The Dragon in the Driveway (2 page)

Jesse chuckled. “Well, I’m not sure how much better you’re going to feel playing in the storm,” he told her.

“Not playing,” said Emmy. She added with a sly hiss, “S-s-spying.”

“Spying?” Jesse asked.

“Spying on the Dragon Slayer,” Emmy said with a knowing nod.

That would be a switch. It was usually St. George who spied on
them
, wanting to find Emmy. Every day for two weeks he had parked his big
black Cadillac outside their house, from nine to five, like it was his job. If Jesse and Daisy went out, he followed. Jesse nearly laughed, thinking about it. St. George had hardly been stealthy about his spying! Then he had disappeared with the rain, as abruptly as the sunshine and the blue sky.

“The bad man has a bad plan!” Emmy said. “We will spy on him in his den. Then we will steal his big book!”

St. George’s “den” was a lab in the zoology department of the Goldmine City College of Mining and Science, where he was posing as a herpetologist, or reptile scientist. In the first week of Emmy’s life, St. George had stolen Emmy from the cousins. The cousins had gone to his den and stolen her back. That was when they had seen the big book. It was as big as a door and as thick as five phone books. The cover was too heavy to lift and the gold writing cut into the dark red leather was in a language neither of the cousins had ever seen.

“Spying! Brilliant,” said Jesse. “That ought to cheer up Daisy. I’ll go tell her. You eat the cabbage swill.”

Emmy took the container in her agile forepaws. “I will eat it allllll up … for Jesse Tiger! Thank you, please.”

“You’re welcome, please, Emmy Dragon,” said
Jesse. Then he ran back to the house, careful as always to lock the door behind him. When he passed through the mudroom into the kitchen, he was surprised to find Daisy back up on the edge of the sink, her nose pressed to the windowpane again.

“They’re gone, Jess,” she said in a small, forlorn voice. “Those two trees with the strips of cloth wrapped around their trunks I said I saw? They’re gone.”

“Really?” Jesse said. From where he was standing, it all looked the same. Still, he was sorry that the trees had gone before he had gotten a chance to try to look for them again.

“Maybe they were never there in the first place,” Daisy said sadly. She jumped down from the sink and hugged herself hard. “Maybe this was one of those times when I wanted to believe the magic so badly, I saw what I wanted to see, rather than what was really there.”

“Or maybe,” Jesse said gently, “the trees had to go someplace else and they’ll come back later … when they’re ready to show themselves to both of us.”

The corners of Daisy’s lips turned up a fraction. “Then you believe me?”

“Hey,” he said, “two months ago, if somebody had told me that we’d have a dragon living in
our garage, I would have said they were wacky. Now … who knows what can happen, right?”

Daisy nodded, but she still seemed a little down, so Jesse told her about Emmy’s plan.

Daisy perked up right away. “I’ll tell my pops we’re going over to the college to see the documentary they’re showing on global climate change. Boy, is that ever appropriate,” she said, cocking a thumb at the window. “You turn off the invisible fence. We wouldn’t want to give Mrs. Nosy-Britches another flash of dragon.”

Jesse went down to the basement circuit breaker and flipped the switch that controlled the invisible fence, and then, still in his poncho, he returned to the garage. Emmy was just licking the coleslaw container with her long pink forked tongue when Daisy burst through the door and slammed it behind her. She had a big scowl on her face. “Pops says we can’t go out gallivanting—not until the rain stops,” she said.

Jesse groaned, but Emmy asked eagerly, “When the rain stops piddling down,
then
we can go out?”

“That’s what the rock doc said,” Daisy replied gloomily, plopping down onto an old picnic bench.

“Yeah, but who knows when
that
’ll be?” Jesse added, plopping down next to her.

“I do!” said Emmy, her irises beginning to spin
like a set of brilliant green pinwheels. Her nostrils gave off three puffs of peppery pinkish smoke, which rose up and radiated outward, filling the entire garage with a bright, hot, pulsing light.

The next instant, the rain stopped drumming on the roof.

CHAPTER TWO
THE TREE SLAYER

“Now?” said Emmy, nodding brightly at the cousins. “We go out gallivanting now, please? Thank you, you’re welcome, don’t mention it.
My pleasure!
”

“Holy moly!” said Daisy.

“How did you
do
that?” Jesse asked the dragon.

“Weather spell,” said Emmy, looking very pleased with herself.

“Yes, but who taught you?” Jesse asked.

“The book taught me,” Emmy said.

“The big book?” Jesse asked.

Emmy nodded eagerly.

Jesse looked around, as if the big book might be in the garage. “Where is it?”

Emmy shrugged. “Somewhere nearby, I think. I want it. I need it. It’s MINE!”

Jesse and Daisy both stared at the dragon with wide eyes.

“The big book is yours?” Daisy asked.

“Maybe,” said Emmy. “Perhaps. Possibly. Don’t know. Yes.”

“What are we waiting for, then?” Daisy said. With that, she leaped up, ran to the side door, and flung it open.

Jesse followed her. They poked their heads out. The trees were still dripping, but not a drop more came down from the sky, and the wind was now a gentle breeze. A bright blue crack suddenly opened in the clouds, and a sunbeam struck the back lawn like a spotlight. Steam, smelling of crushed flowers and wet dirt, rose up from the earth.

Jesse grinned at Daisy. “Too bad we didn’t ask
for this five days ago,” he said. “Well … what are we waiting for?”

“It’s time to spy!” Daisy said as the cousins shucked their ponchos and launched into their own private celebration jig, which they called the happy prospector’s dance.

Daisy danced over to Emmy. “Leash time for you, young lady,” she said.

Emmy pulled back with a disgusted little snort. “That leash stinks like dragon piddle,” she said.

“Stinky or not,” Jesse said, “Aunt Maggie says no leash, no walk. And what have we said about Aunt Maggie?”

Emmy heaved a dreary sigh. “Aunt Maggie is the boss.”

“Exactly!” said Daisy. She clipped the leash onto Emmy’s bright purple Great Dane–size invisible fence collar, to which Daisy had also attached the gold baby locket her mother had passed down to her. The gold in the locket fortified the growing dragon, like vitamins. Plus, Emmy was very fond of it because it contained two miniature photographs of her Keepers—Jesse and Daisy.

Jesse unlocked and rolled up the big folding garage door.

If Mrs. Nosy-Britches had peered out from
behind her living room curtain, she would have seen two kids walking an English sheepdog on a leash. That was because Emmy was using a masking spell. Masking is a power that dragons use to hide by assuming the appearance of another animal. Such was the power of Emmy’s spell that everyone who saw her at these times, even Jesse and Daisy, sensed, felt, heard, and even
smelled
nothing but one hundred percent sheepdog. And it was a mighty good thing that while her dragon self kept growing, her sheepdog body remained the same size.

Daisy ran to the Rock Shop and told her father they were leaving now that the rain had stopped. Then they set off for the college on foot because the wet leaves made it too slippery to ride their bikes.

At the corner of their dead-end street, they stopped at Miss Alodie’s little stone house with the blue shutters. Miss Alodie herself was outside, clad in a shiny bright green slicker, cleaning up the mess the storm had made in her garden. Miss Alodie’s daisies were bigger than sunflowers, her sunflowers were bigger than fruit trees, and her tea roses were as big as Frisbees.

Miss Alodie made soothing noises as she snipped off the broken leaves and splinted the cracked stems of her rosebushes. Pink and white
and yellow and red petals carpeted the ground at her feet like confetti.

Daisy tugged at Jesse’s sleeve and pointed. “Look,” she whispered.

Jesse nodded thoughtfully. A new fence, low to the ground and fashioned from sticks and string, now surrounded Miss Alodie’s picture-perfect garden. Knotted around the string, every three feet or so, was a scrap of bright fabric with a flowered pattern.

“There, there, my loves, perk up, now,” Jesse and Daisy heard Miss Alodie murmur. “It’s not so bad, is it? Mother will have you back in the pink soon enough. Pan’s pipes, but that man’s wrought a world of woe, hasn’t he, now?”

“Hey, Miss Alodie!” Daisy called out.

Miss Alodie looked up, her face alight at the sight of them. “Heigh-ho, cousins!” she called out.

“What’s the new fence for?” Daisy asked.

“Is it to keep out pests?” Jesse asked.

Miss Alodie’s sparkling blue eyes turned steely. “Something like that,” she said. Then she saw Emmy and beamed again. “If it isn’t my very favorite canine cohort!” she said. Emmy barked once and sat up, offering her right paw over the top of the fence. “Aren’t you the clever boots?” she said, giving Emmy’s paw a smart little shake.

“She can fetch and beg, too,” said Jesse.

This was no time to show off Emmy’s tricks. Daisy took Jesse’s hand and tugged him and Emmy’s leash with equal urgency. “Have a great day, Miss Alodie. We’ll be seeing you.”

As soon as they had gone around the corner, Daisy stopped Jesse and whipped him around to face her. “That flowered material on the fence, Jess!” she said.

“It looks like she tore up one of her old shirts,” said Jesse. “What about it?”

Daisy moved in closer. “It’s
exactly
like the strips of cloth I saw tied around the trunks of those two trees,” she said.

Jesse’s eyes went wide. “Really? Maybe we should go back and ask her about it.”

Daisy shook her head. “Let’s ask on the way home. We’re on a mission, right?”

“Right,” said Jesse, his eyes narrowing. “A spying mission.”

“So let’s do it!” she said. As they walked across town to the college, Daisy stared suspiciously at the trees. Many had lost branches and at least half of their summer growth of leaves, which lay in a thick sodden carpet beneath their feet. Emmy kept slurping up huge mouthfuls of wet leaves. For her it was an eight-block-long, all-you-can-eat salad bar.

When they reached the college parking lot, they saw very few cars, and St. George’s big black Cadillac wasn’t there, for sure. They raced across campus to the zoology building, where they dived into the wet bushes and crawled through the muck to peek in the basement windows. All the lab windows were closed, and St. George had rigged a curtain of sheets over them to discourage prying eyes. But Daisy went to the window they knew had a broken latch and pushed it gently. It swung open. Daisy snaked a couple of fingers in and tried to lift the sheet, but she couldn’t reach it.

“I need a stick or something,” she whispered to Jesse.

“Right,” Jesse whispered back. He crawled around in the wet bushes, searching for a stick long enough to reach the sheet. He had just found a good one when a man came around the corner wearing the green uniform of a campus guard. Jesse froze until the guard had walked away. Then he crawled back to Daisy with the stick.

Daisy took the stick and poked it carefully through the gap in the window, moving aside the sheet just enough to offer them a look inside the lab. Jesse, Daisy, and Emmy leaned forward, cheek to cheek to cheek, and peered under the sheet into St. George’s lab.

“Huh?” Jesse said.

“What?” Daisy said. She shoved the window wide open and snatched the sheet aside.

Jesse sat back on his heels. Emmy crouched down and started barking shrilly.

“Easy, Em,” said Jesse, grabbing hold of her collar. But he didn’t blame her for being upset. He felt the same way.

The mounds of geodes, the thunder eggs, were gone. The table saw that St. George had used to cut them open was gone. The hot plates, microwaves, and freezing chambers were gone. And most important of all, the big book was gone, too.

“Where did he go?” Jesse said. He had dreaded laying eyes on St. George again, but
not
seeing him—and not knowing where he was—made Jesse far more uneasy.

Emmy began to whimper.

“It’s okay, Emmy. Everything’s going to be fine,” Jesse murmured, wishing he believed that himself.

“Maybe someone here knows where he went,” Daisy said.

So they all backed out of the bushes and went in search of someone who might know St. George’s whereabouts. Finally, they tracked down a man from the campus police, who told them that the reptile man had “flown the coop” the week
before without leaving a forwarding address.

Daisy turned to Jesse and said gravely, “We need to report this to Professor Andersson.”

Jesse nodded. Professor Andersson was their online consultant on all matters concerning dragons. Just after Emmy had hatched from the thunder egg, they had been lucky enough to stumble onto his site. “Let’s go,” said Jesse.

Jesse and Daisy tried to hurry home, but Emmy stopped every few blocks and wouldn’t budge until they had smothered her with hugs and kisses and reassurances that everything would be all right. When the cousins had finally pulled down the garage door and unfastened her leash, Emmy shivered and shook, droplets of moisture spinning off her in a fine spray. Jesse and Daisy watched as the blur of white gradually turned to blue-green. When Emmy stopped, wet dog had become dry dragon in mere seconds.