by Willa Hart
Chapter Sixteen
Three seconds after falling into a coma, my eyes fluttered open and I found myself standing in the middle of Max’s lair. Instead of feeling like a disjointed dream, or even a vision, I felt truly there, a one-to-one match with the waking world. No static, no gloomy smoke, just straight-up high-def reality. I took a surprised step backward as I tried to get my bearings, and my calves bumped into something. The chair I’d walked through during my previous visit stood next to me, as solid as anything else in the real world.
“Party Favor, I wasn’t expecting you.” Uncle Max peered at me from his throne-like chair at the back of the granite cave, an ancient scroll hanging limp in his hands.
“I’m a maverick like that,” I said, glancing around the cave as I approached him.
Now that no smoke concealed the space, I could see it wasn’t nearly as massive as I’d previously thought. It also wasn’t even remotely as lavish as I’d imagined. No piles of gold bullion, no stacks of ancient treasures. A few ornate antique pieces scattered about, a couple of very worn Persian rugs, and of course Max’s throne.
“Your powers seem to be growing faster than I expected,” he said, rolling up the parchment. “That’s good. Very good.”
He stood and closed the distance between us to give me a fierce hug. It felt as if I hadn’t seen him in months, even though it had been less than a week. I clung to him, breathing in his slightly smoky scent, and fell into the comfort of his nearness. He’d been my rock for the last few years, and his absence in my day-to-day life had left me feeling rudderless. I didn’t want to let go, but he pulled away first. He moved to a large mahogany table pushed against the wall of the cave and laid the scroll down before turning back to me.
“Have you noticed anything else unusual, other than apparently finding me at will? Anything odd or out of the ordinary that you might have put down as coincidence because there was no rational explanation?”
I snorted a little too loud. “Where the hell do I start? Maybe with the most recent incident where I magically smelled an odorless drug. Or maybe the fact I went full Jackie Chan on the asshole who’d slipped the drug into Zoe’s drink. Or how I carried her by myself to my car and barely got winded.”
He stared at me, a little agog, which was saying something. Max wasn’t easily surprised.
“Is that it?” he asked softly.
“Isn’t that enough?” I shot back, then immediately felt ashamed for lashing out. “I’m sorry, Uncle Max. I’m just wrecked from a crazy night. To answer your question, no, that’s not it. Yesterday I somehow knew Ash and Hale were walking up to the house, even though I had no reason to know it. It was just like how I knew Zoe’s drink had been drugged. I just…knew.”
“Like how you knew where to find me?” he asked, tilting his head to one side.
I shook my head. “I have no clue how I’ve found you. I close my eyes and wake up here. Wherever here is…”
My feeble attempt to fish for information failed miserably. Max just stroked his chin thoughtfully as he watched me.
“You’re saying you can’t find me or my nephews at will?”
“Nope, it just happens.”
“Have you tried?”
I opened my mouth to say Of course, but then I snapped it shut again. I hadn’t, not really.
“I-I don’t know how.”
He gave me a gentle smile before heading back to his throne. “Of course you do, kid. You’ve found me three times and two other dragons. That’s no easy feat, even for a skilled dragon keeper.”
“But I didn’t try to find any of you. It just happened and I have no idea how.”
Max settled in his chair and relaxed. “Try.”
I wanted to argue, to balk at his command because I was afraid of failing, but part of me wondered if I could do it on purpose. The curiosity overpowered the fear, and as I closed my eyes to concentrate, I reminded myself that’s exactly what killed the proverbial cat.
I pulled up Ash and Hale’s faces. I’d only known them a short time, but I could already pick out small distinctions between their almost-identical features. A small scar just above Ash’s upper lip. The single fleck of forest green in Hale’s right eye. Their matching shaggy blond hair.
My insides felt as if they were being pulled out of me. Not in a painful way, but like in a sci-fi movie where the heroine gets sucked into a black hole and she sort of blurs and stretches.
“East L.A.,” I breathed, knowing that’s where the twins were in that moment. I didn’t see them, but I definitely sensed them.
“And the others?” Max asked softly.
I shifted my focus to the Novak brothers. Kellum’s piercing blue gaze, Ryen’s scruffy beard, Danic’s love for Adele, and suddenly I knew.
“Downtown. They’re at Drakonis, I’m almost positive.”
“Describe it to me. How do you know?”
I blinked my eyes open to bring myself back to reality. Or whatever this was.
“It was faint. Is faint. I can still feel them, even though I’m not concentrating on it anymore. Sort of like I have a radar screen in my head and can see them ping on it. Wait, you know what radar is, right, Uncle Max?”
He narrowed his eyes at me “Don’t test me, kid.”
I couldn’t stop myself from snickering. I’d missed our back and forth.
“Favor,” he said, turning serious, “keepers have a sort of empathy for their dragons. They can pick up on their feelings, locations, and occasionally even their thoughts.”
“I remember that lesson, Max, but I thought you were my dragon. I thought that’s why you’ve been training me.”
Max gave her a bemused shrug. “I was training you to be a keeper, not necessarily my keeper. But considering how you can always tell when I’m lying, I have to admit, I’d rather assumed the same.”
“But not anymore?”
He looked thoughtful, steepling his fingers in front of him. “I just find it odd that you’ve lived within close proximity of me for five years now and never before have been able to get a bead on my location. Right?”
I shook my head. “Not until…” I waved my hand around his lair.
Water dripped loudly somewhere in the cave as silence fell heavy between us. This conversation excited and alarmed me. If I wasn’t Max’s keeper after all, who was my dragon? Did I even have one?
“Favor, I suggest you spend time getting to know each of my nephews,” Max said, pulling me back to the moment. “A keeper chooses her dragon once the relationship has deepened. Since you seem to have a connection with all five of them, it would behoove you to get to know each one better. Only once you know them all well, have built friendships with them, will you learn which is the right match for you. Besides, it seems the more time you spend with them, the stronger your powers grow.”
I loved the idea of becoming a powerful dragon keeper, though I couldn’t imagine surpassing my father’s talents. He was a legend, apparently, but a girl could always hope.
“My father—“
“Your father couldn’t locate five dragons at once until he’d had many, many years of intense training,” Max stated flatly. “But don’t let that go to your head, Party Favor. You’ve still got a lot to learn.”
It might have been a little too late for that. Pride swelled in my chest that I’d somehow inherited my dad’s skills.
“Oh boy,” Max chuckled as he watched me struggling to keep a somber expression. “Why don’t you tell me why you came here, Favor. Besides an ego boost, of course.”
Oh, shit! After the completely fucked up night I’d had, I’d almost forgotten we had other business to discuss.
“We got the jewel back,” I reported.
I thought he’d be excited, or at least relieved, but Max seemed downright alarmed.
“Beg pardon?”
“Danic and I drove up to Big Bear to see Archibald Thrush. We thought he might have some information about Enoch, but when we arrived, he was being attacked b
y this big, bad-ass Romanian dragon. Turns out it was the same guy Ryen fought off the night before.”
Max became increasingly agitated. “What?”
“It’s been a long week,” I said with a shake of my head. “But everyone’s okay. Don’t worry. Ryen and Danic had no trouble handling themselves, and Archibald… Well, he didn’t look very good by the end, but we got there in time to save him.”
“And what about the jewel?”
I couldn’t understand why he was frowning so hard. “We got it back. Well, the Romanian guy brought it back, for some reason. That’s what Archibald told us. Said the guy stormed in, bashed him in the head with it, and wanted to know where the real one was. Let me tell you, that stone was as real as they come. And huge!”
Simply remembering the heft of the priceless jewel brought back the excitement of holding it. I smiled up at Max, expecting to find relief in his eyes, or at least satisfaction that we’d partially solved his case. But he seemed even more worried than before.
“Max, this is good news,” I insisted. His expression made me falter. “Right?”
His lips pressed into a grim line, like he had some bad news to break. “I’m afraid not, kid.”
Without so much as a word of explanation, Max stood and walked to the cave’s entrance, hands laced behind his back as he stared into the darkness. Color was starting to brighten the sky and stars were winking out with each passing second. I realized that it was probably closing in on dawn back in L.A Wherever we were, it had to be in the same time zone. Didn’t narrow down the location much, but it was something.
“Max?” I said quietly, not wanting to interrupt his thought process, but desperate to understand. “How can recovering a $30 million ruby the size of Danic’s fist be a bad thing?”
He sighed heavily. “Hopefully it isn’t. Worst case, it could spell the end of dragon kind, but that’s a long shot.”
Before I could fully process that delightful little nugget, he spun around and grabbed my shoulders.
“Listen to me carefully, Favor. It’s more important than ever that you find Enoch as soon as possible, understand? We need to know who hired him. Use every possible resource at your and my nephews’ disposal.”
I nodded my understanding. “Do you want me to come get you when we find him so you can interrogate him?”
He dropped his hands and pressed past me. “No, I have other matters to attend to. Just stick close to my nephews and make sure they understand how important it is to find Enoch.”
“Okay,” I said, scratching the back of my neck as unasked questions — ones I had no hope of getting answered — nagged at me.
“Before you go,” he said, stopping at the chair I’d walked through and turning back to me. “I don’t suppose you remember, when you first came to work for me, I had something in my office. It was a, um, paperweight of sorts. Kind of translucent, with a rock encased in it, like a mosquito in amber?”
“Oh, you mean that thing you hid in the toilet tank?”
I smiled as his jaw dropped in shock. He stammered and scowled.
“How…how did you know I…” Then he shook his head and chuckled. “I see I’ve underestimated you yet again, Party Favor.”
“I like to keep you on your toes,” I said with a wink. “What about it?”
He grew deathly serious. “You need to retrieve it and keep it safe. At all times, understand? My nephews can—“
Max’s instructions were interrupted by the piercing screech of a terrified woman. I whipped my head around to find myself back in my bed, Zoe screaming and thrashing beside me. Pure instinct took over and I pulled her into a tight hug, holding her until she calmed.
“Hey,” I murmured, “it’s me, Zoe. I’m here. You’re safe. It’s just a bad dream, okay?”
I’d had plenty of those over the years, so I knew exactly how to calm her down. I swept my hand from the back of her head, all the way down her spine, in long, comforting strokes. I don’t know why the motion was soothing, but every time Aunt Shirley had used it on me, I felt better almost instantly.
“Oh, Favor,” Zoe whimpered, sobs jerking her body.
I held on tight, perfectly willing to lie there as long as she needed me to. It’s what besties were for. After a long while, she calmed down and looked around the dark room.
“Where are we?” she asked, rubbing her forearm across her snotty nose. I made a mental note to wash the sheets later.
“My room. I brought you here after the hospital. Doc said to make sure you weren’t alone for the next twenty-four hours.”
Zoe rubbed her head and fell back against her pillow. “Hospital? Oh right… Motherfucker!”
I couldn’t stop a smile. Whatever the Rohypnol had done to her, the real Zoe was back. I was about to tell her what the doctor had related about good ol’ Chadwick Von Dystryl and his future as some burly convict’s bitch when the smell of something sweet and familiar reached us. Zoe’s stomach rumbled loudly, a testament to the dinner she probably skipped before a night of clubbing, then purging everything in her stomach.
“That would be Aunt Shirley’s world-famous French toast,” I said with a raised eyebrow. “C’mon, nothing cures a nightmare like Shirl’s cooking.”
“Favor, you’re too good for this world, you know that?” Zoe said, her voice hoarse from sleep and probably the charcoal treatment.
“It’s true, I am.”
I helped her out of bed and steadied her while she pulled on a pair of my old sweats.
“And to prove it, I’m going to make sure Aunt Shirley pampers the hell out of you today.”
She pulled a sweatshirt over her head and frowned as I packed my backpack and pulled on my shoes. I’d never undressed, making it the fastest I’d ever been ready for a day of work.
“Where are you going?” she asked, a note of panic in her tone.
Setting my backpack down, I pulled her into a hug. “It’s okay. I just need to go to the office. Urgent detective business, dontchya know.”
Zoe seemed less anxious by the time I released her and opened my bedroom door.
“You’re not going to leave me to eat a mountain of French toast on my own though, are you? You wouldn’t really be that cruel.”
That’s exactly what I’d intended, but bacon and coffee mixed with the scent of French toast, and this time it was my belly making noises.
“That would be rather rude of me, wouldn’t it?” I said, dropping my pack to the floor.
The world would survive a few extra minutes while I stuffed my face with fried bread.
Chapter Seventeen
My week had been so strange I never imagined it could possibly get any more bizarre, yet as I straddled the toilet inside Maximus Investigations, a dripping wet blob of something in my hands, I realized how wrong I’d been.
The tank cover stood perched against the wall as I stared at the thing. Every curve had apparently been etched into my memory during the few moments I’d held it five years earlier. It looked exactly the same and strangely familiar, as if I’d seen it every day of my life. When Max had snatched it from me, some part of me had known where he’d hidden it, but I hadn’t bothered to think much about it since. If he wanted to hide it, I figured that was his business and I respected that.
I held the blob up to the bare lightbulb dangling from the ceiling to examine it more closely. Rounded on the top, flat on the bottom. Like a grapefruit-sized drop of water or a strangely shaped loaf of artisan bread. I’d always assumed the translucent material was Lucite, but it was far too cloudy. It looked natural, like amber, but not. Maybe some kind of resin? Whatever it was, the stuff was incredibly hard.
The object embedded inside was tough to make out clearly, but it looked like a rock. Vaguely heart-shaped, gray, rough. The light caught it just right and bits of it glowed red. I had to squint to see it, the change was really slight, but then they glowed again. And again. And again. The damn thing was pulsing, just as it had the first time I’d seen it. All
this time I’d thought I’d imagined that. I stood motionless with the thing over my head, becoming more anxious with every pulse. It took probably a full minute to realize why it upset me to the very core. It matched the beating of my own heart.
Despite the overwhelming sense of discomfort, I felt the guys — all five of them — approaching the office. And they were excited. Everything else was static next to the torrent of their emotions flowing through me. I’d never experienced anything quite like it.
I smiled, knowing they couldn’t wait to see me. It felt nice to be appreciated. But I certainly didn’t want them to find me standing over a toilet holding this dripping wet blob. I quickly patted it dry with some paper towels before shoving the thing into my backpack. I moved my bullet journal and makeup bag out of the way so it could sit on the bottom and not squish anything. Thank god I’d left my laptop at the house or the blob might have dinged it. I managed to replace the toilet tank cover as they spilled through the front door.
“We found Enoch!” Ash shouted.
I slung my backpack over my shoulder as I rushed out of the bathroom. “What!”
“Seven-oh-one North Farm Drive in Ventura,” Hale added as the three Novak brothers nodded in confirmation.
“We need to go get him before he finds another rock to hide under,” Danic grunted.
“That’s fantastic!” I said, relieved that everything was coming together relatively easily. “Max says it’s more important than ever that we learn who hired him.”
Kellum jerked in surprise. “You talked to him again? Is he back?”
“Don’t tell us you got him to start using a cell phone and didn’t tell us,” Ryen joked.
“He’s not back,” I said to Kellum, then turned to Ryen. “And have you lost your mind? I just…have a connection to him, I guess.”
I ignored their gawking expressions and walked outside. They soon followed, Danic locking up behind them.
