“Mom,” Kaylee said. “He’s right.”
“How do you know that, Kaylee?” Her dad said. “Surely there’s someone more qualified. More stable. More…sane.”
But Alastair was reluctantly shaking his head. “I hate to say it, but if half of what I’ve heard Randall has done is true then he is equipped for the danger Kaylee may face. And his elemental magic is close to hers.
“A dragon-kin should have a say in who they have as their mentor, and Kaylee has picked Randall,” Alastair continued. “We’ll see if it turns out to be the right choice.”
“Yeah, we’ll see,” Kaylee said, giving Randy a hard look. He smirked.
“Randall and I are going to have a very long chat tonight before Kaylee begins lessons,” Kaylee’s mom said quietly. “We have a few things to iron out.”
Randy’s smile dropped. “I look forward to it, sis.”
“And while you are training Kaylee or residing in Scarsdale, you are hereby under Scarsdale Convocation rules and order,” Alastair said. “You follow our laws, you confer with us before you do anything, or there will be consequences.”
“Sure. Whatever. Maybe with me here you’ll actually get your little rogue dragon-kin issue packed away.”
“How do you know about that?” Alastair said sharply.
Randy grinned, tapping the side of his head. “Oh, I’m half as good as they say, Alastair. There’s a lot I know that I’d just love to share with you. I’m sure you wouldn’t mind the extra helping hand of a fully trained dragon-kin every now and then, would you?”
The temptation was evident on Alastair’s face but he managed to stamp it down. “It…wouldn’t hurt.”
There came a cry of alarm from the hallway a second before Jeremy stumbled in. He froze when everyone stared at him.
“Hi…” He gave a sheepish grin. “I, uh, found your dog-thing, Uncle Randy.”
The electric fox sauntered in behind him, looking rather pleased with itself.
“Completely forgot about that,” Randy said. He waved his hand and vanished the fox before rustling Jeremy’s hair. “You’ve gotten big!”
“Were you eavesdropping again, squirt?” Kaylee said.
Jeremy made a face at her. “It’s not eavesdropping if you can hear everything from the stairs.”
“That’s enough for tonight,” Kaylee’s dad said. “Jeremy, set the table. Kaylee, homework.”
“Randall,” Kaylee’s mom swept her arm towards her office. “Let’s talk.”
“Right.” Randy straightened his rumpled jacket. “Interrogation time.” He ruffled Jeremy’s hair again and walked past Kaylee.
“Training starts tomorrow, Kaylee,” he called back. “Hope you’re ready.”
The office door slammed shut.
“He’s so cool,” Jeremy said. “Think he’ll let me drive his motorcycle?”
“I hope you made the right choice, Kaylee,” Alastair said, staring at the office door.
“I hope I did too,” Kaylee said.
Chapter Six
Kaylee hadn’t thought she’d regret choosing Randy so soon. Definitely not the second she walked out of school and saw him casually kick standing his motorcycle in the parking lot’s pickup circle.
“Subtle he is not,” Jade muttered beside her.
Another van honked at Randy and he lazily raised one gloved hand and waved them around. Another honk, and the hand began dropping fingers down to one.
“Randy!” Kaylee hissed.
“Hey! Princess!” Randy called. He patted the seat behind him. “Daylight’s burning!”
“You did pick him,” Jade said, almost regretfully.
Randy raised his hand to shout again and Kaylee nearly zapped him right there, witnesses or not.
“I’m coming!” She shout-whispered. “Just give me one second!”
Randy smirked and put his hand down. He winked at a mom in a minivan behind him.
“Just take a deep breath and try not to kill him,” Jade said. “We can hang out tonight, when we’re both done.”
“I’ll need to.”
“Just think about Friday.”
“What’s on Friday?”
Jade patted her arm gently. “You really are out of it. Maddox’s first lacrosse game? We were talking about it at lunch.”
“Oh, right.” In all honesty, Kaylee had completely forgotten, though lately Jade never failed to be on top of anything Maddox was doing.
Randy yelled again. Kaylee ground her teeth, pulling her backpack straps so tight they hurt. “See you tonight.”
She ignored the small group of students gathering around the pick-up lot. Kaylee spotted Dani, her jaw slack.
“You know him?” she mouthed in disbelief.
“I’ll explain later,” Kaylee mouthed back.
“You sure took your sweet time,” Randy said when Kaylee reached him.
“I’m perfectly capable of walking to wherever it is we’re going.”
“I haven’t even shown you where it is yet.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll walk across the country as long as you don’t come here again.”
Randy snickered and shoved a helmet in her hands. “Strap that on and hold tight. I’m not having any niece of mine splatter her brains out on my watch. That’s to do on your own time.”
Kaylee settled herself on the back and reluctantly wrapped her arms around Randy’s midsection. A buzzing current of electricity traveled up the length of her arms, as if just beneath his skin was a live-wire waiting to break free.
Randy revved the engine louder than necessary, then peeled out into the flow of traffic, cutting off another mini-van and eliciting a chorus of angry honks in his wake.
“I think I’m gonna like it here!” Randy yelled back to her.
Kaylee recognized where they were the second Randy turned from the commercial district of Scarsdale and onto a more rural country road. Though Kaylee had only ever taken the foot path out to this place, the checkerboard fields of tan, dead plant stalks and groves of intermittent splotches of trees were familiar.
“I have some questions for the hag,” Randy said. “Want to see what she has and hasn’t covered.”
The motorcycle skidded on gravel as Randy took a sharp turn down a long drive leading to Baba’s house. Even though she wasn’t taking lessons from her anymore, Kaylee’s stomach clenched with nervousness as Randy parked and shut off the engine.
From the state of her house it would appear Baba had taken special care to make it look as uninviting as possible. There were more rotting side boards than Kaylee remembered from just a week ago. The columns supporting the roof of the back porch were bent, some splintered like a man with his teeth punched in. The windows were all stained yellow and more than one (though Kaylee was to blame for this) was cracked.
Baba was standing on the back porch before Randy had even dismounted.
“Stay here,” he said. “This’ll only take a sec.”
“Kaylee!” Edwin appeared behind Baba, and despite it having only been a couple days since she’d seen him last, Kaylee was beyond relieved. At least here was one friendly face she could count on.
“I didn’t say you could stop training,” Baba griped.
“I’m taking my break now,” Edwin said, then gingerly slipped past Randy on the stairs. Randy rolled his eyes and stopped in front of Baba.
“Randall,” Baba said.
“Baba,” Randy said.
“Never thought I’d see you crawl out of whatever hole you’d buried yourself in.”
Randy spread his arms. “Behold, I have risen again. We need to talk. I have a few questions about the girl.”
Baba nodded over her shoulder. “Inside. You like scotch?” she asked as they both vanished. Edwin whistled.
“Ookay…my dad told me, but I didn’t believe it. Is that guy for real?”
“Seems like it,” Kaylee said glumly.
“He’s really your uncle?”
“Unfortunately.”
>
“And you actually picked him?”
“I didn’t have another choice, Edwin. I need to keep training and he’s an electric dragon-kin. And my uncle. Family has to count for something, right?”
Edwin nodded slowly, rubbing his chin. Kaylee noticed a thin dusting of stubble had grown there, and for a brief moment she imagined reaching out and running her fingers along it. Much like him defying Baba to come speak with her, it was something she never would have imagined doing a year ago.
“He taught you anything yet?” Edwin said, and it took Kaylee a moment to bring her thoughts back to their conversation.
“Just how to ruin what little reputation I had in school.”
Edwin grinned, and the small movement lit up his whole face. “Important life skills. I like it. Baba’s been keeping me on the same track as before. Maybe ramping up the offensive magic, though she’s as pissed as ever about my progress. Needs to get more creative with the threats.”
“I miss training with you—with her—us together,” Kaylee blurted out before she realized she’d voiced what she’d been thinking.
Edwin looked at her. A pink tinge was on his cheeks, though Kaylee told herself that was from the cold. “Yeah, I missed you too. I mean the lessons with you. Both?”
“Which is stupid because we literally just saw each other a couple days ago and we’re seeing each other Friday night,” Kaylee said. She laughed, but it sounded awkward to her ears.
“Friday night?” Edwin said. “Are we going to something Friday toge—?”
“Maddox’s lacrosse game?” Kaylee said quickly, for some reason scared of what he was going to finish that sentence with, but not sure if she was happily scared or terrified about it.
“Right. Of course. Of course I’m going. I’ve never missed any of his opening games since he started.”
“Great!” Kaylee said.
“Great,” Edwin echoed. He cleared his throat. Kaylee kicked the ground.
“So…find anything more on what the Slayers are up to?” Kaylee could have kicked herself. That was what she almost always asked him. And now she was just being a chicken because there was maybe something else Edwin wanted to talk about, and it definitely did not involve the people who wanted her dead.
But Edwin looked excited as he said, “Nothing new yet, but I did find some more interesting reading in my dad’s office. And I’m thinking of asking Baba for permission to enter the secret room.” He chuckled at Kaylee’s horrified expression. “I know, it sounds insane.”
“Why the heck would you want to do that? She almost killed us last time, Edwin!”
Edwin lowered his voice. “It’s the only place I can think that might have more info on Lesuvius. Plus, we found out what the Slayers were doing last time in there, didn’t we?”
“I guess…”
“Besides, there’s been nothing much going on other than your uncle showing up, and the rogue dragon-kins appearing again.”
“Randy mentioned them last night. I didn’t know they’d come back around here.” Kaylee peered up at the house, but Baba and Randy were still nowhere to be seen. “You don’t think he’s part of…”
“I don’t,” Edwin said. “From what my dad’s said about Randy, even a gang of rogues is too much order for him. But it’s a little weird they came in at the same time. Anyway.” Edwin scratched his stubble again. “If I don’t find anything else about the Slayers soon I plan to go talk to Damian.”
Kaylee gave him a sharp look. “I’m not sure he’ll want to talk to us. Not after last time.”
Edwin chuckled weakly. “I’m sure he’s forgiven us. We didn’t destroy that much of the Slag Heap.”
“You think he knows something?”
“Not sure yet. But if anyone will it’ll be him. I have to ask.”
“We have to ask.”
“We? Just you and me?”
“Jade and Maddox too. All of us.”
“Of course.” Edwin rubbed the back of his neck. “Of course. Yeah. L-listen, Kaylee. I’ve been meaning to ask—”
“Load ‘em up, kid!” Randy bellowed, tromping down the steps. He nodded at Edwin. “Alastair’s kid. Glad to see you don’t look like as much of a prick as he is.”
“Glad to see you’re not as ugly as he told me you were,” Edwin shot back.
Randy laughed, then slapped Edwin on the back so hard he stumbled. “Keep training with that she-beast and in ten years you might learn to make a good comeback.”
Kaylee barely had time to grab hold of Randy again before he started up the motorcycle and tore out of the drive, spewing dirt and rocks behind him.
“Do you have to be such a jerk?” she yelled.
Randy just smiled.
Kaylee had been right: she could have walked to where Randy was staying. But then, she supposed, Randy wouldn’t have had his fun completely embarrassing her.
They left Baba’s house, entered city limits and the condensed snarl of suburbs, passed Kaylee’s house, and only a minute later had hit rural farmland again. There was only one other house along the narrow gravel road winding to the edge of a private drive.
“You have got to be joking,” Kaylee said when Randy parked at an unmarked mailbox and stepped off.
Randy pulled off his dust covered goggles. “Does this look like the face of a man who jokes?”
No. No it didn’t. But it did look like the face of a man who ate car exhaust on a daily basis and had never heard of the concept of moisturizer. But Kaylee knew Randy was just trying to goad her for his own amusement. That was his game, and she wouldn’t let him win.
Randy stepped into the ditch behind the mailbox and kicked a For Sale sign farther down into the drainage pipe. Behind him, Kaylee noticed movement between some of the trees surrounding the property. Men in black clothes and sunglasses.
“Are those—?”
“Alastair’s pet Protectors, yeah,” Randy said. There was a note of grudging tolerance in his voice. “He insisted. As did your parents. For now, at least, they don’t trust me.”
“I don’t blame them. I don’t trust you.”
Randy got back on the bike. He kicked harder than normal to start it. “Home sweet home!”
‘Home’ had never been sadder.
It looked as if someone had attempted to start a hobby farm, then promptly gave up halfway through. A half-finished chicken coop with loose boards stacked beside it sat next to a lazily roped off snaggle of dirt that might have been a garden. Kaylee couldn’t tell. The ‘dirt’ was more rock than soil. To the left was a somewhat respectable shed, but the house itself wasn’t much better than Baba’s. And that was no small feat. Two stories of white trim with a sharply slanted roof and a gloomy, vomit-colored paint job.
“This place is a dump,” Kaylee said, gingerly stepping off the bike.
“Then I guess it’s a good thing you’re here to clean it,” Randy said.
Kaylee snorted. Randy didn’t.
“You’re serious?” Kaylee said.
“Just call me Mr. Miyagi. And I’d start with those rocks in the garden. They look heaviest and we don’t want you getting tired before we start the real work.”
Then, whistling, he wheeled the motorcycle away.
Kaylee couldn’t believe what a waste of time this was. After Randy had stored the bike in the shed (he’d made extra sure she wasn’t able to peek inside) he’d gotten Kaylee clearing the rocks from the back. The loose boards were next, making a stack of them on the side of the house. Then it was raking the gravel path, trimming the tree blocking the view from the kitchen window, and helping Randy load the rest of his stuff onto the porch, but not the house. He didn’t let her go in there, either.
Throughout all this the only training Kaylee felt she received was strengthening her patience in not summoning a storm and zapping the place to charred embers. The only attention Randy paid to her was when she tried to get into the shed.
“What’s in there?” Kaylee asked.
“N
othing for you, that’s what,” Randy said.
He pulled her over to a large dirt patch Kaylee had cleared of rocks and raked into a fine, smooth patch. They stood spaced apart, facing each other. Kaylee tried to ignore the meandering Protectors as they patrolled in a wide pattern around them.
“Baba gave me the lowdown on what she’d already worked on with you,” Randy said. “I wasn’t impressed. You can shift your arms and ears—”
“And feet,” Kaylee added.
“Sometimes, according to her. But not wings, a tail, or midsection armor yet.” Randy rapped his stomach with his knuckles. It sounded like hitting iron. “Midsection counts as one of the two things a dragon-kin can shift safely, but it’s invaluable in a fight. We’ll need to work on that. Then there’s the progress on your elemental magic. You can barely control a storm and are only using a fraction of your secondary elemental powers: ice, electricity, temperature manipulation, I’m thinking even some mastery over wind. All in all, not a gold star report.”
“I’ve done okay!” Kaylee protested. “I just started a year ago. And I beat those Slayers last November.”
“Beat, huh?” Randy shook his head. “That’s not how I heard it. More like ‘scraped by’. No, it’s not enough. Especially the older you get.”’
Kaylee crossed her arms. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So if my teaching was so bad, who taught you?”
“I didn’t have an instructor. I learned on my own.”
Kaylee’s mouth dropped open. “And you’re teaching me?”
“Welcome to ‘check your teacher’s credentials 101’. I mastered my powers because I learned something a Merlin could never teach you.”
He walked over and poked her in the forehead. “A Merlin uses books and charms to cast spells. They think. Movements and drills and dusty old words, that’s their world. You and me…”
Randy pointed to his heart. “We aren’t like them. Magic is loaned to a Merlin to be used one second and lost the next. For a dragon-kin our magic is within us. Our gift is our curse. We are always two different halves trying to be whole, but from that weakness we draw strength.”
Dragon's Curse (Heir of Dragons: Book 2) Page 5
