Even so, I hadn’t shifted since finding out about it, which meant that right now, I had no magic. Shifting into dragon form was how I recharged my magical batteries. To stay magical, I had to shift every two weeks or so.
After eating my yogurt, I threw on some clothes and headed downstairs. I was going to to the Pink Flamingo Cafe for breakfast. It was just next door, and it was the place my guest went for a continental breakfast buffet. I had a deal with the owner, my friend Ophelia, who also happened to be a mage.
But I didn’t even make it out of the lobby.
There was a woman waiting for me there. She was sitting on one of the benches next to the brochure rack, flipping through one of the brochures.
Becky, who was working the front desk, looked up when I came in. “Ms. Caspian, this lady wants to see you. She says it’s about magical stuff.”
The woman stood up. “Penelope Caspian, I presume?” She had a British accent, and she was wearing a pants suit and dangly silver earrings. She strode over to me, holding out a hand. “I’m Darla Tell.”
I shook her hand. “Uh, nice to meet you.”
“I work for the Order of Rasmossen and Wolffe, which you have undoubtedly never heard of.”
“I’m afraid not,” I said, feeling confused.
“Is there a place where we could speak privately?” she asked.
“Uh, sure, I guess we could go to my office, but what is this about?”
“I have a proposition for you. Your reputation precedes you, and I’m quite badly in need of assistance, and I think you’re the person for the job.”
“Job?” I said. “I have a job. I own this hotel.” I gestured around at the lobby.
She laughed. “No, of course. I misspoke. Not a job then, not exactly. But I need your help.”
I looked her over, thinking about it. “All right, come back to my office.”
“Thank you.”
I left the lobby and led her down the hallway to my office.
Once inside, I had her sit down on the couch that faced my desk, and I sat down at my desk. It was kind of a mess, covered in a bunch of papers and things I needed to get to at some point. This Darla person seemed so proper and together. I was a little embarrassed. And I couldn’t figure what a person like her needed a person like me for.
She clasped her hands and rested them on her knee. “Well, I suppose I should explain a bit.”
“Okay, yeah,” I said.
“All right, the Order, as we call ourselves, is a magical organization of mages, vampires, drakes and dragons who work to neutralize magical dangers to the populace. We were founded in the 1600s, and we are the organization responsible for the end of several wars and the end of magical tyranny on multiple continents.”
“What?” I said.
“You’ve never heard of us because we prefer to work in secret,” she said. “If powerful magical creatures knew of our existence, they’d concentrate their power on getting rid of us. It’s better if we are unknown—the knife that strikes in the darkness.”
“The what?”
She laughed. “Well, at any rate, we imprison dangerous magical creatures, and we siphon away their power. We use that power to keep them imprisoned. In that way, even the most powerful of evil creatures is no match for us, because we are capable of keeping them in check.”
My mind was reeling. “Okay.” I scrunched up my face, trying to get my brain around this. “So, if you’re so powerful, what do you need me for?”
She unclasped her hands, looking a little confused. “Well… you have special skills against magical creatures, Penelope. May I call you Penelope?”
“Penny,” I said. “And I don’t have special skills, not really.”
“Penny,” said Darla, seeming to almost savor the name as she spoke it aloud.
Okay, this lady was starting to creep me out a little bit. “Maybe you should cut to the chase.”
“Of course,” she said. “We know that you have taken on several groups of powerful vampires in the city, and that you’ve neutralized them. We have a drake problem. We were hoping that you could help.”
“A drake problem?”
“If payment is an issue, we’d be happy to—”
“I don’t need money,” I said. “What do you mean, a drake problem?”
“Well, last year, we relocated to the United States because of some issues in Europe with a family claiming we were located on their ancestral lands and—”
“The point, Ms. Tell,” I interrupted.
“Yes, well, our new location is just outside of Sea City, and it contains a number of tunnels beneath the building, tunnels that fill with water during high tide and cause cave-ins. A number of our order were in one of the tunnel during such a cave-in. We couldn’t get to them—”
“You just said that you’re incredibly powerful,” I said. “What do you mean you couldn’t get to them? Couldn’t you use magic to move the debris?”
“Our magic, I’m afraid, is mostly tied up in keeping our prisoners, er, imprisoned,” she said. “At any rate, we were unable to get to the members of the order.”
“What does this have to do with drakes?”
“There were about five drakes in the group. They were cut off from a source of meat for several days, and they went… feral.”
I felt all the blood drain from my face. “That’s true? That really happens?”
“Oh yes,” said Darla. “It really happens.”
“And so now what? If you give them meat, will they revert back to—”
“The lack of meat causes irreparable damage to a drake, I’m afraid,” she said. “They are nothing more than enraged killers. And they will try to get any meat that they can. So, we were hoping that you could… go in and well, take care of them.”
“You mean kill them.”
“We have it on good authority that you killed Antoine Buordais, who was nearly nine hundred years old, at a place called The Dungeon a few months ago.”
I swallowed. So that was how old that vamp had been, huh? I knew he’d been old, but I hadn’t realized… “I kind of got lucky with him,” I said. “And I didn’t intend to kill him. I had to, though. It was self-defense.”
“Listen, there is a possibility that these drakes could get out of the tunnels. The tunnels are filled with water during high tide, but during low tide, the drakes might be able to get out and begin stalking the populace. If they did, they would attack whatever they saw first. They could be quite dangerous.”
I eyed her. “Either you’re lying about how powerful you are, or you’ve got some other reason for coming to see me.” I strongly suspected that it had something to do with my blood bond with Lachlan. I didn’t know much about it, only what some mage named Esther had told me, but apparently the blood bond had created power-hungry monsters in the past. If this Order really did contain magical creatures who got out of control, maybe they were sniffing around to see if I was a threat.
“I assure you, Penny, I have no ill will toward you.” She smiled at me.
But there was something about that smile I didn’t like. Still, she hadn’t involved Lachlan, had she? If this were about the blood bond, wouldn’t she want him on board? I cleared my throat. “If I did this for you, I don’t know if I would want to work alone.”
“Oh, yes, you have a drake and a gargoyle who usually work with you, yes?”
Hmm. Still no mention of Lachlan. I nodded. “That’s true.”
“Well, of course. You must use whoever you would need.”
Part of me wanted to say yes just to get inside this place, get access to this Order, so that I could determine if they were a threat to me. But I hadn’t shifted lately, and I didn’t have any magic, and I wasn’t sure if I should shift, and besides this whole thing sounded ridiculously dangerous, and I was pregnant…
But if I didn’t agree, could it prove even more dangerous for me and my baby?
I stood up. “I can’t give you an answer right now. I need to th
ink about it.”
“All right, I can see that,” she said, standing up as well. “Please let me know what you decide. I’ll give you my contact information.”
CHAPTER FOUR
I spent the rest of the morning searching for whatever information I could find on this Order of Rasmossen and Wolffe. Nothing.
When I started getting hungry and nauseous again, I realized that I hadn’t had anything besides the Greek yogurt. But it was now mid-morning and I’d missed the continental breakfast. Whatever. I went to the Flamingo anyway.
I ordered some food to go, and then I went back into the kitchen, hunting for Ophelia.
I found her at the sink, washing dishes. Even though she owned the cafe, she still did menial work when she had to, pitching in wherever she was needed. But when she saw me, she handed off the dishes to someone else, and we went back to a little office she had, which was messier than mine, to talk.
“You look worried,” said Ophelia.
“What do you know about the Order of Rasmossen and Wolffe?”
She made a face. “Nothing. Never heard of it.”
“Is it possible that other people would know about Lachlan and me?” I said. “Like you sensed that we were powerful when we came into the restaurant a few months ago. Are we causing some kind of rippling disturbance that mages can feel somehow or something?”
She considered. “Well, maybe. Not recently, of course, but when you were using your magic against Alastair, I think it’s possible that could have been felt by mages. Not by anyone far away, I don’t think. Only sensitive, powerful mages close by might have sensed it.”
“So, they’d know that I had a blood bond.”
“Not necessarily,” said Ophelia. “The magic isn’t like that. It doesn’t feel any different than other magic, if you know what I mean. No, all they might be able to know is that you’re very powerful.”
I nodded slowly. “Huh. Well, that might explain why she didn’t mention anything about Lachlan, then.”
“What’s going on?”
I explained to her what had happened this morning, all about Darla Tell and her strange request. “There’s something fishy about it,” I finished. “It doesn’t add up. And I feel like if I help her out, I might be walking into a trap.”
“Maybe,” said Ophelia. “Or maybe she’s just feeling you out. She wants to see you in action in a controlled environment. Wants to determine if you’re a threat.”
“Could be, I suppose,” I said. “But there’s got to be something else going on. Why would someone so powerful want my help?”
“I can ask around if you’d like,” said Ophelia. “See if anyone knows anything about this Order of Rasputin—”
“Rasmossen,” I said.
“Rasmossen,” she repeated. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
* * *
“I barely got out of bed during my second pregnancy,” I said to Shirley the therapist, “and it ended up not making any difference. So, in my third pregnancy, I figured that if it was going to happen, there was nothing I could do about it, so I just did everything normally. But that didn’t make any difference either.”
“You’re worried about losing this baby too,” she said.
“Of course I am,” I said. “Given my history, it only makes sense. But I also wonder if Alastair beating me during the pregnancies caused the miscarriages. I always shifted to heal, and I assumed that healed the baby too, but I never really talked to a healthcare professional about it.”
“Because you were ashamed.”
“Exactly,” I said. “So I haven’t been shifting because I’m worried that could cause problems. But that also makes me nervous, because now I don’t have magic, and if something went wrong, I wouldn’t be able to protect the baby.”
“What’s stopping you from consulting a healthcare professional now? I assume you’re seeing a doctor that specializes in dragon prenatal care?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess nothing. I should just ask. You’re right.” It seemed simple enough. I was often amazed at how old ways of thinking had become such ingrained habits for me that I didn’t even think to challenge them or do something different.
“And with your ex-husband’s body having been found, you should be a little less on edge about danger, right?”
“You heard about that,” I said.
“I work for the police department and that bust is big news. So, yes, I heard. How are you dealing with the news?”
“It’s, um…” I debated lying about it, but then I figured lying to a therapist sort of defeated the purpose. “It’s actually great news. I feel like a weight has been lifted. It’s so amazing that I can hardly believe it’s true.”
“I see,” she said, her face expressionless.
“Should I be feeling something different?”
“Do you think you should?”
“Well, I guess you’re supposed to be sad when someone dies, but Alastair was a waste of space as far as I’m concerned. I’m not going to miss him. He terrorized me.”
She only nodded.
I furrowed my brow. “I’m sorry that I feel that way.”
“You feel guilt about Alastair?”
“Well… not really, but I guess I sort of should, maybe.”
She surveyed me, waiting.
“But the truth is, no, I don’t. I only feel grateful to whoever killed him. I hate slayers on principle, but this one really did me a favor.”
“So, that’s what you think happened, then? A slayer killed him?”
“I haven’t thought about it,” I said. “But he was killed by an arrow, right? So that makes sense.”
She waited some more.
“Why are you asking me about this?” I said.
“You’d rather talk about something else?”
“Well, last time, you said that I wasn’t free of all the things that I said don’t bother me. I got the distinct impression that you wanted me to face my fears or something like that. I don’t even know how one faces one’s fears, but whatever. The thing is, I’m ready. I want to work through all of this and put it behind me.”
I was terrified of losing this baby, and it was holding me back. I had threats now—actual threats from weird magical orders—and I needed to be able to put the specter of Alastair and abuse behind me. I needed to move forward. If that included facing my fears, I was ready to try.
She looked surprised. “Well, that’s a very positive step. You seemed a bit resistant last session.”
“Well, things have changed.”
“Because of Alastair’s body being found?”
“Sure, I guess,” I said. That was as good an excuse as any, I supposed. “So, how do we do it?”
“Well, it’s not exactly something we can do in an afternoon.”
“It’s not?”
“It’s a bit of a process,” she said. “It will involve your doing work on your own, away from me.”
“Like what?” I said. Work? What did she mean?
“I mean that you’ll have to change the way you think. You typically shove aside the things that bother you, refusing to confront them. You probably have a whole set of defense mechanisms built into the way you think. You’ll have to dismantle them and truly feel your emotions. Only then will they stop having power over you.”
I chewed on my lip. This really wasn’t helping.
“Are you sure you don’t want to talk some more about Alastair’s death?”
“Why do you keep bringing that up?” I said. “It’s over. It’s done with.”
“This,” said Shirley, “is another classic example of the way that you push things aside without dealing with them at all.”
* * *
“Penny,” said my doctor over the phone, “I understand you have some concerns. Is everything going okay? You don’t have any spotting or pain or anything?”
“No, nothing like that,” I said. “I just… I haven’t been honest with you about my medical history
regarding the miscarriages.”
“What do you mean?”
“I may have left out the fact that during each of my previous pregnancies, I was in an abusive relationship, and that I was shifting into dragon form frequently to heal. Is it possible that had any effect on my ability to carry to term?”
“Oh, very possible,” said the doctor.
“But dragons have miscarriages a lot.”
“They do,” said the doctor, “but not late term miscarriages such as yours. Most dragon miscarriages happen in the first trimester.”
“Oh,” I said. I hadn’t known that. That was true for humans too, although dragons were much more likely to lose pregnancies than humans.
“Actually, it makes a good bit more sense to me now, your history,” said the doctor. “I was looking through your files, and I felt that the last two pregnancies were consistent with traumatic injury, but you didn’t seem to have any.”
“I thought…” I took a deep breath, trying to steady my voice. “I thought that if I shifted it would heal injuries.”
“Heal your injuries, yes, but not the baby’s.”
I bit down hard on my lip. I couldn’t speak.
“In general, there’s nothing wrong with shifting during pregnancy,” the doctor continued. “The influx of magic is good. Your body creates a magical barrier of protection around the uterus and each shift brings that back to full capacity. So, you should definitely shift at least every two weeks if you can manage it. It obviously becomes a bit more difficult in the final trimester, getting in and out of a pool with a belly isn’t always feasible, so don’t feel as if you must, but I do encourage expecting mothers to shift.”
I parted my lips, and a tiny painful sound came out.
“Penny?”
“I have to go,” I said. I hung up.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Penny.” Lachlan stood up from his desk at the station. “What are you doing here?”
“Can you take lunch?” I said. “I know it’s a little early, but I just… It’s daytime, so Connor’s asleep, and every time I try to call Felicity, I get her voicemail, and I need to talk to somebody, and I didn’t know where to go, and—”
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