'Til Dragons Do Us Part (Never Deal with Dragons)

by Lorenda Christensen

  Only when I landed did it occur to me that I didn’t have my bag. Which meant that I’d be running through the streets of Tulsa stark naked.

  “Savannah, you are a complete idiot.” I looked around, as if staring hard enough would make clothing magically appear in front of me. It didn’t. Neither did patting the empty spot where my bag usually hung.

  I was going to have to head back to my apartment. I’d managed to pick a relatively narrow alley for my landing. While it had worked perfectly as a target for reaching the ground relatively unseen, it wasn’t exactly ideal for the reverse. I tried to spread my wings to their full width, but only managed to rub them against two slimy brick walls.

  I’d stepped out onto the sidewalk, and had just made the first hop to start my flight when I spotted a large red dumpster just across the street.

  “Could I be so lucky?” Checking traffic to make sure I didn’t get hit by any oncoming vehicles—just because cars wouldn’t injure me permanently didn’t mean they didn’t sting—I walked over for a closer look.

  I performed a mental fist pump when I saw that the word DONATIONS had been carefully stenciled onto the side of the container. The bin, similar to others placed all around the city, contained items humans had decided to donate to charity. And clothing was always a popular giveaway item. I lifted the lid off the bin, and cackled when I found it more than half full of used clothing. I love thrift stores. Glancing both directions to make sure I wasn’t being watched, I pulled the lid completely off its hinges, morphed and hopped inside.

  Five minutes later, I hopped back out, rather less enthused. The dumpster may have been half full of clothing, but there had been very few items even close to my size. In fact, I was half convinced someone had bought out the big and tall store next door, and then decided not to bother with returns.

  I managed to locate a few items that were close to my basic dimensions, and even if it was the most ridiculous outfit I’d ever put on—a pair of lime green track pants and a black shirt—dressed was dressed. The black shirt was especially precious, because it came complete with a spangled grinning unicorn head dead center of my chest. The flip flops were rather tight on my feet, and the left one scratched against the inside of my big toe annoyingly, but they would get me back to the hospital.

  Savannah Cavenaugh, dumpster-diving queen.

  * * *

  Relieved to see that Myrna’s assistant had at least been picked up and brought inside while I’d been away, I approached the nearest reception desk and asked for her by name.

  The nurse checked the pile of charts at her elbow and shook her head. “No one here by the name of Sara.”

  I stood there, dumbfounded. “What do you mean there’s no one here by that name? I brought—” I stopped, realizing that with Sara unconscious, they probably wouldn’t have her name. I backtracked and tried again. “I was told she was brought in just a few minutes ago. Petite, dark hair, had bruises on her stomach and face?”

  The nurse’s eyes widened. “You mean the dragonlady?”

  I smiled. “Yes, the one brought in by the dragon.”

  “They took her straight back to surgery. That dragon certainly did a number on the poor thing. Broken rib, cracked ulna, and possible internal bleeding.”

  I struggled to keep the temper out of my voice. “You think the dragon hurt her? It looked to me like the dragon was trying to help.”

  The nurse just gave me a blank stare, making it clear that she’d never entertained another possibility. I grit my teeth in frustration. I was sick and tired of dragons being blamed for anything and everything, of everyone assuming that we were out to maul and mutilate everything in sight.

  If Myrna were here, she’d set everyone straight.

  Oh, my God. I hadn’t called Myrna. “Is there a public telephone nearby?”

  The nurse pointed me down the hall, where a row of cheap wooden booths had been attached to the wall, complete with phone books and tethered writing utensils. I found the main DRACIM line and dialed, hoping that not only would Myrna come down here and take charge, she could also help me reach Sara’s family.

  I was patched immediately through to Myrna’s office, and I breathed a sigh of relief when, after I’d told her about the bomb and the resulting hospital situation, she snapped into emergency mode, promising to take care of notifying Sara’s parents before heading over.

  I hung up the phone and decided to wait for news from the waiting room, but stopped when I saw a familiar face heading for the exit.

  “Simon!”

  My partner turned, shifting Emma in his arms to peer down the hall in my direction. He touched Jeanie’s arm to get her attention, and they stopped and waited as I approached.

  “Hey there, sweetie,” I said, placing my hand on top of Emma’s head. “How are you feeling?”

  Emma smiled and pointed at my chest. “You have a unicorn on your shirt. It smells funny.”

  The girl wasn’t wrong. Apparently the previous owner of this shirt had gone to extreme lengths to keep it safe for donation, because every time I turned, I got a whiff of fresh moth balls.

  “It does smell funny. I think I’ll take a bath when I get home.”

  “I get to take a bath too, because today is the day I go home. Mommy says they still have to poke me with needles for a while, but I get to see Mr. Ruff.”

  I struggled to hold my smile. “Mr. Ruff will be very glad to see you, pumpkin. He’s been staying at my house, and I’m not nearly as much fun as you are.”

  Simon looked me up and down. “Something I need to know about why you’re dressed like this?”

  “Probably, but it’ll keep.”

  He nodded and turned as a nurse walked up, dressed in a set of scrubs that featured rubber duckies in various forms of sports gear. She leaned in to walk Simon and Emma through the discharge instructions, leaving me with Jeanie.

  “How is she really?” I asked, watching as the nurse pretended to tickle Emma with a small stuffed piglet.

  Jeanie sighed. “She’s fine for now. The doctor said we can come back anytime for her implant, but until then, it’s a long road full of needles and near constant monitoring of anything and everything she eats.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yes. It does.”

  “I went back to get the painting, but they’ve moved the vase I hid it in.”

  Jeanie gave me a sharp look—she had real issues with how I handled priceless pieces of art—but I ignored her. “I’m still trying to track it down. As soon as that happens, the entire fee is yours. No arguments,” I said as Jeanie opened her mouth to protest. “She’s my family too, and I’ll happily give her everything that I own.”

  Jeanie squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back. There were no words necessary.

  We stood there a few moments, watching Simon as he whispered something to Emma that made her laugh, but it was clear from the way she rubbed at her eyes that the poor thing was exhausted.

  “You two head back to the apartment, and I’ll bring Mr. Ruff by as soon as I finish up here.” I decided to wait before telling Jeanie about the bomb, but I wanted to make sure Sara was well taken care of before I left her here alone.

  “Emma and I are headed home, but Simon has a meeting with one of his contacts in less than an hour. He didn’t feel comfortable trying to reschedule.”

  I frowned. The world of art theft was still very much reliant on who you knew, and while I ran point on a handful of our networking arms, Simon was the undisputed expert in that area. But I hated the idea of him being forced back into work when his family could use him at home.

  “Which contact?”

  “Bernie Laurens.”

  Good. Bernie was one of the more easygoing black market fencers, and as he specialized in the business of high-end counterfeiting rather than straight-up theft, he was generally looking for company rather than a way to stab someone in the back.

  “I’ll take the meeting. Bernie likes me. Especially if I can find us a
decent pool hall. I get to hustle him for twenty bucks, and he gets to show off the fact that he managed to convince a relatively young woman to go somewhere with him.”

  Considering Bernie was somewhere around seventy years old and weighed close to what I did when in dragon form, it wasn’t such a bad deal on his side.

  “Really? You don’t mind?”

  “Nope.” I looked down at my clothes and reconsidered. “Well, I guess it depends on whether you still have one of my emergency kits in your car.”

  Jeanie gave me one of the first real smiles I’d seen in ages. “You don’t think the unicorn will go over well at a pool hall?”

  “Nah, the unicorn is fine. It’s the pants. I think they make me look fat.”

  “They make you look something, for sure. It just so happens I do have some of your clothes in the trunk. Tell Simon I’ll be right back.”

  While Jeanie ran out to the car for my clothes, I wandered back over to the reception desk to check on Sara, and was relieved to spot Myrna just inside the waiting room with Trian. I fought the urge to jump back when I saw she was speaking to the blonde reporter, telling the woman in no uncertain terms that no, Trian was not the dragon who’d attacked Sara, and no, she had no additional comment on the episode at this time.

  Unhappy, the reporter nevertheless thanked her and left.

  “What was that all about?”

  Myrna rolled her eyes. “She wants me to spill the identity of the dragon who brought Sara here, and they’re hoping for a big story full of blood, claws and animalistic rage. But I already spoke with Cameron on the way over.”

  “Oh.” So it was too late to hope I could catch Cameron and convince him to keep my secret. I braced myself for the inevitable questions.

  “But he told me the dragon morph was already shifted when he saw her. Based on the description, it’s the same dragon morph that Trian ran into at DRACIM, and Cameron confirmed that she had nothing to do with the bomb. Other than that, we know absolutely nothing.”

  For a minute, I was stunned into silence. He hadn’t told anyone. I struggled to compose an appropriate response, then realized that as Savannah Cavenaugh, human wedding planner, I should be very confused about the existence of a second dragon morph.

  “Wait. So the dragon at Bridal Visions wasn’t Trian?”

  As Myrna patiently explained the circumstances that I already had firsthand knowledge of, I let my mind drift back to Cameron. Why had he lied to keep my secret? Not that I didn’t completely appreciate it, but I just didn’t see what he got out of the deal. I’d seen the look in his eyes when he realized what I was, and there had been nothing there but ice.

  The warm, caring Cameron who held me and asked after Emma had vanished, replaced by a cold, professional stranger. Sure, he’d been thrown into serious bodyguard mode, but I didn’t think all of his distance was due to business.

  I caught Jeanie’s wave from outside the waiting room. “I’m sorry to run off like this, but I have a friend waiting on me.” I looked around and snatched a pen from one of the tables, scribbling my home number on the back of the piece of paper I’d torn from one of the many outdated waiting room magazines. “Can you call me as soon as you hear anything?”

  “Of course.” Myrna gave me a squeeze on the shoulder before I turned to leave. “If I haven’t said so already, thank you for driving over to make sure she had someone with her. You should go rest. You’ve had quite the day.”

  I gave her a grim smile and started for the door. She had no idea.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The pub was super busy for a weeknight, but Bernie seemed to have no problem with the noise as he pushed his way toward the bar, his beefy arm wrapped securely around my waist while he dragged me along with him. He managed to locate two empty stools, and I slid onto mine gratefully, my feet aching after their bout with the ill-fitting flip flops.

  I accepted the glass of beer from the man behind the counter and scanned the room as Bernie negotiated the menu, finally settling on three orders of cholesterol-laden cheese fries and a quarter pound hamburger.

  Despite the pulse-pounding music coming from the jukebox, the place had a nice homey feel, and I decided that I might enjoy this meeting more than I expected. It had been a long time since I’d had the time to sit down with a beer.

  A crowd had formed out on the dance floor, their feet moving in rhythm to the Texas two-step as they made their way around the small space, the sound of laughter and conversation a soothing compliment to the clink of glasses behind me.

  His order complete, Bernie swiveled around to enjoy the show, his feet tapping with the music on the metal step of his chair before his attention landed on me.

  “Vanni Cavenaugh. It’s been ages since I’ve seen you. You look good.”

  I gave him a smile, and made a big show of running my gaze over his impressive girth. “You look exactly the same as the last time I saw you.”

  He laughed. “That’s Bernie. What you see is what you get.”

  “You always say that, and then you try to cheat me at pool. Don’t think I don’t remember your attempts to pawn that broken cue stick off on me. Did you think I wouldn’t notice the crack? Amateur.”

  “Just making sure you’re staying sharp. All that artsy stuff can make a girl go soft.”

  I laughed into my glass, the puff of air disrupting the thin layer of foam on the surface of my beer. “Are you trying to prod me into a game? Because you know, all you have to do is ask me. I’ll gladly embarrass you in front of all of these people.”

  Bernie snorted, and pushed himself out of the chair. “We’ll see about that.”

  We played pool for the next hour or so, each of us taking full advantage when we managed to get a ball or two ahead. I was up a game on Bernie—mostly because he kept getting distracted by all the food he’d ordered—when a good-looking guy approached and challenged us to a match against him and his date.

  His girlfriend, a perky brunette with more style than skill, was more interested in how her cleavage was being displayed than where she hit the cue ball, and we cheerfully wiped the floor with them. Laughing a little at the guy’s obvious irritation, I started to rack the balls for one last set with Bernie.

  It was time to get down to the business that brought me here. “Jeanie tells me you’ve been looking for us. I’m hoping you have some news we’d be glad to hear.”

  “Well, I’m not so sure glad is the word I’d use to describe your reaction, but I’m happy to share. Rumor has it that your client is shopping around.”

  I straightened from leaning over the table, easing the pool stick back to the ground so I could face Bernie without succumbing to the urge to throw the stick against the wall.

  Could anything else go wrong?

  “Shopping around? Since when?”

  “I got confirmation from the other party two days ago when I went to pick up my new machine.”

  I gave him a sharp look. In addition to enjoying an occasional game of pool with yours truly, or a similar boys’ night out with Simon, Bernie liked to perfect his craft. And while the man was a genius with a pen and paper, there were only so many forged identities he could create by hand. Bernie’s business depended on volume, and he needed equipment to achieve that volume.

  So Bernie did what a lot of people in the black market did when they needed high-end toys. They went to the king of high-end toys.

  And Prometheus was the king of high-end toys.

  “So let me get this straight. You’re telling me that my client hired us to get the Tofegaard, and then hired Prometheus for the same job? He can’t do that!”

  But it wasn’t true. Our client absolutely could do exactly what Bernie claimed he had. As part of our standard contract, we’d ask for a very small upfront fee—honest money, Simon jokingly called it—but for the most part, we weren’t paid until the art landed with the client. There was nothing in our agreement that precluded someone else from being sent after the same piece.

&
nbsp; Rude? Yes. But nothing we had any control over.

  Despite the irritation at knowing I’d just had an additional kink added to the already messy situation, I was glad I would at least know to keep a lookout for another thief sniffing around Relobu Manor. I walked around the table and gave Bernie a peck on the cheek.

  “You didn’t have to tell us this, but you did it anyway. I speak for both me and Simon when I say we appreciate it, and we won’t forget.”

  Bernie patted me awkwardly on the back, uncomfortable with my impulsive display of affection.

  “Aw, it’s nothing you wouldn’t do for me. You just remember old Bernie when you’re in the market for a new life. Or when you get tired of standing in line at the real passport office.”

  I laughed. “Sounds like a fair deal. Now,” I lifted my stick and took aim at the cue ball, “it’s time for me to demolish your self-esteem.”

  * * *

  I thought about heading over to Simon’s house after I left the bar, but decided that since there wasn’t anything we could actually do with Bernie’s news tonight, I went home instead.

  Stripping off my clothes, I tossed the shirt that smelled of cigarettes and stale beer into a laundry hamper on my way to the bathroom. I flipped on the shower, only to flip it off a moment later and instead dig under the sink for my bath salts. If there was ever a time when I needed to relax, tonight was the night.

  I filled the tub up to the brim with bubbles, then sank into the scalding hot water with a deep sigh. Second only to the existence of a patio, a full-service whirlpool tub was something I always requested of Jeanie when she was apartment shopping. That way, I knew that no matter how bad my day might get, I’d always have a warm bath to fall into.