The woman smiled and pushed her hair back over her shoulder. Maybe she was an aspiring actress, and this was the closest thing to a break she’d had so far.
Weren’t they all trying to get on camera there?
“His eyes were wrong. Milky or something and this black goo was coming from them, totally gross.”
Clay shuddered and rubbed at his arms. The little one was locked behind a safe for now, his magic dying out, but he’d have to remind Toph never to touch it, no matter how tempting. No human could survive the magic—even with a small dose. Black, oozing eyes were just the beginning in Los Angeles.
“Maybe here, too,” he said.
But, of course, the room couldn’t answer him back.
9
Saffyranae
The first time Saffyranae had visited the human world, she’d been but a broodling. With her fathers by her side, she’d tried her hardest to push herself into the body of a child. No matter how hard she concentrated, parts of her kept slipping back, leaving her far too big, and far too obvious, for explorations.
“She could simply pass as an adult,” Elryne had suggested.
Fieryo’s consternation had been written blatantly across his sharp green features, and for a time, no more had been said. The time came soon enough when the Council had to insist she spend some time observing humans, and of course, the only thing she could do was present herself as a tall adult human female. Even then, it hurt a little, throwing the bulk of her mass into the pocket dimension every young dragon learned to make and fixing all of her concentration on being something that she most definitely was not.
These struggles seemed to float to the surface as Saff realized how difficult it was to sustain a shift for such an extended period of time. Minerva was right, of course, that stealth would be their friend in their endeavors, but even presenting as a very, very tall human female, Saff ached and keenly felt the throbbing of the split between her Self that stood before Minerva, and the one that she had hidden.
“Are we doing the gas ‘shtick?’” Saff asked as Minerva sorted through an odd assortment of clothing on the floor. It had taken her a moment to realize that these were costumes of a kind.
“No. I mean, Johns probably didn’t tell his cousin anything. For starters, he’d look batshit if he did. But he might have had an unusual pang of conscience and told his cousin to watch out for a gas department scam. So, it would be better if we tried something else.”
Minerva looked particularly small there on the floor. Like a little child. It occurred to Saff that by human standards, Minerva would only barely be considered an adult. Much like Saff herself. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, the Council most likely would have ordered Saff to stay out of the investigation. Let other shamans, more gifted in deception, enter the human world and find the deplorables capable of buying and selling children.
But the situation was dire, shamans were not so easily moved from their positions, and here they were.
“You can look not like a dragon, so can you—“ Minerva asked.
“I cannot make my form smaller.”
Minerva looked up with a cocked brow. Saff hadn’t meant to snap, but clearly Minerva had heard the edge in her voice.
“I wasn’t gonna ask that. If we get in trouble, bigger is better. For you, anyway. I’m used to being tiny.” Minerva pulled one leg underneath her. “I was going to ask if you could change your hair and eye color. Your height is odd, but less odd in the land of models, and most descriptions would focus on color.”
Saff held her braid in front of her and frowned. “What color?”
“Brown or black would be best, since most people on the planet are darker. But if you could just make it a little less white and a little more blonde, that could work, too.” Minerva slumped over and rested her hands on her shoes.
Saff gave a single nod and knelt on the floor with Minerva, who watched attentively. Closing her eyes, Saff tried to picture her human form in her mind’s eye. This part was always difficult. Her thoughts always drifted back to what she truly was. How was she to concentrate on looking different when the self-image wouldn’t stay put?
“Oh!” Minerva cried.
Saff opened her eyes. She could tell from Minerva’s expression that she hadn’t done it right. Looking down, it was obvious that she had halfway shifted out of human form.
“One moment.” Saff drew in a deep breath and locked herself back into the human she ought to be.
“Okay.” Minerva clung to the wall. Then, she let out a short laugh. “Maybe I’ll just let you borrow a wig, huh?”
Saff did not laugh. She glanced down at her hands and scowled. How could she be so incredibly inept at this? She was so gifted in elemental magic. She could even sense lies in humans, apart from Minerva, and track the shifts in their moods. But she couldn’t do this.
“Don’t worry about it. I was just getting a sense of our assets.” Minerva opened the closet and stepped inside. A moment later, a dark brown ball of hair came flying at Saff.
“What…?”
“I can tie your hair up so it won’t bunch up under the wig. Just give me a minute.” Minerva emerged with another wig, blonde and short. “Okay. Makeover time.”
Minerva waggled her brows at Saffyranae before ringing the doorbell of the townhouse. Something about the outfit she’d donned caused her to be more playful and cocky than she normally was.
It had also caused her to say over and over again in the car, “LAPD. We’re investigating a series of jewel thefts in the area. Would you mind if we came in for a few questions? It’ll only take a few minutes.”
After each iteration, Minerva had cleared her throat, taken a breath, and tried again with a slight variation. By the end of her practicing, her voice was substantially lower, and her accent much flatter. She clipped her words and changed the pattern of emphasis. Her voice did not sound at all like her own.
Unfortunately, Minerva’s diligence might prove to be wasted. No one answered the door, even after several rings.
“Dammit,” Minerva muttered.
“No one is inside.” Saff tilted her head back. “I don’t sense an egg here, either.”
“Hm.”
Saff swallowed hard and kept the visual of her human form distinct in her mind. Another dead end. Had Johns lied? No, she would have known if Johns had lied. He wasn’t as skilled in that capacity as he likely imagined himself to be.
When she looked up, Minerva had taken several steps back and was skimming her eyes over each of the townhouses in the row. Saff had never seen her look so much like a predator. Minerva was scanning for weaknesses, openings. And then, her eyes stopped flitting around and widened.
“What?” Saff asked quietly. She did not have the confidence of someone dressed in an LAPD uniform. Minerva had told her that she was to be a detective and to act like herself but say little. Her disguise was the wig, a pair of jeans that Minerva had to borrow (or maybe steal) from one of her neighbors, and a blazer.
“Okay, we’ve got an open window on the second-floor balcony there,” Minerva said. “We could get in if we jumped up from the fence surrounding the patio.”
“Or I could fly us up there.”
Minerva gave her a hard look. “Do you want people to be spreading dragon pictures all over the internet?”
“No, but I don’t see how people wouldn’t notice your leaping up the side of a building.” Saff paused. “Can you even do that? That seems an unlikely skill for humans. You aren’t apes anymore.”
“Parkour!” Minerva pumped her fist. Then, she shook her head. “No, for real, I’ve done it before. It’s a common design flaw with apartments and townhouses to stack the patio and balcony next to each other. You just need enough upper body strength to pull yourself up.”
Saff thought about telling Minerva that it wouldn’t be considered a flaw if you could trust people not to steal, but she decided that comment was unnecessary. Her opinion had been made known, and repeating it did n
ot improve upon the silence.
“Anyway, it’s going to be dark soon. We can go wait in the car like good creepy cops, and if they don’t come home…”
“We enter by cover of night,” Saff finished. “That plan will suffice.”
Minerva put both of her thumbs in the air and headed back to the car. Saff wasn’t overjoyed to be getting back in the car again, but it would likely look suspicious if she simply milled around on the sidewalk.
“It was my house,” Minerva said suddenly, as the sun was setting and Saff had just been getting sleepy.
“Pardon?” Saff rubbed her eyes.
“When I said that I’d jumped up onto a balcony before: It was my house. My father had locked me out. So, I jumped up on the balcony and got back in because we didn’t lock the balcony window.”
“Why… Why would he lock you out?” Saff asked.
“We had an argument,” Minerva said, her words clipped and tense. “I could’ve gone to Abuela’s, but I was being stubborn. I wanted to prove something, I guess. That he couldn’t make me leave unless I wanted to.”
“And apparently, eventually he made you want to.”
“Something like that.” Minerva shrugged. “Sometimes you feel like there’s nothing left for you in a place. You have to move on. It’s just a thing.”
“I could not image either of my fathers barring me from our home. Not for any crime I could commit, let alone a simple argument. Do humans not normally argue with their parents?”
“Humans argue with their parents plenty. But some parents… suck.” Minerva drummed her fingers on the dashboard. “Okay, let’s get going.”
Saff followed silently. She would let Minerva speak when she felt comfortable doing so. Still, it was jarring to simply leave their conversation like that.
They approached the house once more, and Minerva pressed her hands against the fence around the patio and pushed, testing it. Saff looked out on the empty street. A car could come by, or someone could come walking and spot them. She lifted a hand and pulled on the water in the air around her as she exuded cold into the air.
“Uh…” Minerva turned around and started at the fog now billowing around them.
“To hide our activities,” Saff explained.
“You’d be a decent thief.” Minerva winked, clearly knowing this statement irked Saff. “Don’t let anyone tell ya different.”
“I will remember that.”
Saff’s budding sour expression was disrupted as Minerva launched herself from the fence and caught the balcony above. Her legs swung forward, and she gave another kick under the balcony and pushed herself up through the well-spaced wooded bars.
“Oh…” Saff looked at the fence. It was possible that she’d just break the thing, if she tried to climb on it. Instead, she shot another look to the street and, confident of her cover, let part of her wings furl loose from nothingness and flapped up to the second floor.
As she gracefully landed on the balcony from above, Minerva crossed her arms, and said, “Show off.”
She pulled a small black device out of her pocket and gestured for Saff to enter. “Try going in. I need to see if the motion detector is on, or if it’ll send out signals when you enter.”
Saff had no idea what that meant, but she shifted her wings away and stepped into the house. It was dark, though she could see clearly enough when she blinked her third eyelid into place, and still very empty. On this level, there was a kitchen and a sitting area, as well as various paintings on the wall.
“Okay, I need you to go to the wall right by the staircase and attach this to the little box with all the numbers on it.” Minerva held something out. It was even smaller than the first box.
“Is this some kind of magic rune?”
“Yes, and it’s gonna get the password for me, since I haven’t had time to case this guy. Be quick. We’ll disable his security and then look around for clues.”
Saff did as she was told, and a little fist pump from Minerva told Saff that whatever witchcraft Minerva was doing, it had worked. She told Saff what numbers to press into the box, and then instructed her to go upstairs and do the same thing. Once she had finished, Minerva was inside and joined her on the top level.
“Most people with a three-level townhouse will sleep on the lower level. But we’re not looking for personal items, just information,” Minerva explained as she led the way into one of the upstairs rooms. “Here, we have a private study. I bet he’s more likely to have something I can use here.”
“You and your little magic boxes,” Saff muttered as Minerva reached into her pocket again.
“It’s a jump drive, oh wise and ancient dragon.”
“I know what a jump drive is, and I am not all that old.” Saff leaned against the wall and looked around the office. “I do know that jump drive is going to do more than save files. I would bet on it.”
“You’d be right… but I don’t need it right away.” Minerva shook her head as the computer started up. “No password. Yikes. I guess he doesn’t think he needs it, since this is a desktop. People are like that. They get lazy on security sometimes. And look where that gets them?”
Saff leaned forward. She had a modest understanding of human technology, as it was impossible to get along in the human world without it. She hadn’t imagined Minerva’s trade might in part involve taking advantage of that human dependence on technology. It was quite clever.
“Open sesame.” Minerva opened a browser window, scrolled down a list in the top of the browser, and clicked. An email inbox popped up, filled to the brim.
“How did you do that?”
“I didn’t. He’s already signed in on his major accounts with his browser. Since he didn’t put a password on his desktop, I can just come in and poke around. Why bother to bring the big guns when they make things so easy?” Minerva shook her head and started scrolling through his email.
After a few minutes, Minerva half turned her head. “Could you keep an eye out for us? This might take a while.”
“I was already listening, but I will stand guard.”
Saff realized that she liked that little chuckle of Minerva’s.
10
Minerva
Minerva had to admit that Saff cleaned up well. Obviously, Saff always looked amazing. Whether she was in her pro detective undercover outfit or dressed in her plain jeans and t-shirt when they’d questioned the Douche, Saff was gorgeous. If the dragon had any sense of human customs or any desire to take her act to the catwalk, Minerva was positive she’d own the world of modeling in under a year. Kendall Jenner who? Then again, one look at those icy blue eyes of Saff’s, and it would be obvious to anyone who figured out they weren’t caused by extreme contacts that Saff wasn’t exactly normal either.
No, she was better than that.
After looking through Cousin Douche’s files, they’d found the location of an auction happening a few blocks from UCLA’s campus and bordering on Rodeo Drive. Made enough sense. Whoever was running the black market on occult goods and now dragon eggs had to sell them to the highest bidders. The rich and vain were perfect marks, people who’d abuse the power of the egg to gain both wealth and supernatural prowess.
The problem was that if they went to the auction, they couldn’t exactly try either the gas schtick or the undercover cops. The only way to blend in seamlessly (minus Saff’s social gaffes) was to look the part. Not exactly something that either she or Saff were used to. However, they’d gone to a store down in Beverly Hills and shopped for the right ensemble for each of them. This time, no hacked credit cards or five-fingered discounts needed. Saff had produced actual gold coins. After an incredulous look from the staff, at least until someone had verified it was real, they’d accepted everything.
It reminded Minerva about old legends she’d heard of dragons before. Most of what she knew was pasted together from catching the occasional episode of Game of Thrones from stolen HBO Go passwords and watching an ancient DVD copy of the Neverending
Story, but gold. Yes. That was something her abuela had mentioned before, something dragons held onto.
Perhaps Saff had access to quite a bit to help her blend in. Whatever was going on, being able to pay for the right look to pass through the security at the auction was key. And with Saff now decked out in a long, slinky silk dress that hugged every curve and was slit almost criminally high on her right thigh, Minerva was having a hard time concentrating.
Then again, it could also be because she didn’t often wear heels. Thieves needed stealth and quickness. Sneakers were best for her in case she had to scale a balcony or run away from a botched deal. The three-inch red heels she was tottering on weren’t high by many women’s standards, but they might as well have been stilts.
She took a deep breath and tried again to stride across the room. Minerva made it past her modest desk and bed before she stumbled. Thankfully, Saff had quick reflexes. Minerva crashed into the other woman’s arms, and it wasn’t a soft landing. Saff was pure muscle. While she managed to hide her dragon form or shift, there was still that strength running through her.
Minerva swallowed and looked up into those piercing eyes. It amused her a little that Saff’s skin wasn’t completely a smooth porcelain white, but had the hint of scales creepy across her cheeks.
I’m not the only one who’s off balance here.
Warm breath hit Minerva’s cheeks. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.” She leaned back on her heels and straightened out her dress, a scarlet number with a skirt that flared out at her knees in flamenco-style ruffles. Minerva Reyes if she were a pod person. Not that it wasn’t fun for once to be able to afford more than clothes from Goodwill or liberated from people’s closets. It just so wasn’t her. “If I ever find who invented heels, I will murder them.”
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