The sea serpent snapped the fish out of the air and chugged it down, swallowing it whole.
It could probably swallow Ember the same way.
The other sea serpents dodged with their sinuous necks, angling for where Ember was going to throw the next fish.
The ebony sea serpent, however, noticed the other fish she’d readied lined up on the side of the fountain.
The serpent went for it. He lunged past the other five serpents and leapt face-first at the line of fish. He grabbed the first one and sucked it down. Without even inhaling, the sea serpent gobbled up the next three fish in the row.
Oh, my Ladies, that one was going to eat all the fish, and she wouldn’t have any left for the rest of them. “You, there! Stop that. Stop that!”
She ran at the enormous, fanged sea serpent, waving her hands, before she stopped to think about the stupidity of what she was doing.
The sea monster looked up at her, the surprise in its dark eyes turning to guilt, but it managed to grab three more fish and suck them down before diving back into the water and swimming away as fast as it could.
The others had seen the remaining fish and surged toward them, creating a tidal wave that jumped over the retaining wall, knocking those fish outside.
Ember ran backward, but the stinky water missed her.
Whew. Getting that slop on her would have been nasty. She didn’t even want to think about trying to get her hair back in order after a soaking with that smelly, slimy water.
The other five sea serpents—their shimmering scales of green, blue, gold, and red shining in the sun—stuck their heads out of the fountain, trying and failing to eat the fish lying on the wet cement.
Their noses and hard lips scraped along the concrete, but they couldn’t get their teeth or tongues around the fish to pick them up. It was like they were trying to pick up a coin with chopsticks. Their curving tusks got in the way as they bonked and scraped their noses and chins until they were snapping at each other in frustration.
Ember approached them, her hands up. “Back off, nice sea serpents. I’ll throw them to you if you just go back in the water.”
The red sea dragon growled at her, but it slithered back into the water like a spaghetti noodle being sucked up.
She grabbed one fish by the tail and hurled it above the fountain.
The green one, it’s scales shining like emeralds, snapped it out of the air.
Okay, Willow had been right. Ember would have to hand-feed these beasts, one at a time.
It took only a few minutes to feed them all the fish remaining from that box, and then Ember struggled out with the other three boxes of fish in the wheelbarrow, dosed each one with the vitamin potion while the serpents slither-swam in circles like a feeding frenzy of pissed-off, giant koi, and tossed the fish to them.
After a while, it felt just like throwing bacon treats at a pack of snarling dogs.
After feeding all the sea serpents at least a couple of fish each—she was pretty sure the black one got more than his fair share—she settled down to evaluate the situation.
Even though she’d kinda gotten used to the smell while she was standing there, that fountain stank.
If you could have seen the stench, it would have been a spiked, boiling mess like a soup full of swords. It was so gross that it was aggressively offensive. People might choke on chunks of the smell. The stink stabbed up noses and sliced down throats.
She had to figure out what to do about that. Surely, the casino could not have its gala opening in just under a month if the fountain smelled like a million gallons of bacon, onion, and mayo potato salad, gone very bad.
If she could just look under the surface, to get a little glimpse of what was going on down there, she could plan what to do about the smell much more efficiently. Was it actually the sea serpents tooting? Or was there a more microbiological problem, perhaps an algae that could be killed with an appropriate application of herbicide or bleach?
So, once again, Ember opened her purse and pawed through the bottles, vials, aspirin containers, emergency snacks, and outdated phone chargers to find the particular bottle of the elemental she wanted.
The vial she held was a frosted glass, iridescent black bottle slightly larger than her hand. The stopper was a pretty bulb with ruby-glass accents. She warmed the glass in her hand, and the elemental sloshed happily inside.
Something in the back of her mind said, This is a bad idea.
The voices that said that in Ember’s head sounded suspiciously like Willow and Bethany.
The voices of Bethany and Willow whispered in Ember’s head that she should absolutely not release a water elemental out here, right off the Las Vegas Strip and in the full view of the crowd walking by and the VIPs who filled the casino and hotel who were probably all looking out their windows right at her, and she certainly shouldn’t do it for such a frivolous reason as looking underneath the water to make sure that the sea serpents were farting.
The dark, iridescent glass glowed in the desert sunlight.
Ember uncorked the bottle.
She really did need to see what was making the smell if she was going to be able to figure out whether she could do anything about it.
She wasn’t using Jumpy this time, though. Jumpy was a cute little elemental who did inadvisable things like drilling through oil layers, and Jumpy probably would have rebelled if she tried to send him back into the nasty water, anyway. He really hadn’t liked that fountain. The sea monsters had frightened him.
No, this water elemental was much bigger. Swishy wouldn’t be afraid of those sea serpents.
And, come to think of it, Willow had put some sort of an oil slick potion over the fountain to keep the smell in. Maybe a water elemental could contain the gas better, without upsetting the serpents.
Maybe Swishy could just float on the water in the fountain and hold the noxious fart-gas in.
Ember whispered an incantation over the bottle as pixie dust fell from her fingertips, settling on the glass.
A column of water shot from the vial, leaping into the sky like a javelin.
Yeah, Swishy could handle those sea monsters. They couldn’t hurt a water elemental, anyway. If they chomped her, it would be like fighting a firehose shooting sea water, and she would reform on the other side and kick them in their heads.
Swishy swirled into the air, a vibrant waterspout come to life, and she popped and rained down on the fountain’s basin, soaking through the water.
Ember quieted her mind, listening for Swishy’s vibrations.
The blast front hit Ember’s face: Get out! Bad! Bad-bad-bad! Yucky stinky snakes!
The water in the fountain boiled—the whole thing, all at once, in a violent, spitting, frothing boil that slopped at the retaining wall—and the serpents reared out of the fountain, snapping at the water.
People walking on the Strip beyond the fluttering construction tape stopped and stared.
Globs of water jumped out of the fountain and smashed back down, becoming bigger with every splash, and smacked the sea serpents in their faces like a water balloon fight.
The sea monsters shook off each hit and dove back into the water, bursting forth snapping and flailing their tails like frenzied sharks.
“Swishy!” Ember yelled. “Swishy, come back!”
Blobs of water sprang out of the fountain and sped toward Ember.
She held the bottle with the open end out and ducked, but she wasn’t fast enough.
The water elemental coalesced, the separate globules of water smashing together and becoming a torrent lancing through the air.
Swishy barreled into the bottle.
But the stinky water that she’d brought with her drenched Ember.
Fart-saturated water.
Oh my Ladies, her clothes and her skin and her hair were soaked, and she reeked.
The bottle in her hand jiggled. Close it up. Very bad snakes.
Ember plugged the top of the bottle with the stopper an
d held her arms away from her body, confused as to how she should stand to get away from the rotten-egg water that saturated her clothes.
A puddle of the stinky water was forming around her shoes as she dripped.
Slimy moisture slipped off the ends of her hair, slithering down her back and neck.
Standing like a menacing koala bear was not working to either dry herself or reduce the stink, so she rummaged around in her purse that had also been splashed by the sulfurous water until she found Jumpy’s bottle.
Ember unstoppered the bottle. “Jumpy, baby, I just need some help. I need you to rinse me and my purse off a little, okay?”
A little bubble of water poked its head out, sniffing her. Nasty.
The water elemental sank back into its bottle.
“Hey! Jumpy, you come out here and help me out.”
The bottle swiveled, shaking its head no.
People out on the Strip had stopped and were staring at her.
Jeez, Cai might be watching her stinky humiliation from one of the million windows on the casino. At least some VIP guests certainly were watching her.
Ember shook the bottle upside-down. “Come out, you damp jerk, and hose me off!”
Jumpy squeaked over and over as Ember tried to sling her out of the bottle like she was trying to shake ketchup loose. No no no nasty nasty no no no.
“Come out, you little twerp!”
Another bottle had rolled out of Ember’s purse, and she didn’t notice that she’d kicked its stopper out.
An enormous air elemental zoomed out of the open bottle, twenty feet of swirling, righteous anger that sucked up the dust in the courtyard into a furious dust devil and swirled the paper wrappers and plastic cups lying on the ground.
“Oh, crap!” Ember cried. “Blowhard, no!”
But it was too late.
Blowhard sucked in a tremendous breath of air and bellowed, creating a mighty wind of the dry, hot desert air that sprayed Ember with a fine grit and a light pelting of gravel even as it whipped her clothes against her body.
And then she was dry.
But she wasn’t clean.
No, a thin crust of sulfurous residue and yellow dirt that coated every inch of her body because Swishy’s noxious water had saturated her clothes.
Ember tried to catch her breath, but she gasped and trembled.
When she blinked, her yellow eyelashes blotted out the fountain for a second.
Blowhard huffed and jumped back into her bottle, pointy-end first.
Leaving Ember standing there, weaving in her shock, filthy and still stinky.
When she moved, the crust on her skin flaked and fell off like full-body, yellow dandruff.
Her hair—each strand encased in a shell of grit and blown-dry so that each hair was repelled by static electricity and trying to fly away from every other one of her hairs—waved in the breeze like a dandelion poof.
Oh, crap. That was going to take gallons of silicone hair treatment and hours with a flatiron to fix.
This was so bad.
Her arms and legs and clothes were coated with an even layer of the yellow-brown dust. She must look like a child-drawn stick figure of a person, scrawled with a stick of yellow chalk.
She didn’t want to touch herself. She didn’t want to be herself.
She wanted to crumble into disgusting dust right there and blow away and never be whole again.
Anything to avoid moving.
But she had to get home to shower this crap off of herself.
Ember shifted one leg forward.
The crap was stiff on her thigh and knee.
Her rigid clothes pushed back when she tried to walk.
Somewhere behind her, Cai’s voice called, “Ember! I wanted to talk to you about yesterday. I am sorry about that. Did you like the—”
She turned.
Cai was a lot closer than she’d thought.
Indeed, he was standing right in front of her.
Cai Wyvern stared at her, his eyes flowing with green fire. “What happened to you?”
Ember grabbed her befouled purse and ran, shuffling stupidly, to her car and drove home.
It took hours in the shower to get every last stinky grain of sand off of her skin and scalp.
Rogue Fire
A week later, Ember stared at the text on her phone.
This is Cai Wyvern. Look, I’m sorry about all these texts and about last week. I hope you liked the jewelry. I just can’t seem to help myself.
Ember frowned.
Cai must be talking about the other jewelry that had arrived since the earrings.
Boxes of it.
Boxes and boxes of it.
Every day.
Once, two boxes in one day.
Some was relatively normal, like gold-chain necklaces and bangle bracelets that she could wear anywhere and had begun wearing around her apartment because they did make her feel pretty.
But there had been another set of earrings: dark lavender Tanzanite drops on chains encrusted with white diamonds, and Ember had nearly dropped the teal Tiffany & Co. box when she’d tried to assess them with her elemental powers. Everything about the stones and platinum was flawless, and a quick perusal of Tiffany’s website had netted her only a phone number to call if she were interested in them, not a price.
Whoa.
She’d set those earrings aside to return to him, because why would a guy who’d bolted out of bed send her such ridiculous, extravagant gifts?
Maybe he was on the down-low and was paying her off so she would say that she’d slept with him.
Ember could be bribed. She had student loans to pay off. She could totally be bought to tell all kinds of stories and be a well-compensated beard, if that’s what Cai Wyvern needed.
But they needed to talk about that, which meant a real conversation, not just texts and some expensive gifts by delivery dudes.
Ember would not allow herself to be bought off and dismissed like that.
Cai texted, The concert that is in rehearsals has a problem with a fire elemental. Could you come and take a look at it? We’ll pay whatever consulting fee you want on top of your usual salary. I’m sorry. Please. Before it sets the casino on fire. More than it already has.
Dammit, that guy thought that he could order her around like nothing had ever happened because he was the boss? Well, she’d show him. She’d go pet the sea serpents for a while and let Cai Wyvern’s casino burn down around his ears.
Another text from an unknown number arrived. This is Dragon’s Den Casino’s HR Department, Smedley O’Tentacle. VP Wyvern informs me that you’re an elemental witch. There is a problem with a fire elemental in the arena’s stage area. If you can contain it, the casino will pay standard consulting rates.
Well, that’s what she got for almost-sleeping with the boss. A boss can order other people to order her around.
Another text came from Cai, I need you.
Yeah, she just bet he did. Now that a fire elemental was toasting his butt, now he needed her. Before, he just sprinted out of the bedroom like she had the sea serpent farts.
And his texts over the last week had been less than satisfactory. Yes, he’d apologized, but he hadn’t explained.
Still, making a couple of hundred dollars on top of her usual salary was nothing to cry about. With the extra money, maybe she could buy one glass of that expensive champagne she’d put on Cai’s tab last week.
Ember started trudging toward the big arena in the back of the casino. If she were any angrier, she would be dragging her toes on the thick carpeting and leaving lines in her wake.
A sparse crowd of guests—you had to be holding a VIP pass to get into the Dragon’s Den Casino before the gala opening—punched slot machine buttons and drank complimentary booze. A few people hung around the two poker tables that were staffed, laughing and playing cards. She recognized quite a few of the guests from movies and TV. Usually, they couldn’t hang out and mingle with the bourgeoisie because th
ey were too famous. They’d get mobbed. But with a VIP pass in a mostly empty casino that was only admitting other celebs, they could prance around with abandon and not worry about anyone stalking them. Ember saw two ladies who’d won Oscars a few months ago, and one woman was arguing with her agent about whether she was going to do an HBO mini-series “for the exposure” or whether they were going to pay her what she was worth. She said, “That offer is missing a zero. You go find it. That’s what I pay you for.” She pulled the handle on the slot machine, grimaced at it, and fed it another coin.
Well, if Ember was still mad when she got home, she could drink another bottle of that Moet & Chandon Dom Perignon by Karl Lagerfeld champagne. She still had four magnum-sized bottles left from the six-pack she’d ordered through Cai’s room service. Sold separately, each bottle was worth two thousand dollars. He’d probably gotten a little price break on the case she’d put on his tab.
She was still cackling about the room service bill she’d signed his name. It served him right.
Ember stomped into the back of the arena that seated over ten thousand people, her huge purse bonking on her butt as she walked. She emerged on the floor level, behind the expensive seats. The fluorescent house lights drew glowing lines in the ceiling far above her.
A flaming tornado wheeled around the stage, bending as it changed direction.
Black-clad stage technicians chased the fiery tornado. One threw a rope at it.
The elemental was scorching a black, looping track into the wooden floor of the stage.
Every time it touched a drape or set piece, fire licked at the material. Technicians sprinted over with fire extinguishers and sprayed white foam at the flames. Some of them were even shooting the flame retardant foam at the fire elemental like they were trying to put it out.
Ember rolled her eyes as she marched down the center aisle. “Stop! Stop it!” she called. “You’re making it mad!”
In the front row, Cai spun. “Ember! Thank the Dragon Lords you’re here!”
She held one finger out at him and did not turn her head toward him. “Do not even talk to me, Cai Wyvern. I am not here for you. This poor baby needs me.”
Ember climbed the steps and rummaged around in her purse until she found an empty metal bottle about the length of her hand with the stopper jangling from a piece of string. She set it in the middle of the stage floor, right by a livid scorch mark in the wood, and stepped back a few paces. “Yo! Dude with the rope! Set it down and get off the stage. The rest of you, move slowly and extinguish the fires, but quit trying to hurt it. It’ll settle down in just a minute.”
Dragons and Fire Page 8