Caleb sat on the balcony in one of her cushioned wicker chairs, a towel wrapped around his middle, his muscular torso and legs bare to the sun. Next to him sat Mrs. Bradley, her square purse on her lap. Mike, leash limp on the balcony floor, investigated Caleb's ankles. Caleb was talking nonstop, Mrs. Bradley smiling and giggling like a teenage girl.
Caleb lifted his head as though he'd caught Lisa's scent, and his lips curved to a smile. He jumped up, the towel thankfully staying put, and strode to Lisa, wrapping her in his arms.
He was warm and strong and hugged her like he hadn't seen her in months. He smelled like masculine musk and also her scented soaps, because she'd showed him how to use the shower before she'd left. She'd also showed him how the toilet worked.
"Lisa," he'd said as she explained the mystery of how to run her temperamental shower, "when dragons pee—"
She'd quickly held up her hands. "Caleb, do not tell me about dragon pee. I don't want to know."
"—they go someplace remote and private that no one else knows. It is personal."
"Oh," she finished lamely, then explained that humans went into small rooms like this with sinks and toilets, decorated to fit their tastes. Caleb was suspicious of a room where he both used the necessary and showered himself, but he finally resigned himself to it. He'd obviously washed his hair because it hung in damp, uncombed clumps across his shoulders and back.
"Lisa-ling, you have returned," he told the neighborhood. His voice had healed, the rich tones present again. Last night he'd only been able to rasp words, which had frightened her even more than the cold, clammy sweat on his skin.
Behind his back, Mrs. Bradley gave Lisa a thumbs-up. "I like him better than the other one."
Lisa blushed. Mrs. Bradley, first seeing her come home with Greg then finding Caleb here sans clothing in the morning, must think Lisa had an interesting love life.
Mrs. Bradley only smiled at her. "I came to borrow a cup of sugar." She lifted a plastic container from her lap and shook it. "Caleb and I had a nice chat all about his missions for the CIA."
"The… CIA?"
"Yes, it must be very exciting." Mrs. Bradley's eyes twinkled, indicating she'd enjoyed whatever the hell stories Caleb had been telling her. "But I really must be going. Come on, Mike. Time to make our cookies. I take them to my church group, I was telling Caleb. I'll bring up a dozen for you."
Lisa thanked her in a daze. Mike panted up at Caleb, his reaction world's different from his terrified response to Greg the night before.
Lisa walked Mrs. Bradley to the front door, listening to the elderly lady chatter. Before she left, Mrs. Bradley winked at her. "Such a nice young man, and so entertaining. You snap him up, Lisa, they don't grow on trees."
Giggling, she left, crooning to Mike all the way down the stairs. Lisa closed the door and turned to Caleb who was already rifling through the bags.
"What were you telling Mrs. Bradley?" she asked, watching his bronzed skin move as he bent to investigate the contents of a bag. The towel slipped, baring one curve of hip. Oh, my.
Caleb pulled out a pair of jeans and eyed them critically. "I had to explain why I was sitting in your apartment without any clothes. So I made up stories about having to be extracted from a mission where I left all my clothes behind."
"Oh, very clever," Lisa said. "Do you think she believed you?"
"I don't know, but she liked the stories."
"Which you got from watching reruns of Alias!"
He shook out the jeans, holding them upside down. "Yes, but it distracted her from the truth."
"She didn't believe you at all, Mr. Smooth. She thinks we lost your clothes in some bizarre sex game, and you're making up stories to cover."
Caleb looked at her blankly, the gold of his armlet gleaming. "You think so?"
Lisa pushed aside the enticing thought of herself and Caleb tearing off each other's clothes and whatever activities would follow that, turned her back on him, and dumped the contents of the shopping bags on the sofa. She was never going to get used to Caleb in human form.
Lisa had to help him with the clothes, which didn't bother Caleb. He saw no reason not to drop the towel in front of her so she could show him how to put on what she called briefs.
She turned brilliant red and averted her eyes, but he liked that she covertly ran her gaze over him as though she could not stop herself. He knew he was handsome as a dragon, but he had no idea how that would translate into a human body. He'd stood in front of the mirror a long time while she'd been gone, touching his human face, examining his pitifully small teeth and un-forked tongue. He found this human body inadequate, but if Lisa liked it, it was fine with him.
Lisa was beautiful this morning in her sleeveless blouse and low-slung jeans, the charms whispering on the bare skin in the open V of her shirt. The waistband of her jeans beckoned him to slide his arm across her hips, and the little pocket in the front would be the perfect place to rest his fingers.
Humans seemed to design their clothes to be all about sex. The clothes outlined the body or exposed just enough to be enticing—their way of sending out pheromones, he supposed. Women decorated themselves with necklaces that drew the eye to cleavage, or earrings that focused attention on pretty earlobes and the whorl of a well-shaped ear.
Lisa waved a hand in front of his face. "Caleb? You awake in there? You have to put on your shirt."
He smiled slowly and took the shirt, which was dark blue with some kind of writing on it. He didn't have as much trouble with this as he had the briefs—he'd watched men take off and put on shirts on television, mainly on what Lisa called soaps. No one stayed with their partners very long on these soaps, which seemed to be about changing lovers and having arguments.
He shoved his arms through the two small holes and his head through the larger hole. It took him a moment to unfold the fabric down his torso, and the shirt clung in an uncomfortable way. He flexed his arms, trying to settle it.
"You have it on backwards," Lisa said, finger to her lips.
He looked down at himself. "Do I?"
"If you walk down the street with your shirt on backwards, people will either laugh at you or think you're insane."
"All that from wearing a shirt backwards? It looks almost the same as frontwards."
"Anything not normal attracts attention." Lisa lifted the hem of the shirt and scooted it up his chest. "And you are definitely not normal."
Caleb helped her push the shirt off. "I think I like having you undress me even better."
She blushed, her embarrassment reaching him through their threadlike bond. He sensed that she liked looking at him but was ashamed of liking it for some reason. He did not really understand that, but he would gently explore it.
Lisa shook out the shirt and turned it around so he could put it on again. He settled it over his chest and looked down at his front. The magic that let him enter the earth world let him read English letters, but he couldn't decipher what these meant. "I heart SF?"
"I love San Francisco," she translated. She busily did not look at him as she tore paper tags off a pair of jeans.
"Do I?" He turned around and looked out the balcony window. He'd enjoyed sitting in the sunshine with Mrs. Bradley, gazing over the rooftops to a green expanse Mrs. Bradley had called the Presidio. "Do you?"
"Do I what?" Lisa asked.
"Love San Francisco?"
She glanced at him, startled. "I do actually. The best times of my life have been here, with my grandmother, and my family, before I found out what life was going to throw at me."
He sensed her sorrow, those hurts that had nearly undone her, and sent her a thin thread of soothing music. "Try ducking blue dragon fireballs."
Her brown eyes crinkled as she grinned. "Blue dragons? Are they powerful and virile, like goldens?"
Caleb snorted. "They have no power at all. They're animals, nothing more."
"Really? I thought all dragons were intelligent."
"Not even close. R
eds, greens, and blues do nothing but kill, eat, kill, eat. They might have rudimentary communication between themselves, but they're nothing like the great dragons, goldens, blacks, frosts, and silvers."
"What are silver dragons like?" she asked, folding up the bags into neat piles. She liked to do that, make neat piles of everything.
"I don't know, I've never seen one." When she looked surprised, he explained, "Silver dragons are very rare, and might even be extinct. One hasn't been seen in ages. Dragons like to keep to themselves, but I usually encounter another great dragon—golden or black or frost—every fifty years or so, lesser dragons more often. But in fifteen hundred years, I've never seen a silver."
"You shouldn't let on how old you are."
He sensed her teasing but didn't understand what she meant. "Why not? The older the dragon, the more feared and respected he is. Most goldens live to twice my age, black dragons can live five thousand years."
Her eyes widened. "It's hard for me to comprehend that. You don't look fifteen hundred to me. You look… good."
He liked the way her gaze lingered on his body, even when it was covered with clothes. "I have to say you look… good… too." He held out his hand to her. "Now, show me your city, Lisa."
She led him into a world of strange smells and sounds and sights, a cacophony of textures he was unprepared for, despite the hours he'd spent looking off the balcony this morning. But the reality of a city, he quickly learned, was much more than what he saw on the flat screen of the television or from the balcony.
First there were sounds, not only the various sounds of cars and trucks on pavement, but the thump-thump of music in a passing vehicle, the shouts of people and their laughter, the shrill howl of sirens, the hiss of sprinklers in tiny gardens, the high-pitched yapping or deep baying of dogs, the sounds of children's cries. Then there were smells, of someone frying meat, of cigarette smoke drifting lazily from a window, the metallic smell of car exhaust, the DIESEL of trucks. They passed a grocery store on a corner with crates of produce stacked outside the door sending forth the fresh green scents of lettuce and parsley, the earthy smells of potatoes and turnips, the raw smell of meat somewhere inside.
Lisa strode through it all, head up, arms swinging, very much at home here, very much one of them. She waved to a woman watering a garden, who smiled and returned the greeting, then she dropped a coin in the cup of a panhandler who sat near the grocery store. The wizened man's dirt-streaked face creased into a smile and he asked, "How are you, Lisa?"
She belonged in this human world, in this city in particular, her blend of ancestry like the blend of cultures he'd heard discussed on the local television shows. Caleb had never encountered a being who belonged somewhere so fiercely as Lisa Singleton belonged in this place called San Francisco.
Caleb knew he didn't belong here at all. His world was one of vast wilderness, of caverns carved from cliff faces a thousand feet from the ground, skies stretching unblemished for miles upon miles, wind that scoured the land, and a night sky white with stars. He had not seen the stars at night in this place, the view from the windows of Lisa's apartment showing him bright lights that overwhelmed that of the stars. He'd at first thought the human world had no stars, but Lisa told him you could still see them if you left the heart of the city.
He would also have to work to get used to the time it took humans to move across the face of their world. In Dragonspace, he could fly faster than most human airplanes could. He could even slide between space, traversing the width and breadth of his world in seconds if he wanted to. A full quarter of an hour passed before he and Lisa reached what she called a bus stop, a journey he could have taken in the blink of an eye.
A bus, Lisa said, would take them to Chinatown much faster than walking could. Her car would be faster, but then she'd have to find and pay for a place to park it. The bus would do. Caleb had watched the buses pass on the road and thought silently that riding in one would not increase their speed by very much.
He boarded the bus first to make certain it was safe for Lisa. He scanned the seats, scrutinizing each passenger as well as the impassive driver, alert for signs of the black dragon or his magic. When he decided all was well, he beckoned Lisa in. They took a seat near the middle of the bus, Caleb on the aisle. He gave the bus driver a wave of his hand and a nod. "You may proceed."
The driver, not looking impressed, slammed the door shut and shot out into traffic.
The bus took them up hills and down, the huge metal buildings silhouetted against the sky coming closer and closer. Beyond the sharp tang of traffic, Caleb could smell the cool sea though he could not yet see it. He enjoyed the ride, slow as it was, looking out the window with his arm around Lisa, she snuggled into his side.
He studied the other passengers, wondering who they were, pushing his dragon thoughts very carefully into them. Most were busy with their own lives, the errands they had to run, the children they needed to pick up, the bills they had to pay, or basic needs like hunger or thirst. He touched each one down the rows, brushing them with a tiny thread of dragon music, making their day lucky. A youth in the back of the bus was more troubled, thinking black thoughts and contemplating ending his life. Caleb wrapped golden dragon magic around the youth's mind and one fleeting thought, Be at peace.
The youth lifted his head and looked out the window, his eyes clearing. He pressed the bell, then stood up, and moved to the door as the bus slowed, squaring his shoulders, the darkness inside him lightening. Caleb gave the youth a grin as the doors opened. The young man looked startled, then he returned the grin and walked away with a light step.
"What was that about?" Lisa asked, her breath sweet on his face. Before he could answer, she said, "Our stop's next. We'll go around and enter Chinatown from Bush Street so you can see the gate."
They emerged from the bus, walked around a corner, and climbed onto another bus, Caleb repeating the procedure of not letting Lisa on before he checked things out. The driver glared as Caleb assessed the bored-looking people in their seats, and finally snatched the little piece of paper in Caleb's hand. "I said, You have a transfer?"
Caleb sat on the aisle again, protecting Lisa with his body, and they rode a few blocks to descend before a gateway with a green-tiled slanting roof and stylized dragons on top.
"This is Grant Avenue," Lisa said. "That's the gate to Chinatown. It can be very touristy, but fun if you know where to go."
Caleb sniffed the air. "There is magic here," he said.
"And good dim sum," Lisa offered. "Come on. I'll take you to the restaurant where my grandmother and I always used to meet."
* * *
Chapter Six
Donna sat back from her bowl of scrying water, frustrated. She'd had difficulty all morning keeping Lisa in focus, and once the pair entered Chinatown with its mix of magics both petty and powerful, she lost them. The pesky dragon must have given Lisa protective magic or showed her how to use whatever power lingered in her grandmother's apartment to keep Donna away.
Donna contemplated casting a spell to bring Saba a slow, lingering death for letting Caleb through the door where he could interfere with Donna's plans. But then, Saba was now in thrall to the black dragon and that would be exquisite punishment enough. Black dragons were cold creatures, and he'd use Saba and suck her dry.
Donna chuckled. Grizelda and Saba were weak and foolish and easy to manipulate. Just how she liked young witches to be.
Caleb could be a problem. She'd brought him in to report everything Lisa did so she could keep track of how fast Lisa's power was growing and how vulnerable she was, not to mention keep the black dragon away from her. Now that the old woman was dead, Lisa was ripe for plucking, unprotected and confused. The power Li Na had passed to her was there, but Lisa had no idea what to do with it or how to hone it, or even why she had it.
Just like Li Na to remain cryptic to the end. If Donna had her way, Lisa would never learn the truth, and she'd remain ignorant and out of control. When D
onna stepped in and offered to help her, Lisa would not be able to refuse.
She wasn't certain whether she'd kill Lisa slowly or quickly and spectacularly, but she would explain to Lisa exactly why she was doing it before the end. Donna would have her revenge.
The black dragon was the biggest threat to Donna's plans. The black dragon who called himself Malcolm must not gain the orb.
She sighed and rubbed her temples. San Francisco morning sunshine poured into her bedroom, dazzling her scrying water. The dancing light reminded her of dragon's scales, and her anger escalated.
Then again, perhaps Saba had done her a favor. If the black and golden dragons engaged themselves in a testosterone battle, they might cancel each other out. Then Donna could slip in to save Lisa from the dragons who thought they were so powerful and get Lisa to give her the secret of the dragon orb.
Donna pushed away the scrying bowl and stretched, the sleeves of her silk bathrobe sliding down her arms. She would have to stoke up her own power a little more to take on Lisa and find the dratted orb, which was hidden by magics she couldn't penetrate. Lisa was strong even if she had no idea how to use the power inside her.
Sheets stirred on the bed behind her and an incredibly beautiful man with a long mane of white hair sat up. He regarded Donna petulantly with his night-black eyes, covers sliding from his muscular torso. "Want more."
Incubus, Donna thought with slight disgust. They were insatiable and rather stupid creatures, but they could be very useful.
"In a moment," Donna said.
She peered into the scrying bowl again and smiled when she clearly saw Malcolm the black dragon leaving his lavish flat in Pacific Heights. A few carefully placed spells would send him right to the golden dragon.
If all went well, her dragon problem could end today.
Chinatown was two worlds, Lisa explained as they angled up Grant Avenue. One was for the tourists, full of souvenir shops and Chinese restaurants with predictable menus. Then there were the alleys and back streets that crisscrossed the main streets, free of the red hangings, big signs, and dragons painted on every window. Back here were tiny restaurants with fantastic food, stores that you weren't quite sure what they sold, and people living ordinary lives. The alleys provided grist for movies and novels about underworld crime and secret societies, but in reality, most people lived quietly, not shutting others out but not letting the rest of the world intrude.
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