Bride Of The Dragon

by Georgette St. Clair

  His eyes gleamed. “Among other things. As you know.”

  Kelly’s cheeks colored. “Ahem. My sister is here. If you don’t mind.”

  “Yes, really,” Teresa said, her cheeks also reddening. She glanced at Winthrop. “They are incorrigible, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, they are. Absolutely unsuitable for a lady of your refined qualities.” He didn’t address Teresa as “ma’am”, Kelly noted.

  “Anyway. Have you heard anything more about those fire dragons that burned down the Maplethorpes’ house?” Teresa asked. “It was in the paper this morning. The fire dragons apparently said the same thing as the ice dragons – they literally don’t remember any of it. Principe Teague was quoted as saying that it’s still under investigation.”

  “No, we haven’t been able to uncover a thing,” Gabriel said.

  “I got a very interesting phone call this morning,” Teresa said. “From Chad. He said that he had been thinking about it, and he laid out the conditions under which he would be willing to take me back.”

  Winthrop had grabbed the coffee carafe and was about to pour Gabriel some more coffee. He froze where he stood, staring at Teresa, wide-eyed.

  “I would need to quit my job and agree never to work again, and I would need to write a letter of apology to his parents for the embarrassment I’ve caused them, and I would need to agree to cut off all contact with you immediately and permanently.”

  Teresa paused for dramatic effect. Then she gave a sly smile. “I told him to kiss my – Winthrop, you may want to cover your ears. No? Okay, I warned you – ass.”

  Winthrop broke out in a huge smile and refreshed Gabriel’s coffee.

  “But I don’t usually speak in such an inappropriate fashion,” she added quickly to Winthrop.

  “Of course not,” Winthrop said. “But on this occasion, I think it was entirely justified.”

  Then he glanced up, and his brow creased. Everyone else followed his gaze. There were a couple of dozen ice dragons flying towards the castle, their enormous bodies glittering ice-blue and white.

  Gabriel leaped to his feet and rushed into the castle with Kelly, Teresa and Winthrop at his heels.

  “Stay inside,” Gabriel said to Kelly. “They’re probably here to try to arrest you on some kind of trumped-up charge. Let me deal with it.”

  They hurried through the castle, and Kelly waited in the drawing room as Gabriel rushed out the front door. Looking through the enormous windows, she could see that Calder had driven up in his car. Fifteen of the dragons were still in dragon form, but Calder, Principe Teague and several of Teague’s men were in human form now, naked.

  Gabriel, his parents, several of Gabriel’s cousins, and about a dozen of Gabriel’s employees stood on the front steps. There was a lot of arguing and yelling and arm-waving going on, and puffs of steam and smoke emanating from dragons’ curved nostrils.

  Finally, Kelly glanced at Teresa and said, “Screw it,” and headed for the door.

  “Miss, Gabriel told you to stay inside!” Winthrop protested, following at her heels.

  She ignored him and walked out onto the front steps. To her surprise, Gabriel turned and glared at her with a look of utter fury and betrayal.

  “I trusted you,” he said simply.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You betrayed us,” Tabitha said bitterly. “You told the Elders about Alexandra.”

  “I didn’t tell the Elders!” Kelly spluttered. “I told my mother, because I thought she might be able to find a healing stone that would save Alexandra.”

  “Why would you do that?” Gabriel demanded angrily. “Now the Elders are giving us forty-eight hours to hand over Alexandra to be terminated. That’s what happens to mentally ill dragons. That’s why we kept her hidden. Is the commission on the ruby that important to you? Hell, we could have given you the money if it mattered that much.”

  Kelly looked at him in shock. That was what he thought of her? He might as well have stabbed her in the heart.

  “I was trying to help,” she said furiously.

  “There’s no point in lying now,” Gabriel said, his voice bitter.

  “Hey, more bad language coming your way,” Teresa piped up. “Fuck. You. Don’t you dare talk to my sister that way.”

  Winthrop cleared his throat.

  “I know, I know, you can’t see me anymore,” Teresa said, her tone resigned.

  “Actually, I was going to let you know that I will be packing my bags. I wonder if your hotel has an adjoining suite.” Winthrop gave Gabriel a severe, chastising look.

  “I’ll help you pack,” Teresa said, and followed him back into the castle.

  Tears of hurt and anger filled Kelly’s eyes. “I have never lied to you,” she said to Gabriel. “From the minute I came here, I told you that I was going to do my very best to find the Dragonsblood and that I would turn you in for it when I found it. Does that sound like somebody who’s trying to deceive you? If I had known what would happen to Alexandra, I wouldn’t have told my agency. I’m going to take a cab into town, and I’m going do my very best to track down some healing stones somehow before the deadline is up. And you can all kiss my ass.”

  “Did you know about this?” Principe Teague asked Calder. “Did you know that your family was concealing a mentally ill dragon in their castle and endangering the lives of every human being in the valley?”

  Calder met his gaze. “I knew my sister was here, yes. I visit her as often as I can. And she isn’t a danger to anybody.”

  Teague’s eyes lit up and he said, tone gloating, “When I tell the Dragon Elders about it, you will be fired.”

  “So be it,” Calder said coolly. “I regret nothing.”

  “You know, while I’m being truthful, you are all being a bunch of hypocrites, blaming Calder for your problems,” Kelly snapped. “You were the ones who caused Alexandra’s condition. You didn’t mean to, I know, but you one hundred percent are responsible for it. It’s not his damn fault that he did his job and prevented Emerson from stealing the citrine. I’d have done the same thing in his position.”

  Smoke poured from Tabitha’s nostrils, and scales covered her body. “You…you…you…”

  “I what?” Kelly yelled. “You can’t say anything because you know I’m right!”

  She stomped off towards the end of the driveway, and heard footsteps thudding after her.

  “Hold on,” Calder called. “I’ll give you a ride.”

  Kelly sighed and climbed into his car. She blinked back tears as they drove away, but she refused to look back at the castle, and she refused to cry. She was too pissed off.

  They drove to town in silence, and Calder parked on the town’s main street, in front of the Dragon’s Scale Hotel.

  “They’ll have rooms here,” he said. Then he glanced at her as she slid out of her seat. “You know, my brother really loves you.” Calder sighed. “For what it’s worth.”

  “I love him too, for what it’s worth, but I’ve spent a lifetime being treated like crap for things I didn’t do, and I’m done with it,” Kelly said. “Thank you for the ride.”

  She went to the front desk and checked in, with a dull feeling of sorrow settling in her stomach. Then she went up to her room and started calling everyone she knew, desperately trying to find a lead on any jewel that might help Alexandra.

  Nothing.

  She finally flopped back on her bed and lay there, staring at the ceiling. Her phone rang, and she quickly grabbed it, hoping it was somebody with an answer.

  “Hello?” she said eagerly.

  “It’s me,” Teresa said. “Where are you right now?”

  “I got a room at the Dragon’s Scale. Where are you?”

  “I’m going to come pick you up right now. And if Calder’s still with you, don’t tell him.”

  “He’s not still with me. Why?”

  “Because I’ve got an idea about how to get the Sunrise Citrine.”

  Chapter
Twenty-One

  Teresa pulled up in a car with Winthrop a few minutes later, and they took Kelly to a home he owned on the outskirts of South Lyndvale.

  “I purchased this home in case I ever found the perfect woman,” Winthrop said, glancing fondly at Teresa, who simpered in a way that Kelly found rather gross but Winthrop apparently found charming.

  Winthrop’s house was tucked away on a couple of acres of property at the end of a long driveway with meticulously clipped hedges. It was an English-cottage-style home with a steeply pitched roof and a chimney, and Kelly could see Winthrop’s influence everywhere. The gardens were neat and orderly, the topiary bushes with their balls of greenery didn’t have a leaf out of place. The gardens around Gabriel’s castle were much more free-flowing, designed to look like wildflowers had sprung up from the rolling hills.

  “What are we doing here?” Kelly asked as they walked to the front door.

  “You’ll see. Come on, clock’s ticking – we have no time to waste,” Teresa said.

  They hurried into the house, and to Kelly’s surprise, Evangeline was waiting for them in the living room. She was sitting with a woman who looked like an older version of her – a thin woman with deep circles under her eyes and a blank stare. The woman wore a white nightgown, and had copper bracelets on her wrists. Dragon shifter. Evangeline’s mother, clearly.

  “We smuggled her out of the castle through a secret tunnel that only the Kingsleys know about,” Winthrop explained to Kelly. “That way, if the forty-eight hours expire without a solution, the ice dragons won’t find her when they storm the castle.”

  As Kelly got closer to Evangeline, she felt a humming. A vibration.

  She walked over to her and looked down. Evangeline was holding the Dragonsblood Ruby cradled in her hands. The enormous red stone was thrumming with power; Kelly opened her mind and it hit her in waves that almost knocked her off her feet.

  Kelly sank down on the couch next to her. “Where did you… How did you…”

  “How did I get it?” Evangeline shrugged. “I know where my family keeps their loot. And they use retinal scanners for their security system. My retina is in their system; I can use it to get anywhere in the castle.”

  “How did you make it work? You’re a dragon shifter.”

  Evangeline’s lips quirked in a wry smile. “I’m half human. My father was a gem empath. That’s how he and my mom met; they used to boost power gems and sell them on the black market.”

  “Where is he now?”

  Evangeline scowled. “When my mother went crazy, it was too much for him. He took off.”

  “I’m sorry. That was a dick move. I mean—”

  “I’m fifteen, Kelly, I’ve heard the word dick before,” Evangeline scoffed. She looked down at the ruby. “After I talked to you about power gems and empaths, I went and got the ruby out of our safe, because I thought it might fix my mother. I knew it didn’t work just having her hold it, but I thought maybe if I amplified its powers it would work. I sat there and experimented with it. I practiced and practiced, but it didn’t work the way I hoped it would.” Tears spilled from her eyes and ran down her cheeks. “I can control her actions so she doesn’t try to attack anybody, but I can’t bring her mind back.”

  “You were the one who made the dragons attack the Maplethorpes,” Kelly said. “Evangeline, you could have killed people.”

  Evangeline’s gaze dropped to the ground. “Pandora called me crazy,” she muttered.

  “Evangeline.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her expression pained. “I shouldn’t have done it. I’ll never do it again.”

  “All right, focus on the real issue here – we need to fix her mother, and there’s only one jewel that has those kinds of powers,” Teresa said. “You know the Sunrise Citrine? We’re going to steal it from the museum in New York and use it to heal Alexandra.”

  Teresa was planning a heist? Had the world gone mad? “Why would you do that?” Kelly asked, astonished. “And how?”

  “I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do. And as for how, everyone thinks of me as this perfect goody-two-shoes who does everything she’s supposed to. Nobody is going to suspect me. I’ve already contacted the museum and told them Allied Jewel Insurance needs to see the citrine. I will go in to the museum with a fake. While pretending to examine the citrine, I will swap it out, and I will bring the real one back here.”

  “My God. That might actually work.” Kelly’s eyes widened in admiration. “But where will you get the fake?”

  “Gabriel. Already called him. Their family had a replica prepared for when they tried to steal it the first time.”

  Teresa glanced at Kelly. “Also I called him a few things that I won’t repeat in front of Evangeline, but that’s a story for another day.”

  * * * * *

  Teresa was pants-peeingly nervous as her heels clacked on the polished marble floors of the Mildenhorff Museum. Chad and his family would have pitched a fit if they’d known she’d turned jewel thief. She could hardly believe it herself. But Winthrop had just nodded in his grave way when they’d told him the plan. That was the difference, she decided, between being concerned with decency and being concerned with appearances.

  When she handed her bag over to the security guard, she felt as if the fake citrine was flashing red, making its presence known through the lining of her purse, where Winthrop had carefully sewn it with neat stitches. She had to stifle a tell-tale sigh of relief when the guard gestured her through to a small room behind a door marked “private”.

  The archivist of the museum’s geology collection, which included its gems and semi-precious stones, was a middle-aged man with a lined face. “It’s such a shame to have taken it off display,” he said, “but we can’t take any chances until the security system’s been updated.”

  “Can’t be too careful,” Teresa agreed solemnly. “There are some very untrustworthy people in the world.”

  Teresa had shamelessly exploited her position as a gem empath for Allied to get access to the citrine. After Emerson’s attempt to steal the jewel, the museum had decided to install a new security system. Teresa’s story was that Allied would need to update their insurance policy to reflect that, and that meant she needed to re-authenticate the citrine.

  The gem was stunning. It lay on the table on a velvet cloth, glowing with soft golden light. To Teresa’s eyes, the fake in her purse looked like cheap costume jewelry in comparison, even though she knew it was a valuable gemstone in its own right. Maybe it was because of the way the Sunrise Citrine felt. Even though her gem empath powers were weak in comparison to her sister’s, she could feel a warm glow of soothing energy rolling from the stone. Deep inside it, sparks of sunlight seemed to sparkle and fade.

  She couldn’t believe she was going to steal it. She’d spent her whole life fretting about doing the right thing, trying to please her mother by making up for her father’s moral failings. But she realized now that sometimes it wasn’t that black and white. All she’d managed to do was make herself and everyone around her miserable. Now she could do the right thing by breaking the rules.

  She took a deep breath and willed the wobble out of her voice. It didn’t completely work, but hopefully that wouldn’t matter.

  “Mr. Blake,” she said, “forgive me – I wasn’t expecting the gem to be quite so powerful. Do you have a pair of gloves I could use to handle it?”

  She wasn’t powerful enough for a gemstone to hurt her just by touching her skin, and anyway the citrine’s energy was all warmth and light. But Allied made a point of talking up its very powerful empath employee, and was reticent on the point of which employee. It was just good business practice to let every client think they were getting the best.

  “Oh, of course.” Mr. Blake turned away to grab a pair of the white cotton gloves the museum kept on hand for handling fragile exhibits. He had to pull open three or four drawers before he found the right one.

  Heart beating so fierce
ly she was surprised the guards didn’t hear it and come running in, Teresa quickly ripped open the stitches in the lining of her purse, tucked the Sunrise Citrine inside and replaced it with the very pretty but completely powerless stone Gabriel had given her.

  Then she smiled politely as Mr. Blake turned back and she accepted a pair of gloves from him.

  The ten or fifteen minutes filling out meaningless paperwork were excruciating. At every moment she expected Mr. Blake to extract the Sunrise Citrine from her purse with a flourish, and call the police, and then she’d be marched out of the museum in shame, and the judge would call her a menace to society, and she’d go to prison… Would Winthrop visit her? She didn’t have the nerve to be a jewel thief…

  But a few minutes after Mr. Blake had conscientiously double-checked and signed the forms, written in fake legalese that would have given Allied’s lawyers a nervous breakdown, she was being ushered out of the museum.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  They pulled up in front of the house and hurried out of the car. Teresa had told Kelly about the golden waves of wellbeing she’d felt pulsing from the stone. Kelly hadn’t actually been so excited she’d wrestled her purse off her and pulled the stone out right there in the airport, but the thought had crossed her mind. More surprising, Teresa had thrown her arms around Kelly and given her a rib-crushing squeeze. It was probably just the adrenaline hangover after breaking the law, but it still made Kelly feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

  They let themselves into the house and called out, finding the others gathered in the living room. Evangeline was sitting on the sofa, her face pale. Her mother sat beside her, her features working through expressions of anger, puzzlement and pain. It must have been torture for Alexandra to be locked inside herself all these years, unable to fight free of the effects of the cursed opal. And they’d not only be able to free her, but spare her whole family the pain of seeing her like this, a shadow of her former self. Gabriel sat in an easy chair, angled away so she couldn’t quite see his face. Kelly couldn’t wait to see his reaction when they showed him the stone.