Dragon Riders

by Elle Casey

  I waited for Tony to get dressed and then had my banana breakfast with him in his big, empty kitchen. I half-listened to him shoot the shit about his friends in chess club and his biology teacher being so unreasonable expecting him to know all the material she was testing on today. Most of what he was saying went in one ear and out the other, though, because I was trying to figure out what Red’s deal was. Why had he sent me here? Was it a mistake or was it on purpose? Was there something that I’d done to make the spell go awry? All I knew was that when I got back to my regular place and my regular time, I was going to make him pay for this bullshit…causing me to have to start all over again with myself and Tony at our stupid human school…forcing me to have to play dumb with my best friend so I could get him to go down to Miami… Yeah. Forget a comasizing; I was going to zap Red’s ass with The Green so hard, he’d never come out of the coma-void it sent him into. I smiled just thinking about it.

  “Jayne, you’re scaring me with that look on your face. What are you so happy about?”

  I shook my head to get it out of the clouds. “Nothing. Just imagining getting some righteous revenge on somebody who totally deserves it.”

  Tony frowned. “You need to leave Brad Powers alone.”

  The name of that turd-for-brains pricked my ears up right up. “Why do you say that? Why bring Brad Powers into the mix?”

  “Because, I know he makes you mad sometimes, and I heard…” He shrugged, obviously leaving something off the end of his thought. The way he kept trying to look away and not let me catch his eye told me way more than his empty words had.

  “What did you hear, exactly? What were you about to say?”

  He started gathering up our dishes. “Never mind. It was nothing.”

  I grabbed his arm, keeping him from walking away with our plates—mine with an empty banana peel in it. “Tell me. I won’t kill him, I promise.” I might zap him with The Green a little bit, but I wouldn’t actually end his life. I had to bite the insides of my cheeks to keep from smiling at the vision of him that was dancing around in my head: Brad Powers crying like a baby, on his knees and drooling, seeing me as the mother of all fae. Oh, I shouldn’t. But I so want to!

  Tony’s gaze dropped to my hip. “You can’t bring that knife to school, you know.”

  I looked down at it. “Oh. Yeah. Forgot it was there. I’ll put it in my pocket.” I let him go and unhooked it from my belt, shoving it down into my pants. I moved it sideways and then diagonally, trying to keep it from looking suspicious, but no matter what I did, I had a weird bulge on my leg. Holy tiny boner alert. I left the little stick that used to be a dragon fang attached to my thigh because I was worried it would break if I tried to put it in my pocket with the knife. It was hardly noticeable.

  “What is that supposed to be?” Tony asked, pointing at the tiny, lame version of Blackie on my leg. “A magic wand?” He smiled like he was trying hard not to laugh.

  “No, fool, it’s not a magic wand.” It’s a dragon tooth that could melt your skin off if I wanted it to. “It’s just a lucky stick.” I was so disappointed in my non-ability to pull the real fae version of the dragon fang out and let him see what it could do. For sure I wouldn’t have had to beg him to come to Miami after that display of awesomeness.

  “But the way you have it strapped to your leg is…kind of funny. You have to admit. You look like a Harry Potter fan gone rogue.” He giggled at his stupid joke.

  I sighed as I pulled it out of the straps and jammed it into the back pocket of my jeans. “Happy now?” I left the holder for it where it was. Call it a fashion statement.

  “If they catch you with either one of those things in school, it’s zero tolerance, you know. They’re considered weapons, even that stick. You’ll get in big trouble.”

  I bugged my eyes out at him. “Ooo, big trouble? I’m so scared.” He had no idea what big trouble was. Five weapon-wielding demons coming after you in hell, intent on ending your life before you can make contact with a dragon who you’re supposed to hang out with as a companion at the portal to hell? Now that’s big trouble. I could take the vice principal down with one finger. Pfff, please. Scared? Don’t make me laugh.

  He turned away and walked over to the sink. “You should be scared, Jayne. If you screw up too many more times, you won’t get into college. And then where will you be?”

  I started laughing so hard, I fell off the stool I was sitting on. The idea of me going to college was ludicrous. Who’s got time for college when she’s busy being Mother to the fae, fighting demons, negotiating with angels, and out-maneuvering Fates? Not this girl. Ridiculous. He sounded so much like his parents, though, it was awful. I seriously needed to rescue his skinny ass, and soon.

  He hissed out his annoyance at me as he brushed past, moving to the foyer to get his backpack full of books. “Come on. I don’t want to be late.”

  The clock in his kitchen said we had plenty of time. “We’re going to get there a half hour early. How could you possibly be late?”

  “I don’t trust you not to delay me on the way,” he said, grabbing his backpack and throwing it over both shoulders. Tony never wore his backpack on just one side.

  I followed him out, my arms empty; Elementals don’t have time for school books.

  Tony noticed my carefree look as he was locking the front door. “Where’s your stuff?” He leaned over to look behind me. “You don’t have your backpack or anything.”

  I didn’t want him to dwell on the issue—he could be a real nitpicker when it came to schoolwork—so I pulled an answer out of my butt. “I don’t have any tests today and my back was hurting.” I made a few lame-ass stretching moves and winced extra hard to emphasize the point.

  He stared at me for a few seconds but let it go, shaking his head, probably in disappointment over my complete lack of interest in learning. I wasn’t going to worry about it; he’d soon learn that we had bigger fish to fry. And that when there’s something worth learning, I’m there, one hundred percent. Talk to me about fae magic and how we can defeat evil from taking over the world and I would be all ears. But talk to me about the Battle of the Bulge? Uh, no. Not happening. Even though the name of that battle makes me giggle every time I hear it.

  Together, we walked down the front steps and over the stone pavers in his yard that led to the sidewalk. We made our way to school in companionable silence, and I reveled in the concept that for just a few moments, I had my pre-changeling best friend standing next to me, and he was completely oblivious to all of the crazy things that were going to be happening very shortly in our future lives. He didn’t know that he had fae blood running through his veins, that he was part of a huge supernatural community that was in the process of battling demons determined to take over what the humans called Heaven, and that he would soon leave behind this world for another that no humans knew of, a place where he was very special and very well-respected. It almost made me long to stay here for a little while longer, ignorance being bliss and all that jazz. Almost, but not quite. Being fae was still way better than being human, even though it meant our lives were ridiculously complicated and threatened pretty much on a daily basis.

  Just as we were reaching the edge of the school grounds, a car drove by. Something flew out of its window and hit me in the leg. I looked down and saw a balled up paper bag from a fast-food restaurant. I looked up at the perpetrator. “Hey, dick!” I yelled. I’d recognize that car anywhere. Brad Powers—assbag extraordinaire. He’d just nailed me with his garbage, the fuckwit. It reminded me that Tony had failed to cave under the pressure of my interrogation earlier and reveal to me what he’d heard about Brad and me.

  Tony put his hand on my arm. “Jayne, don’t do anything. Just let it go. Who cares what the rumors say. They don’t mean anything.”

  “What rumors?”

  The way Tony clamped his mouth shut and shook his head, I knew there’d be no getting any information out of him there. I’d work on him later. I had other shit to deal
with first. I turned my head and narrowed my eyes at the car, slowly gathering The Green’s elemental Earth power up into my body. “Don’t worry, Tony, my friend. I won’t touch him.” With my hands. I could easily sense Brad’s presence inside the car, and I sent a nice jab of Green energy right up into what I hoped was his butthole.

  The car leapt forward and then came to a screeching halt—two times. Then the door flew open, and Brad spilled out onto the asphalt, holding his rear end and looking over his shoulder.

  Tony stopped and stared, his mouth falling open. I held my stomach and laughed and laughed. It felt like I’d just mainlined pure happiness. Fae-style revenge is ever so much sweeter than the human kind.

  Tony looked at me, completely confused. “What just happened?”

  I shrugged, sighing with pleasure as I leaned over a little, holding my sore stomach muscles. All this laughing was turning into a serious workout. “How the heck should I know?” I raised my voice so Brad could hear it. “Looks like you need to go back to driver’s ed, Flowers.”

  He picked himself up off the ground and glared at me. “Nice hair, G.I. Jack Off.”

  I patted my shorn non-tresses and smiled. “Thanks for noticing. I had no idea you had such a big crush on me, Brad. But don’t waste your time asking me to prom, because the answer is No. Your car and you both suck donkey dong.”

  He screwed up his face like he’d just smelled a giant dog turd. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  I shrugged. “Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. But I’m not interested, so you should probably think about moving on. Find someone your own speed.” I snorted at my awesome comeback. I loved not being afraid of a guy twice my size.

  When Tony spoke, his voice was at least one octave higher than normal and mostly a whisper. “Jayne, what are you doing? He’s gonna pound us!”

  An eerie feeling went through me when I heard those words come out of his mouth. Tony had said the exact same thing right before our human lives were turned upside down almost a year ago. It launched our trek to Miami where we met Jared and got recruited into the fae world.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, reaching into my pocket to pull out my lame-ass pocket knife. “I’ve got this covered.” Last time I taunted Brad, he came at me aggressively, and I engaged him in my awesome version of the high-school fighter’s stare-down…right before he pushed me and I landed on my butt in the grass. It prompted Tony to go all commando badass, pulling out a gun to protect me. I glanced at his backpack, but he didn’t seem to be in the process of reaching into it for a weapon. “I can handle his ass.”

  But Brad didn’t come at me. Instead, he dusted himself off, got back in his car, and left with squealing tires; and Tony never touched his backpack. Oh, shit. What have I done?

  Tony and I started walking again, only slower this time. I was panicking that I’d messed up our lives completely—that in order for us to get to Miami, the confrontation with Brad was supposed to happen but it hadn’t. Am I screwing up my future as a fae by doing things differently? I felt sick all over again. This is bad. This is really bad. I could feel it.

  “That was seriously weird,” Tony said as we turned toward the main building that led to our classrooms. “I thought you said you hadn’t heard the rumors.”

  I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “What in the hell are you talking about? What rumors, Tony?”

  “You just said to him that you weren’t going to prom with him.”

  “Yeah. So?” Tony was making no sense at all, and it sure wasn’t helping to lower my freak-out mode level, either.

  “So?” He just stared at me.

  “Are you saying the rumor was that he was going to ask me to prom?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged, looking embarrassed.

  “Who in the hell would start a rumor like that?”

  His face turned bright red, a sure sign that he knew more than he was letting on.

  “Spill it, Tones, or I’m gonna get pissed.”

  He looked at my hand. “Are you going to cut me?”

  I followed his gaze and quickly shoved the pocket knife down into my jean pocket again. “No, don’t be stupid. Just tell me the rest of that ridiculous rumor so I can figure out who I have to have a conversation with.”

  He sighed. “Fine. But I think you should just let it go. It’s not a big deal.”

  “According to you.”

  “Yeah, okay. Anyway, someone in one of my classes last week said that you guys are always in the vice principal’s office together, so I guess the assumption was that there was something going on between you two.”

  I barked out a laugh and turned to continue our walk to school, my stress level back down to almost max instead of fully maxed out. “Oh my god. People have nothing better to do with their days than make shit up out of nothing. How precious.”

  “And you’re always arguing with each other,” he added lamely.

  I glanced at my seriously misguided friend. “Which is the basis of every healthy relationship, I guess?”

  “Well, no. But it does seem to suggest that there might be some chemistry there…”

  I held my hand up in his face to stop those nasty words from going any farther. “No. Just…no. Whoever is feeding you that garbage needs to stop. Tell me who it was.” We paused under a tree full of leaves. I opened my mouth to tell Tony that shit was about to get real if he wasn’t going to tell me what I wanted to know, when the tree gave a mighty shudder and dropped half of its greenery right on top of me.

  Tony looked up in trepidation, probably expecting to find a bald eagle up there shaking things loose, but of course there was nothing there.

  “What…is going on?” he asked, fear lacing his voice.

  “A bunch of weird shit that better start making some sense very soon.” I looked around but saw no one appearing either guilty or satisfied with what had just happened. It was like only Tony and I had noticed the entire thing.

  Tony looked at me. “Is it just me, or does everything seem…kind of off today.”

  “Yeah,” I said, with a huge load of dread in my heart. “Something tells me today is going to be a really strange one.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  MY FIRST PERIOD wasn’t with Tony, so I spent the next thirty minutes at a desk in a different classroom with a borrowed pen, drawing fake tattoos on my hand. Waves of nostalgia rolled over me as I stole glances at the other students nearby. They were watching the teacher attentively, taking notes, clearly interested in being there. I couldn’t believe how simple their lives were. I used to sit in this exact classroom and wish my life were different. And now it was super different, but also super crazy. I had a whole new family and a whole new life, but a ton of new responsibilities too. I wondered if I would have kept wishing for a change if I had known all that the change would entail. A voice in my head was telling me maybe I should stay in this time for a while and live this ignorant life for a few days. Ignorance could be bliss, right?

  But then I thought about never using my elemental powers again, never having Tim fart and blame the fruit on the buffet, never having Spike cuddle up next to me and whisper funny, sexy things in my ear, never having my friends hang out in my room and talk about all the ways that we were going to mess with the cranky old fae around us. And I remembered that the Overworld was still full of demons killing angels and how them winning that battle could mean the end of the world all these innocent humans were living in. I had responsibilities, and even though they were a pain in the ass sometimes, it was up to me to handle them. I couldn’t just dump my troubles on somebody else and expect them to manage things for me.

  “Jayne? I get the impression that I’m boring you.” The teacher was glaring at me and pointing a ruler in my direction. The students around me were laughing. The girl to my right gave me a disgusted look.

  I shook my head, hoping to stop this train before it got too far down the tracks. “No, you’re very interesting. I’m loving this lecture.” I was proud
of how mature I sounded. Fae life had taught me a lot.

  “Is that so? Well, how about you give me the answer to my question, then, since you’re so interested?”

  I could feel my face turning red with embarrassment. It didn’t matter that I was the Mother to all the fae out in the real world. In here, in this place I didn’t even want to be in anymore, I was just a kid who wasn’t paying attention and about to get her ass kicked by her teacher. Sigh and double sigh. “I guess I kinda missed that question. I was still stuck on your last point.” I smiled and nodded, hoping she’d move on.

  “And what would that last point be?” She tipped her head, waiting for my answer.

  My grin slipped a little. Quick! Think of something! Go-go gadget brain, don’t let me down! “That thing about the…guy. That interesting guy who…did that interesting thing.” I had no frigging clue what she’d been talking about for the last half hour. It could have been George Washington or the Pythagorean Theorem for all I knew. I couldn’t even remember what classroom I was sitting in and nothing on the walls was cluing me in either. How had I forgotten so much?

  She walked over to her desk and took out a little notepad that I knew only too well from the top drawer. “Bring this to the vice principal’s office with you.” She held up the pink slip that meant I was going to be spending a couple extra hours in school, and her expression went dark. “Get your detention scheduled as soon as possible.”

  I tossed my pen to the girl who had loaned it to me and walked to the front of the classroom. I wanted so badly to zap every single person in that room with The Green—give them a glimpse of who I really was—but there was no point in causing pandemonium or showing off. My only goal was to get out of there and back to my real life, and to do that, I needed to fly under the radar for the rest of this very short but very annoying trip through my past.