Dragons and Magic

by Blair Babylon

  His whole body surged with life like a jubilant current of electricity had been ignited under his skin. The sun’s beams brightened the whole room like he had just noticed that sunlight was beautiful.

  Math said, “I’ve never been better.”

  Bethany licked her thumb and rubbed it on his cheek. “You have schmutz on you.”

  He laid his head back on the floor and laughed.

  Penthouse One

  FOR the next few days, Bethany followed Math around the casino, working her magic, cleaning up parts of the main rooms, and preparing the property for the big meeting with the angel investors, one month hence.

  She flitted around behind him, keeping up as he strode through the main floor and the upper high-rollers’ area, covering ridiculous amounts of ground with each step of his long legs. She tried not to watch him move as he walked, but he tended to remove his suit jacket and drape it across the back of a chair and then forget it. When he rolled up his shirt sleeves to his elbows, she couldn’t help but notice the strong sinews that wrapped his forearms. She suspected that the way his arms and chest strained the white cotton of his shirt meant that the rest of him was heavily muscled, too. Even his neck was strong and thick above his clean collar. The outline of his broad shoulders was more than apparent under his clothes.

  The one time that he yanked off his tie and unbuttoned his collar, the heavy, smooth rounds of his pectoral muscles swelled near his throat. His skin was golden bronze, as if he’d had pale skin but was thoroughly suntanned.

  One afternoon about a week later, Bethany had conjured an army of leaping ferrets that scurried around one of the penthouse suites, gathering up all the litter and belly-sliding across the furniture to polish it. Barn swallows held the corners of bedsheets with their beaks, draping the wide fabric over the king-size bed, while other ferrets busily tucked the sheets in at the corners. They tugged the pillows into pillowcases and wrestled them into place.

  Math leaned against the wall, his arms crossed across his wide chest and his legs crossed at the ankle, as he watched Bethany’s sparkling apparitions perform perfectly.

  As a matter of fact, all of Bethany’s spells had performed perfectly for days. Every swish of her brushes and inks across her incantation paper had been sure and confident, and her magical helpers bustled about efficiently and finished each job ahead of schedule.

  This was her best streak of spellcasting since she was eight, and if just three more spells didn’t backfire, she would break her all-time record of nineteen spells in a row that did not turn into disasters.

  Something horrible was going to happen any second now.

  And Math was standing right back there, watching. When the disaster happened, he would have a front-row seat to the chaos.

  Oh, how she hated chaos.

  A green, glittery ferret careened across the top of the dresser on its tummy, its little paws spread and a gleeful grin on its pointy face. Bethany flicked her fingers, and the ferret somersaulted to the next part of the wood, wiggled its little butt in the air, and dusted the next row of the furniture. She turned her attention to the bed, where two large sidewinders rolled from the middle toward the edges, perfectly smoothing the duvet.

  With another flick of her fingers, two Peregrine Falcons swooped and snagged two hamsters in their claws, a fuchsia one and a chartreuse one. They carried the fluffballs up to the ornate crown molding where the rodents scurried, clinging to the wood with their tiny claws, leaving perfectly clean, dust-free trim in their wakes.

  Wow, Bethany’s magic was performing perfectly.

  The magnitude of what was going to go wrong when this streak broke terrified her.

  A few minutes later, the bedroom was perfectly clean and ready for occupancy. The ferret apparitions condensed into anteaters, which perambulated around the perimeter of the room, sucking up the last bit of dust around the edges.

  Math rubbed his hands together, grinning. “This looks great. I’ll have my things brought up here right away.”

  Bethany set her fists on the small of her back and stretched. She’d never done this much spellwork within so few days. “I thought this suite was for the angel investors’ dog and pony show.”

  “It will be. We’ll need a few of these penthouse suites ready for them to look at, but I’ve been crashing in some of the economy rooms on the fourth floor because they were the only ones that had sheets and stuff.”

  “I guess the Chief Financial Officer can stay in the penthouse, if he wants to.”

  Math walked over and tested the firmness of the mattress, pressing on it with his fingertips. “My feet were hanging off the end of the bed in that room. I think I’ll sleep better here, and you bet, commandeering the penthouse is one of the perks of the job.”

  Bethany was having a hard time keeping herself from imagining Math’s muscled body stretched out on the sheets that her magic had lain on the bed. He might sleep in just a pair of athletic shorts, without a shirt, maybe. The few times he’d unbuttoned his collar, she hadn’t seen any chest hair peeking through the vee of his shirt. His skin seemed to be smooth, and the way his shirt’s closely fitting fabric clung to his tight waist when he twisted suggested that there wasn’t much room for any sort of insulation between his hard flesh and the fabric.

  Not that she had noticed.

  Not that she had observed that every time he moved, he seemed sinewy, strong, and muscular.

  Not that she had imagined that his bronze skin might be satiny over his rippled abdominals, burly chest, and his shoulder muscles.

  Bethany shook her head, but the images persisted of Math, half-naked or fully naked, sprawled on the bed with a sheet barely covering his man-parts but leaving one of his long, strong thighs and calves bare.

  She needed a new thought.

  She needed a new thought right then.

  “Well, even one of the cheap rooms in the casino has to be better than living in a cave, right?” she asked.

  Math looked at her, one dark eyebrow lifting. “Why would I live in a cave?”

  Bethany hoped she wasn’t being politically incorrect, which was just another term for saying something ignorant and stupid. She really didn’t want to be stupid and ignorant to Math.

  Because he was her boss.

  She had to remember that he was her boss.

  She asked, “Because you said you lived in the dens? Aren’t dragons’ dens in caves?”

  Math laughed and sat on the bed, bouncing on the mattress as he tested it. “A few centuries ago, maybe. We just call them dens. Just another figure of speech.”

  Oh, great. Now he thought she wasn’t politically incorrect, just a complete idiot who couldn’t understand figures of speech. “That’s interesting. Tell me more?”

  Now she sounded like a hooker. Even better.

  Math kicked his shoes off and sat on the bed, leaning back against the headboard with his fingers interlaced behind his neck.

  “Hey! I just got those sheets perfect!” Bethany couldn’t stop watching the way his biceps bulged under his shirt.

  Math crossed his long legs. Even his fine, dark socks were sexy. He asked, “Have you ever seen Kensington Palace?”

  “I’ve never been to England.”

  “Kensington Palace isn’t one large castle. It’s more like a small neighborhood of row houses and cottages, surrounded by a wall. Most dragons’ dens are like that these days. They’re compounds with individual residences and townhouses. Kensington Palace is just one of the most famous.”

  Bethany’s mind clicked as she processed what he’d said. “Wait, you can’t be telling me that the British Royal family are dragon shifters.”

  “Most of them. One of the side effects of being a dragon shifter is a longer-than-normal lifespan. Most of us live to be well over a century old, usually a hundred and fifty, sometimes close to two hundred years. How else do you think the Queen is ninety-five years old and still maintains a schedule of hundreds of personal appearances every year? She�
��s just reaching upper-middle age in dragon years.”

  Bethany gaped at him. “No way.”

  “She’s a little silver dragon, smaller than the vast majority of dragons. She’s hardly larger than a German Shepherd. I’ve heard she likes to transform and play with her corgis.”

  Bethany was laughing at this point. “Now I know you’re kidding me.”

  “Not at all. One of the Queen’s German relatives is a huge, blond dire-wolf shifter as big as a Clydesdale horse. He’s the scary one of that family.”

  “No way!”

  Math raised his hands. “That’s the rumor, but it’s been a persistent rumor. But the place where I grew up is a lot like that. Dragons’ dens are close-knit communities. New Wales is more like a housing development than a castle, but it’s conservative, really conservative. Like, odd governmental structure and societal ideals. Dragons Den, Inc. has an office building just down the block from the dens, so a lot of us work there. It’s north of Los Angeles, just another one of those gated communities up there. The naturals never bother us.”

  “I grew up outside of Las Vegas, here,” she said. “It’s not much of a witching community. We’re highly integrated with the naturals. I didn’t attend a wizarding school and university like a lot of witches do. I just had Saturday school where I learned Witch History and magic. Lots of my friends were naturals.”

  “I didn’t know any naturals growing up.”

  “They’re just like us, only with less magic.”

  “That makes sense.”

  Bethany’s mouth often got her into trouble, and that day was no exception. “So, what color of dragon are you?”

  A slow smile curved his lips. “That’s not how we usually say it.”

  “Oh? I’m sorry.”

  “The dragon is a separate soul from the human part of us. One would ask, ‘What color is your dragon?’”

  “Oh, I see.” Another faux pas. He was going to hate her.

  “It’s gold,” Math said. “I transform into a gold dragon.”

  The same color as the metallic sparkle in his eyes, she imagined. “Can you do it now?”

  Oh, crap. When shifters transformed, their clothes fell off.

  She’d just asked him to get naked.

  Math glanced at the high ceiling and walls of the large room. “I wouldn’t fit.”

  Oh, he was a big dragon, which made sense. Math was really tall, well over six feet, maybe six-feet-six or so.

  He probably had a thirty-six-inch inseam, or longer.

  His dragon must be—proportional.

  That sounded dirty.

  “Wow, that must be something to see.” Her voice sounded breathless, like she was preoccupied with something so much that breathing wasn’t all that important.

  Because she was thinking about him naked again.

  Math patted the bed beside him. “If we’re going to keep talking, you might as well make yourself comfortable.”

  Bethany stepped toward the bed before she figured out he must be kidding her. “Oh, geez. I just don’t get any jokes, do I? Should I finish working on the other suites up here in the penthouse?”

  Math’s hand lay on the crisp sheet where he had been patting the mattress, inviting her into his bed. “I have meetings with the accounting department to audit their books. The first one starts in fifteen minutes. It’s going to take days. They were set up last week before I arrived, due to the irregularities. Will you be okay on your own?”

  “Of course, Mr. Draco. You don’t have to babysit me. You can see that I’m doing quite well, and I’m even ahead of schedule.” Bethany almost sounded confident instead of surprised. Ember would have been proud of her.

  “Call me Math,” he said, still watching her from the bed. “Mr. Draco sounds like I’m a hundred and ten.”

  “Math, then. You don’t have to babysit me, Math.”

  “Excellent, Ms. Aura.”

  She smiled at him, turning her head a little. It was cute that he was still being formal until she told him otherwise. “Call me Bethany. I assume the cleaning has met your expectations?”

  “It has exceeded my expectations in every way.” He slid his legs off the bed and stood, stretching his arms above his head. His fingertips almost brushed the ceiling, it seemed to Bethany, even though the ceilings were fourteen feet high.

  Yes, Math was really tall, and he probably had a really big dragon, too.

  He walked over to her, extracting a card from his wallet and holding it out to her. His gold and hazel eyes twinkled as he smiled. “This master key will open all the doors in the entire casino. Use your power wisely.”

  Bethany laughed and took the skeleton keycard from him.

  Her fingertips brushed his warm ones, and a wave of shivering power trickled over her skin.

  His eyes grew brighter, turning a pale caramel shot through with gold lightning.

  Everyone whispered that dragons were great in bed and why. Maybe they did have some sort of sexual magic, and that’s what the zing was that she was feeling down her arms and between her legs whenever she touched him. Maybe that’s why dragons kept to themselves, because right then, if Math had patted that bed again, she would have flopped on the mattress on her back with her arms and legs spread.

  She whispered, “Okay, thanks. I’ll get started on the other suites.”

  Math cleared his throat and growled, “I’ll see you later.”

  “Okay. Sure. Looking forward to it.”

  Math walked out, leaving her in the room where he was going to be naked and sleeping later on that night.

  And now she was holding a key to all the doors in the casino, including this room.

  But had he meant that?

  No, surely he hadn’t meant that she should use the keycard that he had just shoved into her hand to open the door of his room that night, which he had just told her that she totally could do, and join him in the bed, the bed that he had just patted and invited her into?

  Nope.

  Probably not.

  Bethany didn’t move a muscle until she heard the door in the suite’s living room slam.

  She could not do this. She could not lust after her boss at the first job where she was not a complete screw-up.

  Bethany bonked her forehead against the wall, trying to clear thoughts of naked-Math from her brain—because she suspected that hard, strong cords of muscle wrapped his torso and legs just as much as it thickened his lower arms, and he probably had that sexy vee around his lower abs and dimples on his lower back—and then she went to the suite next door to begin cleaning.

  The next suite was another enormous penthouse cluttered with construction crap and coated in a thick layer of drywall dust. Seriously, why had they moved the furniture in before the construction was finished?

  Okay, she could do this.

  Seventeen successful spells in a row was not any different than sixteen, statistically speaking. Each spell was an individual event, like throwing dice. There was no reason she had to start screwing up now.

  Bethany released the ink pots to float around her and meticulously formed the next rune on her drawing pad. She wanted a litter of tiny Pomeranian dogs to retrieve the construction trash and then dust the place with their silky fur.

  “Litter of Poms. Litter of Poms,” she chanted as she inked the incantation.

  When the spell was ready, Bethany ripped it out of the pad and held it out, inspecting it for even the slightest deviation from her plan.

  Nope, it was perfect.

  Math must be somewhere down in the accounting department by now, far away from her. She could probably do this even better without him watching her and distracting her with his big, strong arms, chiseled cheekbones and jaw, and clean, slightly smoky scent.

  “Okay, don’t give me a wrong litter Pom,” she said, stumbling over her words.

  Tragically stumbling.

  Bethany breathed on the paper, releasing her magic from her heart and soul and imbuing the paper with
power.

  Silver and purple sparks streamed from the rune, disintegrating the ragstock paper. Fire coalesced in the center of the room, hovering above the bed as the sparks swirled into a ball.

  That didn’t look quite right.

  The sparkling miasma spun into shapes that almost looked like dogs, but then the whole thing contracted into a small, hard sphere.

  A sparkly sphere.

  A glittering orb.

  “Oh, no,” Bethany gasped, horror dawning on her.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and flung her arms over her face.

  The bomb detonated, spraying the room with gallons of glitter.

  The Glitter Cavalry

  WILLOW picked up her ringing cell phone. “Hello?”

  Blubbering spilled out of the speaker.

  Ember looked over from where she was examining a rack of shoes, looking for a deal. “What’s that?”

  Willow stared at it. “The caller ID says that it’s Bethany, but it doesn’t sound like Bethany. It sounds like someone having a conniption fit.”

  Ember took the phone out of Willow’s hand and listened. “She keeps repeating ‘buckets of glitter’ over and over.” She listened intently, her eyes narrowed. “She said, ‘I tried to scoop it up and toss it over the balcony, but it won’t go away. It blows back in. Every time I breathe, it all blows out of the dustpan.’”

  “Oh, no,” Willow said, her hand over her thumping heart. “You don’t suppose she’s had another glitterbomb incident, like The Great Junior Prom Glitter Catastrophe?”

  Ember visibly shuddered. “If it’s half that bad, she needs our help, now.” She shouted into the phone, “Bethany! Pull yourself together and listen to me, woman! Drop a broom on WitchyMaps, and we’ll find you.” She waited and then hung up. “We’ll have to pick up lunch on the way. She whispered ‘Bring a vacuum’ like she was being held in a serial killer’s basement. We’d better get there fast.”

  A Warning from the Squid

  FOR two long days, Math waded through some very improper finances, demanding to know where the hell his clan’s money had gone from Folant Vishap, the head of Finance, who wiggled and wormed at whatever Math asked him. Finally, when he had a few spare minutes one afternoon, Math found himself nearing the door to the human resources division to discuss a rather, ahem, personal matter.