“I’m sorry,” Dominic says, shaking his head. “I just found out about dragons less than an hour ago and that mere children were responsible for protecting Midday Sun at sch—”
“He has a name!” I interrupt. “He’s a person, you know, not just a mission.”
Dominic goes on like I didn’t even say anything. “Now you’re telling me there are shapeshifting fox women who can fuck with my head by looking at me and leave me with no memory of it afterward?”
I admonish him with a cluck of my tongue. “You really shouldn’t use such language around mere children.”
He ignores my dig. “How do I know you’re not this fox woman pretending to be Kitty?”
I take a step closer to him and shift into my dragon form, roaring to accentuate my point, though the roar threatens to turn into a chuckle when he falls back on his butt.
“Right,” he says.
I shift back to my petite, quiet-looking Asian girl form, giggling. Sani shoots me his very best stop-messing-around glare. He’s leaning against the far wall, still trying to gain control of his dragon, not trusting himself to be close to the man who shot him a few hours ago. He stands in deep shadow with his arms crossed across his chest, making his biceps bunch enticingly beneath his T-shirt. My gaze trails across the curves of his muscles until he clears his throat.
“Fine,” I mouth to him. I look Dominic over, assessing. “Give me your phone, tablet, watch, any other communication device you may have on you.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” the Secret Service agent says, placing a hand protectively on his left jeans pocket.
“Hmm.” I tap my finger to my chin, pretending to think it over. “Well I’m the one the president begged to take this mission, and you’re the one who shot my partner twice already today, and I’m the one whose entire race has been imprisoned, and I think it’s necessary.”
Dominic looks at Sani, hoping for some support. I think he’s already figured out who the sensible one is, even despite Sani’s initial reaction.
Sani grunts. “You shot me.”
“I didn’t mean to!”
“Agreed,” I say with a devilish smile. “And we’d hate for you to ‘not mean to’ call the CIA and report our location or something.”
Dominic pulls his phone out of his pocket and stares at it like it’s a lifeline in a raging sea.
Sani pushes off the wall and steps toward us. “Look. The president trusts us—all of us,” he says, moving his hand around to include Dominic in the circle of trust. I make a face at that.
“Including me,” Dominic reiterates. “Meaning I should be able to keep my phone.”
“However,” Sani says, still moving toward Dominic. The man’s face falls. “The kitsune can look like any woman and make you do things by simply looking at you. On the other hand, she has to touch us to affect us—and all she can do is confuse us. I think, all things considered, it would be best if you can’t make a call without our supervision.”
I would say he snatches the phone from Dominic’s hand, but the movement is too smooth and controlled to be called a snatch. He removes the battery with three deft maneuvers and slips the two parts into his jeans pocket.
I smile at the two of them. The smile is forced; through all of this, I’ve never forgotten we have less than two days to rescue Jacob—and let’s not even mention DIC, my mother, my father…
Time for business. “What’s the plan for Operation Rescue Jacob and Worry About the Rest Later?” Okay, so maybe I have trouble with being all business.
“I have the five probable locations memorized,” Dominic says. He glances around the Jefferson Memorial with a skeptical look. I’d almost forgotten where we were. “Is there somewhere better we can go? Maybe somewhere with a map? Or some coffee, at the very least?”
What is it about this guy that makes everything he says piss me off?
“Well,” I say. “We could go to the DIC planning ro—oh no, we can’t, can we? How about my place? Oh yeah, that’s kinda out of the question too. Hmm, Sani? What about your home?” I raise my eyebrow at him theatrically.
“Okay, okay. I get the point,” Dominic says. He checks his watch. “Have you had dinner yet?”
Only then do I realize I’m starving. “I pick the place,” I say.
“Of course you do,” Dominic mumbles. I’m not sure if he meant for me to hear him or not, but I know a normal human probably wouldn’t have been able to make out the words.
“This place?” he asks, at full volume this time. “It wouldn’t happen to be on a train line, would it?”
A sharp laugh escapes Sani’s mouth. “You’d have to knock Kitty unconscious to get her on one of those things. Enclosed spaces, limited exits, cameras everywhere, crowds crawling with unknowns.”
Dominic turns to me. “A little paranoid?”
“Coming from a Secret Service agent, I consider that a compliment,” I say, smiling. “No trains. And no probably bugged government vehicles either. We fly.”
Dominic swallows hard as his eyes widen.
“What?” I ask, innocently twirling the purple stripe in my hair around my middle finger. “Don’t trust me?”
“Can I ride with him?” Dominic points at Sani. I almost laugh. I must have really made an impression if he’s begging to ride with the guy he shot earlier today.
“Silly Secret Service agent, African dragons can’t fly.” I don’t feel the need to mention Sani can’t yet change. “You’ll both be riding with me.”
“Let’s go,” I say, shooing them. “Outside. I don’t want to try squeezing through these pillars with both of you on my back.”
Dominic starts out first. I go to follow him, but Sani gently grabs my elbow and turns me to face him. My heart skips when I look into his concerned green eyes, and the soldier girl inside me wants to beat the girly girl inside me with a stick. I shush the former and revel in the way his gaze searches my face, careful and protective. Gods forgive me, I can’t help myself. He pulls me closer, but not close enough.
“I’ve never seen you carry that much weight,” he says, below Dominic’s hearing threshold. “Are you strong enough?”
I shrug. “No time to waste, remember? Jacob has forty-six hours and dragon flight’s the fastest. You know, I’m stronger than you give me credit for, Sani.” I turn back around and hop in between two columns, hoping he doesn’t realize I failed to answer his question.
I think I hear Sani say something. I think it’s, “You have no idea how much I’d give you.” But that can’t be right. Now I’m hearing things.
Chapter Ten
I dropped Sani off about a mile back to pick up a map at a gas station. I know he can catch up with us in about a minute, and he was right—the weight of both him and Dominic would’ve had me sweating if dragons did that sort of thing. With Dominic still on my back, I drop behind the massive dumpster in the back of a 24-hour greasy spoon restaurant in one of the shadier suburbs around D.C. The agent is quick to jump off—I may have done a few unnecessary swoops and loops since dropping Sani off. So sue me.
I shift to my human form and round the dumpster toward the restaurant, narrowly avoiding the legs of a junkie who’s decided this is a great place to pass out for the night. Leaning against the back wall of the restaurant is another scraggly guy staring straight at me, not seeing me. He’s got a bottle in a brown paper bag in his left hand, and I can smell the stench of whiskey and vomit from twenty feet away. This place is perfect; there’s no way a CIA agent or one of Cleft Chin’s goons will stop at this place for a bite. Under normal circumstances, there’s no way I’d stop here.
There’s a ninety-pound middle-aged woman sitting on the bench next to the front door. She’s got an extinguished cigarette hanging from her painted lips and holes the size of my fist in her thigh-high stockings. “Are you lost, honey?” she drawls.
I don’t slow my steps, but I don’t speed up either. “No, ma’am.”
“I’m no ‘ma’am’,�
� she says.
As a rule, I avoid eye contact with crazies. Dominic walks behind me, every muscle in his body poised to strike.
When my hand touches the door handle, the woman’s bony hand wraps around my other arm. Dominic freezes. I look at her now. I know my skin is scorching hers, but she holds tight, her dilated eyes open wide.
“Are you some kind of demon?” she whispers.
“Ah,” Dominic says. “So you two know each other, then.”
I toss him a glare and return my gaze back to the woman. I see a couple of dime bags sticking out from her black lace bra. I notice the track marks on the arm still holding mine and the permanent dark circles under her eyes.
“Yes, ma’am, I am,” I say, keeping my voice low and serious. “I’m not here for you tonight, but if you continue on this path, I’ll be back for you real soon.”
The heat of my skin finally overwhelms her deadened nerves, and she snaps her hand back, gasping. “Take me now,” she says. “No use in waiting.”
“Trust me,” I say. “You don’t want to go where I’m going.”
With that, I turn and continue on into the restaurant. Dominic follows me, slack-jawed.
“What the hell was that?” he asks.
“Ever heard of scared straight? I’m like the supernatural version.”
The waitress, whose apron is more stained than it isn’t and who has more wrinkles than smooth skin, motions for us to take a seat anywhere. I make for a table in the back, close to the emergency exit.
“What gives you the right—”
“To save that woman’s life?” I ask. Only when he leans over to pull his chair out do I notice the St. Christopher medal hanging around Dominic’s neck. “Ah. You’re Catholic.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” he asks.
“What did I miss?” I didn’t see Sani come in, but he’s suddenly standing next to us, not even winded from the brisk pace he would have had to run to be here so soon. He has a U.S. map book wedged between his arm and his rib cage.
“Mephisto,” I say.
“Ah,” Sani says knowingly. “And Dominic’s Catholic.”
Makes total sense to him; don’t know why the G-man can’t figure it out. If I’m going to be mistaken for a demon, it might as well be the one who accidentally saved Faust’s soul.
“What?” Dominic begins, but he seems to decide it’s not worth the argument. He huffs out a breath.
Now that Sani’s here, I scan the room. About six tables are occupied and no one looks out of place—except for us. At least four illegal handguns are stuffed in the waists of sagging pants around the room. No one would ever guess the two kids sitting in the back are the most dangerous things in the diner.
The waitress glances at us, but she isn’t exactly in a hurry to get to the weirdo table. The walls were probably white once, but now I can’t come up with any color besides “dingy.” Weirdly, the floors are perfect, shiny light gray tiles without a speck of dirt or a single crack.
Sani places the map book on the table, but drops something else in front of me.
America’s favorite adorkable actress winks at me from the cover of one of three gossip mags. Dominic glares at the magazines like they’re infected, but I couldn’t possibly care less what he thinks. Sani knows having this little bit of normalcy will keep me grounded. Sure, talking about who wore it better and knowing which thirty-something starlet had a bit of work done isn’t going to fix anything, but I’ve always loved getting lost in the fantasy and glamor of it. When I’m reading about their disasters, for just a few minutes, I don’t have to think about my own.
I grin at Sani. “My hero,” I croon.
He nods, smiling a little, then motions for Dominic to begin. As I stuff my magazines in my backpack for later, the agent flips to California and points at one of the many inserts for Los Angeles. He spouts off an address that means nothing to either Sani or me.
“The rumored headquarters for the Yakuza’s main warehouse?” Dominic says.
“Hold your horses,” I say. Yeah, it’s an old saying, but I like to be occasionally surprising. “You’re telling me the first two locations are the CIA headquarters and a mob warehouse?”
A man with tattoos covering most of his skull turns to look at our table. Seeing the three of us, he shakes his head and turns back to his girl. She raises painted eyebrows at him and shrugs.
“It only gets more interesting from there,” Dominic says.
The waitress finally saunters over, and Dominic closes the map. As if it says something that a million other maps don’t also say.
“Drinks?” she asks.
Sani orders water and Dominic orders coffee, black. I glance at the grease-covered plastic cups stacked on the counter and ask, “Do you have anything that’s prepackaged and sealed?”
The waitress stares at me blankly. Her dyed brown hair is pulled into a messy ponytail and she’s wearing thick blue eye shadow.
“Something in a bottle or can? A carton even?”
“Chocolate milk,” she says. It’s not a question. If it was, I wouldn’t have time to answer it, because she spins on her heel and heads for the kitchen.
“More interesting?” Sani prods Dominic.
“Possible location number three,” he says, flipping to Virginia’s map. He points at Norfolk. “PETA Headquarters.”
“What the hell?” I ask. “Did your intelligence group just pick the most random collection of headquarters in the United States? Maybe they threw darts at a map? Oh, I know—the first five hits for conspiracy websites that popped up after Jacob was kidnapped.”
“You know as well as I do that the CIA is the best at what they do.” A harsh glint flashes in Dominic’s eyes. “In fact, you know better than I do, don’t you?”
The dragon roars in my head. My entire body itches to change. “You little fu-”
The table clangs against the floor when I surge to my feet, the sound reverberating through the diner. The only thing that keeps me from jumping across the table and causing this guy permanent damage is Sani’s arms wrapped tightly around my arms and chest. We’re standing in a strange, fierce embrace before I even realize he has me restrained.
“Shh,” Sani whispers in my ear. I can feel his breath on my neck and, though it’s as hot as steam, it sends a shiver down my back all the way to my toes. “Not here, Kitty. Not now.”
He pulls his head up even with mine and indicates the diner with his eyes. I forcibly tear my gaze away from his face to check it out. Every single person in the room stares at us with differing degrees of annoyance. The biggest black man I’ve ever seen comes out from the kitchen and crosses arms the size of me over his ridiculous chest.
The giant is staring straight at me. “Problem? I don’t allow no problems in my diner.” His voice sounds like Mr. T gargled some boulders and washed it down with sand.
Sani drops his arms and returns to his seat. I follow his example.
“No, sir,” I say.
“You sure?” he asks, indicating Dominic with a deadly glance.
“Sorry, sir,” Dominic says, bumbling like an idiot. “Just made a bad joke about her mom. Won’t happen again.” It’s the truth, more or less.
“See that it doesn’t,” the giant says, then returns to the kitchen without another word. I imagine that if we had looked like his usual clientele, we wouldn’t have gotten off so easily. Only when the doors to the kitchen close again does the normal buzz of conversation return to the room.
Dominic unwraps the spotty silverware and refolds the paper napkin before placing it in his lap. He doesn’t look at me, but I’m pretty sure my eyes are burning holes in the top of his head.
Sani reaches under the table and takes my hand, squeezing it gently. Both my hearts beat so loudly I’m afraid the Unjolly Giant is going to come back out to figure out what the drums are banging for. I look at my partner and I forget about Dominic—hell, about the rest of the world. His hand envelops mine completely as
I think he can’t possibly know how this affects me. He’s just trying to comfort a friend. To calm me enough so that I can complete the mission. That’s it. Nothing more.
Get a freaking grip. I squeeze Sani’s hand. No, Kitty—get a grip on yourself.
“The other two locations,” I prod.
He tells us about a militant environmentalist cult holed up in the mountains in Colorado. They call themselves Justice for Earth and have made continuous threats on the president for years.
“And the last?” asks Sani.
Dominic flips to the Arkansas page, and his finger falls on an empty spot in the northern area of the state. He gives Sani a long, anxious look. “Zinc, Arkansas.”
“It’s not even on the map,” Sani points out.
Dominic nods; he’s stalling.
My right leg starts to shake with impatience. “And what would be there?”
“Let’s just say I hope this isn’t the one.”
I growl under my breath. What could possibly be worse than CIA headquarters and the Yakuza?
Dominic leans toward the center of the table and gestures at us. “I’m just saying, you two would not be welcome.”
“We’re well-practiced in going to places we’re not welcome,” I say.
Dominic shakes his head.
“Who is there?” Sani asks.
Dominic leans in even closer and glances around the diner. Even I, inches away from him, can barely hear what he says. “Knights of the KKK.”
Sani’s calm breaks for an eighth of a second, and he looks away, seeing a place he never wants to go again. This is the part of Sani’s history we haven’t discussed since he shared it with me a year ago: Before fleeing Uganda, he was forced to fight in an ethnic conflict he never truly understood. Someone else’s intolerance had turned the most honorable boy I’ve ever met into an assassin at only ten years old. I don’t realize his hand’s still holding mine until he squeezes it so tightly it would injure me if I was human.
“Awesome.” I allow some of the dragon’s rage to slide into my eyes. “Let’s go there first.”
Dragons Are People, Too Page 9