by ReGi McClain
“I’ll get some of Jason’s clothes for you.” She looked him up and down as he waddled past and tried to determine what items might fit him while she pulled out another towel for mopping up his trail. His athletic musculature, though lean, made him thicker than Jason, but Jason had been several inches taller.
Seraph took the towel from her hand and bent to wipe up the water.
“What are you doing?”
Seraph smiled over her shoulder. “Cleaning up after Zeeb. If you show me where the things are, I’ll make you tea, too.”
Harsha shook her head to clear it. It felt fuzzy and slow to react, no doubt the result of falling asleep on her feet after trying to stay awake all night. “No. I’m sorry. I mean, thank you. I’ll wipe up the water, and I’ll get the tea, too. You can relax for now.”
Seraph crinkled her brows and gave Harsha a stern look. “I came here to help you, not be waited on.”
“You are helping.” Harsha tried to take the towel. “It helps to have people around to do things for.”
Seraph shook her head, her mouth turning down in greater disapproval. She kept hold of the towel. “Fine. You can make the tea, but let me do this.”
With a sigh, Harsha acquiesced. After standing outside Jason’s door trying to picture his wardrobe for several minutes, she decided to lend Zeeb a pair of board shorts with a drawstring waist. Careful not to wake Kel, she tiptoed into the room and rummaged through the stuffed drawers. The scents of Jason’s cologne and the laundry detergent Elaine liked wafted up from the crumpled fabric, giving her the feeling he stood in the room with her. Each time she shifted an item, more memories drifted into her awareness. Quivering with the effort of keeping her sobs quiet to avoid waking Kel, she hurried her search. In the bottom drawer, she found the shorts. Hugging them to her chest like a treasured memento, she wiped at her eyes and swallowed down the lump in her throat.
When she gained control of herself again, she grabbed the first T-shirt her hand landed on and took the outfit to Seraph. The redhead was crawling around on hands and knees, wiping up puddles of pool water and mopping the surrounding areas.
Embarrassed her friend felt the need to mop her floor for her, Harsha thrust the clothes in Seraph’s face to make her stop. “Here.”
Seraph sat up and looked down at the illusory orange shift and corset that served to maintain her modesty before and after flying. “You want me to put on boys’ clothes?”
The image of Seraph in Jason’s clothing brought on a chuckle. It felt good to laugh, but the lifting of her cheeks spilled tears down her face. Harsha wiped them away before Seraph looked up. “No. I meant for Zeeb.”
“Oh.” Seraph took the outfit. Without knocking, she opened the bathroom door and deposited the outfit. “Clothes on the counter.”
She went back to mopping before Harsha managed to recover from the unexpected glance at Zeeb’s naked silhouette through the translucent shower curtain. It seemed like something she ought to be able to handle without blushing, but a wave of heat bronzed her cheeks.
She retreated to the kitchen, started the tea, and assessed her egg whites to determine whether or not they were safe to use. A fluffy lump of foam floated on a pool of unbeaten slime, and the hour hand sat on the wrong side of three. Probably not safe . Frustrated with herself for wasting a dozen eggs, she dumped them down the drain, washed out the bowl, and made a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough to bake in the morning. Or rather, later that morning.
Meanwhile, finished with her mopping, Seraph flipped through channels and kept up a running commentary on whatever flashed on the screen. It seemed her habit of talking to warn away bears spilled over into her everyday life. Zeeb emerged from the shower around the time Harsha started folding the chocolate chips into the dough. She noticed he opted not to wear the shirt and assumed the relative warmth of a Hawaiian winter made him uncomfortable, given his copious body hair and the frigid temperatures he endured this time of year in his home state. He headed in her direction, as if he intended to help with the snacks.
Seeing someone else in Jason’s board shorts put cracks in Harsha’s emotional dam. She waved Zeeb away without giving him the chance to speak. “Help Seraph pick something to watch. She seems to be having trouble making up her mind.”
Zeeb looked taken aback and Harsha wondered if her tone sounded clipped. She meant to sound cheerful. To reassure him, she put on a smile. “I’m almost done.”
Zeeb sighed and shook his head, but sat down next to Seraph and took control of the remote. “Let’s avoid the chick flicks, shall we?”
Avoid the chick flicks. Jason never minded them.
Harsha huffed in bitterness. Such a little thing, one she’d taken for granted until this moment. She rolled her cookie dough into a long cylinder, wrapped it, and put it in the fridge, exchanging it for meatballs to serve her carnivorous friends. Meatballs she’d spent hours teaching Elaine to make. Standing behind her friends with a tray of tea and meatballs clutched in both hands, she wrestled with the tears clawing their way out of her eyes.
Zeeb called, “Are you sure you don’t want help?” He twisted to see her sobbing and leapt over the couch to fold her in his arms.
The tea tray found its way to the table and she ended up curled against Zeeb, gasping out what she knew of Jason’s and Elaine’s deaths and elucidating on her experience at the Rice Clinic and her suspicions regarding the connection between it and the disappearance of Jason’s body. Seraph and Zeeb listened without interrupting. Their expressions grew darker until both wore deep, dangerous scowls.
With her monologue finished, Harsha started to feel awkward with Zeeb. The last time she’d let herself cry so much in front of anyone, it had been Jason. They were children and neither of them cared much about snot getting on their clothes, but here she’d soaked Zeeb’s chest and maybe even slimed him with mucous.
She snatched the box of tissues from the side table and started blotting up her tears. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to lose it.” Then she realized she was touching his bare skin without permission and dropped the tissues. “I’m so sorry.” The dropped tissues, of course, landed in his lap. She reached for them, but stopped in time. She clasped her hands in her own lap to keep them out of further trouble. “I’m sorry.”
Unperturbed, Zeeb tossed the tissues into a wastebasket and pulled her into a hug. “Hey. It’s okay. No one expects you to keep it together all the time.”
“Except yourself,” Seraph added. “As for me, I didn’t fly three thousand miles to help you pretend nothing’s wrong when your world is falling apart. I’ll get you a cup of tea.”
Harsha felt childish and burdensome. She opened her mouth to tell Seraph to let her get the tea, but Seraph crossed her arms and twitched her eyebrows up in a don’t argue glare. Sighing in defeat, Harsha leaned on Zeeb and closed her eyes while she waited for the tea.
She didn’t realize she’d fallen asleep until Kel’s startled exclamation woke her the next morning.
Her head lay on Zeeb’s chest and her feet on Seraph’s lap. Zeeb’s head lolled against the back of the couch, his mouth open. One of his arms held her while the other dangled over the side of the couch. At the opposite end, Seraph lay in a heap that reminded Harsha of a snake coiled around itself.
Harsha managed a smile for Kel while she eased into a sitting position, working out stiffness on the way up. As she pulled away from Zeeb, he tightened his grip and lifted his head. He closed his mouth with a snap when he saw her and let go. “Oh, sorry.”
Massaging the back of his neck, he tilted his head from side to side a few times before he noticed Kel. The two stared at each other for a moment before Zeeb offered his hand. “Hello.”
Seraph uncurled with a languid stretch, like a cat. “Good morning.” She smiled at Kel. “And good morning to you, too.”
Kel looked unsure of what to do with himself. Staring at Zeeb’s hand like he thought it wanted to bite him, he wrapped his arms around Harsha with uncharact
eristic affection.
Harsha returned the hug. “Good morning, Kel. These are my friends, Seraph and Zeeb. Do you remember me talking about them before?”
He nodded.
Seraph scooted forward on the couch. “Your Aunt Harsha talks a lot about you.”
“Are you really a dragon?” Kel blurted before clamping both hands over his mouth.
Harsha lifted her brows, surprised he knew about her friends’ unusual heritages. She knew Jason had told Elaine, but not Kel. She watched her friends to see their reactions to finding a child knew their secret.
Seraph smirked. “Yes. I am. Do you want to see me breathe fire out of my nose?”
“You can blow fire out of your nose?” Kel squinched up one side of his face in a doubtful expression.
“Got anything you don’t mind destroying?”
“I’ll get my backpack.” Kel burst out of Harsha’s arms and raced for his room.
Harsha leveled a warning look at Seraph. “Do not burn up his schoolwork.”
Kel returned and held up his bag. “Burn this.”
Harsha turned the warning look on him.
He selected one book. “How about just social studies?”
“No.”
Kel made a face, then looked to Seraph. “But, can you, really?”
Seraph pinched off one nostril and sent a spurt of flame out the other.
“Awesome!” He turned to Zeeb. “What can you do?”
Zeeb shrugged at Kel’s question. “During the day? Nothing cool.”
“He’s strong, for a mammal, and he can run fast,” Seraph pointed out.
“Like the Flash?”
“About twenty-five miles an hour.”
“So, not really fast.”
Zeeb laughed and Kel asked more questions. Harsha, glad Seraph and Zeeb welcomed Kel’s fascination, took advantage of his distraction to make breakfast and consider what needed to happen next. With her illness in its last stages, she doubted Elaine had made her guardian—if she’d made any plans at all—but Harsha knew of no other plans. She didn’t even know who Elaine might want contacted. Even if she did, she couldn’t call them and say, “Oh, sorry, but your friend died and her body is missing.”
She shook her head. First things first: find the bodies without letting Kel know what’s wrong . She picked up the phone and called his best friend’s number.
Chapter 18
After breakfast, Harsha walked Kel to his best friend’s house. His pace slowed the further they went from their home until he came to a stop two houses away from their destination. Before today, any offer of an extended sleepover at the Campbells’ would have sent Kel into raptures, but he stared at the house with a look of anguish, his lower lip quivering and tears sliding down his cheeks.
“Do I have to go to a foster home?”
Harsha sucked in a breath and turned him to face her. She wanted to tell him, “No. Never,” but she knew better. “Not yet. For now, you’re just going to visit the Campbells for a few days, and then I’ll come back. I need to get a few things figured out, and it’ll be easier for both of us if you’re with friends, having fun. Then I’ll find out what needs to happen, okay?”
More tears slid down his face, but he nodded and they walked on. Kel’s best friend and two toddlers hopped on the porch. “Did your aunt tell you what we’re going to do this week? She’s paying for us to…”
Harsha ignored the rest of the conversation. She thanked Mrs. Campbell and handed over a wad of cash with a promise to pay the family back if they exceeded the two thousand dollars in their efforts to entertain the boys. Watching while Kel’s friends tried to pull him into a game, her mind flashed back to the week before her sister Ami died. Harsha was fourteen years old. She sat beside her sister’s bed, holding a cake in her lap.
“Pink candles.” In spite of her gauntness, Ami’s smile filled the whole room. “My favorite color. Thanks, Sweetie, but you counted wrong. There are twenty-two candles on this cake. I’m turning twenty-one, remember?”
“It’s to grow on. My English teacher says it’s tradition. You blow them all out at once for good luck.”
Harsha’s mother stifled a sob with her hand. Ami’s smile broadened, but a tear traced a path along her skin. “I’ll do my best.”
Jason, twelve at the time, hovered beside Harsha. “Come on, Ami. Blow them all out.”
Mother dropped her hand to smile at him, forcing the droplets brimming in her eyes to roll down her cheeks. Ami sucked in a deep breath and blew.
All but one of the candles went out.
Everyone clapped, pretending not to notice the flame. Mother pinched out the remaining candle and sliced the cake.
A dream woke Harsha that night. She flitted across the space between Ami’s bed and her own to check on her sister. Ami woke. She smiled. Any other expression looked foreign on her face. She brushed the hair out of Harsha’s face. “I’m sorry about the last candle,” she whispered.
Harsha brushed the hair out of Ami’s face, mimicking her sister’s actions. “It’s no problem. You’ll just have to try again next year.”
Ami never got the chance to blow out another candle. Harsha spent weeks sleeping in Ami’s bed, hoping one day she would wake up to her smiling face and find it was all a joke, like a game of hide-and-seek where the hider jumped out to surprise the seeker. Mother died two years later. Now Jason was gone, too.
Loathe to pour more tears and snot onto Zeeb’s chest, she spent a few minutes letting out her grief in her backyard before walking in the backdoor. She found Seraph and Zeeb engaged in a rough competition of Dance Dance Revolution, trying to push each other off the mats without missing a step, like a cross between Sumo wrestling and aerobics.
Their gyrations sent tremors through the floor, threatening to upset a crystal figurine she had secured well to be nephew-proof. Apparently, it wasn’t dragon- and werewolf-proof. The little ballerinas, each demonstrating one of the five ballet positions, quivered, throwing sparkling rainbows here and there like a disco ball. She cleared her throat and pointed at the figurine. “It costs two hundred dollars. You break it, you buy it.”
Without wasting an instant, they let go. Zeeb fell onto his backside and Seraph tumbled into a snaky heap. The word “Failed” flashed on the TV screen while a male voice asked, “Did you do your best?” Harsha shut it off before it asked if they wanted to play another round.
“So. Can you guys help at all?”
Zeeb pulled himself off the floor. A dark expression crossed his face. “I have an idea. I’d prefer not to share it until I can confirm it.”
Harsha took a deep breath and bit her lip. She understood if Zeeb preferred not to make accusations without evidence, but she needed to find out what had happened to her brother’s body, and withholding information seemed unfair. She pulled the tin of rosemary candies out of her purse. Popping one into her mouth, she sat on the couch. He sank down next to her with an arm across the back. Seraph stayed on the floor, staring at the ballerinas. Harsha made a mental note to hide all her pretties. So far, Seraph hadn’t demonstrated tendencies toward kleptomania, but, well, she was a dragon.
“What do you need to do to get confirmation?”
Zeeb shifted and cleared his throat. “I don’t think I can get it here. I need to go… elsewhere.”
But Jason went missing here. Harsha sucked on her candy while she sorted through details. If the police couldn’t find a trace of the thieves on the security footage, her own chances were slim. On the other hand, the idea of letting Zeeb run off to conduct his own investigation and leave her out of it soured her stomach. “Can you smell as well as a canine?”
“Oh, sure. The average werewolf has a sense of smell four-point-two percent better than the average bloodhound. The problem is, we get distracted more easily than bloodhounds, so in practical application, we rank about eight percent lower than ”
To avoid losing sight of the point, Harsha cut him off. “So, you can pick out an individ
ual’s scent?”
“Of course. You, for one, smell like woman, roses, and halibut. Seraph smells like lizard and brimstone.”
Harsha shifted to face him and wrinkled her nose. “I smell like fish?”
He squirmed. “Not in a bad way. You smell like a nice, fresh halibut, right out of the ocean. The kind that’s perfect with beer batter.”
She sniffed her underarm. Perhaps her singleness had less to do with personal preference than she wanted to believe. Maybe she turned men off with her odor. “I smell like fish dipped in beer?”
“No! I meant ”
Seraph erupted in laughter. “Give it up, Zeeb. There’s no way to turn ‘you smell like a fish’ into a compliment for a human.”
Zeeb sank lower into the couch, eyes pitiful. Harsha popped a rose candy into her mouth, hoping to infuse more of the pleasant fragrance into her personal scent. “Can you smell Jason?”
“There’s a family resemblance.”
“He smelled like roses, too?” That would be amusing.
“Sandalwood.” He sank lower in the couch.
Assuming Jason smelled like man instead of woman, that left fish. Perhaps Mother and Ami smelled like fish, too. In that case, Harsha dismissed her worries. Both Mother and Ami enjoyed the attention of several suitors. “Can you track him from the hospital?”
He lifted his eyebrows. “You want me to sniff out your brother? Like a dog?”
“I’ll pay.”
Zeeb cringed. “Please don’t. Yes, I can track him.”
“Do you have a plan?” Seraph asked Harsha.
“What’s your normal body temperature?”
Seraph smiled, a mischievous glint in her eye.
Harsha ran into the emergency room. Zeeb followed, straining under Seraph’s weight. Harsha spewed out an explanation to the receptionist, hoping she sounded panicky. The receptionist listened with unmoved face, checked Seraph’s driver license, and attached a paper bracelet to her without comment.
While he settled Seraph into a chair, Zeeb muttered, “If I ever suggest I carry Seraph again, shoot me.”
