Quicksilver Dragon

by Chant, Zoe

  And she knew she needed to keep him grounded. He had a lot more power right now than he knew what to do with, and his couch had already paid the price.

  She waited until it seemed like the change was finished, until she could no longer see any new scales blossoming in place of skin.

  Then she said, “Boone?” She tried to keep her voice as quiet and even as possible. Like people turned into dragons in front of her all the time.

  Boone closed his eyes, hiding from the question.

  “Boone, it’s okay. We can figure this out.”

  He opened his eyes just to give her an incredulous look.

  “See,” Lindsay said, “I’ve never seen a dragon look sarcastic before. We’re already making progress.”

  He huffed a little through his nostrils in what she guessed might have been a stifled laugh.

  “Eleanor turned back to being human. You can turn back too.”

  She tried to ignore the fact that Eleanor had looked and acted like someone straight out of a fairy tale, someone who might have already been used to a world of dragons and magic. She refused to even think about what would happen if they couldn’t get Boone to transform back.

  He kept looking at her for a second and then turning his head away. Look, turn. Look, turn.

  “What are you doing?” She turned her head to follow his gaze. “What are you looking at?” She smacked her forehead. “Yes/no questions only, right. Is there something you need me to find? Is that what you’re looking for?”

  Boone shook his head.

  Okay. She believed him. But she couldn’t think of any other possibilities.

  He was still doing it, too. Look, turn. Look, turn.

  Lindsay had an idea and scrambled to her feet. “Boone, where do you keep your art supplies? The physical ones? Can you point?”

  He moved one foreleg slowly, looking at it in disbelief, and gestured back into the hall.

  “Just a sec.”

  It was easy to find—the door to his studio was open. Lindsay stepped inside, feeling a little like she was stepping into Boone’s mind.

  The light in the little studio was incredible. Three out of the four walls had enormous old-fashioned windows that opened with cranks, and they had no curtains or blinds. A box fan stood in the corner, presumably to bolster the air conditioning on especially hot days, when Boone must have felt like he was working in a greenhouse. The room smelled faintly of turpentine, and there were little stray streaks of color on the white walls and polished cedar floorboards.

  Lindsay had the feeling most of the magic happened at the big wooden desk, which was scratched and scored with the harsh pencil marks of years of hard work. It looked homey somehow. An iPad and a desktop computer shared space there. On the interior wall, the one with the door Lindsay had come in through, were dozens of pinned-up sketches, ranging from everything to the design for a beer label—Late Night Lager! That was her favorite local microbrew—to a beachside panorama done on butcher’s paper.

  Bingo. Exactly what she’d been hoping for.

  Butcher’s paper, butcher’s paper. Lindsay hunted around the studio, opening up drawers and cabinets. She remembered this stuff from helping her niece with craft projects. It came in thick, heavy rolls and could be spread out into long banners. It was just what she needed.

  She finally found some in the back of a bottom cabinet—apparently it wasn’t something Boone used a lot—and she grabbed a bottle of black paint off an easel. She almost squealed with delight on finding a puffy little sea sponge that Boone must have used for painting certain textures. She grabbed that too.

  She rejoined Boone in the living room, juggling all of it.

  “Okay,” Lindsay said. “Practical problem-solving.”

  She unrolled several feet of butcher’s paper across the floor and then held up the sea sponge.

  “Raise your right hand? Um, your right front leg, I guess?”

  Boone held it up. He was still turning his head away from her spasmodically, but when he did look at her, he looked intensely interested in whatever it was she was doing.

  Lindsay gently poked the sponge onto one of his claws, impaling it just deeply enough that it would hold there without wiggling around or falling off, but not so deeply that the tip of his claw poked through.

  She took off the top of the paint bottle and eyed the smallish opening.

  “Two seconds,” she said.

  This time she went to the kitchen and came back with a cake pan. She emptied the bottle into it and tilted the pan back and forth until its bottom was evenly coated with thick black paint.

  She set the cake pan down in front of Boone and moved herself back. The butcher’s paper stretched between them, like a street that made them neighbors.

  “Okay,” Lindsay said. “What do you keep looking at?”

  Boone glanced down at the sponge stuck on his claw and then grinned the dorkiest dragon grin Lindsay could ever have imagined. It looked so out of place on his serious, ethereal face.

  He dipped the sponge-tipped claw into the black paint and smudgily wrote GENIUS GIRL on the butcher’s paper.

  “Obviously,” Lindsay said, but for all she wanted to pretend to be unmoved by the compliment, some part of her thrilled at it.

  But even more than that, she thrilled at actually hearing from him again. The few minutes without him being able to clearly talk to her had been weirdly, intensely lonely, like she’d suddenly been in a submarine plunged deep down into the ocean. She’d been alone in the world—alone and way out of her depth, in a dark, strange place. Now she had him again.

  And he was still writing:

  NOT LOOKING, TRYING NOT TO BREATHE FIRE AT YOU.

  “But you’re not breathing fire,” Lindsay said.

  COULD, Boone wrote. SHOULDNT RISK IT.

  Lindsay rolled her eyes. “You’ve been consistently not breathing fire this whole time. I’d really like it more if you didn’t keep twitching off to the side whenever you needed to exhale.”

  Boone shook his head. Apparently there were some things he just wasn’t going to cave on, and this was one of them.

  She guessed if a guy had to have a point he wouldn’t even consider compromising on, “not burning you alive” was a good one.

  “Well, I appreciate the thought, at least, even if I don’t think it’s necessary. Has the pain stopped?”

  Boone nodded.

  “Good,” Lindsay said. It felt like that relief sank all the way down to her bones. She couldn’t stand the idea of him still hurting. “Do you have any idea why this is happening?”

  PURPLE FIRE?

  Right, the fire Eleanor had aimed directly at them. The fire that had been hot enough to melt the sand beneath them into glass while somehow leaving them completely unburnt. Lindsay felt a sudden chill and wrapped her arms around herself.

  “But that hit me too. Why aren’t I changing?”

  MAYBE DELAYED REACTION.

  She had no idea how she felt about that. Did she want what had just happened to Boone to happen to her? As far as she could tell, all it had done for him so far was cause him an unspeakable amount of pain and worry. And if he was stuck like that—

  But at the same time, there was something transcendent about him right now. He had more inherent majesty than anyone who’d ever worn a crown or commanded an army. Power and magnificence were just wrapped around him like some kind of invisible cloak. He was stunning. Lindsay felt like seeing him cut through the sky would make whole crowds fall to their knees in wonder.

  Did she want that? She’d never had anything like that kind of power. She’d never even tried for it.

  But she had to keep her mind on Boone.

  “Sure,” she said lightly. “My mom always said I was a late walker, too, so a delayed change could be part of a pattern. Let’s not worry about that right now. If Eleanor could switch back and forth, you can too. Maybe there just has to be some kind of trigger, like a full moon or a crucifix. Or silver. You don’t h
appen to have a crucifix lying around the house, do you?”

  Boone shook his head. NOT CATHOLIC.

  “And it’s too early for us to see much of a moon. Do you have any silver?”

  He gestured towards the kitchen.

  Lindsay checked it out and came back with what she was pretty sure was an antique silver samovar, even though she didn’t completely know what a samovar was. Something Russian, she thought. And maybe it had something to do with tea.

  Either way, it looked old and expensive. The bottom of it was engraved to two people she was guessing were Boone’s parents.

  “Is this silver?”

  When Boone nodded, Lindsay tentatively touched the lip of the samovar (that maybe wasn’t a samovar) to his side.

  Nothing happened. No telltale sizzle of flesh, no sudden transformation back to humanity.

  Boone wrote, GOOD TO KNOW IM NOT A DRAGON VAMPIRE.

  “Or a dragon werewolf,” Lindsay said.

  Anything she pulled out of an old monster movie was probably unlikely to hold up as research, but she didn’t know where else to get facts about dragons and other things that went bump in the night.

  Don’t think about him as a dragon. Think about him as Boone. What would Boone need to change back?

  Eleanor had changed back when she had known that they were with her. Had she felt safe?

  At the very least, she hadn’t felt alone.

  She leaned against his broad chest, turning her head to feel his heartbeat. It was the same thing she’d done when he’d been on two legs, and it felt comforting to be able to do it still.

  “Just relax.”

  She let him feel the way her lips moved against his scales. She wasn’t afraid of him or disgusted by him, and she needed him to know that. She wasn’t worried about him accidentally roasting her. He could let all that go.

  “I’m right here. We’re in your house. Nothing bad is going to happen.” She listened to the slow beating of his heart. “I’ve got you.”

  Chapter Eight

  Lindsay did a good job calming him down.

  Without her, Boone had no idea how long he would have been a dragon stuck inside his house like a ship inside a bottle. But Lindsay’s voice had been low and melodically reassuring, and she had talked to him until he had slipped into something that felt almost like a trance.

  In his head, he had slipped all the way back to the beach. The first few drops of rain had just started falling from the slate-gray sky, and the woman way down below him had just pulled on the most ridiculous-looking poncho he’d ever seen in his life. It was neon bright enough to save her from being hit by traffic, at least. If the unpaved shoreline got hit by a sudden onrush of cars.

  Then again, people in San Marco did make some weird driving decisions. Maybe the poncho woman was just smarter than he was.

  Now he knew she was.

  Lindsay.

  He stopped holding his breath. He trusted her.

  Her name echoed through him. His heart closed around it, like it was catching some secret—and then all the rest of him closed around it too. He could feel himself boiling down to his essence. There was pain this time, too, but it was completely different. It was the pain of shedding his skin and stepping out smaller and newer and more vulnerable. It was like he could feel every molecule of air vibrating against him.

  Lindsay launched herself into his arms.

  “Boone!”

  Arms. He had arms.

  “Arms!” Boone said happily. “Lindsay!” He picked her up and twirled her around, taking in the rush of her bubbly laughter.

  When he put her down, she just pressed her hand against his cheek. He wondered what it felt like to her after she’d been leaning against his dragon hide.

  That thought stabbed through him, making him ache. He’d never meant to scare her. He’d wanted to be perfect for her.

  You were perfect, Talia said inside his head. She sounded more sad than angry. But you’re not anymore. Whose dream guy are you supposed to be now?

  Boone shook his head, banishing the memory.

  Changing into a dragon—feeling his body crack open like an egg—had made him feel vulnerable, so it was easy to think that he’d become something monstrous and ugly. But Lindsay hadn’t acted like he was either of those. She had touched him as easily as ever.

  Lindsay was smart. And she didn’t think he was a monster, and she didn’t think she was wasting her time with him.

  He needed to believe her.

  “Where’d you go?” Lindsay said softly. She was still stroking through the stubble on his cheek.

  God, he needed a shave. Five o’clock shadow always made him feel sort of sketchy.

  “I was going to say I was sorry I scared you.”

  “I wasn’t scared,” Lindsay said instantly.

  “That’s why I didn’t say it.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it, lingering on the silky skin on her knuckles.

  Then she asked the question he really didn’t want to answer. “What did it feel like?”

  Boone hesitated.

  The problem was, once the pain had faded, being a dragon had felt incredible. Not knowing for sure when or if he’d change back had made him want out of the shape as quickly as possible, but that hadn’t been enough to change how amazing he’d felt. Like he’d had the best night’s sleep of his life and could run a marathon without even breaking a sweat. Like every particle of him had come alive.

  When he’d been a dragon, colors had been sharper and sounds more melodious. He’d been able to feel the air stir around him, warmer near his head than it was near his claws. He’d seen each individual, shining strand of her dark hair; he’d seen the little flecks of gold in her deep brown eyes. His perception of her had been off the charts. He’d breathed in her scent, more deeply and more profoundly than he ever had before, and he’d smelled not only gingerbread but warm vanilla and clean paper and ink and something elusively feminine.

  When he’d been a dragon, Lindsay had seemed more significant than anything else in the world, like she’d burned a hole through reality and come through from some higher plane.

  Even now, human again, she looked like that to him, like she had some lingering halo around her.

  Boone had never done LSD or anything remotely like it, but if it was at all like being a dragon, he could see why people got hooked. The intensity of it was indescribable.

  Now, except for Lindsay, it was normal. Human. He felt like Dorothy going from Technicolor Oz back to black-and-white Kansas... and that was a dangerous way to feel. Because he knew that all the Technicolor magic and all the dangers it carried with it were just under the surface of the black-and-white world he knew so well. Someone was hunting Lindsay and probably hunting him too, and he had no idea who they were or what they wanted.

  It was like being back in Iraq. All around him, people were going about their daily lives, and he had to be on sharp lookout for an explosion. This was how he had felt back then, like his skin was on too tight, like every nerve ending he had was trained towards sensing trouble underneath all the boredom. He’d always been haunted by the idea that he would miss some key sign someday and someone would get hurt because of it.

  He already knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if Lindsay turned out to be that somebody. He wasn’t going to fall down on the job around her.

  He needed to stay sharp. He couldn’t get fooled back into believing the world was normal.

  He snapped to at hearing Lindsay say his name.

  Oh, right. She’d asked him a question, and he’d drifted off into a guilty reverie.

  While thinking about how he couldn’t afford to get distracted.

  Nice one.

  He wasn’t going to lie to her, though.

  “It felt good,” he admitted. “Intense. Powerful. It worried me a little, honestly. Feeling that good—feeling that strong—can make people do some terrible things.”

  “Eleanor didn’t do anything terrible.�
��

  “We don’t know that,” Boone said. He hated having to point it out, especially given what had happened to her. It broke with every belief he’d ever had about not speaking ill of the dead, but he had to get to the bottom of what they were dealing with. “We don’t know anything, Lindsay. For all we know, Eleanor torched a whole block of houses somewhere and whoever killed her is the ‘hero’ who hunted her down. Isn’t that how the story’s supposed to go? Aren’t the dragon-slayers the good guys?”

  “I don’t think there are a lot of stories where killing a woman minding her own business makes you the good guy.”

  “I know. And Eleanor tried to protect us. But—”

  “But she also turned you into a dragon,” Lindsay finished. “And maybe me too.”

  “And we didn’t ask her to turn us into dragons.”

  “No,” Lindsay said thoughtfully. She frowned. “And it did seem like she meant to do it, too, so I don’t think it was an accident. But I’d rather be a dragon than dead, so if we’re keeping score here—”

  “If we’re keeping score, Eleanor still comes out way ahead of her killer. No questions. But—” He didn’t know if he could phrase it in a way that wouldn’t make her want to run. “But the other thing that worries me is that while I was like that, I had these... urges.”

  In short, his senses hadn’t been the only part of him cranked up to full volume. When he had first started transforming, he’d still been thinking about the possibility of someone tailing Lindsay. He’d already wanted to do everything he possibly could to protect her. He’d already been determined to die for her if he had to.

  But as soon as he’d become a dragon, he’d found it almost impossible to think of anything else. She’d been the one to do most of the problem-solving. He’d been all emotion—and that emotion had felt as hot and fierce as fire. What would have happened if she hadn’t been there to steady him?

  As a dragon, he’d been in his own living room, totally safe. And he’d still been ready to flame anyone he thought might hurt her, without thought of the consequences.