Waking The Dragon

by Alexis Davie

  Brin cracked a smile now. It lit him up inside—it was such a new feeling he almost made a noise. Almost let out a breath at it. He might have made a mistake letting this witch into his life, his home, his bed.

  “Just go to the restaurant Xander’s father runs, and maybe my father’s club. Pretend you aren’t a five-thousand-year-old dragon king and the master of all the immortals for thousands of miles? They won’t recognize you, will they?”

  Garrick shook his head. “They might know my name, but I assume I won’t use that? I haven’t been… out at functions and such in a long, long, long time.”

  “Over 500 years?” she asked. “My dad is about that age.”

  Garrick cleared his throat. He was ten times her father’s age. He pushed the thought to the back of his mind and locked it firmly in a filing cabinet for later. Then he shrugged.

  “Think we’re good. I’ve been a hands-off kind of a leader for a while. And before that, it was all thrones and delegation, and we didn’t have social media, so. Well, he might have seen a painting…”

  “An accurate painting?”

  “Nah.” Garrick pushed his hair back, put his head to the side as if he were posing—an artist’s model. “They tended to kind of up my attractiveness a few levels. At some points, they added a beard.”

  She looked up at him. “Yeah. I expected a dragon king to be a bit more, well, intimidating, if I’m honest. I didn’t expect to run into you in a crappy pub, but if I were to imagine…”

  “Okay, okay, I’ve had my moments, thanks.” Garrick wasn’t lying, but for some reason, her saying that annoyed him this morning. He was feeling… well, he was feeling. That in itself was a turnup for the books. Brinley raised her eyebrows, clearly catching the irritation in his tone.

  “Keep your hair on, mate,” she said. “Don’t need the big scary dragon for today’s activities. You need to blend in. Don’t wear anything weird. And don’t insult anyone.”

  Garrick gestured irritably at his clothes. “Drink quietly in a corner? I can do that.”

  Brin rolled her lovely eyes. “Not too much drinking? You need to know what’s going on and not do anything stupid. Can you manage it? Xander works the bar on Sunday mornings, supposed to teach him humility or something, but I think it’s to human-watch. Can you handle asking normal questions? Just watching him and his dad interact?”

  He wanted to emphasize his age and experience again, but that felt weird now. He also wanted to touch her. Brush her cheek, at least. He crossed his arms.

  “Yeah, I can probably manage.” Light sarcasm would have to do.

  “Give me your phone,” Brinley said and held out a hand.

  “I don’t have one.”

  The witch laughed. “Right, I get it, you’ve lived a long life, and you like old suits and old whiskey. But you have a phone. You must. How else do you know what’s going on?”

  “I have informants. And I go to the pub and listen, and, obviously…” Garrick stood up. His ankles hurt from digging into the concrete. He went over to what looked like a long, low cabinet and opened the top. Inside was a beautiful record player, and on the other side, a radio that he now clicked on. It was tuned to a news station.

  “Really? You aren’t fucking with me?” Brin stood up and came to join him. “Do you have a computer?” Garrick shook his head.

  “This is as far as I bothered getting. It was hard to keep up post industrial revolution. People move so fast. Guess they have to, with their tiny little lives.” Brin shot him a look. “I mean tiny in length! I’ve no problem with them. They make the best music and, like you said, whiskey—”

  Breaking news!

  The radio cut into their conversation, ads turning quickly to a seemingly unscheduled broadcast. They both turned to look at the radio, as if staring hard would tell them more.

  Strange scenes in South London turned to chaos when fires broke out seemingly spontaneously in several bars and nightclubs last night. There has been no explanation for the fires from emergency services. The only injuries, as far as we know, were minor burns. Vicky Jarvis is on the scene….

  “Yes, thanks, Simon, I’m here with a bartender at The Fancy Squirrel, a popular Dulwich pub. Simon, can you tell our listeners more?”

  “It was… uh… this sounds crazy, I know, but it was coming out the taps. People’s bowls of nuts were just catching alight, too… I’ve never seen anything like it…”

  Without saying anything, Garrick flicked off the radio. He closed its lid.

  “That’s Xander,” Brinley said. “Why isn’t my dad doing anything?”

  “I don’t know, but I know they’re trying to get our attention.”

  Brin shook her head, “They’re just messing around, they’re idiots, they’re not—”

  Garrick lifted her chin so she was looking at him, their eyes locked, green on green. It almost made him dizzy, but he took a breath.

  “I’ve seen idiots do some pretty terrible things, Brinley,” he said. “It takes someone intelligent not to get drunk on power. Idiots are dangerous.”

  Brin opened her mouth and closed it again.

  “Okay.” she said. “So, you should get down there.”

  Garrick nodded. Then he bent his head down, meeting her soft lips with his. But Brin was tense. She pulled away quickly. “What are you doing?”

  He blinked at her. “I was kissing you. I’d think that was obvious?”

  “We’re not doing this… that. We just, you know, got rid of the tension. Right?” She didn’t sound sure. Garrick wanted to say no, to have a conversation, but he hadn’t been rejected in… had he ever been rejected? He cleared his throat, stepped back.

  “Yeah,” he said, “was just… one for the road.” What the fuck was that supposed to mean? He turned and walked over to the door, to his jacket and shoes. “I’ll meet you at the pub this evening, yeah? Maybe you could look into places to stay today?”

  Brinley was padding up behind him on bare feet. There was a heavy moment where he thought she might say something important, or, well, about them, but she just said, “Sure. I need to try to calm the book down, though. I mean, I need to spend some time with it. I think it could help us a lot, beyond being a ransom item. Maybe I could wipe some memories when this is all done, for example.”

  Did she mean his? He turned to look at her—oh, the humans, she meant the humans.

  “Whatever you need to do,” he said. And he opened his front door and left. He’d only gone a few steps when it opened again and Brin popped her head out.

  “Public transport, Garrick, yeah?”

  He nodded, fully aware he looked surly, and put his hands in the pockets of his corduroy jacket.

  8

  Brinley

  He’d better not fly there.

  Brinley stretched as she walked back into the living room, to her bag, where she hefted the book out and slapped it on the floor.

  “Sorry,” she muttered to its cover. She gave it a small pat, slumped down beside it, leaning against one of the recliners, and sighed.

  He’d probably fly there. Why had she let him kiss her? Or had she kissed him? Why had she gone to bed with him, was what she meant. Why had she protected him the night before? And she was worrying about him now! He was cold. He was broken, or he seemed it. She didn’t want to have to do his caring for him. For now, though, they needed one another. They were probably one another’s best hope of getting on with their lives, so they’d have to remain close for a while. But not too close.

  Brinley was determined to keep Garrick at arm’s length now. It had been a mistake. She had wanted it—badly—but it wasn’t like they could be together, anyway. She couldn’t even imagine what her father would say. What he would think of him. In fact, maybe that was why she’d done it, or part of it. She wasn’t marrying Xander, and she wanted to cleanse herself of him. Surely, though, her father was going to relent on the Xander thing now that he was acting out so obviously. He could turn a blind eye to a bit of dayt
ime flying, but not this! He’d turned a blind eye to Xander being an absolute bore and an entitled child, but not an attempt to draw out and overthrow the magical council that had sat for thousands of years.

  It had been terrible, the fight they’d had when her father had told her he’d arranged the marriage. She’d known Xander vaguely. They’d been at the same parties and the bigger seasonal events held by witches and warlocks from time to time. In fact, her father told her they’d been friends as small children. That is, they had gone to the same early-years academy, before her mother died and her father pulled her out of school.

  They’d gone to meet Xander and his father at the restaurant they owned. It was their cover for the human world, an explanation for their quality of life and what they did all day, should any human ever enquire. Not that they would. The Chaffinches didn’t have human friends; neither did her father. In fact, she had heard him express the opinion that having a front for humans was uncouth in some way. New money.

  And that was what Harry Chaffinch, Xander’s father, was. He wasn’t anywhere near a High Warlock. Their family had never been powerful until recently. Harry was a ‘good man,’ her father said. She had no idea what this meant. Just knew that he had become powerful through magical artefact collection and dealing. She was hazy on the details. But ‘good man’ had to be some kind of euphemism. Her father talked only in euphemisms. The meal with Xander and his father had been… well, weird, because she’d had no idea why it was happening, but also normal. They’d talked about sports and the weather and politics. Xander had shown off about wine and kept looking her up and down, but she’d just thought he was a douche. And he was, but he’d also been assessing her, she later realized.

  At the end of the meal, Xander and Harry had shaken hands with her dad and said, “This seems like it’ll work nicely.”

  Back at home, after a quick teleportation because Brin and her father would have nothing to talk about on the short walk, and probably to impress the Chaffinches, her dad had suggested, “A photo of you two together as kids for the announcement, beside one of you now.” She’d looked at him confused, and he’d said, “We’ll get a professional to take the now pictures, obviously.” He’d put a hand on her arm, trying at reassuring. And when she still didn’t react, he’d added, “And you’ll get a new dress, of course.”

  It had taken her another few seconds of processing to say, “Dad, what are we announcing?” And he had looked at her like she was a moron when he had replied, “The wedding, dear girl. The wedding!”

  Brinley’s father had always been distant and something of a mystery to her. He had parented her from afar from the day her mother had died, so decisions were often made without her input. New teachers, new rules, her clothes bought for her until she’d thrown a tantrum at fifteen and her nanny had talked to him about her emerging personality and womanhood, and he had been embarrassed enough to hand over a credit card. But that day had been… beyond anything even Brin expected of the man.

  On Garrick’s floor, in another patch of sun, she turned her attention to the book. She put a palm on it. Should she… talk to it? She’d always had to be the one to turn the pages when being taught from it, because it wouldn’t open for anyone outside of the family. It had belonged to her mother’s family for generations, which meant, by Brin’s estimation, that it should really be loyal to her over her father—she had her mother’s blood—even though she’d taken it from home. Anyway, her father had guarded it with an intensity he rarely showed for anything else. It lived in a locked cabinet in a locked room. She’d had to steal the key to the room and then use a spell she’d been practicing for weeks on the cabinet. The book had been happy to see her… she could read it like she could people. It had been happy to see her, she thought, and then confused when it was in the tight dark of her bag. But, just like with people, she didn’t have the training to see more than the basics.

  Now, there was warmth coming up through her hand. It was happy again. Happier than when she had gone to get it. Why? What did the book know? And how did it know it? This had never been explained to Brinley. It was her mother’s book, so that would probably have been her mother’s job: explaining, passing it down.

  Brin opened the front cover. Inside the first page was a family tree that grew new branches when needed. There was one emerging now, beside Brinley’s own branch. The name hadn’t yet come in, but it was for Xander. Her father had called her into his oppressive, leather-heavy office to show it to her.

  “Right decision, then,” he had said. And he’d smiled to himself like he was some kind of match-making genius. That was the moment this plan had started to form, she thought.

  Brinley ran a finger over the smudge beside the new branch. It was coming in. It was still coming in.

  “Wedding’s off,” she murmured to the book as she touched its page. Maybe it would just take a little time. Maybe it would fade slowly like it had appeared. What happened with a child? What had happened with her? Did the book know before a couple did, that there was someone new arriving into the family? Did it know what the name would be, what would be chosen, before it was chosen? Thinking about it made her head hurt. She turned to the middle page.

  A Love Charm for Manipulation:

  Warning: This love will never end in happiness.

  Then she flipped a few pages further. Healing. And a few more. Heat, cold, wind, rain. The spells in this book were mad. If someone wanted to, they could control the world with them. They could change almost anything. Maybe Brin should have looked up the spells to change appearance earlier, given Garrick a moustache or an overbite or massive ears or at least made him shorter. He was notably tall. He would stand out.

  She checked herself. He was, as he loved to point out, a five-thousand-year-old dragon king. He could probably look after himself.

  At the back of the book were blank pages. Brinley had never looked this far through. What were they for? New spells? Did they appear, like the names, or were they written in? Was she supposed to write spells in the family book? She couldn’t imagine doing such a thing. She couldn’t imagine being confident enough to put a pen to this ancient paper, or powerful enough to create a spell. It was probably a thing that wasn’t done anymore.

  She closed the book. She hadn’t really thought this far ahead. She had thought about getting the key, about learning the lock breaking charm, and getting out of her father’s crumbling-pile of a house. But then it had been something vague. Disappear for a while and send her dad a letter about the book. Cancel the wedding, or the book gets it.

  Now, it didn’t seem to make much sense. She’d thought she’d have to coax the book into cooperation, but it had just been confused in her bag. It seemed to want to work with her. Maybe, it occurred to Brinley, the book was hers. Maybe that was the pull she’d had to take it with her when she had run.

  She wasn’t powerful or disciplined enough to use it, though. She was just… she was just a little witch. Garrick was, unfortunately, right about that.

  Brinley closed the book and stroked its cover. The old leather was blood warm. What a strange couple of days. Everything had got a lot more complicated than just running away. An image of Garrick, his smooth chest and his strong forearms, the dip of his clavicle, came into her mind when she thought this, but she pushed it away. Until Garrick got back, all she had to do was wait. She may as well use that time to find an alternative accommodation.

  Brin felt bad about bumping the book about in her bag yesterday, probably getting it wet. She took the blanket that was folded at the end of the recliner and carefully wrapped the book in it before she went into Garrick’s room and opened his cupboard. She stood on her tiptoes, and then she wasn’t on her tiptoes anymore, but floating. Surprised, she bicycled her legs and almost tipped over backwards, but she was at the top of the tall cupboard, and she grabbed a lip of wood. Luckily, the cupboards were fitted to the wall. She was stable. She slipped the book on top of the cupboard and slid it right to the back. She
didn’t know who she was hiding it from, but it would be safe there.

  Brinley dropped to the ground a little too fast, so she did fall backwards now. She landed on the mattress and bounced lightly. She lay and stared at the ceiling for a moment. Well, that had never happened before…

  9

  Garrick

  At least the East London Line was the emptiest and the most above ground. Garrick still had trouble with the new cards, the way you just touched them to a surface and the gates opened. He would have been discreet if he’d shifted and flown… but he didn’t want to annoy Brinley. And his desire not to annoy Brinley annoyed him.

  Garrick had no problem with humans, or, no problem except the speed at which they seemed to change the world he lived in now—the city he loved. But he wasn’t entirely comfortable around them. On the train, he sat gingerly on the edge of his seat, curled into himself a little. Every time the doors dinged at a station, indicating that the button could be pressed to open them, he jumped. Dragon king, indeed. When had he become so… out of touch? When had he become so old?

  He managed to get out at the correct station and through the difficult gates. Then it was a short walk to the cafe/bar. Brinley had drawn him a scrawled little map. She was not a talented artist, but he found it in the end, well positioned on a corner, big windows. Inside, it was dark wood, and there were a few people eating. Garrick looked at his watch. Its gold hands told him it was 11:30. What kind of a meal was at 11:30 a.m.—-

  “Brunch buffet, sir?” A waiter had emerged from nowhere. He was human, Garrick was almost sure. Just a boy really, with a silly haircut. What was a brunch? Garrick nodded, took the proffered menu. “Will it just be you today?” the boy asked, smiling at him. In commiseration at Garrick’s lonely… brunch. Whatever that might be.

  “Yeah,” said Garrick, his voice coming out gruffer, bitterer, lonelier than he had intended. “I’ll sit at the bar if that’s okay,” he said.