by Bianca D'Arc
That didn’t mean Mellie was content to just sit and watch while her sister went into danger time and time again. She’d wanted to be close in case of disaster, so maybe she could help save her sister’s life. But the bears of Grizzly Cove weren’t allowing it. At Urse’s request.
Double stinkers.
Peter had been sent to sit in the apartment with her to make sure she wouldn’t circumvent Urse’s desires and the Alpha’s orders. As if Mellie would deliberately cause problems for her sister. All she’d wanted to do was be nearby, in case everything went wrong and Urse needed her. But no. Urse had decreed Mellie couldn’t be anywhere near and had to be watched like some kind of prisoner, under house arrest.
Mellie still hadn’t quite forgiven her sister for that. In fact, their relationship had been a bit strained since Urse had saved the cove and Mellie had been failing at every attempt to do her part. It didn’t help Mellie’s mood that her sister—her best friend—had found her mate and was totally wrapped up in John.
Not that Mellie wasn’t happy for them. She was. She really was. John was a great guy, and Mellie couldn’t have asked for anyone better for her only sister. It’s just that seeing them so happy… When Mellie was failing so badly every time she tried to brew a potion… It was hard. Urse wasn’t there in the middle of the night when Mellie needed to talk.
Urse had moved out of the apartment above the bookstore and moved into John’s house—his den—farther up the cove. She wasn’t all that far away, but she wasn’t there for Mellie the way she always had been. Mellie was having a rude awakening about just how much she’d come to depend on her older sister. She hadn’t realized it, but she was coming to appreciate it now more than ever.
Mellie was feeling lonely and a little left out of her sister’s life. She knew it was a bit selfish to feel like that, but she couldn’t help it.
“Here.” Urse set a steaming cup of tea down in front of Mellie. She’d been so wrapped up in her own morose thoughts, she hadn’t really heard Urse rustling around by the stove, making tea. Chamomile, by the delicate fragrance of it. Yum.
“Thanks, sis.” Mellie truly loved her sister, even if she was having a hard time adjusting to the new dynamic of her sister being married.
Urse came over and sat down across from her at the kitchen island, sipping her own mug of steaming tea. She let Mellie enjoy the tea for a moment before she spoke.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” It was the same question Urse had been asking for weeks, but Mellie didn’t have a new answer. She just shrugged. “I’m sorry, hon. I really am.”
“I know.” Mellie sipped her tea again, feeling calmer and a bit sad. “I’m stopping for today. I’ll have to clean out the laboratory and bless everything all over again. There’s a new moon tonight, so it’s a good time to do it. Then, I guess I’ll start fresh tomorrow, but I have no idea how. I’m sort of at a dead end here.”
“But I thought the grimoire Nonna sent had the potion you needed,” Urse said quietly.
“It does. At least, I think it does, but it’s so ancient. Some of the ingredients I have to guess at because we don’t call them by the names listed anymore. I’ve had to do a lot of research, and I think I’ve got everything right, but there’s one ingredient—a really important one—that I just don’t understand and can’t figure out.”
“The dragon’s blood thing, right?” Urse asked, familiar with the problem Mellie had been kicking around for the past few days. “Are you sure there’s not some obscure herb or potion that goes by that name?”
“I’ve tried everything. I’m at the point where I think there might actually have been dragons around at the time the grimoire was written.” Mellie chuckled at the thought. Real dragons? Yeah, right. Pull the other one.
“Well, it is pretty old,” Urse offered uncertainly.
Mellie looked at her sister in disbelief. “Seriously? You think there really were dragons?”
“Well, you know the old saying. Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. I mean, we have all these old stories about dragons. So, why couldn’t they have been real at some point?” Urse shrugged, sounding unsure of her own theory.
“I thought they were just stories ancient people made up when they found dinosaur bones and couldn’t explain them,” Mellie offered. That idea had always made sense to her.
“I’m not so sure,” Urse told her. “I think you should talk to Lyn Ling tomorrow. There are lots of stories about dragons in China. Maybe she knows something.”
“But the grimoire is from Italy,” Mellie protested weakly.
“And Marco Polo traveled the silk road,” Urse fired right back. “What if there really were dragons in China? Didn’t you tell me some of the other potions in the grimoire used ginseng and other Asian herbs?”
“Ginseng also grows in the United States, you know,” Mellie said, just to be contrary. She really wasn’t in a good mood. Not after this latest humiliation. But she knew Urse was trying to help, so she tried not to be too bitchy.
“Okay. You’re proving my point, you know. If the ginseng in the grimoire is from the U.S., then why couldn’t it also reference dragons from China? Ancient people traveled and traded, you know. It just took them longer to get where they were going.”
Mellie wanted to growl but bit it back. Urse’s heart was in the right place, even if Mellie wasn’t in the mood to hear it right now.
“I’ll go to Lyn’s shop tomorrow,” Mellie conceded. “Find out what she knows. I promised to bring Daisy some new books anyway.”
Urse smiled. “Good. Now, that’s settled, I’m heading home.” Urse stood and put her empty mug in the sink. “Will you be all right on your own?”
Urse asked her that every afternoon when she headed home from the bookstore they ran together. Mellie would take over for a couple of hours—not that they were inundated with customers, but there always was a chance of someone stopping by—then she’d lock up and retreat to the apartment above the shop to do a little work on her potions before heading to bed.
More often than not, she’d eat dinner all alone. It was getting on her nerves, but she wouldn’t tell Urse that. Not for the world. Mellie had always had Urse in her life. They’d cooked together all the time and spent a lot meals laughing and talking with each other. Now, Urse was off doing the happy couple thing, and though she’d invited Mellie to dinner many times, Mellie hadn’t wanted to horn in on their newlywed period.
Maybe it would become easier in time, but for now, Mellie was spending a lot of time alone, thinking about how lonely she was. It was circular thinking, she knew, but knowing that didn’t always help stave it off.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” she assured her sister. “Go. Tell John I said hi. I’m just going to finish my tea, then I’ll head down to the bookstore.”
Urse left a few minutes later, and Mellie did as she’d said. She left the mugs in the sink for later and headed downstairs. She would spend an hour on the computer downstairs, doing more research into the ingredients she needed. She spent a lot of time doing research these days.
She was scrolling through a website devoted to dragon lore when the bell above the door to the shop tinkled, breaking her concentration. She looked up to find Peter walking into the shop.
“Back so soon?” Mellie asked, guessing Peter had driven the komodo dragon straight out of town and back to its owner.
“It’s been hours,” Peter told her. “It’s well past your usual closing time. I saw your lights still on and figured I’d stop by to see if everything was okay.”
Mellie looked past him to see out the front windows. Son of a gun. It was dark out there. The street lights were on, which meant it was pretty late.
“Wow. I guess I got caught up in my research.” She sat back and stretched the kinks out of her lower back. Judging by how much her spine hurt from sitting in one position for too long, she probably had been hunched over the computer far longer than she’d realized.
“What are you rese
arching?” Peter asked conversationally.
He wasn’t usually one for small talk, so his question was a little out of the ordinary. Was he making an effort to be more friendly? If so, she was all for it. She’d like to get really friendly with him, in fact, but she didn’t want to get the cart before the horse. Peter had been a bit aloof with her since Urse had done her work, and Mellie didn’t want to chance that he’d scamper off again.
“Dragons, of course,” she told him, laughing weakly at herself. “Urse has got me half convinced that there were such things as real dragons once upon a time.”
“But there were.” Peter’s statement set her back. He sounded so certain.
“Seriously? How can you be so sure?”
“There is dragon blood in my family line,” he told her.
“Wait. What?” Mellie shook her head, trying to wrap her mind around what he was saying. “You mean dragons like…shifter…dragons?” Suddenly, it was as if a light bulb came on in her mind. “Why didn’t I think of that before? Dragons were shifters?” She stood and started to pace. “Stars! Do any still exist? Why didn’t you mention this before?” She turned her questions on Peter. “You have dragon blood? How far back?”
“My grandmother’s grandfather was a dragon, or so she claims. He died long before I was born, of course, and I don’t personally know anyone who can shapeshift into a dragon. These days, with the rise of human technology—especially radar—they’d probably be living in secret, in very remote locations, if any still exist. Dragons were hunted, you know. Not just in stories, but in real life. My great-great-grandfather lived in secrecy, too. Only the family knew what he was, and I understand there was great rejoicing when the children of that union all turned out to be bears and not dragons.”
Mellie thought hard about what he was saying. “But you still have dragon blood. At least a little. I wonder if I tried the potion with a drop of your blood…”
Peter squirmed a bit, which was unusual for him. “I’m willing to try, but I’m a bear, Amelia. One of my distant ancestors was a dragon, but I don’t think that really counts because my animal side is bear all the way. At least, that’s how it feels to me.”
“Look.” Mellie sighed heavily as she moved to stand before him. Her tone and demeanor were as serious as she ever got. “I don’t have much choice here but to try. If you’re willing, I’d love to give this another shot. Who knows? It might work.”
“Or, it might not, and the entire fire department might show up next time,” he cautioned her.
She didn’t like the reminder of her failures, but he did have a point. She shook her head. A little more embarrassment was a small price to pay. And there was a small chance it could work this time. It was worth the risk.
“That’s a chance I’ll have to take,” she told him. “I’ve got work to do cleaning out the lab and purifying it tonight when the new moon rises. Come by tomorrow afternoon, and we can start brewing, if you haven’t changed your mind.”
Peter shook his head, much the way his bear form sometimes did. “I haven’t changed my mind. I’m always willing to help you, zvyozdochka. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up too high. My dragon ancestor is very distant.”
“You’re the best I’ve got, Peter,” she told him, realizing that was true on many levels.
CHAPTER TWO
Mellie worked long into the night, first cleaning up the mess she’d made earlier with the komodo dragon, then performing ritual cleansing as the new moon rose in the dark sky. She couldn’t see it, but she knew it was there. The magic of the moon was something she was very attuned to, as waxing and waning power of the moon in its phases influenced her work all the time.
The next morning, Urse came in, as usual, to open the shop downstairs. They’d agreed that Urse would take the morning shift because Mellie was staying up late each night working on her potions. The sisters would usually have lunch together then work side by side for a while in the shop before Urse went home mid-afternoon and Mellie stayed down in the shop until closing time. Then, she’d go back up to her lab and work on her pet potions.
They’d fallen into a routine over the past few weeks, and Mellie was glad of it this morning, as she got to sleep in, knowing that Urse was taking care of things downstairs. Mellie finally got out of bed a little before noon and made herself presentable. She put lunch on the stove so that it would be ready when Urse flipped the sign from OPEN to CLOSED downstairs and came up to share the mid-day meal.
There was a lot to discuss today, but oddly, Mellie felt reticent about sharing Peter’s family secret with her sister. That stopped Mellie in her tracks. She told her sister pretty much everything. Why, now, was she suddenly reluctant to share this?
It was Peter. That had to be it. Mellie had been shy about her growing feelings for the giant werebear because Urse seemed to gain a little too much satisfaction from teasing her sister about it. Mellie’s feelings about Peter were special…and private. Not for public consumption or ridicule.
Not that Urse had been mean about it. No, she’d just liked teasing her sister. Not in a cruel way, but in that older-sisterly way that sometimes drove Mellie nuts.
This, though, was a little different. The information Peter had imparted about his family history felt like a secret he had trusted her with. She wouldn’t betray that implied trust lightly. So, maybe Urse wouldn’t be hearing about the plans Mellie had for tonight with Peter and her potion room. Huh. That was different. She didn’t like keeping secrets from Urse, but this felt like the right thing to do. Quite a contradiction.
Mellie didn’t have more time to dwell on it, because at that moment, she heard Urse’s light tread on the stairs leading up to the apartment. Lunch was just about ready, so Mellie pulled the pan of chicken from the oven and set it on the table, just as the door opened.
“Smells yummy,” Urse observed, pausing to give her sister a quick hug hello.
The sisters ate and talked about the town and the people, not going near any of the more difficult topics. Mellie didn’t mention Peter at all. Not even to say he was coming over later that day. With any luck, Urse would have left before Peter showed up.
Mellie liked him too much to betray his confidence, and she wouldn’t really be able to explain his visit to Urse’s satisfaction without explaining about why he was now, suddenly, helping her with the potion. There was a small temptation to let Urse think that maybe Peter and Mellie were dating, or something, but that might be even worse because the teasing would probably know no bounds. Better to keep Peter’s involvement to herself for now.
The sisters went back downstairs together, after lunch had been cleared away, to work in the bookstore. They were redecorating the front display windows with a new selection of books. The business was doing surprisingly well considering the small population of the town. Most of the men were readers, though, which helped considerably. Apparently, werebears were more erudite than she would have expected before moving here. No wonder the bookshop had been second only to the bakery in gaining approval from the town council.
That, right there, pointed out the basic priorities of bear shifters in Mellie’s mind. First, they liked to eat—especially the sweets that the bakery specialized in, though they also served man-sized sandwiches on freshly baked bread. Right after food came books, for some reason.
She might have thought a gun shop would be the next priority after learning the entire town council and most of the residents had been Special Forces soldiers, but she supposed they were all still well-armed enough without adding any new firepower to their arsenals. Plus, aside from the gun collections all over town, the men could turn into deadly bears any time they wanted. They carried around their own weapons, built into their bodies, in the way of claws and teeth. Quite a few of them were into knives in their human form, as well, and wore them like women wore pocketbooks—with them at all times, an accessory to their lifestyle.
So, the second business to be approved had been a bookstore. Theoretic
ally, all the men in town had officially retired from military service. Most of them didn’t follow any kind of schedule anymore. The town was supposed to be an artist’s colony, and the men lived a life, not of leisure, but of their own design. They woke when they wanted. Ate when they wanted. Dabbled in art, if that was their thing. And they read. A lot. More than the average person, Mellie thought, though she didn’t know precise figures.
Still, the bookshop was doing reasonably well, even in such a small community. Most of the men in town came in at least once every couple of weeks to pick up book orders. The shop wasn’t stocking loads of books on spec. It was more boutique than that. Mellie and Urse had decided to cater to their customers. Specializing in special orders was fast becoming their motto. If someone wanted a particular book, they just let one of the sisters know, and a few days later, it would arrive.
The floor space in the store itself was devoted to several specialties. There was a section of books about art—helping to maintain the façade that the town was really an artist’s colony. Any tourists who might come through and browse in the bookstore would expect that. There was also a section of coffee table books about the Pacific Northwest. There was a cookbook section, and they had just decided to devote a small corner to children’s books.
In fact, that’s the project they had been working on for the past week. They’d repainted that corner and put up shelves in strategic places to create a little nook perfectly sized for little bodies to browse books shelved at their level. Right now, little Daisy Ling was the only child resident of Grizzly Cove, but as more men paired off with their new mates, the sisters had begun to think ahead.
Mellie silently thought Urse was already planning for her own children with John, but the sisters hadn’t really discussed it yet. That was something Urse and John had to figure out between themselves first. Mellie didn’t know, for example, if John was in favor of the large family Urse had always wanted. Would he object to the fact that some of their kids could be born without the ability to shift? Some, or all, might be born mages. Mellie knew for a fact that Urse was hoping for at least one little girl to carry on the strega tradition.
