by Molly Harper
Bael’s house was more subtly decorated than she’d expected. There were no golden dragons mounted on the walls or gem-studded faucets. The furniture was sturdy and comfortable, covered in cream colored fabrics with touches of forest green and gold. His back porch opened onto the Fool’s Blood River, so she could hear the water rushing, even through the closed doors. She noted that Zed and Bael and Clarissa occupied most of the photo frames, though there were a few black and white shots of a younger couple, wearing styles from the 1940s. The woman had Bael’s straight, slim nose and the man smiled Bael’s warm smile. They had to be his parents. And the toddler perched on his mother’s knee had to be Bael. In the 1940s. She was dating a Baby Boomer.
Bael led her down the hallway, with its dark hardwood floors, and opened the bedroom door. Jillian’s jaw dropped. The room was windowless and cavernous. The ceilings had to be twenty feet high, at least, and the room itself took up more than half the house. A huge nest of pillows was situated in the center of the room, but there was no other furniture. Not even a night stand.
“Your bedroom is huge,” she noted. “And you have no bed.”
“It’s a dragon thing. But I promise, it’s plenty comfortable.”
“I have no doubt. But keep in mind, if you’re going to keep me here, you’re going to have to feed me,” she told him.
“Not a problem. Clarissa packs up meals for me every week, ‘so I don’t starve to death.’ You want reheated meatloaf or reheated gumbo?” he asked.
She laughed. “You have that woman wrapped around your little finger.”
“It’s kind of like when a tiger adopts a baby goat at the zoo. It’s unnatural and shouldn’t warm your heart, and yet it does.”
And so they proceeded to spend a very pleasant evening, at home, eating reheated meatloaf and watching old movies. There were no interruptions, no discussion of murder. Bael ignored several texts from Zed asking why Balfour came to his office demanding justice for his nearly electrocuted balls.
For just a night, it was nice to pretend they had a regular relationship without inter-species tension or possible serial killers. And falling asleep on a giant pile of pillows was much easier than she anticipated. Before she drifted off, her face pressed against Bael’s shoulder, she couldn’t think of a single thing she needed to do the next day. Instead of her usual habit of constructing a to-do list, her mind simply went quiet and slipped into a pleasant darkness.
Around 2 a.m., Jillian woke up very warm, so warm that she’d sweat through her clothes. She kicked off her blankets and sat up, wondering if she should open a window. Instead of the firm feather mattress she’d become accustomed to, she felt warm, smooth skin.
The body was immense, far too large to be a person, and covered in scales as seamless as glass. She blinked, shaking the last traces of sleep away from her head. And then she shook her head because she didn’t believe what she was seeing, a huge gold and green dragon wrapped around her like a faithful hound. She was cradled in a soft leathery wing, pressed against the dragon’s warm belly. Her foot was wedged against the dragon’s horned snout. She quickly drew back her foot, as if the dragon would wake and suddenly decide to take off a few of her toes.
She supposed this was why his bedroom was so large. In his dragon form, he could barely curl himself inside this room. If he changed forms in his sleep, he wouldn’t want to take out a wall. Sliding off of the wing, she crouched in front of the dragon’s head, which was the size of a smart car.
The scales on his face were bright, glowing gold, with green showing around the edges of each tiny circle. Spiky green growths like claws grew from his brow and ran in symmetrical rows down his snout. She traced the slopes of his nose with her fingertips, marveling how he could stand to run so hot all the time. He was like a living furnace.
He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. And he was Bael.
The eye, glowing from within like a living topaz, snapped open and focused on her. She clutched her fingers to her chest and scrambled back. Bael shook his head like a dog throwing off water.
“Don’t panic,” she told herself. “Don’t panic. It’s still Bael.”
His forked tongue flicked out, tasting the air like a snake. It snapped playfully across the bridge of her foot, and then wound around her ankle, pulling her closer to him. He nuzzled his nose at her knees and then at her side, all the while flicking that tongue against her skin.
The flush of arousal she felt was as alarming as it was complete. She wanted Bael, badly. She spread her palms along his snout.
“OK, Bael, I need you to go back to your human form, because there are some things even I’m not open-minded enough to try.”
His body shrank into itself, still golden and glowing, until it was just Bael. His mouth crashed down on hers like an ocean wave, all tongue and clacking teeth.
“You’re really pretty when you’re a dragon,” she told him.
“No one has ever said that to me before.” He kissed her again, his claws tearing at the sides of her panties.
She bit lightly at his chin, making him growl. “Do me a favor when we go back to sleep. Don’t roll over.”
13
Bael
Bael and Jillian established a routine over the next few weeks. As the community relaxed back into normalcy and people forgot about the horrors that Ted and Gladys had suffered, they became more willing to talk to Jillian. She rescheduled the canceled interviews, collected questionnaires and entered data into spreadsheets.
Most afternoons, she got back to Bael’s house before his shift was over and had something either reheated or assembled from ready-mixes before he got home. They’d eat, talk about their days. Sometimes Zed came over, and he and Bael watched sports while Jillian worked. And then, when Zed left, they’d attempt to shred Bael’s pillow bed with some bone-bending sex.
He enjoyed making her part of his routine. He’d been alone for so long that he’d forgotten what it was like to come home to someone, to call out when he opened his door and know they would answer. He’d forgotten what it was like to have a home, instead of just having a house.
There were bumps along the way. They could not agree on appropriate television volume. Bael took way too long in the shower, in Jillian’s opinion, for someone who had very little hair to wash. And one morning, Jillian woke up glowing, literally.
Bael had been sleeping when she discovered the issue. He’d woken up to her shrieking, “What the hell is this?!”
Jillian’s entire body was glowing. She was a beacon of golden light in the dark room. Frowning, Bael scrubbed a hand across the back of his head. “Yeah, I probably should have mentioned that.”
She scowled at him. “Mentioned what?”
He cleared his throat. “Sometimes, when a dragon takes on a human partner, well, after the exchange of…my contribution…you take a little bit of my fire into you. And you glow. It’s supposed to draw me even closer to you. You know, the whole ‘dragons are attracted to shiny objects,’ thing?”
“Your body fluids are going to make me bioluminescent?”
“Not permanently,” he assured her.
“Oh, well, that’s a comfort.” She stared down at her glowing form. “So, I won’t get pregnant.”
“No.”
“But I’m going to glow in the dark?”
“There are women who pay top dollar for this sort of thing!” he exclaimed.
“Are you telling me there’s dragon semen in high-end beauty products?”
“No, it’s more of an internal process…Never mind.”
She glowered at him. “How long until I can leave the house?”
“You’ve never been more beautiful to me.” He tried to smile his most charming smile, but she was not having it.
“How long?!”
“A few days,” he admitted.
She poked her finger into his warm chest. “I am going to call Zed and have him gnaw on you.”
“That seems fair.”
&nbs
p; While she’d been grumpy about her seclusion, Jillian eventually admitted she was grateful for her “indoors time.” It gave her an excuse to focus solely on her work. And she also seemed to enjoy the offerings of chocolate and beignets Bael brought her to make up for his not saying anything about the glowing semen… And to prevent her from following through on her threat to tell Zed. The shit he would have given Bael would have been thorough and relentless.
It was bad enough that Zed came into his office to “officially rebuke” him. He wore a tie and everything. It was clipped on to his t-shirt, but it was still pretty clear Zed was wearing his Mayor hat and not his friend hat.
“So, we gotta talk,” Zed said, tugging at his shirt collar. “There’s been a complaint about your job performance.”
“In terms of?”
“We have two unsolved murders and people are scared.”
“Someone actually filed a complaint, saying ‘I’m scared?’” Bael asked.
“No, they said that you’re incompetent and that if you’re going to try to do a thankless human job, you should at least do it well so you don’t embarrass yourself.”
Bael frowned. He’d heard those exact words come out of someone’s mouth. “Balfour filed a complaint about me?”
“You know I can’t say.” But Zed was nodding. “In an unrelated note, your cousin’s an asshole.”
Bael rolled his eyes. At least he knew that the complaint was filed by someone who didn’t really count. Balfour had always held a grudge against Bael, and now he was just taking advantage of the situation. If Bael somehow got fired from his “thankless human job,” it would mean even more loss of face with their grandfather.
But still, if Balfour was filing a complaint, that had to mean there was some rumbling of disapproval from Mystic Bayou’s residents. Balfour never did anything unless he thought he could get away with it.
“For the record, Jillian thinks Balfour killed Gladys and Ted.”
Zed scoffed. “Really? I mean, as I said, he’s an asshole. But I can’t see him killing anybody. Why would he do it?”
“To make me look bad? Make everybody afraid under my watch? The more I think about it, the less insane it sounds. But until there’s some evidence that he had anything to do with it, my hands are tied. So now what?” Bael asked.
“I’ve officially put you on notice. You are hereby rebuked,” Zed told him. “Now, you ignore it. You just keep doing what you’re doing. You know the job. Sometimes, stuff comes up and you can’t control it and all you can do is work your way through it.”
Bael grumbled.
“Did you get any information back from the League’s forensic people?” Zed asked.
“A whole lot of nothing. There were no fingerprints on the doors besides Gladys and Ted’s. No foreign DNA on the swabs I took near the wounds. They were able to tell me that the perp used a very sharp knife, to which I say, ‘no shit.’”
“Well, the chances of them finding some CSI, ‘this bat guano is only found in a two-square mile section of the swamp,’ key to everything was pretty unlikely. I hate to say it, but all we can do is watch people for any odd behaviors.”
“Well, please don’t tell Jillian. It’d probably hurt her feelings if I called her coworkers basically useless.”
“How’s all that goin’?” Zed grinned. “You still got her locked away in your tower?”
“Why does everybody keep mentioning a tower? There’s no tower!” Bael exclaimed.
“Aw, hell, I think it’s sweet that you two are all shacked up. You’ve been sixty-percent less of a grumpy bastard since she started sleeping over. You thinking about making it permanent?”
Bael’s mouth quirked at the corners. He had in fact, been thinking about making their arrangement permanent. He wanted marriage and hatchlings and the whole nine yards. He didn’t care about his grandfather’s wrath or the possibility of losing out on his share of the family hoard. While he’d wanted to honor his father’s wishes, Bael knew his father would rather see him happy than richer.
He just didn’t know how to approach Jillian about it. He’d shown her his hoard and her response was, “That’s nice, for science!” Bael’s father had shown Bael’s mother his hoard and she’d practically swooned.
He was going to have to get more creative.
“Uh, Bael, you’ve been staring off into the distance and smiling all weird for the last five minutes.”
Bael snickered. “Sorry.”
“You don’t look sorry.”
Bael’s reply was interrupted by Theresa’s appearance in Bael’s office doorway. Her expression was stricken and her complexion was nearly gray. Zed glanced up and muttered, “Aw, shit.”
14
Jillian
Hours later, long after the sun rose on a new day, Bael unlocked his door to find Jillian
perched on his kitchen chair, one leg tucked under the other as she read. There was a pencil in her mouth and a red pen stuck through her twisted hair. A cup of coffee sat forgotten near her elbow. She looked up, her eyes slightly unfocused, and grinned at him…until she saw the expression on his face.
“Another one?” she sighed. He nodded. She rose from her chair and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
“Teenie Clackston.”
“I hadn’t met her yet.”
“You didn’t have an appointment with her?” Bael asked.
Jillian shook her head, a relieved expression on her face.
“She was a sweet woman who made blackberry wine and brought it down to city hall every Christmas. I used to tease her about arresting her for running an unlicensed brewing operation, but the wine was so damn good, I couldn’t stand to. She was a room mom for her daughter’s second grade class, for gold’s sake. Her husband… Her poor husband is heartbroken. And I don’t know what to tell him.”
“I’m so sorry, Bael. I was worried when you didn’t come home last night, but I figured something had come up. Was Teenie human?
“You know that doesn’t matter to me, I’d mourn her either way.”
“No, I know. I’m just curious. Was she human or shifter? I think you mentioned her before.”
“She was born human, but about ten years ago, she developed these supernatural skills in the kitchen. Soups that could actually cure the common cold. Cakes that could soothe a broken heart. For New Year’s, she’d do a big crawfish boil and wish everybody good fortune. And somehow, everybody who showed up had better luck. Zed’s already talking about putting on a big memorial for her on New Year’s. He’ll probably ask you for help organizing something classy.”
She tilted her head. “I probably won’t be here for New Year’s.”
“Do you already have plans? Are you gonna visit your parents for the holidays?”
“No, but I’ll probably be gone by next month. You knew this isn’t a permanent assignment, right? When I’m done, I move onto the next study. After taking such a big assignment on the fly, I should have my choice of field studies, especially if my report goes over well.”
“So you’re just going to leave when you’re finished? Even with what’s between us? You wormed your way into our community and you’re just going to leave?”
“I think I resent the word ‘wormed,’ but yes, that’s my job. Look, I feel for you… The things I feel for you, I’ve never felt for anyone else. But I can’t give you the whole white picket dragon’s lair and nest full of eggs.”
“What is wrong with that?”
“Nothing, it’s just not for me. I worked really hard for my career. It’s my passion in life. And I’m not going to apologize for wanting to keep it.”
“Well, I’ve waited decades for my mate to come ’round and I’m not going to apologize for wanting to keep her.”
“You can’t keep me. I’m not one of your treasures. I’m a person.”
“We’ve gone over this, Jillian. I don’t want to keep you with my treasures. That’s the whole reason I took you to my hoard. Don’t you understand what
that means?”
“You trusted me not to steal it.”
“No, it means, I have real, life-altering feelings for you. It means I see you as a potential mate. It means I want to show you that I can provide for you, that this isn’t just a quick roll on the coins. It’s pretty much a marriage proposal.”
She stared at him, mouth gaping like a beached fish.
“Well, how the hell am I supposed to know that?” she exclaimed. “This is the problem with you dragons being so secretive. You can’t deny humans information about your culture and then get mad at us for misunderstanding. That’s why I want to keep working, to help people with relationships like ours, to help them understand how Mystic Bayou works!”
“Mystic Bayou works because we make it work. That’s the problem with ‘your study.’ You’re trying to show people how to duplicate how we live here, and you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because what we have here is special!” Bael exclaimed.
“I’m not going to deny that. But there are other special towns out there that could be just as great.”
“So you’re trying to franchise Mystic Bayou, like magie McDonald’s? I’m not supposed to be bothered by that?”
Jillian threw her hands up. “Why are you trying to twist my words?”
“Why are you trying to ruin my town?” he shot back, dropping his case files on the table with a thwack.
“What are you talking about? I’m not trying to ruin anything. I’m just trying to help people!” she cried, pausing as a plastic bag containing a blood-smeared piece of paper fluttered out of Bael’s files and to the floor.
“What’s this?” she asked, bending to pick it up.
“Zed found it on the floor of Gladys’s kitchen. We’re assuming it belonged to the killer. It’s just a page full of crazy.”
“That’s not crazy. It’s short hand. Every scientist I know has their own way of writing notes. The killer’s writing his observations down. Don’t you do that with your investigation notes?”
