Chapter 31
Chapter
Thirty-One
I blinked, unsure what to even say. I looked at Cassander, who was staring at me, eyes narrowed, frowning. Head tilted, he looked back at Brad, considering something before his face cleared, eyes going wide.
“What are you talking about?” I finally managed, each word sounding choked.
“You’re a… dragon?” Brad looked between everyone, but even Candy’s eyes were wide. “I smelled it the first time we met. That’s why we fought. I thought maybe you were after the kids. Statistically, there’s a chance one of them is going to be a wolf, and, well, dragons are notoriously territorial.”
My sister turned to me, mouth working before she hissed, “You’re a dragon ?”
“I am… not?” I turned to Cassander. “I’m not.”
But Cassander was looking at me with consideration, his head tilted. Then he looked me up and down. I turned my attention back to Candy. “I’m not.”
“Mom always said she knew there was something special about Dad.” Candy squinted at me, as though she was trying to see the dragon underneath my skin the same way I could see the wolf in her husband.
“She didn’t say he was a dragon!” My voice had gone loud, and Betty looked around the bar suspiciously. Everyone else had gone quiet.
Betty clapped her hands. “Okay, everyone out. We’ll settle up your tabs next time you come in. Consider it a loan.”
Grumbling, the two drunks managed to stumble their way out, and the teens shoved the last of their food in their mouths before walking out the door.
“I think we need Mom,” Candy said. She pulled out her phone, squinting at it drunkenly before handing it to Brad. “See if she can come over.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked Cassander.
“It would explain a few things,” Cassander said finally. “You can’t tell me you weren’t suspicious about the charred handprint you just left on Milner’s desk.”
“And it would answer some questions.” It would explain my dreams, it would explain that shifting feeling of heat under my skin, and it would explain why, after years of solitude, I was clutching tight every single person around me who had shown me even a breath of kindness.
“Maybe we do need some more of this,” Betty said. She got back on her stool, bringing the alcohol bottle down.
After she poured us all a drink, she filled our beer glasses as chasers. Then she considered the bottle. “You know who makes this?”
I shook my head, sipping the alcohol. It no longer burned at all. Instead, as I drank it, I felt warmth slither down my throat, settling in my stomach. It left me with the feeling I had felt in my dream, sitting on a pile of gold, my claws picking up the coins and letting them fall back on each other with a beautiful ringing sound.
“Who makes it?” I asked.
“There’s a guy a few towns over, closer to Joshua Tree. He’s been making it for decades. Before my dad could even drink.” She looked at the bottle, tracing her finger over the dragon. “He collects all the best ingredients, makes it just for himself. He has bottles and bottles of it. My dad always said that he did it because it was his hoard.”
“His hoard. He’s a dragon too?” The more times I said it didn’t make it make sense. A few weeks ago, I had believed the only magic in the world was trapped in magical artifacts, leftovers from some distant time, from some distant magic. Now, I was sitting next to a fae, a werewolf, and I had just found out I’d won the magical lottery and was a dragon.
“I don’t know. I think so. He lives out in the desert by himself. His house is set into the hills.” Betty looked up at me. “So maybe you aren’t alone?”
“Does this mean I have to eat sprites?” I turned and looked at Cassander with wide eyes. “Or pixies?”
Cassander began laughing, although his mirth seemed sharper now, surprised. “No. Not unless you have an appetite for small creatures that are more bone than flesh.”
“I mean, are we talking like a quail here? Because I’ve had quail, and I don’t know why those things are so expensive. There wasn’t even enough flesh to fill a teaspoon. And I paid five hundred dollars for it.”
“You really didn’t know?” Brad asked.
“Brad, two weeks ago, I thought you were just a boring lawyer my sister married. I didn’t even know any of this was real.” I shook my head, taking another small sip of alcohol.
For a few minutes, we all sat in silence, and then someone knocked on the door, and Betty checked her security system before walking over and opening it. My mother came in, shooing the kids in front of her.
Now that I was watching, I saw how Junior looked around the room, his eyes following trails of smoke that disappeared almost as soon as I saw them. No wonder he was quieter than his sister if he was used to listening to things that other people didn’t know were there.
He would make a good spy, listening instead of talking.
“What’s wrong?” my mother demanded. She looked at me. “Milner doesn’t want peace?”
“Brad, here, who apparently everyone knew was a werewolf, said I’m a dragon.” I jerked my thumb at him. “And Iris Milner has given us three days before we all go to war because Cassander thinks she has her own dragon.”
My mother blinked, her mouth going open. She looked between all of us before frowning. “You’re all drunk.”
Brad raised his hand. “This is actually my first glass. I thought we were talking about the dragon thing because… well, that meant your husband was a dragon.”
My mother blinked, swallowing. “A dragon?”
Brad nodded slowly, and Cassander looked at him before saying, “I have my suspicions that he’s right.”
My mother’s eyes went unfocused, and the frown on her brow was unusual. My mother was a good actress but not this good, and for the first time in my life, I had the feeling she was at a loss.
The expression on her face wasn’t hidden, it wasn’t coded in what she thought we needed to see, it wasn’t nuanced and perfect so that whoever she was trying to fool would feel a certain way. Instead, the expression on her face built in rage, her brow furrowing, her throat working. She turned, facing the empty bar.
“Where is my husband?” she roared.
I had never heard my mother speak that loud, and the part of me that would always be five years old jumped and winced away. Candy caught my hand, her nails digging in, and we both turned to look at each other.
Mamá Reyes never lost control. Mamá Reyes was a perfect con, someone who always had a plan, someone who never lost her temper, because she never lost.
Slowly, the bar began to fill, ghostly apparitions coming through the walls, each almost invisible, but with my new sight, I could see them, see their expressions.
“My husband!” my mother shouted again.
“Ma,” Candy said quietly, braver than me in the moment. “You know he’s not here.”
“One of you has to know the truth. Who was there when he died?” My mother looked around the room as it continued to fill, dozens of people dressed in clothes from every time period. “I have never asked you. But now I need to know. I need to know if my son is in danger the way his father was. Who saw my husband die?”
Finally, a woman spoke. Her hair was pulled back out of her face in a tight bun; her clothes made her look like a school matron from the old West. “I saw it.”
My mother swallowed as she swung to face the woman, and I caught sight of her eyes, wide and terrified. Mamá Reyes never lost control, but this was my mother. I remembered her yelling at us from the Ventura beach. Be careful, mijos! Don’t go too far!
This was the mother who loved me as her child more than for my abilities to run a con.
“Tell me.” My mother’s words were clipped, and this wasn’t how you interrogated someone; this wasn’t how you pulled information out of them when they didn’t want to give it.
The matron glared at her for a moment but then raised her chin. “Silas Milner called him out and shot him in the street.”
“Why?” my mother asked.
“He didn’t want your husband to gain his full powers.” The matron sniffed, her nostrils flaring. “Milner has been the dragon of this valley since he was dug out of the ground by the miners. He has ruled since they first cracked open his hiding spot two hundred years ago. Your husband was a threat.”
“Did he know what he was?” I asked, but the ghost ignored me, so my mother repeated the question.
“If your husband had known he was a dragon, he would have fought back,” the matron said. “Rosario Reyes, we are not yours to command. Do not speak to us as though we are.”
The ghosts faded, and my mother’s shoulders slumped. I sat, staring at nothing. Riley stepped forward, wrapping my mother in a hug, and my mother absently put her hands around Riley’s shoulders.
“I’m all right, baby.” When she turned back to us, my mother’s face was under her control; the only evidence of her unhappiness was the tear streaks she wiped away. “I always knew Milner had done it. But I never understood why. Your father was a good man. A good worker.”
“Dragons are extremely territorial. If your husband was just coming into his powers, if he didn’t know yet what he was, Milner might have seen it as his only time to strike.” Cassander looked around. “Which means that Iris Milner wants the same thing her father did. She might want me, she might be in bed with my brother, but she wants Damian as much as her father wanted your husband.”
“But now we know that,” I said, a plan coming to me slowly. “She gave us three days, right?”
“Three days and three nights,” Cassander agreed.
“It was a deal, a bargain?” I raised both of my eyebrows. “Can we use that? Get her to attack first, before the three days, and then you can pull the house down around her, hopefully burying the witch with it this time? I could do with some disintegrating feet and ruby slippers.”
Cassander considered, tapping his chin as he thought. “That might work. But we need to know what her bargain was with my brother, if she has one. Each bargain has its own rules. We might be able to use that as well.”
“How do we find out?” I asked.
Cassander sighed. “Only my brother and whoever he made the deal with would know.”
“And it’s not like we can just call him on the phone and ask, ‘Hey, bro? So, you know how you want me dead? What exactly are the terms of your deal with the secret international artifact dealers?’” I sighed in frustration.
“No, I don’t think that would work.” Cassander’s lips twitched.
“I actually think it might be easier,” Brad said. He cleared his throat when we all turned to stare at him.
Brad grinned, all white teeth and American boy good looks. “From my understanding of fae politics, if Iris Milner takes another deal, one that’s at odds with the one with your brother, she would be breaking a fae promise. She would be breaking a fae contract .”
“Yes, which is why we need to know exactly what she promised my brother,” Cassander said, voice getting frustrated.
“No, you don’t, because you know the end result.” Brad raised his eyebrows.
I blinked, snapping my fingers, suddenly seeing what he was saying. “Your brother wants you dead. Or at least he wants you handed over. If we offer Milner something she wants more than whatever your brother promised, we don’t need to know the details because she’ll be taking a deal that would automatically break the contract.”
“But we don’t know what my brother offered her. We don’t know what she wants.” Cassander raised an eyebrow.
“She wants me.” I gestured to my neck. “Or at least my head. Whatever part of me leads to me being just as dead as Dad.”
Voices exploded around me, Candy saying no way , while Betty shook her head, already commenting about my plans not improving since I was a teenager. Brad seemed like he was the only one considering, while Cassander glared holes in the side of my head. Junior began crying, which quieted everyone.
My mother knelt, holding his shoulders. “Junior.”
“Is he going to die? Is he going to die and disappear forever like Grandpa?” Junior whimpered.
“No,” Riley answered before anyone else could. “He still owes us a day at the arcade. That’s a deal. And dragons don’t break deals. Right?”
“Right.” I nodded, and when had I started agreeing I was a dragon? When had that begun to make more sense than the alternative that everyone was crazy, including me?
Cassander was looking at me, and a slow smile slipped over his face. “No, we have no need to lose out on a day at the arcade because there is one thing a dragon would always want more than anything and one thing my brother would never offer.”
“Okay.” My mother stood, dusting her hands. “Let’s figure out a plan.”
Later, I found my mother outside the bar, her expression grim. She pulled a pack of cigarettes out from her purse, placing one between her lips. Inside, the rest of the family was making good use of Betty’s cook, and I didn’t even ask how much money my friend was losing closing for the night and feeding us all.
“Ma?”
My mother glanced at me, blowing out smoke into the desert night. “I was mad too. At your father. Why didn’t his ghost stick around? What was his spirit satisfied by that he didn’t remain here where I could still speak with him? And now, to find out he was murdered like this, and he didn’t even bother to stay and help you…”
She shook her head, taking another drag from her cigarette. I leaned against the stucco wall, feeling the night in my skin like I was an actual cold-blooded creature, and the night soothed me into motionlessness.
“I’m sorry.” I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry I was so angry at you that I didn’t see how you were hurting too.”
“Ay, Damian.” My mother reached up, and I felt her fingers trail over my cheek. When I blinked open my eyes, she had crossed her free arm over her chest. “You’re a good boy.”
She ground out the cigarette under the toe of her shoe and went back inside the bar.
I took the fae coin out of my pocket, pinching it between my fingers. Then, I flipped it into the air, catching it in one hand. I slapped it on the back of my other, pausing a moment before taking my palm off.
Dragon side up.