And he loved her. Nathaniel Clarke, the high priest of the Order of the Dragon, had admitted his love for her. After ten years of her abandonment. Even without her magic. Even with dark circles under her eyes, hair that desperately needed the loving attention of a hairdresser, and the fine lines and wrinkles that seemed to have formed the moment she’d turned thirty. He loved her.
The temptation to give in to the feeling, to stay here and play house and let him take care of everything, was almost overwhelming. It was a temptation greater than her physical desire for him, even though that burned bright within her. Nathaniel would keep her safe always. She’d always have enough to eat and a place to sleep.
And that was absolutely terrifying. Everyone she’d ever allowed herself to love had eventually abandoned her. He would too eventually. He’d collect her and then become bored with her, and she’d have nowhere else to go. There wasn’t another family waiting for her or even a foster system to catch her if things turned bad. If she trusted Nathaniel, she’d be walking the high wire with no safety net.
She finished her breakfast and then went straight back to her room, feeling even more exhausted than before. A text from Tom blipped on her screen.
Hope progress is being made. Text me an update when you have a chance.
She turned off the phone, crawled into bed, and curled on her side. Pulling the covers over her head, she allowed herself to slide into an uneasy sleep.
“Clarissa? Clarissa?”
Clarissa desperately wanted to remain unconscious, but Nathaniel’s commanding voice forced her eyes open. His stern face stared down at her. She yawned and stretched. “Hmm?”
“You’ve overslept. Get ready. We need to leave soon.”
She blinked up at him. He was phenomenally attractive. She’d read somewhere that gray eyes were a mutation between green and blue. His were the color of stormy skies right now, although they became magnificently purple in the throes of magic. With his complexion and dark hair, they were positively stunning.
“Where are we going again?”
He huffed. “To consult with a supernatural being who will know how to break your curse.”
“Who? I thought you said the curse used dragon magic as a catalyst.” She rubbed her eyes with both hands. “Who knows more about dragon magic than you and Warwick?”
He scowled at her. “For once in your life, just do as I ask, Clarissa.”
All softness had bled from his expression, and she climbed out of bed to escape his prickly exterior. “Fine. You don’t have to get snippy with me.”
He glanced toward the ceiling as she unceremoniously undressed and reached for a change of clothes. After last night, she wasn’t going to pretend to be bashful.
“There’s something I need to tell you. I wanted to tell you this morning, but I didn’t get the opportunity.”
“Sounds serious. What’s going on?”
“A friend contacted me early this morning. It seems there is someone in London who looks exactly like you.” Everything about his expression seemed to indicate this was horrible news, although Clarissa didn’t understand why.
“I’m a celebrity, Nate. People try to imitate my appearance all the time. There was a woman in Russia who paid tens of thousands of dollars to have plastic surgery in order to look like me.” She shrugged. “It’s weird, I admit, but not the end of the world.”
He cleared his throat. “Do you remember Peter Wallace?”
“Of course. Is he still teaching history at Oxford?”
Nathaniel nodded. “This woman who looks like you brought him a manuscript… that was written by the order. He said she was your doppelgänger.”
She shook her head. “What? What does that mean?”
“I wasn’t that concerned at first. Even Wallace said it could be a coincidence. But this morning, after I left you, I went to Relics and Runes. I have a new worker named Albert. He doesn’t know what I am. He showed me a picture, a selfie he took with a woman he claimed looked exactly like the famous Clarissa. Now, Albert has no idea you and I were ever an item. He doesn’t know anything about me. He’s new and he’s a barely more than a boy. But he found this woman attractive. Asked her out.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket and brought up a photo.
“What the fuck?” Clarissa was looking at a picture of herself in the lower level of Relics and Runes, only her hair was its natural shade of black and she didn’t own that dress. “It’s uncanny. It’s like looking into a mirror.”
“I thought so too. But the really unsettling part is that she was buying a book on dragon magic.”
“Hmm?” Clarissa stared at him with total disbelief. What did it mean? This was too weird to be a coincidence.
“A natural doppelgänger is a very rare magical occurrence. Extremely rare among humans. She could be yours. If so, I have no idea why she’s here. Perhaps she’s tapped into my magic or the magic of the order somehow for some nefarious reason we have yet to understand.”
Clarissa stared at the picture of her double. The woman didn’t look evil. If anything, she looked normal, more normal than Clarissa herself. She was definitely younger, now that she inspected the face more closely.
“We know that whoever did this to you took a strand of your hair. Perhaps this isn’t a doppelgänger at all but a skinwalker. The magical possibilities are dark, and this thing seems to be working its way closer to home.”
Dressed now, she ducked into the bathroom and squeezed a blob of toothpaste on her toothbrush. “So what do you think we should do?” she called out the door before inserting the brush and starting to scrub.
He appeared in the doorway. “I need to know exactly what we are dealing with. We might be able to use Wallace to lure this thing to us, but without knowing what it’s capable of, it’s just too dangerous. We could be walking into a trap. We need help. We need more information, someone to tell us what it is and why it might be interested in you.”
Clarissa swished and spat. “Who could know that? We’d need a seer or an oracle.”
Nathaniel nodded. “There’s only one creature in the United Kingdom that sees all and knows all.”
“You can’t mean…” Clarissa knew of only one such creature, and it was a horrible abomination.
Nathaniel confirmed her greatest fear. “Grindylow. Hurry. I want to make it to Lancashire before nightfall.”
Chapter Twenty-One
He had to be out of his mind. As Nathaniel thought about what he’d have to do to get Grindylow to answer their questions, he experienced true fear. The creature was unlike any other, a water demon as ancient as the water itself. Even when Nathaniel was in the area, he stayed as far away from her lake as possible.
But Grindylow was an oracle. He had to try.
“I thought Grindylow required the sacrifice of a child in exchange for answering any questions? I’m telling you right now, I’m not murdering a kid for the sake of my magic,” Clarissa said.
“It’s good to know you have a line you will not cross.”
“So then what’s your plan?”
“I’m still working it out.”
“We have four hours in the back of this car. Work it out with me.”
Nathaniel looked out the window. The funny thing about dragons and immortality was this: he could be killed. No, he would never die of natural causes, and he was very difficult to kill. Decapitation was the only proven way to kill a dragon. Permanent death. Clarissa understood that, and if he told her his plan in advance and gave her too long to think about it, she might attempt to talk him out of it. He couldn’t have that. This was a necessary risk.
He’d have to change the subject.
“What have you told Tom about your time here?”
“I’m in a spa in Switzerland, undergoing experimental therapy for my strained vocal cords.”
She leaned back against the seat, and he was struck by how graceful she was. She held herself like a queen, not an orphan who’d grown up with foster c
arers, some of whom had made it a habit to slap her around and underfeed her. She’d never had a dance class as a child. Nor a voice lesson. But whoever her ancestors were, her real ancestors, they’d given her something. Something a hard life couldn’t take away.
“However will he survive without you?” Nathaniel had never liked the bastard.
“Oh, you know Tom. I’m not his only client, but if my career went under, he’d take a hit.”
“Financially or personally? I always wondered if he fancied you back in the day.”
She snorted. “Oh, he did. Tried to get in my pants on a number of occasions.”
Nathaniel’s dragon twisted, and a growl rumbled through his chest before he could do anything about it.
“Easy,” she said and laughed lightly.
Nathaniel rubbed his chest and cleared his throat. “Apologies. It’s instinct.”
“Still?” She gave him a soft, curious look.
He hated himself for tipping his hand once again, but he nodded. It was the truth. His dragon desperately wanted her and would likely have done nightmarish things to Tom if ever given the chance. “Still.”
“I don’t owe you an explanation, but if it makes you feel better, it never happened. Tom is… not my type. Plus I know exactly what he is. I know he’d use me. I’m his client, not his doormat, and I’d like to keep it that way. I have some self-respect.”
A smile stretched his lips. “Good. You should be with someone who truly adores you.”
“What about you? You must have had a long parade of lovers over the past ten years.” Her gaze darted to her tangled fingers.
“No,” he said evenly.
“No?” She studied his face. “Why not? There was always someone interested in the high priest of the order—witch, fairy, druid, or human.”
He rubbed his hand over his mouth. “I am a man of particular taste. A busy man. I’m fine on my own.”
She frowned and looked out the window. “You always are… fine, I mean. I have this memory of you from when we were together. It was the first time I really understood how old you are.”
He laughed darkly. “Ancient compared to you, I suppose, but I will remind you that I do not age like those of your species. My body is no more than thirty by your standards.”
She raised an eyebrow and a blush stained her cheeks. “Oh, I know. I saw for myself, up close and personal, last night. I’ll look older than you in a few years.”
“Never,” he said quietly, admiring the way the light from the window backlit her profile.
She rolled her eyes at him. “I’d just started staying with you because you said you couldn’t bear to know I was sleeping in the hostels. We hadn’t even, you know…” She lowered her chin. “…become a couple yet. But I was staying at Mistwood and this man came to your door with horns growing out of his head.”
Nathaniel laughed. “I remember that. Alisdair. Poor Scot didn’t know he had fairy blood and tried to do a transfiguration spell. Got stuck halfway.”
“Anyway, he came in and fell to his knees. He was shaking, trembling from fear. And it took me a moment to realize he was afraid of you.”
“Well, he should have been. It’s against the code of the order to perform that type of magic without permission. Not to mention, his motives were sketchy. The man was attempting to turn himself into a goddamned ram. He said he wanted to spy on his neighbor about a land dispute, but really, what a strange way to go about it.”
She giggled. “I agree. And he was a sight for someone like me who wasn’t familiar with magic. But I remember thinking that you must be extremely powerful for him to fall on the floor, shaking like that. Were you a gangster? A killer? The head of a cult? Why was this man, who was just as big as you, with horns growing out of his head, so afraid of you that he was practically wetting himself?”
Nathaniel snorted. “You must have assumed I was a monster.”
“I wondered, for a moment. But then you told him to get up, blew some sort of powder into his face, and made the horns go away.”
“I also gave him graveyard duty for a month.”
“Graveyard duty?”
“In decades past, it was common for magical folk to sit in a graveyard at night and speak to the dead on the rare chance one of them should have any warnings or suggestions for us. Truthfully, the dead will speak to anyone who will listen. They like to hear themselves talk. Self-importance doesn’t die with the body. We stopped doing it because we’d often get inundated with stories and questions about people’s descendants. It wasn’t as useful as it was time consuming.”
“You made him sit in a graveyard and talk to ghosts for a month?” She smiled wickedly.
“No better way to teach someone to respect magic.” He gave her a wink. “Did it scare you? Seeing me like that?”
“No. It made me… admire you. You could have handled that situation in many ways, but you showed compassion. I’ve known men who would use any excuse to flex their muscle, but I’ve never seen you abuse your power. Ever.”
The corner of his mouth quirked upward. “One who knows their power has no need to prove it.”
She snorted. “See, human men don’t go around saying things like that unless they’re a yogi or Russell Brand.”
He waved a dismissive hand in the air.
“And then the first time I saw you shift… When you took me to your treasure room to show me… I really understood. You are a dragon. A massive purple dragon with claws and teeth as long as I am tall. You can take anything that you want, but you don’t. For as long as I’ve known you, I have never seen you use what you are to your advantage unfairly.” She sighed. “Do you know how unusual that is? To have the power you do and no ego to go along with it?”
This conversation was making him uncomfortable. He pulled his pipe from his pocket and lit up, thankful for the familiar numbness of Warwick’s tobacco. “I can’t have everything I want. I can’t have you. Even if I took you, you wouldn’t be mine.”
She sighed and met his eyes. “I’ll always be yours, Nathaniel,” she whispered. “But if you had me, if you kept me like all the gold and jewels you have in your treasure room, you’d notice I wouldn’t shine as bright. You wouldn’t want me anymore if you had me. I’d just be another thing you’d already collected.”
His eyes narrowed and his inner dragon chuffed. She was serious. She turned to stare out the window, and it occurred to him that this was it. This was the truth. She’d never told it to him straight before. She’d said she wanted to strike out on her own. She’d said it was because she couldn’t stand the thought of losing her singing career or her audience. But the truth cut deeper. She’d never had a real family. No one had ever loved her the way she should be loved. And so she didn’t think it was possible. She honestly believed he’d grow tired of her. She’d grow old and he’d lose interest. And if she’d given up her art for that, she’d truly have nothing left when it happened.
“Clarissa,” he said softly, “that’s not how a dragon’s bond works. When we mate, we mate for life, and life to an immortal dragon is a very, very long time.”
Why on earth had she told Nathaniel all that? By God, she might as well cut open her chest and show him her still-beating heart. She’d never been so forthcoming or vulnerable about her deepest fears before. Maybe she’d never realized exactly what had motivated her to leave back then until now. Or maybe…
“Did Warwick add some kind of truth spell to that smoke?” She stared at his pipe. “I shouldn’t have said all that.”
He shook his head. “Same as always.” He blew a smoke ring, and it turned into a bright red heart above her head.
“Oh.”
“I’m glad you told me. Now I can tell you how utterly full of crap you are.”
“Excuse me?”
He leaned toward her. “You are full of shit, Clarissa. You can’t possibly believe that to be true. Not anymore.”
She shrugged. “Why not? Because you say dragons mate for life
? People will say anything to get what they want.”
“Do people usually wait decades? Do people…?”
“What?”
“Never mind.” He looked away from her and smoked his pipe. When he spoke again, his voice was fire and brimstone. His gray eyes flashed. “You underestimate me, Clarissa. You shouldn’t.”
A chill crept along her skin although the temperature in the car had actually risen a few degrees. That was his inner dragon speaking. Nathaniel was the dragon and the dragon was him. He was a shifter. But the part of him that slept when he was in his human form sometimes woke up. She’d seen the dragon last night when he’d hunted her after the ritual. And now the beast was right there on the surface.
It was a humbling thing to look into the face of a dragon, especially when you didn’t have any magic of your own to protect yourself. She watched the hills roll by and didn’t speak again until the driver, Emory, did.
“Almost to the lake, Mr. Clarke. Where would you like me to park?”
“Close enough to the water that you can help if need be. You have the weapon?”
“I do. Practiced a bit with it beforehand.”
“What weapon is that?”
“Crossbow,” Nathaniel stated. “Holy-water-soaked bolts.”
“What exactly is the plan, Nate?”
“We offer Grindylow a child and then ask her questions.”
Clarissa inclined her head. “And where do we get this child?”
Nathaniel wiggled the fingers of his right hand where a large amethyst ring resided. Clarissa knew few specifics about how dragon magic worked, but she knew the ring was the closest thing to a magic wand that dragons possessed.
“Explain.”
The amethyst flashed and Nathaniel changed. His body folded in on itself in a way that made Clarissa profoundly uncomfortable. It was too angular. There were too many folding joints and protruding bones. The transformation was physical, not mystical, and coupled with the slurp of bodily juices and the crunch of grinding bones, it was truly disgusting. She had to turn her head away. When the noise stopped, she tentatively glanced back at Nate. A twelve-year-old boy was in his place, dressed in a child-sized pair of jeans and a T-shirt he’d procured somewhere.
The Dragon of Cecil Court (The Treasure of Paragon Book 5) Page 12
