city of dragons 07 - fire and flood

by Val St. Crowe

  Despite what Felicity had said to me, I knew we couldn’t impose on her hospitality any longer. Besides that, it wasn’t good for the boys not to have space to themselves to nap and sleep away from the adults. So, I went ahead and rented out another condo in her building. I could do that because the condos were independently owned, and a lot of the people didn’t live there year round. They rented the apartments out when they weren’t there, letting them by the week. It was high season prices, so it wasn’t cheap, but it was necessary.

  We ate takeout again that night, but after I got Wyatt to sleep, I determined that I needed to go grocery shopping.

  Connor had come by to help out with the boys. He was often their night nanny. As a gargoyle, he was only alert during the night hours, never during daylight. So, he came by to watch Wyatt and sometimes Jackson every so often. It was a nice way to give both Vivica and I a break from night wakings.

  Wyatt was doing better, though. He typically only woke once during the night, and he went right back to sleep after a snuggle and a little milk. I hadn’t really employed much (okay, any) sleep training, so I was counting myself lucky that he did so well. I knew there were kids his age out there sleeping through the night, but he wasn’t quite there yet. Noting his progress, though, I was fairly sure that he was going to get there sooner than we had all thought.

  Anyway, since Connor was around, he offered to come to the grocery store with me, and I decided I could use the company.

  Together, we strode through the brightly lit aisles. Every once in a while, I would stop and put something in my cart. “I should have made a list,” I muttered.

  “Right, because you’ve had so much time to yourself to do that in the past two days,” he said.

  I laughed a little. “You’re right, I guess.”

  “Of course I’m right.”

  I leaned against the cart. “I don’t even know what I should be buying. There’s nothing in the kitchen at the condo. No spices or anything. I need salt and pepper at least.”

  “Why don’t you just pick up some frozen stuff?” said Connor. “Meals you can just heat up?”

  I wrinkled up my nose. “Don’t they all have a really high salt content?”

  “Maybe,” said Connor, shrugging. “What do you care?”

  I considered. Maybe more salt would mean that Wyatt would eat more of the food. He was starting to develop a fussy toddler palate, and it was driving me nuts. As a baby, he’d been so good about eating his veggies. Now, all he wanted was starch and protein. Plus, the frozen food would be easier, and it wasn’t exactly as if my life was stress free right now. “Fine,” I said, “let’s go to the frozen section.”

  We trooped over there.

  I eyed the selection of meals in bags. There was pasta and sauce, rice and veggies, even a full fajita kit with tortillas. I yanked four of the bags out of the freezer section and tossed them in the cart. “I wonder if we could freeze the Green King.”

  “With what?” said Connor. “A freeze ray?”

  I glowered at him. “I’m just throwing things out. You don’t have to be a smartass.”

  “Not trying to be,” he said. “I’m only saying it’s not a practical line of thinking.”

  “Maybe not,” I grumbled.

  “What about that ring you have?” he said. “The one that you got from when you were missing with Clarke?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “That ring.” Clarke Gannon and I had been captured and forced to save Santa Claus. In the process, I’d gotten a ring from a reindeer who was actually an ancient water spirit.

  He took the cart and began walking away with it. “What is it supposed to do again? Make you burn pure and white or something?”

  “Yeah. Allow me to suppress the darkness within me and only burn pure and white,” I said. “Whatever the hell that means.”

  Connor increased his speed. “Oh, it’s obviously about the whiteflame.”

  I had to pick up my feet to keep up with him. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  Connor moved even faster. “I don’t know. You’ve had a lot on your mind.”

  “So, you think wearing that ring will allow us to use the whiteflame without going all crazy and evil?”

  “That’s what it sounds like,” he said, careening around the corner at top speed. “I mean, that’s what I thought the first time you told me about it.”

  Now he was ahead of me. “Why didn’t you say something before?”

  He was practically sprinting up the aisle.

  “Connor?” I called after him.

  He glanced at me and then back at the cart. He kept going. “Honestly? I’m not sure I want you to try it out. What if I’m wrong? The last time you and Lachlan used the whiteflame…”

  I rushed after him, grimacing, remembering that. We’d completely lost it. I’d been intent on the both of us flying through the world, burning cities to the ground until all the world leaders surrendered to us. I had wanted to rule the world. Apparently, the whiteflame brought out the megalomaniac within me. Lachlan had nearly killed Connor, and I hadn’t even tried very hard to stop him.

  I put a hand on Connor’s arm. “Hey, you know I’m sorry about all that.”

  He slowed his pace, sighing. “I do know. And I know you weren’t in control of yourself.”

  “But that doesn’t make it better,” I said. “Does it?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Well,” I said, “it’s too dangerous to test then. We can’t try the whiteflame again unless the circumstances are dire.”

  “Extremely dire,” said Connor. “Because you might save yourself and Lachlan and Wyatt, but I think you’d just as easily burn the rest of us to the ground in the process.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next morning, I realized that I had completely forgotten to get anything for breakfast. I had frozen meals for lunch and dinner coming out my ears, but the only remotely breakfasty thing I’d managed to pick up was bread. I could make toast with that.

  Toast wasn’t much of a breakfast, though.

  I’d even somehow forgotten coffee. I wandered around the kitchen in the rented condo swearing to myself.

  Lachlan sat at the breakfast bar, drinking a cup of blood. I’d remembered to pick up blood for him, so I’d at least done something right. “You doing all right?” he said.

  “There’s a reason you shouldn’t go grocery shopping without a list,” I said, glaring around at the cabinets, which were painted a bright blue and had little sea shell flourishes in the center of each one. Vacation house decoration left something to be desired, I thought.

  “And that is?” said Lachlan.

  “You buy a bunch of stuff you don’t need and forget half the things you do need.”

  Vivica stood up in the living room, where she was watching the boys. “You want me to run out and pick a few things up?”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Who could that be?” I muttered. I crossed to the door. It was just down the hallway from the kitchen. On opposite sides of the hallway were two bedrooms. At the door, I tugged it open. Felicity was standing there, fabric grocery bags slung over her back. Asia was with her. “Um, hey,” I said.

  “Can we come in?” said Felicity. “We’re here to make you breakfast.”

  “What?” I said. “You don’t have to do that. We moved out of your place so that you didn’t have to do that.”

  “Well,” said Felicity, “it turns out that I have basically nothing to do these days since the hotel where I work got severely water damaged, so…”

  I ushered her in, giving her a hug. “Thank you for this.”

  She grinned. “Not a problem. But can you stop hugging me and take one of these bags? They’re heavy.”

  “Sure,” I said, taking one.

  Asia deposited her bag in the kitchen and ran over to where the boys were playing in the living room. She was really taken with the little ones.

  Felicity began taking things out o
f her bags.

  “Good morning, Felicity,” said Lachlan.

  “Morning, Lachlan,” she said.

  “Geez,” I said. “You planning on making breakfast for an army?”

  She shrugged, pulling out milk, eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, and orange juice. “I thought people might be hungry.”

  “You going to come make breakfast for us every morning?” I said. “Oh, did you bring coffee?”

  “Yes, I brought coffee,” she said. “And I can make breakfast anytime you want.”

  Lachlan raised a finger. “If you’re making coffee, I want some.”

  “Noted,” I said, rummaging through one of the bags for coffee. “You brought pastries too?”

  “For another morning,” said Felicity. “Or for snacks or desserts or something.”

  “How long are we planning on staying here?” said Lachlan.

  “I don’t know, until the hotel’s fixed, I guess,” I said.

  “So, when I said that about going to Texas, you completely blanked that out?” said Lachlan.

  I turned to him, unopened bag of coffee in my hand. “You were serious about that? I thought that was trauma talking.”

  “What’s this about Texas?” said Felicity.

  “The kid who killed Lachlan’s daughter was murdered,” I said to her. “Lachlan wants to go bring the murderer to justice.”

  Felicity made a confused face.

  “The murderer of the murderer, I mean,” I said.

  “Look,” said Lachlan, “it’s not like that. You’re making it sound demented.”

  I crossed to the coffee maker and began scooping coffee into it.

  “Do you think it is demented?” said Lachlan.

  I took the coffee pot to the sink and filled it from the spigot. “I told you, I think the Green King killed him to send us a message that he could get to us anywhere.”

  “Well, all the more reason to go there, then,” said Lachlan.

  Felicity had a skillet out on the stove, and she was loading strips of bacon onto it. They hit the hot surface with a sizzle, and a delicious smell started to permeate the condo. “Look, I can’t go to Texas,” she said.

  “You just said that you didn’t have anything to do,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t have a job with the hotel closed down,” she said, “but Scott still has work, and Asia’s got school. I can’t up and leave them. Besides, I never really help out with the murder-solving stuff.”

  I supposed that was true enough. “It doesn’t matter anyway, because we haven’t even decided to go to Texas.”

  “Why not?” said Lachlan. “We’ve got nothing keeping us here.”

  I sighed. “You really want to go back there?”

  “I told you, it’s a locked-room mystery. It’s a thought experiment,” said Lachlan.

  “And it’s got nothing to do with feeling as if you’ve got unfinished business with that whole part of your life?” I said.

  Lachlan took a big swig of blood. He set down his glass. “Well, even if it was, is that such a bad thing?”

  Vivica called over from the living room area. “Are you guys talking about going to Texas? Am I coming?”

  I chewed on my lip. “Well, we’d need a babysitter, wouldn’t we? We can’t leave Wyatt alone.”

  * * *

  And somehow, just like that, it was decided. We were going to Texas. It was a good thing that I hadn’t booked the condo we were staying in for more than a week, because we weren’t going to be staying in it long.

  It would just be Lachlan, me, Vivica, and the boys. Felicity and Connor would stay back in Sea City. I’d appointed Felicity my liaison with the contractors who were working on the hotel. They’d contact her first and she’d do her best to help them before bothering me halfway across the country.

  However, owing to my conversation with Connor, I wanted to know more about the ring that I’d been given by Dasher the reindeer. Lachlan and I hadn’t discussed it much since looking at it prompted our discussion of marriage. But if the ring that Dasher had given me was indeed a protection against the darker tendencies of the blood bond, then Lachlan and I needed to know that.

  We could use it against the Green King.

  None of us said anything, but there was an undercurrent to our very existence these days. The Green King had struck once. We were going about our lives now, doing our best to rebuild, but all of us were aware that he could strike again at any moment. And that we weren’t ready to fight him.

  So, anyway, I went to Ophelia to ask her about the ring. We met in her house, which was near the cafe.

  First, she wanted to know what was going on with the hotel and what had been meant by all the talk about Lachlan’s stepson. I filled her in as best as I could. She nodded throughout, asking a few questions here and there until she had the entire story straight. And then she simply shook her head and sighed. “Well, that’s a crazy mess, near as I can tell.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m not even sure why it is we’re going exactly. But I have to admit I’m curious to see where Lachlan came from. He doesn’t talk much about his past. He’s kind of secretive that way.”

  “Probably because he doesn’t want to dwell on it,” said Ophelia. “It sounds like his past was painful. And the two of you have such a beautiful life together now.”

  I smiled. “That’s true. We’re lucky.” Well, except for the fact that some ancient monster was stalking us. That wasn’t particularly lucky.

  “So, what is it you wanted to come to talk to me about?” she asked.

  I took out the ring and handed it to her. “I was wondering if you could tell me anything about this. It’s a powerful object, I know that much, but I’m not particularly sure what it does or how to use it.”

  “Hmm.” Ophelia squinted at the ring. “Well, all right then, I’ll see what I can find out. Come on with me to the kitchen. I’ve got most of my supplies there.”

  Ophelia’s kitchen was a small room. There was a doorway at one end, and then a narrow strip of space in between counter-lined walls. The stove was at the far end, the sink on the right hand side just in front of the window, and the refrigerator next to the sink. On tiptoe, Ophelia began pulling small hand-labeled jars out of a high cabinet. She began to hum to herself.

  I couldn’t make out the labels on all of them. Once said, dragon scales. Another, sweet basil. A third, oil of clove. Ophelia began sprinkling a bit of the contents of each of the jars into an earthenware bowl. She muttered to herself as she did it, still half-humming, a spell of some kind. I wasn’t entirely sure how mages used words to shape their magic. My use of magic was instinctive and innate. Mages were less powerful than dragons, but their magic could be more versatile, and they had more control.

  Finally, Ophelia quieted. She picked up the ring and dropped it in the mixture in the bowl.

  There was a sizzling sound, like dropping water into hot oil.

  The ring bobbed to the surface, and smoke emanated from the bowl.

  Ophelia fished it out. The minute she touched it, a jolt went through her body. She convulsed. Her eyes rolled up in the back of her head and she let out a high-pitched piercing noise.

  “Ophelia?” I reached out for her, but then I pulled back. I wasn’t sure if I should touch her or not.

  She opened her eyes and peered at me. “Well.”

  “Well?” I said.

  Matter-of-factly, Ophelia turned on the spigot and rinsed off the ring. “I can’t much tell what it does, I’m sorry about that.”

  “Oh,” I said. “It seemed like something was happening.”

  Ophelia handed the ring back to me. “I was able to determine one thing, and that’s that it’s got a finite amount of power. Whatever it does, it doesn’t do it forever.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, touching the ring gingerly.

  “It’s limited. Its power would only work for a brief time.”

  “How brief?” I said.

  “Can’t say for sur
e,” she said. “But it does seem to be, as you said, a very powerful object. I feel you could do something pretty big with it.”

  I moved the ring from one hand to the other and back again. I was almost tempted to put it on. But what if it did something besides help with the whiteflame? What if it was dangerous? I shoved it back in my pocket. “Thanks, Ophelia.”

  “Oh, any time,” she said, smiling.

  * * *

  “Hey, hey,” said Christiane Dirk, the other magical creatures officer in the Sea City Police Department. “I hear you’re putting in for some vacation time, Flint.”

  Lachlan and I were at his desk at the office. He had come in to talk to the captain about how he’d be leaving for a while. I’d come with him to see if I’d left anything behind that I needed. Given the fact that our hotel was ruined, the captain was pretty understanding.

  “Hey, Christy,” said Lachlan. “I would have run this by you first, if I could have found you. I don’t want you to feel like we’re leaving you in the lurch.”

  She laughed. “Boy, please. I’ve handled all the murders since Thanksgiving, haven’t I?”

  Lachlan and I were actually a wee bit annoyed about that. Christy had this annoying habit of nabbing all the good cases before we even knew about them. She was always working late in the office, and that seemed to be when the violent crimes happened. By the time Lachlan and I woke up, Christy had already claimed dibs on those cases. Lachlan and I had been stuck with things like petty theft and gargoyles turning to stone in the middle of the street and other less-exciting cases.

  The only silver lining to it all was that we were usually home in time for dinner, and it was important to us to be able to spend time with Wyatt.

  “You have,” said Lachlan, “although we could have taken one of those off your hands.”

  “As we’ve said,” I put in.

  She shrugged. “All I’m saying is that I’ve got this.”

  “Right,” said Lachlan. “So, you won’t mind holding down the fort until we get back.”

  “Not at all,” she said. “You two just do the best that you can to get your hotel back in ship shape.”

  I sighed, thinking of the ruined Purple Dolphin. “Yeah, we’re working on it.”