Hidden Dragons (16 page)

“A
special
gift?” The back of Cass’s neck tingled. She’d learned that word meant something when he used it.

“Three special gifts, actually. I’ve been saving them for you. I think you’re old enough to take care of them.”

Cass felt her eyes go round. “Are they what you took your trip to get?”

“They are. Why don’t we sit in your chair, and I’ll tell you.”

He pulled her onto his lap in the story chair. The big moon shone through the window, so he didn’t turn on the lamp. “Remember when I told you about T’Fain?”

“T’Fain was the bravest dragon in Faerie. You raised her from a hatchling. She gave her life to form the Pocket.”

“That’s right.” He let out a little sigh that told her he was sad. Cass put her cheek on his chest to make him feel better. He hugged her but just gently. “What I didn’t tell you was that T’Fain wasn’t really the last dragon.”

“She wasn’t?” Cass tilted her head to him.

“No. The Dragon Guild—”

“Your bosses.”

“Yes, my bosses kept three final eggs a secret from the kings of the fae. They knew their rulers wouldn’t be able to resist using up the dragons’ magic if they knew they existed. They didn’t want the race to die out forever.”

“They gave the eggs to you,” Cass concluded. “Because you were the best dragon keeper.”

“I don’t know about the best, but they trusted me to do what it took to protect them.”

He petted her hair as she nodded sleepily on his chest. She liked this story so far. She’d always thought the last dragon dying was a sad thing.

“Cass,” her father said. “You’re my daughter. You’re the last of my keeper line.”

“I’m half,” she said.

“Half is enough. In fact, half is perfect. You’re going to take care of the dragons now.”

The sleepiness fell away from her. Shocked, she sat up straight on his lap. “Not really!”

Her dad touched her cheek with one finger. “You can do this, honey. You’re good at hiding things. Of all the powers I’ve taught you, that’s the one you’re best at.”

“But—”

“All you need to do is hide them in a good safe place you never tell anyone about. Not even me, Cass. If my enemies ever found me, they’d steal the location out of my head.”

“You have enemies?”

He smiled crookedly at her disbelief. “They won’t guess I’d trust you with this, that I’d give up control of this treasure to a half human. I promise I’ll do everything . . .”

He stopped. To Cass’s amazement, her dad was crying. He wiped his eyes and went on. “I promise I’ll do everything to keep you safe and out of sight from them. After you do this, you won’t have to . . . lift the burden again until you’re much older.”

Two more tears rolled shining down his cheeks. He brushed them away and simply looked at her. She realized he was waiting for her decision—as if she were grown up too.

“The dragons need me,” she said slowly.

“Yes,” he agreed. “You’re the perfect person to protect them.”

She didn’t see how she was perfect, but she knew her father didn’t lie. “What if I accidentally tell you where I hid them?”

“I’ll glamour you when you’re done. You won’t remember this happened.”

That sounded a little scary, but she supposed forgetting would be safer. “Could I see the dragons?”

He smiled. “They don’t look very exciting now.”

“I want to see anyway.”

He was so good at magic he made it seem like no work at all. “
Open
,” he said quietly in high fae as he dragged his right index finger across the air. Sparkles trailed prettily behind it.

A space that hadn’t been there before appeared, a shelf supported by nothing, with a gray velvet bag in it. Her dad removed the bag, loosened its black silk drawstring, and showed her what lay inside.

The eggs were about the size of a chicken’s, but they were round. They were gray with a silvery sheen. Her dad put one in her hand. The sphere was surprisingly heavy.

“It feels like metal,” she said, holding it carefully. “And it’s cold.”

“These eggs are dormant. They won’t wake up and hatch until the time is right.”

“How will they know?”

“They just will.”

She stroked the one she held with her thumb. “When will I have to hide them?”

“Tonight,” he said. “The full moon gives you more power to draw on.”

Cass had a lump of fear in her throat. This responsibility seemed too important to leave to her. She remembered the stories her dad had told her about T’Fain: how sweet the dragon was, how mischievous sometimes, and how clever. She knew people cried when they lost their pets. Her dad must have felt ten times worse than that.

A keeper and his dragon were as close as father and child.

“Okay,” she said. She held out her other hand for the velvet bag. “You should wait downstairs, Daddy. You won’t want to know what I do next.”

~

The vision snapped away from Cass. Rick had shaken her back to reality.

“The dream,” she said, caught between different memories. “I dreamed about that night right before my father’s picture fell off the wall.”

“What night?” he asked, looking relieved that she’d responded.

She told him as efficiently as she could. While she did, he helped her find her clothes and dress. Taking them off had been much easier. Somewhat to her disappointment, Rick pulled his shirt back on.

“Your dad gave you the dragon eggs?”

“Evidently.” She was scared and excited at the same time—not unlike she’d been as a girl. “I think we should get them.”

Rick paused in the process of zipping up his jeans. “What if they’re safer where they are?”

“What if they’re not?”

“Shit,” he said, recognizing the dilemma.

“I feel like we should,” she said. “I feel like maybe we need to hurry.”

Rick scratched the side of his square jaw. “You dad did lead the faerie who was looking for them away . . . Does getting them involve breaking into your old house?”

She shook her head, vividly recalling how she’d climbed out her attic window and down the long rainspout. “I hid them in some parkland. We need to drive thataways a bit.”

Rick let out his breath as he decided. “Okay. Thataways it is.”

Having him trust her instincts was gratifying—though it made her nervous that she was right. Finding the nature reserve relatively easily steadied her. It was good to know her newly recovered memories weren’t false.

The entrance she told Rick to stop at wasn’t the park’s main gate. The only thing that marked it was a wider stretch of gravel on the side of the quiet two-lane. They couldn’t see the hiker’s path until they got out. The entrance to that was a break in the low guardrail. The trees were a mix of evergreens and wind-stripped oaks. As the brisk breeze hit her, Cass wished her suit jacket were heavier.

“Cass,” Rick said. “This has to be three miles from your home. Are you sure you walked all this way when you were seven?”

“I’m sure. Faeries are strong. And I could move faster than most kids.”

Rick ran his hand through his thick brown hair. “All right. Lead the way.”

Trees grew a lot in three decades. The packed-dirt path was narrower than she remembered, and of course the landscape looked different in daylight. Despite this, she only hesitated a time or two. She
knew
which way to take at the forks. The right direction tugged at her breastbone.

Rick was a wolf and had no trouble following. He wasn’t out of breath from the pace she set, just surprised as she went deeper and deeper in.

“You were a ballsy kid, coming here by yourself in the dark.”

“I was scared,” she admitted. “Especially when I had to find my way out again. These aren’t faerie woods, but I kept thinking that I heard trolls.”

A short distance off the path, one of the trees caught her eye. The oak wasn’t marked, but it was larger than its neighbors. The shape its lower branches formed stirred a shiver of recognition.

“There,” she said, pointing.

Rick took her hand to help her through the tangled brush. She probably didn’t need the assist, but she welcomed it anyway. His palm was warm, his strength more than a physical support.

“Damn,” she said, looking down at the big tree’s roots. “We didn’t bring a shovel.”

“The ground is soft,” Rick said. “We can use a fallen branch.”

He found one and started digging with its sharp end. “Sit,” he told her. “Wolves are good at this kind of thing.”

She supposed they were. She had five minutes to perch on a nearby boulder and admire his arm muscles in action. On the night her father gave her this mission, she recalled having a kid’s garden shovel: pink with white polka dots.

Suddenly Rick bent, cleared some soil with one hand, and looked at her. “I think I found it.”

She could see the wolf in him. His eyes were bright, his body language vibrating with interest. She went to his side. Down in the hole he’d made, partially covered by dark brown dirt, was a stained but recognizable scrap of gray velvet. Cass’s heart began to pound. A wonder Faerie hadn’t seen for centuries was in there.

She went to her knees and pulled it out.

Rick dropped beside her as she set the bag on her lap. The drawstring loosened after a struggle. She spread the gray velvet mouth.

“What?” Rick said, seeing the astonishment in her face.

“They’re rocks.” Dismayed to her foundations, she spilled the contents onto the ground. “We tramped out here for rocks.”

They weren’t special rocks. Not polished. Not egg-shaped. Not sparkly or colorful. Just common-old, chuck-’em-out-of-your-flowerbed rocks. Cass probed them to be certain, but they didn’t give off the slightest whiff of magic.

“Huh,” Rick said, picking one up and turning it over in his hand.

“Sheesh,” Cass said. “What kind of crazy ploy was my father pulling? Why would he go through that rigmarole to have me bury these?”

“These aren’t what you remember burying?”

“No. The eggs he . . . The eggs I
thought
he gave me were round and metallic. Of course, since he glamoured me, he could have made me believe I was hiding the Hope Diamond.”

“Huh,” Rick said again thoughtfully. He retrieved the other rocks and stuck them in his pockets.

“What are you doing?”

“We came all this way. We may as well take them with us.”

“But they’re rocks.”

“They’re
your
rocks,” he said with exaggerated gravity.

In spite of her disappointment, Cass found herself laughing.

~

Since Tony was still babysitting at Rick’s place, they decided to drive to hers. Cass stared out the window and bit her thumbnail, finding it hard to get over her letdown.

“This is embarrassing,” she said.

Rick glanced at her, and warmth washed her cheek. “You mean because your secret dragon cache was as empty as Al Capone’s vault? That’s pretty normal for police work. Sometimes the lead you follow goes nowhere.”

She squirmed around to face him. “You like being a cop.”

“It’s what I was born to do. I don’t mean because I’m a wolf either. I’m not the smartest or the bravest, but I like protecting people.”

“You liked that when we were in high school too.”

He was watching the road ahead, but she saw his face color up. This was a more date-like conversation than they’d had up till now. “I suppose I did. Mind you—” he turned his head to flash a quick grin at her “—I
am
a wolf. Sometimes I just like kicking ass.”

She smiled, her amusement letting her relax against the door. He was silent for a few seconds.

“Your dad did teach you magic,” he observed.

“I guess he did. He waited until he’d glamoured away my memory to stop our lessons. He could pretend I’d never had any. Even now, with my recall back, that girl I was, waiting so trustingly for him to come home . . . She feels like a stranger.”

“You’re angry at him.”

She was—too angry to hold it in. “He took away my memory of us being truly close. Maybe he had his reasons, but that’s kind of horrible.”

Rick nodded. He was good at that: letting people talk, absorbing what they said. He merged into the lane that would take them onto the freeway. “What does doing magic feel like?”

The question surprised her. She didn’t think she’d been asked before. “Probably it feels like shifting does for wolves when the moon is full. Once you get the hang of a spell, it’s like tying your shoes. If you don’t think about it, it’s natural.”

“Do you ever wonder how powerful you really are?”

“No,” she answered without thinking.

He looked at her, his green eyes more intelligent than he gave himself credit for. “Do you ever wonder why you haven’t wondered?” he asked softly.

This wasn’t him indulging his curiosity. This was a professional query.

“Well, I’ll wonder now,” she said, trying not to sound huffy.

As unsettled by his question as she was by him turning cop, she gnawed at her nail again.

~

The Maycees had their own reserved area in the store’s underground garage. Rick parked between a rain-spotted navy Cadillac and a gorgeous vintage limo he’d seen Cass’s gran riding in a time or two on the news.
Maycee Matriarch Opens Youth Center
or
Renoir Donated to Museum by Patricia Maycee
. Possibly in honor of her granddaughter, the grill ornament was a winged faerie. Rick had a sudden longing to see Cass dressed up to paint the town, swinging her endless legs out of the ritzy vehicle. But this was a fantasy for another day. After a brief struggle with himself, he took Cass’s rocks from his pockets and tucked them out of sight under the front seat of his Buick.

Cass watched him with raised eyebrows.

“They’ll be safe there,” he said.

Shaking her head, she waved for him to follow her to the penthouse’s private elevator. Out of habit, he memorized the code she punched in to access it.

He wasn’t as vigilant as he should have been. Whatever shit was going to hit the fan, it seemed like Cass’s father had led it out of town. Cass—so it appeared—had been left with a red herring. He was semi-relaxed as they stepped off on her floor, but she stiffened.