by Rinelle Grey
Trouble was, it was as unreachable as Lisa was.
He wasn’t a human. He didn’t live here. This wasn’t his world.
He should be keeping his distance.
Should, should, should.
He was so sick of what he should be doing. When did he get to do what he wanted to?
He understood why he couldn’t mate with Lisa again, but what was the harm in going and singing with the humans for a few hours? It wasn’t like singing with them would mean he was stuck singing with only them for the rest of his life.
And really, there was no safety risk. It wasn’t like he was going to sing in public with them again. Not that anyone would pay any real attention to him if he did.
No one even suspected he wasn’t a normal human, like they were. The reality didn’t even occur to them.
It was perfectly safe.
And it would certainly suffice to take his mind off Lisa.
His mind made up, he reached for the phone before he could regret the choice.
Lisa had shown him how to use it when he’d first arrived, and made him memorise her mobile phone number, just in case he needed her. She’d even made him ring her to prove that he could. He could do this.
Dialling Raven’s number, he held it up to his ear, listening to it ring.
“Raven Heathridge, here. Can I help you?”
He recognised the singer’s voice, even though it sounded different, changed slightly by its transmission through the human’s technology.
Verrian ignored the flutter of discomfort at the strangeness. “Hi, Raven,” he said. “It’s me, Verrian.”
“Hi, Verrian,” Raven said immediately. “What’s up?”
“I was just wondering if the offer to come and…” What was the word the human had used last night? “and jam with you, was still open?”
“Sure.” Raven’s voice was enthusiastic. “How about now?”
Butterflies suddenly decided to swarm in Verrian’s stomach. “Now?”
He had this phone call thing figured out, but the cab may be slightly more difficult.
“Sure, if you’re not busy.”
“No… Not busy.” He wanted to go. It would take his mind off Lisa for sure. That was the plan. He just needed to figure out how. “Where should I meet you?”
Raven rattled off a string of words and numbers that were meaningless to Verrian. He wrote them down anyway. “See you in about half an hour,” Raven said.
Verrian nodded, then realised Raven couldn’t see him. “Sure, half an hour,” he repeated.
After he hung up the phone, he stared at the piece of paper in his hand. It was an address, the key to where Raven was, he knew that much. Pity it was meaningless to him.
When dragons wanted to visit each other, they used landmarks and cardinal directions. Human directions were far more complicated.
Luckily, he didn’t need to know what the directions meant, he just needed to give it to the cab driver. That had worked just fine last night.
The number for the cab had been printed on the side of the vehicle. The pattern of numbers was simple enough Verrian could remember it.
He was feeling quite confident about being able to use the telephone and call someone. Until the woman on the other end of the phone asked for his address.
Perhaps he’d been a little overconfident?
He had no idea what Lisa’s address was.
Now that he was on the phone, he remembered that Lisa had given it to them, but he hadn’t been paying that much attention. It had never occurred to him that he would need to remember it. All he knew was the number, since it was on Lisa’s door.
He stared around the room, as though the address would be written there somewhere.
On the bench, right near the phone, was a stack of little rectangular paper bundles. On the front of them was Lisa’s name, and the apartment number, followed by other words.
Was that the address?
What did he have to lose? Worst that happened was the cab didn’t show up.
“What’s your address?” the lady on the other end of the phone prompted again.
Verrian read out the numbers and words on the front of the paper bundle.
It must have at least sounded right, because the lady said, “The taxi will be there in five to ten minutes.” Her voice sounded bored.
Verrian was far from bored. His heart hammered, and he felt almost as exhilarated as he had when he’d mated with Lisa last night.
Almost.
He hung up the phone, then headed for the door. He was about to close it behind him when he remembered.
He had no keys.
Why did human’s make everything so complicated? He was good at navigating unknown situations and dealing with people, but this was beyond a joke.
He stared at the door. Lisa had shown him how to lock and unlock it, but that was from the inside. He needed a key to unlock it from the outside.
But… maybe he didn’t have to unlock it again. Lisa would be home in a few hours. He could just wait until she arrived home. That would mean she’d know he’d been out, but he had no intention of hiding that from her.
He had no need.
Once she saw that no harm came from his visit, she’d understand.
Plus, it would give them something to talk about. Something other than sleeping together.
All he had to do was lock the door.
He opened it, and flicked the switch Lisa had shown him, then closed it again. As he had expected, the door stayed locked.
Simple.
Catching a cab turned out to be simple too. It arrived on time, and the driver didn’t blink when Verrian gave him the address. He just drove off.
And drove. And drove.
Verrian began to feel a little uneasy. How far were they going? It hadn’t occurred to him that Raven might live this far away. As they drove further and further, the buildings grew smaller, and further apart.
When some of the houses were far enough back from the street they were almost hidden by the trees, and Verrian was about to ask the driver to take him home, the man pulled over. “That’ll be thirty-seven dollars fifty,” the man said.
Verrian stared at him, his heart constricting.
Money.
He’d thought he was so clever, that he’d thought of everything.
Why hadn’t it occurred to him that the trip would cost? He’d already noticed that everything the humans did involved a transaction of money, usually done with the little plastic cards. He’d even seen Olivia hand hers to the cab driver.
In his excitement over managing to make the call, he’d completely forgotten.
“Um, I don’t have any money,” he blurted out.
The driver frowned. “You have to pay, mate. I can drive you to the nearest ATM, but you’ll have to pay the extra fare.”
Verrian didn’t know what an ATM was, but it didn’t matter. “I don’t have any money there either.”
The driver’s frown deepened. “It’s a crime to call a taxi if you can’t pay you know.”
A crime? Verrian’s heart thumped in his chest. What if the driver called the police? And they asked for the dreaded ID? He didn’t have that either.
This had been a stupid idea. How had he ever convinced himself he could do this?
There was a knock on the window of the cab. The driver rolled it down with a frown.
“Is something wrong?” Raven asked. He gave Verrian a strange look. Probably because he was wondering how he’d managed to be stupid enough to have a problem catching a cab.
The driver poked his finger towards Verrian. “He says he can’t pay. Is he your visitor?”
Raven looked over at Verrian, a frown on his face. “Yes, he’s visiting me. How much is his fare?”
The driver repeated the cost, and Raven pulled out his wallet and handed the man some money. “Keep the change,” he said. Then he beckoned to Verrian. “Come on in.”
Verrian climbed stiffly out of the car. Any
joy he’d had in visiting Raven and learning more about human music had been spoiled by the trip over here.
He might not know much about the human’s money, but even dragons knew about being beholden to someone. “I’ll pay you back as soon as…” he trailed off.
What? As soon as Lisa came home? Then he’d be as beholden to her as he was to Raven.
Lisa though, he could pay back once he caught up with Taurian. Even a small gem from the dragon’s hoard would be more than enough to cover the cab fare.
Raven shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
If Verrian had a way of getting home now that didn’t rely on the cab driver he couldn’t pay, he wouldn’t still be here. Since he didn’t, he followed Raven up a long driveway lined with trees, staring around.
It was deserted out here. He could always fly home.
Then again, landing anywhere near Lisa’s apartment, with people everywhere, would be an issue.
Verrian shook his head. Why was he thinking of Lisa’s home as his home? If he flew out of here, it would make far more sense to head back to his real home. His clan’s lair.
The thought of being back amongst his own kind, with none of this turmoil or feeling of being constantly out of place, was tempting.
But Lisa would wonder where he was. She’d worry.
And he’d miss her. His heart constricted a little.
Raven opened the front door and ushered him inside, shutting it behind him. “Come on through, the guys are in the living room. We were just practicing for a gig on the weekend, but…” he broke off.
The look he threw Verrian, curious, with a touch of excitement, suddenly made Verrian wary.
“Look, this might not have been the best idea…” Verrian started.
“I’m not your enemy,” Raven said quickly. “I’d actually like to be your friend.”
Verrian stared at him, suspicious. His question implied he knew something. If so, how?
Yet, despite the strangeness of Raven’s words, Verrian couldn’t help feeling they were genuine. He believed Raven really did want to be his friend. That thought allayed his fears enough that he followed the man into the living room.
When the other two band members stared at him strangely though, his heart picked up a beat. Something was definitely going on.
“Have you seen this?”
Raven bent down and turned around a laptop.
Pictures of him and the Trima dragon, fighting on the front of Rita’s car stared back at Verrian. His heart dropped like a stone.
Where had those pictures come from? Lisa had taken Rita’s memory card and all the photos with it.
These pictures though, weren’t from the outside of the car, they were from the inside.
Paul.
Verrian bit back a growl.
He needed to act cool, and calm. Surely these men had no reason to suspect he was the dragon in the photos. Even if they believed them.
“Surely you don’t believe in fairy tales like dragons,” he said, trying to inject some scorn into his voice. “These were photoshopped.”
He had no idea what the word meant, but Lisa had used it with her parents when Rita had posted a picture of the two of them together.
Raven put his finger on the touch pad, and scrolled down a little.
There was that same picture of Lisa and Verrian in the middle of nowhere.
How was he ever going to explain this?
Chapter 14
“Lisa?”
“Huh? Oh.”
Lisa swung her chair around to stare at Olivia. She’d been so lost in thought, she hadn’t even noticed the woman approaching.
She probably wanted to fill Lisa in on how her night with Kevin had gone.
Lisa wasn’t in the mood for it. She hoped things had worked out for Olivia, but she had her own hassles to deal with.
How had her one day of passion with a dragon prince, who she was supposed to never see again, turned into this?
How had it turned into this all-consuming passion that distracted her from everything around her?
“You need to see this, Lisa.” Olivia held out her phone.
Oh great. Pictures of Olivia and Kevin, just what Lisa needed.
But Olivia wasn’t smiling. In fact, she looked worried. And around the office, Lisa was getting more than a few strange stares.
Her stomach churned. What now?
She stared at the phone in Olivia’s hand, and her heart skipped a beat.
The headline, ‘Mungaloo’s Own Loch Ness Monster’ greeted her.
That said it all. Trust Rita to use Lisa’s own joke against her. Lisa felt sick to her stomach.
Underneath the damning headline, pictures of two dragons fighting on the front of a little yellow car stared back at her in full colour, all perfectly in focus.
Damn Rita.
Lisa should never have trusted her. Of course she’d gone straight for Paul’s photos and written the article anyway.
Lucky Lisa hadn’t given her any real information.
“Here, let me see that.” She snatched the phone from Olivia’s hand, not even caring that she was being rude.
Olivia didn’t seem to notice. She just stood there, wringing her hands, while Lisa skimmed through the article, noting that the pictures of her and Verrian were included again as well.
Lisa paused, then read it again, this time more carefully.
None of the information she’d given Rita was there. In fact, aside from the obviously damning photos, there was little text at all. A location, lots of rhetorical questions, but nothing else.
Not that it helped. The photos by themselves were more than enough of an issue, as evidenced by the way Olivia was staring at her.
This was a disaster. She needed to call Karla and Taurian right away.
But first, she had to deal with Olivia.
And her entire office.
“Is Verrian really a dragon?” Olivia asked, her eyes wide.
Lisa summoned up her most scornful look. She stood up, put her hands on her hips, and stared around the office for good measure. “Do you really think that dragons exist? That they’ve been hiding, in the Australian outback of all places, for goodness knows how long?”
“But… the photos…” Olivia sounded disappointed.
Lisa could understand that.
“Haven’t you watched the movies lately? They can make pretty convincing animated dragons. I bet stills are even easier.”
A young lawyer stood up at his desk nearby, giving up the pretence that he wasn’t listening. “But why? Why would someone do that?”
“Jealousy,” Lisa said promptly. “Rita, the reporter who did this, has been jealous of me since high school. When she saw Verrian, the guy I was with, she obviously came up with this elaborate prank to cause trouble for us.”
Barry Hutchinson, her boss, raised an eyebrow. “She’s putting her career on the line, all to get back at you for hooking up with some cute guy?”
“He’s not some cute guy,” Lisa told him. “He’s drop dead gorgeous.” She looked over at Olivia and raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you say, Olivia?”
Olivia actually blushed, adding some more credence to her story. She nodded enthusiastically. “Movie star gorgeous,” she agreed.
“Enough to pull this sort of stunt over?” her boss challenged, waving his hand at the phone.
Olivia giggled. “And more.”
Barry grimaced and shook his head in disbelief.
Lisa suspected there was quite a bit of jealousy in his reaction too.
Yet, even her easy victory didn’t do much to settle her nerves. Yes, there would be a lot of people who would approach the news article with a healthy dose of scepticism. But not everyone. Some would believe it, or want it to be true. Enough to cause a problem.
Especially since Rita had made the town’s name so prominent.
Verrian wasn’t going home any time soon. In fact, with all the dragon seekers that were bound to descend on
Mungaloo after this reveal, Lisa would be surprised if she didn’t have a few more dragons camped out on her couch before the week was up.
Olivia wandered back to her desk, though she kept looking up and staring at Lisa, her eyes curious.
Lisa ignored her.
She tried to focus on her work, or at least pretend to, but it was almost impossible.
She just kept thinking how quickly this could all go wrong.
What if the police showed up?
No, that was crazy. They weren’t going to believe this insane story. Surely they ignored these sort of sensationalist news pieces?
What if Ultrima read the papers?
That thought was enough to send her cold.
Ultrima turning up on her doorstep was worse than the police. There would be no fooling him. He knew exactly what Verrian was. And he wanted to kill him.
But they were in the middle of a crowded city. Ultrima wasn’t going to risk showing up here. At least, not in dragon form.
Besides, it hadn’t been her town printed in the paper. It was Mungaloo.
She wasn’t the one in trouble. Her family she couldn’t care less about. She hoped this caused a whole parcel of trouble for them.
Karla, Taurian and the other dragons though…
She stared at her phone, but she couldn’t call Karla in the middle of the office.
She needed to get out of here.
Taking a sick day right now was going to look awfully suspicious. Everyone knew about the article. They’d guess it was the reason she was leaving, and it would make them doubt her denial of any of it being true.
What did it matter?
What did any of it matter?
Her whole life here, the charade she’d built, pretending she was someone other than a nobody from a small country town, none of it mattered more than the fact that Verrian was home alone. If Ultrima, or the police, showed up, he wouldn’t know what to do.
She needed to help him.
Her mind made up, Lisa grabbed her phone and keys and stuffed them into her pocket, then she headed for the ladies’ room, trying to keep her walk casual.
Once she was inside, she stared into the mirror.
What was she doing? This could cost her her job.
Probably not, although if the truth actually did come out, if someone got irrefutable proof of the dragon’s existence, then maybe she wouldn’t want to come back anyway.
