A Boy and His Dragon (30 page)

“What are you doing here?” Arthur barked out, not remembering until it was too late to keep his voice down. Drew recovered from his surprise quickly and took a few moments to look A Boy and His Dragon

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over Arthur again. It was a long, slow look that probably didn’t miss a thing and which made Arthur blush again despite himself.

Drew had already made it clear what he thought Arthur was doing here in Bertie’s house the first time they met, but Arthur’s appearance now only confirmed it. He’d dressed quickly, sloppily, leaving his hair the mess Bertie’s fingers had left it. His lips were dark, his eyes shadowed with a lack of sleep, and unlike Bertie, Arthur had marks at his throat that would last for days.

Drew’s smile was suddenly a lot warmer. He looked almost friendly except for the cool look in his eyes. Arthur was reminded once again that Drew looked a lot more like the paintings of knights than Arthur did. But Arthur lifted his chin and just frowned harder.

“
What
are you doing here?” he demanded again, clenching his hands so tightly that it hurt. Drew’s gaze skipped over him again, lingering at his side before coming back up to Arthur’s face.

“The same thing you are, I bet, only you beat me to it.” He nodded down at Arthur’s hand and Arthur followed the gesture and ended up staring at the black scale wrapped in his fist. He’d forgotten about it, but the early morning light made it seem wet.

“What?” Arthur asked blankly, with the edge in his palm like a shard of glass. It made him think of a blade and the display of short swords on the wall next to him. They were probably dull, but Arthur might like the weight in his hand. If it felt anything at all like holding Bertie’s scale, Arthur might enjoy holding a sword after all.

“The dragon,” Drew explained with a roll of his eyes. “I bet he doesn’t even know. But I got it the second after I saw you, when I saw him and how he looked at you. I guess short and skinny is his type. And now you’ve got that….” He pointed at the scale. Arthur raised it without thinking. “That’s a scale from his back, right? Did he give it to you? It’s worth more if the old lizard gave it to you freely, not that it’s worth nearly as much as his treasure. But you could probably get that too, if you’re good enough.” Arthur shuddered as something snapped. He wasn’t sure if the sound came from inside of him or from somewhere in the air around him, but it was the noise the ground made when it broke apart, the R. Cooper

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half-second warning most people flinched and hid from. The scale in his hand was like the jagged edge of a rock or an arrowhead, like a vorpal sword, though Arthur wasn’t out to slay any dragons.

“Shut up.” It was someone else’s voice, because it was way too calm to be Arthur’s. But the sound of it was familiar, as familiar as the heat around him and the haze over his eyes. He lowered the hand with the scale in it and let Drew look at the sharp, glistening edge of it.

“I could tell.” Drew ignored the warning because he was stupid. He was a stupid jerk, just like his sister’s ex-boyfriend, just like anybody who looked at the world and thought of what they could take from it and not what they could give it. “Nobody would be with a dragon for any other reason,” Drew started and then suddenly, abruptly, went quiet, as if he finally noticed that Arthur wasn’t agreeing with him.

Arthur narrowed his eyes.

“Treasure?” He moved forward, startling Drew into stepping back. “If you think it’s just about treasure then you really are stupid.

It’s so much more than that. Gold?” He snorted and gestured with the hand holding the scale, watching the sharp edge of it and how it gleamed in the light. Drew took another step back. “
Gold
?” Arthur asked again, almost spitting the word. “You saw
him
and you thought about gold?

“He is—” Arthur briefly couldn’t find the words. “—power and beauty and knowledge and compassion and you wanted to see some jewels?” Arthur nearly tossed the scale at him out of pity. But then he remembered what someone like Drew might do with a piece of Bertie and narrowed his eyes until Drew was off the front steps.

“Leave. Leave now and don’t come back.” He took another step forward to follow, putting one foot across the threshold and for a second felt a swirling rush of warm air around him, pulling him back and pushing him forward. It made him think of Bertie and he got a sick, cold feeling in his stomach.

Drew looked at him and then up over his head, just for a second. Arthur straightened, trying to block the entire house from A Boy and His Dragon

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Drew’s sight. He was shaking, but he didn’t think Drew saw it. Then he gestured out at the street.

“Stay away from Bertie or I’ll have you fired.” He meant it.

He’d never threatened to fire anyone before but he could do it, and would, if Drew said another word. “He’s not for you.”

“Just you, Arthur dear?” Drew was stupid
and
defiant even though he was quaking with fear. Arthur grabbed the door and slammed it closed. He breathed hard behind it for a second and then locked it. The air moved around him. It felt hot on the back of his neck and he turned.

He knew before he looked that Bertie was there, but he looked anyway, all the way up the stairs to the landing. Bertie was watching him, his eyes dark and fierce beneath low eyebrows. He did not wink and there was no sign of a grin.

“I wasn’t taking it,” he insisted instantly, staring back at Bertie because where else could he look? Bertie was unmoving, almost a statue, until he opened his mouth, exposing rows of pointed teeth and that tongue that even now was tasting everything Arthur was trying to deny. “He was wrong, Drew was….” But Drew hadn’t been wrong, so Arthur stopped. Arthur
had
come here partly for that scale.

Arthur dropped the scale and knew as he did it that it only made him look worse. He was standing there fully dressed, like he’d been ready to run, and he was holding that scale while Drew said every horrible word.

The room was getting hotter, and Arthur didn’t think it was just due to Bertie’s presence. He stepped back from the door as if that was going to do any good and felt something brush against him, a force almost like hands or that dizzying feeling when strong magic was close.

Arthur had never felt anything stronger than the kinds of spells kids tried out on each other for fun. He took another step back and shuddered at the rush of air on his skin when the room itself was so hot and still.

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It wasn’t coming from Bertie, he realized in one tense moment. It was coming from the house. Whatever magical wards Bertie had put on the house were reacting to something, probably Arthur and the guilt that wouldn’t even let him look at the scale anymore. He raised his head and flinched again at the way Bertie was looking at him, as if he didn’t know Arthur at all. If he hadn’t known Bertie so well, he would have said that Bertie was waiting for him to make one wrong move so he could roast him on the spot.

“It’s beautiful, but I don’t want it.” Arthur spoke up again, then frowned and shook his head at the answering silence. “It’s yours and I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t do that to you. Not just because I….” It was all out there anyway, it had to be, but maybe the scent was drowned out by the dry, singed smoke drifting downstairs.

Arthur put a hand out and then dropped it because why should Bertie believe him? He
had
lied. He’d lied from the second he walked in this house.

“Not just because I know you,” he finished, though the truth raced through his blood like panic, making him flushed and sick and more scared than he’d been when he met Bertie and thought he might end up charred and eaten.

“I… I thought about it, though. Before I knew you. Before I worked here. A scale like that is worth money and I thought it would be harmless. If one fell off, you probably wouldn’t even miss it and then I could take the money and pay off enough bills to give myself some breathing room, maybe go back to school.” He looked down because no way could he look into Bertie’s face while he admitted to thinking about selling off a part of him through someone like Dante. He didn’t want someone like Dante to come near Bertie any more than he wanted Drew to. Drew didn’t see what made Bertie special; he just saw a dragon, a monster from a story that repulsed him, but one that he still wanted to use.

“You aren’t… what he said. You aren’t that, you’re so much more. You’re incredible. I didn’t realize that when I first had the thought, because I hadn’t met you.” Arthur didn’t even deserve to be this close to Bertie. He took another step back and for the first time, A Boy and His Dragon

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Bertie moved. The scrape of his claw against the balustrade made Arthur glance up.

Bertie had one hand wrapped around the railing, his grip hard enough that a claw was digging into the wood. The repairs would be costly, though that would mean nothing to Bertie. Of course it wouldn’t.

Arthur scowled again and felt his chin go up. “Not that I expect you to understand not having money or working all the time.

Why would you? But let me tell you, it’s exhausting. It’s so exhausting you can’t think about anything else but work and money and how you don’t have any, and if you do it too long, you just know your dreams are going to be just that… dreams. Dreams don’t come true without money, and I wouldn’t change having Kate with me, but you get desperate sometimes, tired and hungry, and I thought… I thought it wouldn’t hurt.”

“Stupid,” he added a moment later, his brief moment of anger fading away when Bertie didn’t say anything. “But I really thought… if you didn’t want it. They said scales just fall off.” He exhaled. “I guess I just wanted to think that. But it didn’t matter.

The second I got here I saw you and I knew there was no way.” He took a step back.

“Arthur.” Bertie spoke for the first time, his voice so rough that Arthur knew it was a sharply growled warning that Arthur was treading on dangerous ground. Arthur shook his head again at the blast of heat that followed the word, the sensation of too much magic or the ground itself rising to trip him up or shove him forward.

“I’m sorry.” Arthur stood where he was for a moment longer anyway and stared through the growing haze. “I’m sorry for thinking it at all, though I never ever would have done it. You should believe that.”

He couldn’t tell if Bertie did or not, or if the magic in the house did. He was so hot he was shivering and Bertie was looking at him as if Arthur had failed him, as if Arthur wasn’t the honest, fearless warrior that Bertie had thought he was. Arthur supposed he wasn’t. But he wanted to be. That made it so much worse.

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He looked up and did his best anyway. “I want you to know…

I couldn’t breathe the first time I saw you, and it hasn’t gotten any easier since then. In fact, the more I’m around you, the stronger it is, this feeling in my chest. It’s not fear. I’m not even a little bit afraid of you. Not like that. You aren’t going to devour me. You wouldn’t have to because I’m….” No, he wasn’t that and stopped himself. He changed his words. “I want….” He was revealing too much, but it wasn’t anything that Bertie didn’t know already. He had to know, and if he didn’t, it was out now, belly up and waiting to be gutted.

Arthur couldn’t take the words back, but then, why should he bother if he wasn’t coming back? Arthur wasn’t just a nobody, he was a potential thief. Someone who had thought about money, no matter his reasons. Bertie wouldn’t want him.

He straightened and turned away before the house could make him. He couldn’t look around; he just kept his eyes on the door. He grabbed his bag and his laptop and kept on going, throwing open the door before he dared to glance back.

The room seemed to shimmer, as if his vision was swimming, and he thought Bertie was changing form but couldn’t tell.

“I’m sorry I’m not your boy, because I wish I was,” he admitted the truth, the whole truth, quietly and then turned to push his bike out the door so he wouldn’t have to hear how Bertie wouldn’t call him back.

HIS chest was tight, though it wasn’t just the fast race across town back to the apartment that made breathing painful. The morning air was cold, colder now that he was outside of Bertie’s house, but he didn’t let himself think about it. He just carried his bike up the stairs and fumbled for his key and got inside with enough noise to bring Kate’s head up from the couch.

She looked sleepy and startled for one second, and then just concerned. Arthur turned away before she could say anything because he knew what it looked like, having spent the night there only to come crashing back home way too early in the morning. He A Boy and His Dragon

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also knew he was probably flushed and that his eyes were probably just as red. The sting made him blink as he shoved his backpack into a corner and hurried past her into the bathroom.

A shower made him feel clean and kept Kate from asking him questions, but that was all it did. He could still feel the ache when he moved, sore muscles getting sorer by the second and reminding him, every time he moved, of what he’d just lost. He tried to distract himself by thinking of what he had to do next: dry off, get dressed, eat, look for new jobs. Practical items on a simple list, things to be checked off in order that wouldn’t give him time to think. It might have worked if he hadn’t run the soapy washcloth over his thighs and thought of Bertie, and then thought
give Bertie his key back
.

He discarded that mental note, then the entire list, and tried to start over. He’d left the tea things in disarray in Bertie’s kitchen.

He… Bertie would… have to take care of that, if he didn’t forget.

Maybe Arthur
should
write out a list, a list for Bertie, that he could drop off with the key.

He wasn’t sure the house would let him in, but he could leave the key in the mailbox with the notes Arthur hadn’t had a chance to share and the names of people who would take care of Bertie’s books if Arthur couldn’t. He could do that. Not today, but he could.

He had to make sure of things.