Dragon Call (3 page)

This isn’t running away
, she told
herself.
It’s getting away. There’s a significant
difference.

The train jolted into motion. Cora sandwiched
herself into the crowd and latched onto a length of overhead
handrail. She tried to rely on the rail more than her fellow
passengers to keep herself steady. New York wasn’t like the metro
in D.C., which was one of her only other public transportation
experiences. In D.C., everybody on the subway became friends fast,
figuring if they were going to be hanging off metal bars and
practically spooning one another during rush hours, depending on
the train route, then they should at least be willing to smile at
one another. The MBTA in Boston was more like New York, with its
passengers slanting sidelong glances and looking away again quickly
when the object of their examination looked up.

Cora’s skin tingled. She raised her head a
fraction despite knowing well that she wouldn’t find the person
watching her. An expert train rider was reading a newspaper while
hanging from the handrail, and a young couple nuzzled nose to nose,
jostling and giggling. They weren’t paying attention to anything
but themselves.

The young couple should have made her
envious. They were happy and in love, cheeks and noses bright from
the wind up on street level. The train hit a rough patch, and the
young man caught his girlfriend around the waist to keep her
upright. Nobody caught Cora. Instead, the passenger behind her
lurched forward and jabbed her shoulder with the corner of a
book.

She wasn’t lonely, though. It didn’t hurt to
see people in love. She couldn’t convince her mother that she was
happy as a single, successful woman. Between her friends and casual
dating, she had everything she wanted. If Miranda really wanted to
help, she’d focus on curing Cora’s insomnia.

Hell, she could even live with the insomnia
if Miranda had a weapon to use against the dragons that terrorized
her when she did manage to sleep.

The tingling of being watched didn’t abate.
Cora shuffled around so she was facing the other direction, toward
the end of the train, and peered around the bend of her elbow. As
she shifted, the train began to slow in anticipation of the next
stop. A polished woman in a black wool peacoat, one of the lucky
few who had boarded when a seat was available, flipped her notebook
computer closed and tucked it away into a briefcase-style bag. The
teenager sitting thigh-to-thigh with her stopped perusing his CD
collection and tucked the vinyl case into the front pocket of his
hoodie. An elderly couple jostled for position to peer at the sign
tacked over the door. A dozen other people went about their
business and not a single eye turned toward Cora.

She frowned at her paranoia. Spending time
with Miranda and Diane had made her overly susceptible to
suggestion. Cora had no more sensitivity to being watched than any
other person. The slight chill she had taken was merely a result of
cold air moving around in the train.

Still, she joined the crowd of exiting
passengers shuffling toward the door as the train stopped and the
doors chugged open. The station emptied out onto Canal Street. As
soon as she hit the sidewalk, Chinatown rose up to greet her.

Chapter Three

Cora dug through her purse looking for a pair
of sunglasses to protect her eyes from the few minutes of bright
winter sunlight that remained in the day. She came across Greg
Cho’s business card during her search and frowned at the Canal
Street address. Coincidences made her uneasy. She considered
backtracking and returning to board the next train, but the
remembered sensation of being watched stayed her retreat. Besides,
she didn’t
have
to visit just because she was in the
area.

Resolutely, Cora settled her sunglasses on
her nose and checked her reflection in a seafood shop window. She
grimaced at her hair, damp and flat from her shower. A large fish
swam up and grimaced right back. Cora’s stomach rumbled. She
grinned at the timing. Chinatown would suit her for sightseeing and
lunch.

Passersby talked back and forth in Chinese
and English, flowing around Cora as she strolled past storefronts
and street vendors. Glitter caught her eye, and she lingered in
front of the display window for a jewelry store, where pearl and
jade were the theme pieces. The proprietor wasn’t afraid of setting
the pieces in yellow gold, either, despite the current trend toward
white gold.

She fanned her fingertips against the glass,
trying to gauge the true size of the pearls featured in choker
necklace on display. As she tilted her head to get around the
reflection of traffic blurring her view, she caught sight of a face
transposed over her own. The second she noticed it, oval and dark
with burning eyes, it disappeared. She didn’t even have time to
scream.

Cora whirled around, pressing her shoulders
back against the window, and scanned the street. A few people gave
her odd looks, but none of them stopped or slowed to indicate more
than passing interest. Half a dozen children, bundled up in parkas
and knit hats, ran past. They slowed when they caught up with a
balloon vender near the subway entrance. The sensation of being
watched returned in full force.

Driven by instinct alone, Cora hurried deeper
into Chinatown, leaving the subway station behind. She passed
grocers without so much as glancing at the stacks of fruit priced
to go for a steal and dodged around a crowd gathered on a bakery’s
doorstep before she found what she was looking for and ducked into
the building.

She came face to face with Greg and another
man, both looking up upon her entrance. Greg stood behind a low
counter covered with small colorful pots. He had a ceramic spoon in
one hand and an ounce-sized jar in the other. Three other similar
jars had already been filled with what looked like herbs, from
where Cora stood. Greg’s customer, a tall man with curling black
hair pulled back in a ponytail, narrowed his eyes.

“Hello,” Greg said, raising his eyebrows.

Cora flushed and stammered an apology, trying
to gather her wits to take stock of the situation. She was
obviously interrupting; the tiny shop didn’t have room for more
than three people, and fit two better. Three made it an intimate
space, and there was no way Cora could retreat without leaving the
shop altogether. She didn’t want to leave, besides. The stranger
and his intent visual inspection put her on edge, but the
nerve-wracking sensation of being watched had vanished. His human
eyes were easier to deal with than the glowing orbs in the
window.

Neither man pointed out that she’d
interrupted, but Cora could see it in the stranger’s body language.
He stepped away from the counter and drew himself to full height,
which put him head and shoulders above both Greg and Cora. She
tried not to stare, but he was fascinatingly, criminally beautiful.
His face—full lips, strong jaw, perfect Roman nose, dark eyes
framed by thick, spiky lashes—belonged on the pages of
People
Magazine’s
50 Most Beautiful People edition.

His attire, on the other hand, belonged on
the broad shoulders of a wealthy mob boss. Cashmere overcoats,
white silk shirts and camel hair trousers were the costumes of
“neighborhood protectors” in those kung fu movies she only ever
watched long enough to determine that they were, indeed, kung fu
movies. Cora glanced at the counter to be sure she hadn’t walked
into the middle of a protection fee payment. No cash, good. She
couldn’t be killed as an accidental witness, at least. She looked
back to the boss to find his gaze still fixed upon her.

“If you scheduled a late appointment,” he
said to Greg without looking away from Cora, “I suggest you cancel
it.”

She considered retreating, thought really
hard about it. There weren’t any mobsters outside, but there
weren’t any glowing nightmare eyes inside. Her nightmares
frightened her more than the mob, she decided, and returned his
narrow-eyed look with one of her own. Several smartass comments
came to mind, but Cora imagined a big black gun tucked into a
holster under his arm and decided she’d have less chance of getting
shot with a defiant look than anything that might come out of her
mouth.

“I hope you won’t mind waiting a moment in
the back,” Greg said, rescuing her from embarrassing silence and
certain death or both. He moved from behind the short counter and
opened a mesh screen door that led to the back of the building. “I
wouldn’t want you to stand outside with the wind picking up and the
sun going down,” he explained, and ushered her through before his
customer/exploiter could object. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Greg left her alone in the back room, which
resembled a living room more than an office or storage area. The
room wasn’t huge—big enough for a loveseat and a rocker, a low
table and a bookcase—but it was warm and comfortably roomy. A
single lamp provided soft light, tinted gold due to filtering
through the lampshade. Another screen door led deeper into the
building. Cora ventured in a few feet until she could make out the
shadow of a banister that gave away the staircase on the other side
of the door. Fabric rustled behind her. She jumped, whirling to
catch a swish of curtain as Greg drew one across the screen that
led into the shop. Frowning, she moved to mash her ear against the
wall to hear what was so important that it warranted this much
secrecy.

Greg and his guest must have moved to the
front of the shop because Cora couldn’t make out distinct words.
She heard both men’s voices as muffled murmurs and thought she
heard “Is that her?” or something similar, but that was the extent
of what she made out. It was enough to know she was the topic of
conversation. Cora mentally kicked herself for not paying more
attention to the exterior of the building. She would do well with
an escape plan. For that matter she would be doing better if she
hadn’t come at all.

Cora bit her lips and hugged herself. She had
no idea what she was doing here. Now that she was away from the
street with its winking headlights and streetlamps sparking to
life, she felt stupid. She had run from imagined glowing eyes to
potential murder at the hands of a mob lackey. What possessed her
to panic like that?

What would she tell Greg when he came back in
and asked what she was doing here? “I was spooked by a shadow in a
window” seemed silly, even to her. She said it out loud, mocking
herself in a high ultra-feminine voice, just to reinforce the
absurdity of her fear.

“Shadows are frightening things. My
grandmother believed shadows were evil spirits. It’s not an
uncommon superstition,” Greg said, twitching the curtain aside.

Cora jumped. He stood with the screen door
propped open, one foot still in the main area of the store. “I’m
going to lock up the front and I’ll be right with you. Unless you’d
rather go out?”

He asked the question as though it were
perfectly normal that she had, not five minutes ago, burst
unannounced into his place of business and interrupted a criminal
transaction.

“I didn’t mean to barge in like that,” she
confessed. Greg might be able to overlook her abrupt arrival, but
Cora felt a need to make excuses for her behavior. “It was—”

“The shadows?”

As much as she wanted to deny that she ever
did anything based on a shadow, Greg already knew the truth. He
didn’t seem to find it unusual at all, either.

“I was going to have dinner soon,” he said,
coming into the room and moving to turn on a tall lamp positioned
in the corner. “Tomato soup and grilled cheese. I’m not a great
cook. You’re welcome to join me.”

Cora watched him move around the room,
lighting three more lamps and chasing the shadows away from the
parameters. “I don’t want to interrupt your evening any more than I
already have.”

“I don’t call the unexpected company of a
woman an interruption. More like a blessing. If you want to stay, I
would enjoy your company. If you don’t, I’ll see you back to the
train station and make sure you get on safely.”

He shrugged out of the short, black satin
robe he had been wearing when she came into the store, revealing
jeans and a turtleneck beneath it. Cora chewed her bottom lip,
trying not to remember the way his lips had felt on hers during
their brief kiss the night before. She also tried to ignore the
tiny shoot of desire sprouting up in her belly at the memory.

“Throughout the term of my mother’s pregnancy
with me,” she said abruptly, “she bought 47 different lipsticks.
The only one she found that she thought looked good with her
pregnant-woman complexion was an orangey shade called
‘coraline.’”

Greg gave her a bemused smile. “Women are
complex. Are you legally Cora or Coraline?”

“Coraline. That reminds me of lipstick,
though, so I prefer Cora.”

“Well, Cora.” He dropped the robe over the
arm of the chair. “Shall it be dinner or an escort back to the
train?”

Going back to the train meant she would have
to go back to Diane’s apartment, since she was staying with her
sister for the next several weeks. It would also mean that she
risked running out into an ambush set by the mob lackey/crime
boss/whatever he was. Cora wasn’t crazy about her prospects. Even
if she survived the ambush, she would have to see her mother,
almost guaranteed to be in attendance at Diane’s.

“Dinner,” she decided. “I’m starving.” She
moved to drop her handbag on the couch and unbuttoned her coat.
“Not crazy about the tomato soup, though. Is it possible to get a
pizza around here?”

“Have a seat and I’ll see what I can find for
you.” Greg headed through the mystery door and up the stairs.

Cora listened to his footsteps as he moved
around on the second floor, trying to imagine the layout of the
upstairs apartment. It probably had another living room. This room,
she decided, was too impersonal to be an actual living space. Greg
had art on the walls, but no pictures. He had his work uniform
draped over the arm of the chair, but no shoes kicked off just
inside the door or paperback opened up pages-down on the coffee
table. The books in the bookcase, titles covering topics such as
European and Asian history, travel, and mythology, could have
either been a reflection of his personal interests or his
professional interests.