by D. R. Perry
Dragon My Heart Around
Providence Paranormal College Book Four
D.R. Perry
This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2016 D.R. Perry
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Version 2.0 May, 2021
ebook ISBN: 978-1-64971-714-6
Print ISBN: 978-1-64971-715-3
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Edward Redford and the Sinister Spindle
Edward Redford and the Sinister Spindle
Connect with the Author
Other LMBPN Publishing Books
Chapter One
Blaine
I couldn’t sleep again. Wondering when the Extramagus would come and try to kill me was an extra pain in my tail. I managed a brash attitude while awake, but my dreams were filled with a shadowy figure force-choking me harder than Vader on a bad day. That sucked big time because I couldn’t even watch Episode IV to take my mind off all of it. I just freaked out and shut it off instead, and I loved that movie. That Magi-supremacist bastard should get himself served extra-crispy for ruining my enjoyment of Star Wars. Getting the jump on someone that powerful was light-years above my pay grade, though.
Like I’d done for the first two nights of my Spring Break, I wandered the manse expanse. As I snorted about my rhyme time, that I was a poet and didn’t even know it, the worst thing in the world happened. The alarm went off, first the one for the vault and then the hoard inside it.
Why in the nest of the first Broodmother did my mother and her dandified Air dragon husband have to be at a charity ball? Why had I been such a recluse and refused Bobby’s offer to stay with me over Spring Break? Why hadn’t I invited all of Tinfoil Hat over for a Poker night? Why weren’t my legs moving? I’d frozen when I should have dashed. It was time to make like Queen Elsa and let it go so I could see what the problem was.
I sprinted down the dragon-wide hallway, remembering my nanny Zyra, and how she used to read me Robert Asprin’s old Myth series. Skeeve’s dragon, Gleep, had galloped down hallways toward the bad guys. So had I, as a kid, when the bad guys were pretend. Time to run straight into the danger, just like that stupid fictional dragon. Gleep did it out of loyalty. I did it because Mother would slay me herself if I didn’t.
As I ran, I thought about shifting. My dragon slept. He didn’t do insomnia, apparently. Once I unsealed the hoard trinket room, I was glad of that. The first thing I saw when I opened the door was a shapely set of legs. I ogled them, then smacked my face with my palm. I’d been a dunderhead, assuming the Extramagus was a guy who’d just send guys.
The itch of my skin going scaly as I started shifting almost distracted me from the woman’s face as she turned around, her eyes wide. Once I did, it was hard not to look at her. She had perfect beige skin and melting amber eyes. I’d seen her somewhere before, and she was way too young to be the Extramagus. Besides, she smelled like a shifter. I dialed back on dragoning out, lulling the beast inside back to sleep. A petite Japanese girl couldn’t be a threat to scaly old me, right? She looked more afraid than I felt.
“Please forgive me.” I watched her lower lip tremble, eyes still wide as she stepped slowly toward me with her hands behind her back. And I could almost imagine she approached a unicorn instead of a dragon man like me, but unicorns didn’t exist. I gazed down into her soft eyes, imagining what her lips might taste like. Thinking that about a girl who seemed so pure made me want to slap myself. Her arm moved faster than I could track it. Everything went black.
“Ow!” My cheek rested on something smooth and cold. Yup, the floor. My vision was still a little blurry, but when I went to rub my eyes, I found my hands tied behind my back. Whatever had poked the tender spot on my head had another go. This time, I could only muster a groan.
“Tell me how to lift the wards, or I’ll hit you again, dragon boy.” The girl’s voice wasn’t menacing at all, but whatever she’d hit me with sure was.
“I can’t. Ow!”
“You can, and you will.”
“No, it doesn’t work for me. Only Mother can open it now.”
“Ugh. Not another mama’s boy.”
“What?” I moved my shoulder, tilting so I could look at my captor. Her hair was long and nut-brown with platinum streaks and tips. I’d seen her before, after Nox’s trial. “Didn’t you help save my Alpha? Why are you robbing me?”
“I’m not robbing you.” She flipped her hair back over her shoulder. “I’m just taking something that belongs to my people.”
I glanced at the small heap of trinkets on the floor next to her. Narrowing my eyes and calling on my dragon, I scrutinized them for magic energy. Sure enough, they swirled with golden Luck energy I couldn't decipher. This girl could only be Yoshi Ichiro’s daughter.
“Look, I get that Tanuki are the best with Luck magic. Really, I do.” I shook my head once and had to stop. It hurt too much. “But you don’t understand dragon shifters. Once something’s in the hoard, you can’t claim reparations or eminent domain or whatever lawyerese your dad sent you over here to recite. My mom’s like Bruce Banner and Doctor Jekyll recombined themselves a lovechild way back in the dark ages. You won’t like her when she’s angry. Even I don’t, and she sort of raised me.”
“Your mother sort of raised you?” One perfectly curved eyebrow lifted. “That’s a weird thing to say.”
“I give you a warning about an irate dragon lady, and her parenting skills are what you focus on?” This girl was driving me crazy. Also, my hands were falling asleep. I focused on scaling them over with a partial shift. Maybe that’d make it easier to get out of whatever she’d used to tie them together. But my dragon didn’t want to escape. Under other circumstances, I wouldn’t want to either.
“I can’t heed your warning, so I figured I’d take the fun in dysfunctional for five hundred, Alex.” She shrugged, making the buttons on the front of her blouse strain a little. I looked away.
“You’re an odd one.” That was the understatement of the decade. This girl was battier than a bat shifter. She’d broken into a dragon hoard, for Tiamat’s sake!
“Back at you, Trogdor.” She smiled, batting her eyes.
“Hey, only my friends are allowed to insult me like that. And none of my friends would ruin my life by trying to break in here.” That made me stop and think, a tough task while recovering from the knock
on my noggin. How had she broken in, anyway?
“And if your friends jumped off the Pell Bridge, I wouldn’t.” She flipped her hair over one shoulder, batting her eyelashes. I paid attention in an entirely inappropriate way. She looked younger than Lynn Frampton, but a Tanuki could physically be nineteen and chronologically be fifty with a Luck charm. And there was a whole pile of them, right in front of her.
“Maybe you’d be better off jumping from a bridge. Mother doesn’t pull her punches, but I’m her only child. I could put in a good word if you try being a little nicer to me.” I hadn’t just said something that smarmy? Oh, yeah, I had. I’d meant it that way, too.
“How about you keep these a secret from your mom?” She held up a pair of Luck-infused cufflinks, then tucked them down the front of her shirt. “That’d give me tons of motivation to be—” She leaned over, her face close to mine. “Nice.”
“Hey!” I wriggled, trying to stop her from sitting on my lap. It was no use. My dragon had woken up and given her his full attention. He liked what he saw even more than I did. That only made things worse. I rolled my eyes. “Why do you need my help? Can’t you just get out the way you came in?”
“No such luck with the wards up.” She shrugged, then gazed into my eyes. Most girls flinched when they were dragonish, but not her. “That’s a striking shade of red, Blaine. You’re very attractive. Why didn’t anyone bother telling me that, I wonder?” She put one arm around my neck.
“Gah!” I pushed with my feet, forcing my weight against the wall I leaned on so I could stand. She fell off my lap with a shrill little shriek. Mother would be back soon, and I couldn’t let her see me with the burglar on my lap. And there was something else, too. “Stop trying to distract me. You got in here. You get yourself out. It’s not like there’s a shortage of Luck charms in here.”
I flexed my arms, hearing the purr of tearing fabric as my hands pulled free of whatever she’d tied me with. Smoke trailed from my nose, hazing my vision. I always hated that. I focused and turned it into a ring instead so I could see what in Tiamat’s name I was doing. Then, I lowered my shoulder and rushed her.
She stepped out of the way at the last possible second. That was a good thing since I had to swerve to avoid smashing a vase worth over a million dollars. I turned to face her again, reaching out to grapple her this time. I got her blouse. Instead of trying to get away, she threw herself at me.
We went down together, rolling around the marble floor in a tussle, unlike any fair fight I’d had. She grabbed handfuls of my hair, pulling my head every which way. I tried to get a grip without seeming like I was copping a feel. The way she writhed in my grasp made that almost impossible.
I felt the air change before I realized the door had opened. I’d been crawling, trying to get off the floor from my hands and knees with the Ichiro girl clinging around my neck and waist with her arms and legs. Her skirt had flipped up, giving Mother and my stepdad a show she might have fully intended. She laughed, obliterating any vestige of innocent girlishness left in my opinion of her.
“Blaine Carter Harcourt, put that girl down this instant.” Mother’s voice was quiet, which rated Defcon 1 on the Hertha Harcourt warning system. I’d rather hear her shout than whisper any day of the week.
It took effort, but I got on my knees and held my hands up like I was in the weirdest jazz dance routine ever. The girl hung on, clinging even tighter. There were women I’d had one night stands with who hadn’t held me that close.
“Miss Ichiro, I believe?” Super stepdad, Wilfred Harcourt, to the rescue. He walked around alongside us, staring down. Then, he did something wildly inappropriate. He stuck his hand down the front of the Ichiro girl’s shirt. He plucked something from her cleavage, then held it up. The cuff-links gleamed from between his thumb and first finger.
I stared at Mother, my eyes so wide I felt they might pop out of their sockets and roll around on the floor. She smiled. Not at her weak fart of a socially appropriate husband. Not at her bewildered son. She stood there grinning at the Ichiro girl. I blinked, probably saving my poor eyeballs from a bug’s squashed fate.
“Well, Wilfred, it seems Blaine’s got something to do besides mope around the manor during his Spring Break.”
“I beg your pardon?” Mother never called him Wilfred unless she had something devious spinning the hamster wheel I suspected of running her brain. She was about to drop some serious trouble in my lap on top of the Tanuki who wouldn’t leave.
“Yes. My son is just the young man to handle this particular problem.” Her smile brightened in wattage until it could have made the moon and stars give up and go home.
“What?” I didn’t realize my jaw had dropped until the Tanuki chick’s thumb pushed it closed. I ground my teeth and pushed her me before speaking again. “Handle this problem?” I pointed at the girl. “She broke into your hoard. Yours, not mine.”
“True, but it’s a pile of wealth you’ll be in charge of someday.” Her lips closed over her teeth, but the corners of her mouth tilted so much they could have been tied to her ears. “And I hear you’ve got quite the reputation for taking care of little mysteries like this when they crop up for your friends. The least you can do is help your beloved mother with this one small matter.”
“Oookay?” I stood up, brushing myself off. Movement snagged the corner of my eye. I turned, my elbow swinging ahead of me. I knocked a delicately rounded shoulder. Trinkets clattered to the floor. The girl put both hands to her cheeks, her mouth making a little round “o” of whatever emotion thieves have when they get caught. I grabbed her arm, knowing I’d better keep a hand on her if she weren’t in my direct field of vision.
“I understand the reason behind your choice, wife, but shouldn’t we at least tell him—” My stepdad shut his mouth mid-sentence when Mother snapped her fingers.
“You know nothing. This is my hoard, the one that brought your title to this marriage.” Mother snaked her arm through her husband’s. “I’ll borrow some of Miss Thurston’s faculty and set up wards around the property instead of just the vaults. That way, she can only run far enough to provide some amusement.”
My stepdad straightened, throwing his shoulders back. He let her escort him to the doorway, then paused. His sibilant whispers carried a hint of pleas. I couldn’t look away because I knew Wilfred had provoked her instead of swaying her.
“I won’t tell him or her. And I think Mr. Waban can also help with those wards, come to think of it.” The sound of Mother’s heels clicking away against the marble punctuated the finality of that last statement. I felt bad for Wilfred, whose shoulders sagged like half the hoard’s contents rested on them. I didn’t much like Taki Waban either, and I suspected the feeling was more than mutual. Make one horse joke at the wrong time, make an enemy of the new ice dragon librarian.
I turned, reaching out to grasp the girl’s other arm. Her head bowed so low I could only see the top of it. She didn’t make a sound. I rolled my eyes. This had to be more manipulation, an attempt to get me to let her go. I headed down past the display case I’d caught her climbing and across an aisle to another curio cabinet, much less ornate than the other one. Then, I let go of one of her arms, pulled open the glass-fronted door, and took out a pair of bracelets. I slapped one on her wrist and the other on mine. The magic activating felt like a static shock to the face. I sneezed. She didn’t, but looked up.
“What did you do?” She reached for the bracelet, trying to unfasten the clasp. I chuckled.
“These are Faerie Tithing bracelets. You can’t go further than an acre from me without passing out.” I let go of her.
“Doesn’t that mean you also pass out?” Her smile was gentler than Mother’s, but no less charged with mischief.
“No.” I lied. I hate lying about my knowledge.
“Oh, you.” Her laugh cascaded like that string orchestral stuff my stepdad listened to. “You’re not the only artifact expert in the world, you know.”
“Think wha
t you want.” I turned, heading for the door. “That acre includes height, you know. I’m going to the third floor, and this is the basement. It’s a building constructed for dragons the size of football fields. You do the math.”
“Don’t you want to know my name?” Soft footsteps hurried to catch up with me. I glanced down, relieved to see she wore moccasins instead of stilettos like Mother.
“I don’t care.” But that was another lie. I did. But I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of asking her for it.
Chapter Two
Kimiko
We walked in silence through the dragon-sized halls and up two flights of stairs. This wasn’t at all how I had imagined the evening going. I should have been in and out of there once I had my mitts on the luck charms I’d come for. I didn’t understand why, either. The charm I’d burnt when Blaine came in should have let me slip out before the wards engaged. Instead, I got confronted by three dragon shifters for the price of one. And Blaine was nothing like what I’d expected. Either Beth had misrepresented him, or he was a giant scaly liar. After his attempt to fool me about the Tithing Bracelets, my money was on liar.
When he ushered me into a room almost as big as the entire first floor of my dad’s house, I thought maybe my Luck would change. I put on my most vulnerable face, slouching a little to make my blouse look more disheveled. I wish I could say he didn’t bother looking at me. He glared. I’d royally pissed him off. I shouldn’t care, and told myself I didn’t as the door closed behind him with a hollow thud. But I was a giant furry liar. A pair of liars, then, but nothing at all like a matched set.
