He shrugged. “Yeah, I sensed that.”
“I thought shifters couldn’t see witchcraft.”
Cai gestured with his hands, making an awkward movement that looked like he was weighing stones with his palms. His other hand peeked out from around Ember’s waist. “I can see it when Wyvern’s in control. When I’m in my human form, it’s more like sensing it. I can feel it.”
“So, Wyvern saw everything,” Ember said, her voice flat and upset.
“He saw a river of transparent magic pouring out of you like a fountain, and then the circle you’d cast changed it to a blood-red whirlwind.”
She blinked, looking up at him. “You can see it.”
Cai winked at her. “After the circle changed the magic, it smelled like roses.”
“It what?” Then she chuckled. “Oh, right. Allergy-inducing, rose-scented black magic.”
“Society must frown on that kind of magic—”
“Ya think?”
“—but I thought it was amazing. You’re right. He’ll be happier out there. He’ll live his life the way he was meant to, but you had to hurt yourself to do it for him. Did it cost you more than your blood?”
“Yeah.” Ember eased herself to the ground and dangled her feet over the edge of the cliff. “Yeah, it did.”
Cai sat beside her and rested back on his arms. If she fell over, Wyvern would pop out, swoop down, and catch her before she bruised her pretty bum on even one rock. “Are you all right?”
“I will be. It makes me a little sick.” Ember shifted and leaned against him.
He curled his arm around her waist and rested his fingers on her hip. He turned his head and kissed her temple.
She sighed against him, and he hugged her to his side.
Ember said, “You never told me you had a white dragon.”
He shrugged. “I’m just your average, garden-variety St. George-class drake. He’s just pretty.”
“I think your dragon is beautiful. He shines in the sun.”
Cai considered not saying anything for a moment, but he mentioned, “There’s a name for a particular sub-variety of white dragon that looks like mine does.”
“Something other than ‘a white dragon?’”
“Like you call a golden horse with a blond mane and tail a ‘palomino.’ There’s, you know, nomenclature.”
“So what do you call your not-a-white dragon?”
“He’s called a crystal dragon because he’s covered in diamonds.”
Ember nodded. “I thought they were diamonds. Wow. And you grow them?”
“Yeah, kind of like how snails grow calcium carbonate shells, I grow crystalized carbon. When I lose a scale, a new one grows in like a fingernail.”
“Was the jewelry you gave me made out of your toenail clippings?”
He laughed. “My talons are typical claw material, but no. I bought your jewelry pre-made at the Tiffany and Company store in the Dragon’s Den casino. They’re store-boughts, not homemade.”
She cuddled against his side. “So, you’re like the Fabergé egg of dragons.”
He laughed. “Sure.”
“Did the egg you hatched out of have diamonds and enamel and stuff on it?”
He looked at her. “You’re joking, right?
She blinked. “You’re a reptile. Reptiles lay eggs, right?”
“I’m a supernatural shifter, but I’m mostly, sort-of, essentially human. I was born the usual way. From my mother. My human mother. After she was pregnant. The swat on the butt and the crying. All the usual baby-birthing stuff. You know about how babies are made, right?”
“Jeez, Cai.”
“Well, with the whole virgin thing—” he said.
“It doesn’t mean I didn’t take high school health class!”
“At our high school, the supernatural health class was sorely lacking. They told us nothing except to keep our dragons in our pants until we went into the fever and mated.”
She grimaced. “Oh, wow. Abstinence-only sex ed.”
“Yeah, it’s a good thing we can’t get a woman pregnant unless we’re mated, because otherwise there would have been a whole bunch of little dragonlings running around Los Angeles during my generation. Math, alone, would have had hundreds. I work in the entertainment industry, and I think he was a manwhore.”
Ember was laughing. Cai could sit there on that rock and listen to her laugh all night long.
He continued, “I mean, they told us nothing. It’s a good thing my dad heard me spout some nonsense and sat me down for a frighteningly informative discussion in his office.”
She was still laughing, and her soft body shook where she was pressed against his side. “That must have been awkward.”
“‘Awkward’ does not begin to cover it. He had a bottle of scotch sitting on his desk, and every time I said something stupid, he’d pour himself a shot. He staggered out of his office and collapsed on his bed, and dragons have high metabolisms for flammable liquids. We boil off half the ethanol in a drink before it hits our bloodstreams.”
“Oh, the poor guy!”
“It’s one of my favorite memories of my dad. But yeah, he told me things I can never unhear.”
She laughed. “Like what?”
“Well, when one has a dragonling, whichever parent is the dragon has to breathe the dragon soul into the baby soon after birth, so that would have been my father. Supposedly, there’s some way to tweak the dragon magic to choose what kind of dragon soul your kid gets, but I don’t know if he chose that I would be a crystal dragon or not.”
Ember mused, “Your hide would be worth a lot of money if you were dead.”
“That is a seriously rose-scented sense of humor you’ve got there, and it is one of the reasons why Wyvern doesn’t come out in human society much.”
“It doesn’t even matter. The naturals would convince themselves he was a horse wearing a rhinestone blanket or something.”
Cai laughed harder. “Or a UFO. Dragons get mistaken for alien spaceships a lot when we’re flying.”
He cuddled her more closely to his side and pressed his lips against her temple again. “I really like you,” he whispered.
“I like you,” she said, “too,” but she said it slowly, too slowly.
Well, maybe in another few days, they could have a conversation, a really important one.
One that his father had tried to prepare him for that evening, when his father had killed two bottles of scotch to explain the facts of dragonish life to Cai.
Maybe.
If they had time.
His skin was starting to itch, to burn.
His mind felt clouded with lethargy and tremors.
This mating fever would turn into the mating frenzy soon.
And then, worse.
Maybe he could talk to Ember when they went out that weekend, maybe over supper, before he took her upstairs to the penthouse and showed her everything he wanted from her.
Maybe.
They sat like that for a little while, watching the air elemental swirl dust devils down the canyon, bouncing from rocky prominence to stony boulder, until it was out of sight.
Cai transformed back into his dragon, shredding those clothes she’d poofed up for him with the promise that it was no trouble for her to whip him up some new ones back in Las Vegas, and he flew back to the casino with her resting against his spine and her arms around his neck.
Serpents and Fire and Air, Oh My.
EMBER had to deal with the yucky stinky snakes in the fountain.
The gala opening of the Dragon’s Den Casino was in three days.
And her friends, Willow and Bethany, had scheduled their handfasting wedding ceremony for three days after that. Oh, yay. Three days before Ember would be the thirdest of third wheels, the maid-of-honor for two brides. She loved her friends and was over the moon about their new husbands and their beautiful wedding. She’d been back to Desert Stars to pick out centerpieces and cakes and dinner plates with them.
Ember was thrilled and happy that they were getting married and not jealous at all.
She could tell when she was lying to herself. Her lips didn’t move right when she lie-lie-lied.
She was so glad that Bethany and Willow were about to have the most beautiful wedding in the world, but she wished that she had someone in her life, too. She wished someone loved her like Math and Arawn so obviously loved her friends, and they loved the dragon shifters back, too.
Because the gala opening was in three days, Cai had been busy organizing the entertainment that would perform on the casino’s five stages for the next three months. After that, he could hand it off to his office, he’d said, but the opening month required his personal attention, management, and authority.
At least, that’s what Cai had texted to Ember while he’d been dodging her like she was poison again.
Texts, emails, and the occasional social media ping had all arrived on her phone, but he hadn’t called her.
They hadn’t gone out for his promised date night of passion or whatever people who had sex called it these days.
Ember was losing faith.
And yet, the jewelry, flowers, and desserts had not stopped showing up at her apartment.
Indeed, the rate of deliveries had increased.
With every shipping box, the delivery driver had handed her a handwritten note—though Cai’s handwriting was getting sloppier by the day—that read something like Thinking of you, or I thought this would look good on you, or You like chocolate, right? You ordered a chocolate cake that day you abused my room service tab, so I went with chocolate. If you like something else, let me know.
The most recent package that had arrived had held an ornate bangle bracelet she’d known was studded with real emeralds and diamonds, and the card read, I miss you. I want to see you.
Yet, Cai hadn’t called her, and he hadn’t asked her to meet him somewhere.
She missed him, too.
Ember knew he was busy. Gala openings must take a lot of time, and the few selfies he’d sent her were always of him in front of a stage at a rock band rehearsal or standing in front of a sea of tables loaded with food. She’d glimpsed him running through the casino, chased by admins and other staff, dictating to them while he yelled into his phone that he would be at the meeting in just a minute, Dragon Lords, give him a damn chance because he was almost there.
Cai hadn’t seen her as he’d run through.
She’d skulked around the lobby of the casino, trying to run into him, but he hadn’t run through there again.
The gala opening of this huge casino represented the investment of many millions of dollars, probably hundreds of millions of dollars.
And it was in three days.
The fountain out in front still smelled like an open sewer.
And it had nasty, bitey sea serpents in it.
Ember flung another halibut into the air.
Bright, desert sunlight bounced off the glistening fish as it sailed in a high, lovely arc and right into the gaping maw of the green sea monster, who chomped it and gulped it down.
The other five sea dragons swarmed and waited, mouths open and drooling.
Great, they were drooling. The sea serpents had acquired a Pavlovian response to Ember and her boxes of halibut.
Bubbly foam dripped from the scarlet one’s lips.
Other bubbles frothed near its tail.
A fresh wave of sulfurous stench hit Ember, and she swallowed hard.
Ladies of Magic, that was nasty.
Ember had begged Bethany and Willow for help. They had said that they would get right over to that fountain to confer their advice as to what could solve the problem of the farting sea serpents, just as soon as they could.
Willow thought that her serpent vitamin potion could be adjusted, or another ingredient might be added that would deodorize the fart gas.
However, Willow wanted Bethany there to consult because these were not natural sea serpents, but apparitional sea serpents. Bethany Sage had conjured them sort-of accidentally, but every time Ember called Bethany to come and look at them, Bethany was off with her new dragony husband, Mathonwy Draco, usually eating supper in Paris or New York or a midnight snack in Chicago.
Those two tended to eat out a lot.
Come to think of it, so did Willow and her new dragony husband, Arawn Tiamat.
And the rest of the time when Ember called them, both of those girls assured Ember that they were fine, but they were snacking. They seemed to be eating their ways through most of the buffets in Las Vegas.
Anyway, six of Bethany’s apparitional helper spirits had taken the form of sea serpents and, unlike every other time Bethany had conjured apparitions, they hadn’t let go of these forms for nearly three months now. Apparitions usually relinquished their forms within a few hours at most.
But these apparitions were still clinging to their sea serpent forms.
They were stubborn, stinky sea serpents.
And they were Ember’s stubborn, stinky sea serpents.
The ebony one snapped at the red one, and the red one glared back, towering like a cobra.
Ember whistled and tossed another fish at the red one.
Now, the black one was eyeballing her. Great.
She slung a fish at it.
Bethany and Willow hadn’t managed to get over to the fountain to confer, despite their repeated promises and protestations, because they were always running off on extended honeymoons with their new, dragony husbands or driving back to their witchy hometown, Desert Stars, to organize their double-barrelled handfasting.
Where Ember was to be the solitary maid of honor for the two brides.
Was there anything more pathetic than being the single third wheel when both of your besties-since-kinder friends were getting married?
Ugh.
Ember threw three more fish in rapid succession to the sea monsters, who snagged them and scarfed them down.
Ember had been feeding the scaly beasts every other day, just like Willow and Bethany had told her was best, and the sea monsters did have glossy scales and bright eyes. They looked sleek as they swam around their fountain basin energetically, whipping each other with their tales and farting in each others’ faces.
Metaphorically speaking, the Leviathan-class apparitional sea serpents were nine-year-old boys who were just waiting for someone to pull their fins.
Bright eyes followed her as she walked around, and she wondered if those carnivorous sea dragons might try to eat her, too.
Or sit on her and fart in her face.
Either one would mean a horrible, horrible death.
They watched her as she bent over the box of ice, picked up a halibut by its tail, and heaved it at the blue sea serpent.
It caught the fish and horked it down.
A sound like a badly blown trumpet emanated from the fountain, ending with an ascending scale and a sputter.
The other serpents honked, laughing.
That was just disgusting.
Okay, Ember had to do something about this, right now.
Anything.
She flung the last halibut at the golden sea serpent.
The sea monster chomped the fish a few times with its long fangs, chewing it apart like a cat with a too-big bite of gristle-tough steak before sucking it down. The great, scaly beast dropped a hunk of fish meat out of the side of its jaws and into the water, and the red one dived after it.
From somewhere in the fountain, the sound of a putt-putt car, revving up, broke through the splashes.
Another wave of intestinal stink rolled across the courtyard.
Ember gagged because sh
e could taste the smell on her tongue, and her burning eyes watered.
Out on the Strip, the crowd parted and ran in opposite directions.
One older lady wheeled around, her eyes rolling up into her head, but a buffed-out dude walking the other way caught her before she face-planted into the sidewalk.
Oh, Goddesses of Magic, these yucky stinky snakes were gross.
The sea serpents writhed as if they were guffawing, and the scarlet one dunked the black one in retribution.
That did it. Ember needed to do something about those noxious nellies.
She grabbed her purse that was the size of a duffel bag from under box of ice in the wheelbarrow.
She started pulling bottles and vials out of it, immediately setting some aside, but examining others, considering them.
The problem, really, wasn’t that the sea dragons were farting. They seemed to be in no distress and, indeed, looked quite amused at the situation with their lolling tongues and rolling eyes.
The problem was that people could smell the farts.
The fountain needed a chimney.
If she could direct the fart gas up and away from people, like sucking it up a pipe and venting it a hundred feet above the casino, it wouldn’t matter whether the sea serpents were farting. They could fart as much as they wanted, and yet the people would not be incapacitated by the stench.
Out on the sidewalk near the street, a young woman stopped, sniffed, and ran backward, her face a rictus of surprise and horror.
Ember found a mirrored flask with an arcane symbol etched on the side.
Yes.
Whooshy was a very, very large wind elemental with a sense of humor. She didn’t particularly like living in a bottle, though she realized it was for her own protection as much as for the safety of the entire western seaboard. Whooshy might be able to handle a half-dozen sea serpents with juvenile senses of humor.
Ember whispered to the bottle, “Hey, Whooshy. How’d you like a job?”
The bottle perked up and pivoted toward her, listening intently.
She explained the problem, emphasizing how very important it was that Whooshy stay in the fountain, but how much it would help people, how very useful Whooshy could be, how much she could protect people like that nice lady on the Strip who had almost passed out from the fart bomb.
Dragons and Fire Page 12
