Chapter 2
Graham
I’d claimed the east wing of the penthouse because the windows gave me the best sight lines over the city. I hadn’t known at the time how thin the walls were between my personal office and the common area kitchen. Now I had to listen to all the laughter coming from it every day.
Not that there was anything wrong with that. I was happy that everyone I cared about had all found their mates. I just didn’t want to see or hear their joy every single day and be reminded of what I could never have.
We had the entire upper floor of the building to ourselves.
And by we, I meant me, two of my three gargoyle brothers, and Eamon, who was technically a demon, but we considered him an honorary gargoyle since we’d spent so many years protecting the same building in the past. The fourth gargoyle brother, Griff, had also found his mate and was living with her nearby.
Eamon’s mate, Tansy, laughed at something her pet conure was doing, and it came through the walls undiminished.
I didn’t begrudge any of them a single moment of their happiness. How could I after the tough life we’d led? They deserved everything they’d worked for. I just hadn’t anticipated how lonely it would be as the only one left unattached.
My brothers knew better than to suggest I find someone of my own. They knew my past. I was single by choice.
I’d loved a woman once, a very long time ago.
Seraphina had married another. Since then, I’d carried all of her details—her face, the way she moved, the color of her hair—in my head.
Not because I wanted to remember her and her betrayal, but because I couldn’t forget her.
But as the years passed, the memories of her twisted and changed.
And somehow as the details got foggier, her effect on my psyche only grew.
I couldn’t even recall her face now, no matter how hard I tried.
Her face came back in fragmented pieces, and I wasn’t even sure if they were true memories or something I’d made up to substitute lost details along the way.
I knew she had red hair since it had always reminded me of the blazing dawn, but was it more red than orange?
Or was it more orange than red? It had waves, but had they been gentle like the ones breaking at the shore of a lake or wild like the ones at the coast? I did not remember.
But she still haunted me, and I had never loved another since.
Hell, I hadn’t even looked at another woman romantically.
The worst part? Despite her ultimate rejection and betrayal, a part of me still felt guilty whenever I looked at another woman, as if I was cheating on the memory of her.
I both loved and hated her. It was confusing.
My phone rang from my desk. Cell phones were one of those modern conveniences I took for granted now, and I wondered how I’d ever lived without them. I answered before the second ring.
Desmon’s familiar voice came through the speaker. “Graham. I have a job for Redrock Protective Services. It needs to be someone reliable.”
“Everybody we hire is reliable, Des.”
“You know what I mean.”
I did. This was something personal.
“I’ll take it. What do you need?”
Most of Desmon’s private jobs were full of action and excitement anyway, something I desperately needed to distract me from all the happily mated couples intruding into my personal space.
“I’ll update you in my library.” His voice was measured, and I wondered what I’d just agreed to. “Seth will open a portal in ten minutes.”
He hung up, and I quickly pulled on something decent enough to meet with a dragon—as in something that hadn’t been sitting in my laundry basket for more than a week—before stepping out to the common area where Desmon’s portals usually opened up.
It was Chicken Nugget, Tansy’s sun conure, who greeted me first. She flew in, landed on my head, and made a squawk that sounded more like a chicken than a parrot.
“Hello to you too, Nugget.”
Gunnar, my brother, was sprawled on one of the couches. Eamon, Lily—Gunnar’s mate—and Tansy had one of the penthouse’s large Bird of Paradise plants on its side. Tansy had her hands on her rounded belly, further proof that the whole penthouse was moving rapidly away from being a bachelor pad.
“Uh, what’s going on?” I asked.
“They’re beyond rootbound,” Lily explained. “It’s time for a new pot.”
It was only now that I noticed the pair of new, ornate, ceramic planters, one on each side of the French doors leading out to the rooftop patio.
“Ah, I see. Looks like you have your job cut out for you. Desmon called, and I’ll be taking a mission for him. And Seth’s going to open a portal soon. Like, right there.”
Eamon looked at the mess where portals usually open up in our penthouse. “Shit! Desmon’s going to end up with potting mix and a giant plant in his library if we don’t hurry.”
I looked at my phone. “You’ve got five minutes.”
The next five minutes were a flurry of activity as they quickly and carefully moved the giant plant into its new planter and filled it in with potting mix.
They had just gotten the Bird of Paradise back into its spot by the door when the familiar telltale signs of magic tickled the nape of my neck, making the tiny hairs there stand at attention.
The portal opened up exactly where the plant had been, and Seth’s head popped through the black, swirling vortex.
Seth was Desmon’s personal wizard, though by his love of the punk goth aesthetic and his ability to take everything as a joke, one would never be able to guess that he was probably the strongest wizard on this side of the planet. He was okay once you got used to his mildly grating attitude.
“What the hell happened here?” Seth wrinkled his nose at the pile of dirt still on the floor before looking up at Tansy. “Hey, Sis.”
He was also Tansy’s long-lost brother… or was it the other way around, since she was the one who’d been missing.
“Hey, Seth. How are Liam and Hazel?”
“Naked and very satisfied.” The wizard was mated in a triad to a demon and a human woman.
“Eww! TMI!” Tansy covered her ears. “Get out of here!”
“As you wish.”
I chuckled, shaking my head, and followed Seth through the portal.
The swirling vortex spat me out in Desmon’s library like it always did, and I was greeted by old books, dark wood, and the collected weight of centuries of deliberate acquisition.
Dragons were known for hoarding things, and while Desmon had a museum and a personal cave of wonders, plenty of his collection still ended up at his estate.
Desmon stood leaning against his desk rather than behind it.
“I’m going to have lunch,” Seth said nonchalantly. “Just call me when you need to go back.”
He disappeared out the door, leaving me with the Dragon of Darlington.
“Thank you for coming quickly.” Desmon gestured to the oversized chair next to him as he made his way behind the desk.
I sat, but he didn’t take his own seat. Instead, he paced. There was a nervousness to him that had my senses on high alert. It took something serious to affect a dragon.
“A woman called the museum this morning, and she asked for me specifically.”
That wasn’t unheard of. Desmon did own the Darlington Museum, and there were all kinds of people in this world, including women crazy enough to call the museum and ask to speak to a dragon directly.
“They had Mateo take the call, pretending to be me.”
Mateo was head of security at the museum.
Desmon trusted him implicitly, and from what I gathered, he treated Mateo and Seth like sons he never had.
They’d both lived at the estate for some time, and rumor was that he’d kept their rooms intact even now, years later, and they still had dinner together sometimes.
“A young woman from New York City claims to be in possession of a dragon egg.”
My eyes went wide. A dragon’s egg was a treasure indeed.
“Mateo thought it was a hoax at first,” Desmon said. “The story was outlandish, and he was skeptical. He might have hung up on her.”
“He thought it was. So that means he doesn’t think so anymore. What changed his assessment?” I asked.
“I did. The woman sent a video of the egg to the museum’s public email shortly after.
We were lucky that Carly was the one who opened it, so no one else knows about it.
It looks genuine. But more importantly, the woman says that it feels warm like it’s generating its own heat, and when she put her ear to it, she could hear a faint heartbeat.
But she thinks she might be imagining it.
She even said she was keeping it upright because she’s afraid of the baby drowning. ”
“A live dragon egg!” For some reason, I initially thought it was non-viable or perhaps a fossilized one.
Those would fetch a fortune on the market as well, but a live one?
That was priceless. I shook my head. Something didn’t sit right.
A live, viable dragon egg would be guarded with a dragon’s life.
How did it end up with some random woman from New York?
“All of that could be faked, though, right?” I mused out loud. It really was a far-fetched story.
“Of course. No dragons have come out reporting a missing egg, however. Though I doubt any would admit to losing something this important.”
“What does she want? Money?”
Desmon looked grim. “We don’t know. Mateo called her back, but she never picked up. We tracked the signal to a stretch of the I-80. It’s still there and hasn’t moved.”
“She ditched her phone,” I surmised.
“Mateo is already on his way to retrieve the device to see what he can find.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to find this woman and bring her and the egg safely to me. I have sent you all the information we have, including the last known location of her cell phone as well as the video of her and the egg.”
Just as he said it, my phone pinged with the package.
Curious, I clicked on the video right away.
A woman with honey-brown eyes and a mess of wavy brown hair sat with a green and bronze egg on her lap.
Somewhere in my mind, I knew that the focus should be on the egg, but I could not look away from the woman.
She was breathtakingly beautiful, from the curve of her jaw to the soft pink of her lips.
I didn’t even realize she was speaking until the video looped and played again.
“—I think I hear its heartbeat when I put my ear to it. But I’m not sure if it’s in my head. And it almost feels like it is responding to me. Like it could hear me.”
She looked around the room, and for the first time, I noticed that she was inside a gas station bathroom. She was hiding in the dirty room to film this, and from the look in her eyes, you’d think she believed someone would break down the door to get to her at any moment now.
“I hope this is enough to convince you. I am pretty sure they’re after me already. Please help. I don’t even know the first thing about taking care of a dragon egg. I’ve been keeping it upright because I read that reptiles could drown in their own eggs, and—”
She inhaled sharply, and the video ended suddenly before looping again.
“Someone is after her.” I could feel her desperation through the screen.
“After the egg,” Desmon clarified. “I think she stole it. I have Prax working on scouring the internet for possible failed ‘transactions.’”
Prax was an incubus and had made a name for himself as a collector of historical and magical artifacts. He’d know people the average person wouldn’t. But even so, I doubted he’d be able to find anything in legitimate channels. This was a dragon’s egg we were talking about.
“I hope whatever we find on her device will give us a clue.” I scrolled through my phone to find Mateo’s number. “She probably ditched it because whoever is following her is using it to locate her. I’ll get Mateo to lead them around a bit and give me some time to find her.”
“Remember,” Desmon said as I stepped out into the hallway in my search for Seth, “no portal travel for the egg. You’ll scramble it. And keep it upright.”
“Got it, Boss.”