Day of the Dragon--Two full books for the price of one

by Katie MacAlister

  The rest of the day crawled by. I sent an e-mail to Archer asking him to contact me immediately, packaged up a couple of orders that Edgar had indicated needed to go out, was in place to receive the day’s arrival of two silver goblets and an ugly little statuette depicting a man riding a frog, and spent the rest of the time trying to force the Internet to give up its secrets on one Archer Andras.

  By the time I was due to leave, I was thoroughly frustrated and had sent two more e-mails to Archer with increasingly agitated demands that he contact me as soon as possible or provide me with a number where I could reach him. After reminding Jamie that he was in charge of the store and leaving him with strict instructions to make sure the doors were locked, the alarm set, and lights were turned off, I decided that I’d just have to pony up the money to the background check site in order to get Archer’s contact information.

  Bree was waiting when I got to the assisted living home where Gran lived. To my utter relief, the puppy she had brought was of the stuffed toy variety, a cute golden retriever with huge eyes that reminded me of hers. What was even more of a surprise was that Bree was absolutely right—she was the hit of the home, flitting from one elderly resident to another, all bubbly personality and bright chatter. Gran clutched the toy puppy that Bree had given her, cooing over it and stroking it just as if it were a real dog, making me feel ashamed of myself for a few minutes that I hadn’t thought to give her such a gift.

  When we left an hour later, several of the more mobile residents gathered around the door to wave us off, extracting promises from Bree to visit them again.

  “That was fun,” she said, taking my arm as we wove our way around people doing their evening shopping. I had donned a pair of sunglasses as I usually did in daylight hours, finding solace in the way it hid so many of my oddities. “I like your gran. She’s very smart.”

  “She used to be, yes. She’s a bit more…vague…now, but when I was little, we’d work books of cryptic puzzles together. Our favorites were the ciphers. Gran was a whiz at them. Bree…” I hesitated, not wanting to ruin what had been a surprisingly pleasant evening so far, but at the same time, victim of my own curiosity. “How did you know about that passage from the Liber Iuratus Honorii? I only translated that a few months ago and haven’t sent it to any of the academic groups yet.”

  “Oooh, this place has almond chicken. Mama loves almond chicken,” she said, peering at the menu posted on a restaurant window. “We can get loads of that, unless you don’t like it.”

  I followed her into the restaurant, smiling when a harried young woman nodded and pointed us to a table near the window. “As a matter of fact, I try not to eat too much meat, but I suppose a little chicken wouldn’t hurt. Is there a reason you’re changing the subject, or do you just not want to answer my question?”

  “Why would I do that?” she asked, taking great enjoyment in loudly slurping the cup of tea that she’d just poured. “Now, what are we going to do tonight?”

  “Actually, I have plans.” I decided to let go of the fact that she once again hadn’t answered my question; I had more important things to focus on, like getting a hold of a certain pale-eyed man. “I’m sorry if you thought we were going to go to another movie or do something fun like that, but I’m afraid I have a project I’m trying to deal with, and an unrelated appointment for a little medieval cipher-breaking job at nine, so I won’t be able to spend time with you.”

  “Oooh, is your project something fun? I can help.” She clasped her hands and watched me with bright, interested eyes.

  “I doubt if you can. I need to get in contact with a man—”

  “Wow, that was quick,” she interrupted; then she looked out the window and suddenly waved enthusiastically at a woman who was slogging her way up the hill. The woman looked startled at being so greeted, and with her head down, hurriedly charged past. “Did Laura find you someone, or did you find a man yourself?”

  “I…er…found one myself. I guess. Although it’s not a romantic thing. Do you remember anything about last night?”

  “Lots. I jumped Ramon’s bones, then he jumped mine, and then we slept.”

  I paused in the act of pouring myself a cup of tea and gawked at her for a moment, before deciding that was too rude. “I meant earlier, when we were together.”

  “Ah,” she said, her eyes narrowing on me. “The bar at the hotel.”

  “Yes, actually. The two men that we…uh…commented on, in particular.”

  “Dragons,” she said, nodding.

  “They were actually in the office— What? Dragons? What about them?”

  “The two dragons you had the hots for.” She poured herself another cup of tea, examining the little bowl containing packets of various types of sugar.

  I took a deep breath, wondering if Bree took drugs. She didn’t seem to exhibit any signs of an addiction, but there was really no other way to explain the sorts of things she said, unless she was mentally ill, and I’d discounted that idea earlier at Gran’s home. She had been nothing but charming and caring to a bunch of elderly, confused people. “Okay, I’m going to say something that is borderline insulting, and I apologize for it in advance, but are you all right?”

  “Sure thing. Why do you ask?” She tipped her head to the side to consider me.

  “Dragons,” I said succinctly.

  “Yeah. The one you snogged last night. Wait, snogged is the right word, isn’t it?” A little frown creased her forehead. “It means kiss, right? I saw it in a movie, and next to hats of asses, it’s my new favorite phrase.”

  “It does mean that, but I didn’t kiss a dragon last night. I didn’t kiss anyone, as a matter of fact,” I answered, pushing aside the memory of Archer’s hot breath steaming the shivery spot behind my ear. Just thinking about that made my thighs feel weak. “Even if I had, I would have kissed a man, and not a mythical being with wings and a penchant for virgins.”

  “Yeah, about that…”

  The waitress arrived with our food just at that moment, which made Bree—who had ordered five different dishes that she wanted to try—cheer.

  I waited until she had a loaded plate (and wished I still had the sort of metabolism that allowed me to eat anything and everything without a care), before suddenly blurting out, “How old are you?”

  She looked up, sucking in a noodle, her nose scrunching as she clearly thought. “One thousand, seven hundred…No, that’s not right.” She set down her fork and counted on her fingers, her mouth working silently. “One thousand, eight hundred, and forty-two.”

  “Not in days, silly, how many years are you? Wait.” I did my own mental addition. “That wouldn’t even be right if it was days. Did you count in weeks?”

  “Years,” she said indistinctly around a mouth of food.

  “I see.” I just stared at her, my gut filled with sadness. If it wasn’t drugs, then clearly she had a mental illness, one that left her delusional. But it wasn’t my business to point that out to her. I made a promise that I would be supportive and helpful if she wanted either, but I wouldn’t push her to seek help unless she made noises along those lines.

  “How old are you? In days?” she asked.

  I pulled up my phone’s calculator. “Discounting leap years, thirteen thousand, one hundred, and forty days.”

  “Cool,” she said. “Do you have a date to snog the dragon tonight after seeing the cipher dude? Or can we hang together because we’re besties and Ramon has practice with his band?”

  I had just sworn to myself that I would be supportive and helpful, and here I was already wishing to tell her I was busy later. “I don’t mind spending time with you, but what I have to do is going to be extremely boring. I have some computer research to do, although perhaps you might like to browse through some of the books in the shop while I do it. The ones that aren’t worth a fortune. I don’t know about later…” My uneasiness rose again at the memory of that man’s silken voice in my ear. I thought for a minute, my eyes on her, trying to w
eigh the comfort of having someone with me to the practicality of her annoying a potential customer.

  In the end I decided that I had enough on my plate without the cipher breaking, so if I lost the job because the client didn’t like Bree, it wouldn’t really matter. “All right,” I told her. “You can come with me to the club to meet the cipher man.”

  “Awesome! I’ll be your protector and keep you safe,” she said, flexing one arm.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “What are we doing before that? Your project that you have to do?”

  I ignored the loud slurping sounds as she guzzled sweet and sour soup, saying carefully, “The two men we saw in the bar last night showed up in my boss’s office later on. The tall one, whose name is Archer, bought a manuscript leaf from Edgar, and he came to claim it. However, Edgar…well, Edgar is being a hat of asses and changed his mind about selling to Archer, which means I have to get the manuscript leaf back. I’m trying to find Archer’s house or a phone number without having to pay a month’s salary, that’s all. It’ll be just me and the laptop, so if you have more exciting things to do…” I let the sentence drift off, hoping she’d lose interest.

  “So, you’re trying to find this Archer dragon dude?” Her nose scrunched up again as she chewed a massive mouthful of kung pao beef. “Why pay all that money for something that you can get easily?”

  “Easily?” I shook my head. “I’ve spent the whole day investigating how to get Archer’s contact info. You know how the news stations always say it’s dead easy for anyone to find out anything about you online? That’s absolutely not true about Archer. There’s almost nothing about him. Nada. Zip.”

  Bree belched, giggled, and excused herself, then, evidently sated after consuming all the food before her, looked around the restaurant. “There’s more than one way to skin a behemoth.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Four ways, actually. Come on, if you’re done, let’s go see what you have in your shop that can help you.”

  “In the shop? Wait, Bree…dammit.” I hurried over to settle the bill, more than a little peeved that I was stuck paying for everything she consumed, before running up the street after her.

  By the time we reached the shop, I was out of breath from the hills in our neighborhood. I unlocked the front door, turned off the alarm, and flipped on a couple of lights before collapsing onto Edgar’s chair in his office. “No wonder you can eat anything you like,” I panted, picking up a sheet of paper to fan myself. “One more block would have killed me.”

  Bree was nosing around the room, poking into the various items Edgar had bought that were waiting for processing. She set down a bone goblet and moved over to the desk. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to where I’d stuffed the prayer rug into a large plastic bag.

  “A demonic prayer rug.” I turned on the laptop and returned to my Google search for info on Archer.

  “Really? Cool!”

  “It’s not real, obviously. I mean, the rug part is, but the demon bit is just a story,” I said, giving her a look that said she ought to know better. “Edgar spun some song-and-dance about it summoning a demon, but it’s not the truth. He only does it to entice buyers.”

  She took the bag and dumped the rug onto the desk, holding her hand over it for a second before snatching it back and shaking it, as if she’d been stung. “Why do you think that?”

  “Because demons aren’t any more real than dragons are. Hmm. I wonder if a private detective would be cheaper?” I tapped a few keys, making a face at the rates listed.

  Bree got a giant pair of fire tongs that were leaning in the corner of the room and used them to pick up the prayer rug, hauling it over to the center of the office before spreading it out on the floor. “You spend your days translating grimoires and other magical texts, and you don’t believe in demons?” She shook her head. “That just don’t make sense, son.”

  I glanced at her, thought about it for a few seconds, then admitted she had a point. “People a few hundred years ago believed in a lot of stuff that isn’t real. What are you doing?”

  “Setting up the demon rug. Normally I frown on calling up demons because the place I work for discourages that sort of thing, but since you’re stuck and need a little push getting to the Archer dragon, then we’ll risk it. You have some salt?”

  I blinked at her a couple of times, unsure if I should take her aside and have a mental health talk with her now or if that was too invasive. “I…yes. Are you talking about drawing a circle of salt?”

  She grinned. “Who better to summon a demon than a woman who has read all the instruction books?”

  “Bree…” I was silent for the count of six, half of me feeling my online search was a waste of time and the other half genuinely worried about her mental state. On the other hand, I was tired of feeling frustrated and helpless. I hadn’t gotten anywhere trying common sense and the organized method; maybe it was time to try the unorthodox and unrealistic. “You know what? Let’s do this.”

  “That’s the attitude! You get the salt and gold, and I’ll get the dead man’s ash.”

  “We don’t have any—” I stopped when she pulled a small glass jar from behind a couple of Edgar’s personal book collection. “Oh. I guess we do.”

  “Your boss knows how to do things right,” she said, opening the jar and sniffing at it. “This stuff is fresh. You’ll have to draw the circle. I’d get into all sorts of trouble if I did it.”

  “Sure, why not. I’ve got nothing better to do until nine. Thank God Jamie has an addiction to hard-boiled eggs and likes them salty.” I fetched a small bottle of salt from Jamie’s snack drawer and trotted back to Edgar’s office, where I smoothed out the prayer rug, noting as I did so that some moths had gotten to it at some point. It was a muddy sort of red, with little yellow threads running through it, but mostly it was so faded and dirty that the original pattern couldn’t be determined. “Right, drawing a circle made of salt now.”

  “You want me to call the quarters, or do you want to?” she asked.

  “Don’t I have to?” I asked, drawing a thin circle with the salt.

  “If you were using something modern, yes, but this is an old rug, so it will expect things done the old way,” she said, standing and spreading her arms out wide and turning to face east. “Apprentices were always used to call the quarters while the practitioner did the actual summoning. Bide ye with us, sylphs of the air, to guard and protect us.”

  I sprinkled the ash Bree found in the salt circle, being careful to touch it as little as possible. I didn’t truly believe the rug was evil in itself. Still, I acknowledged as I scooted my way around it, I was just superstitious enough to be wary of it.

  Bree turned to the north, and recognizing the calling of quarters that she’d used, I mouthed with her, “Bide ye with us, stones and rocks of the fields, to guard and protect us.”

  She turned to the west. “Bide ye with us, naiads of the depths, to guard and protect us.”

  I sat back on my heels and eyed the circle, mentally running down the instructions given in many of the old grimoires, making sure it was complete and whole. I didn’t want Bree using an improperly drawn circle as an excuse why nothing had happened.

  I stood and turned south with Bree, unable to keep from saying with her, “Bide ye with us, dragons of the embers, to guard and protect us.”

  “What demon are you going to summon?” Bree asked.

  “I don’t know. I suppose I could look at a list in one of the Libers.”

  “There’s one that’s been hanging around Santa Mar a lot lately,” she said, sitting cross-legged next to the rug. “Naamah.”

  “Sounds as good as any. Naamah. I think I know that name.” I dug through my memory, pulling out a name that I’d read in one of the grimoires. “She had a fling with Adam after he dumped Eve, and bore him demonic kids.”

  “The plagues of mankind!” Bree said, nodding. “She used to hang out with Henry the Eighth.”

  “Uh…sure,” I
said, and fetched a photocopy of a valuable grimoire held in the British Museum. I drew the symbols related to the demon Naamah. “Last thing…blood.”

  I dashed upstairs to my bathroom, grabbed a safety pin that held the curtain closed, and after dipping it in some rubbing alcohol, pricked my thumb with it, carefully nursing the drop of blood as I made my way back to Edgar’s office. Carefully, I dabbed the drop of blood on the circle of salt.

  “Okay, that should be it. Ready?”

  Bree nodded and, grabbing a small fire extinguisher that had been tucked in the corner with the fire tongs, stood at the ready.

  “You think we’re going to need that?” I asked her, standing so I could hold my hands over the circle.

  “It’s just in case Naamah is testy about being summoned. She used to have the best resting bitch face ever.”

  I pursed my lips, keeping back comments that I knew would not be welcome, and instead said, “I conjure thee, Naamah, by the power of thy lord Oriens, to appear before me now without noise and terror. I command thee, Naamah, to my will by the virtue of my power. By my hand thy shall be bound, by my blood thy shall be bound, by my voice thy shall be bound!”

  Bree frowned. “I don’t think that’s quite—”

  I was about to turn to see what she was saying when something amazing happened. The air inside the circle seemed to thicken, like it was made of clear gelatin that clumped up, twisting upon itself until it started to take shape.

  The shape of a handsome man with blond hair that had been slicked back, a shirt open to the waist, and a pair of black leather pants. The man’s eyebrow rose in obvious question.

  “Holy shit,” I said, my mouth agape as I stared at the man, then looked down at the photocopy of grimoire pages still held in my hand. “Holy everlasting shit. What…uh…”

  “Hello, Naamah,” Bree said, sauntering forward, the fire extinguisher still held in her arms. “I see you’re a man now. How are the kids?”