. I have looked the other way at their high-handedness for a long time, because it was my job to do so. But I will have to think on whether I can remain with them or not.”
I left Drake to wrestle with his conscience and followed Mick around the gallery to the next set of stairs. I stepped lightly, making sure he’d finished walking across the boards before I attempted them myself.
The door to the next flight of stairs was locked, but Mick easily kicked it open. Wooden steps ran upward, Mick testing every one with his weight as he went. Graffiti marred the walls of the stairwell, kids having used the abandoned building to meet and party.
At the top of the stairs, another door opened to a set of rooms that took up half the space as the floor below it. A door on the opposite side of the largest room led to a flat roof, where Mick and I liked to sit of nights and gaze at the stars.
Mick stopped me with a strong hand before I could run to the old desk and the junk I’d found behind it. When I looked at him in surprise, he gave an emphatic shake of his head.
“If another mage has taken control of the mirror, he could kill us with it. Stand back.”
“And let you take the full brunt? No way. Mick, you have to stop protecting me.”
Mick shot me a grin that held his old fire. “You know that’s an argument you’re never going to win.”
He more or less shoved me behind him and tugged aside the desk without much effort. Behind it lay a beat-up painting and the heavy frame of the magic mirror, facing the wall. Mick seized the frame in his big hands and turned it around …
“What—?” I ran forward, and this time Mick didn’t stop me.
The frame looked the same, a gilded thing from the 1890s, its gold leaf flaking off. But it was empty, holding nothing but blank space.
Chapter Eighteen
I stared, dumbfounded. Mick slammed the frame back into the wall, sending more flakes of gilt drifting to the floor.
“Are you sure this is where it was?” Mick growled.
“Yes, that’s the mirror. Or was the mirror.”
“Then the mage has already been here.”
Shit. “Looks like it,” was all I could say.
Drake had come in behind me. “This is grievous news.”
“You think?” I sat down, folding my legs under me, the floor cold. “But what can he do? This is my dream, isn’t it? And yours,” I said to Drake. “Must be Emmett’s too,” I finished glumly.
Mick wrapped warm fing
ers around my wrist. “This is no dream. This is real.”
“It can’t be.”
Mick frowned down at me. “What I want you to do, Janet, is tell me everything—why you think this is a dream, how you learned about Drake and the Dragon Council, who this mage is that did this to me … Everything.”
I sighed. “You won’t believe me.”
Mick’s grip tightened. “I’ve lived more than two hundred and fifty years and seen many things. You didn’t believe in dragons before you met me, did you? So try me.”
I had to concede his point. I wanted to retreat someplace safer, somewhere not close to the vortexes, but Mick held me there, his hand strong, his gaze firmly on mine. He wouldn’t budge until he was satisfied.
I let out a breath. “All right,” I said and settled my legs under me. “Once upon a time, there was a bad, bad mage called Emmett Smith, who coveted a magic mirror.”
I was interrupted by shrill screaming. Not inside, but outside, in the parking lot. A woman was crying out, her panic true.
Mick made it first out the door, even though he’d been furthest from it. Drake held back to let me precede him, as though he felt the need to continue his duty as rearguard.
We spaced ourselves around the gallery so it wouldn’t fall under our collected weight, moving as a fighting team even as we responded to the crisis. We made it down the front stairs without anything dire happening and across the rubble-strewn expanse of the lobby.
Mick wrenched open the locked front door and stopped. I peered around him and blinked in astonishment.
Maya Medina stood in front of the hotel, her fists balled, eyes wide, tears on her lovely face. She was in her white work coveralls, her black hair pulled into a ponytail, which hung down her back as she stared up at the hotel with a look of horror.
When she saw Mick, me behind him, and Drake behind me, her screams cut off and she let out a long, relieved breath.
“Dios, Janet, I thought I was crazy.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and glared at the hotel again. “But I must still be crazy. What the hell happened to this place?”
Mick didn’t want to let me past him, but I ducked around him and went toward Maya, my hands out as though I calmed a scared child or panicked animal. “You know me?” I asked.
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