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Arguments—they made my stomach turn.

Physical fights—they made me freeze up.

Zombie movies—they made me sleep with the lights on.

Cockroaches and gigapedes and—well, any insect to have ever existed, except maybe ladybugs. They were fine.

Now, I could include vampires on that list.

They had come through the Tears after the shifters, sometime around the roaring twenties. It was supposed to be a time of glamorous parties, pretty pearl dresses, and a general sense of peace between Marvels, supernaturals, and regular old humans.

Vampires changed that. They were hungry, literally and figuratively, thrust through a portal no one really understood, completely wiped of their memories, craving both blood and power.

Yeah, the peace kind of shattered after that. It wasn’t until the Iron Treaty was formed in 1954 that the fighting stopped and the peace had been restored.

Tentatively.

The basilisk shifted and lurched underneath me. A light on the ceiling turned bright red. The snake lifted, like it just sucked in a big breath. It gave a loud hiss and began to slither forward, its body so large that the movement from side to side wasn’t as perceptible as the force from the accelerating forward speed. Next to me was a teenager, still wearing his school uniform, backpack between his legs. He had a textbook shut on his lap—History of Marvels and Magic—as he intently scrolled through his social media feed.

History was one of my favorite subjects, wasting time online being one of my favorite pastimes. I might as well have been looking at my younger self.

I noticed him stop scrolling on a video. It was from a news source I recognized. I didn’t need to read the caption to know what it was about. The video depicted it all: a royal-looking icy-blue dragon flying in the sky, the video transitioning to a sickly man lying on a hospital bed. He writhed in agony as his sapphire scales rippled across his human form, turning into angry red blisters before erupting into flames, all of it captured behind a thick plexiglass wall.

“Crazy shit, huh?”

Oh crap, I didn’t realize I was that obvious at being secretly nosy.

I nodded. I forgot to mention teenagers were another one of those things I tended to bolt from. Those still-underdeveloped brains could come up with razor-sharp quips, insults, and insights.

“It is,” I said, deciding to engage this one with extra care. “I feel bad for them.”

“Me too,” he answered. “My best friend’s a dragon. It’s scary shit. He already lost his mom, and now his little sister is sick. If something ever happened to him…” He shook his head and pushed the article off the screen with extra force behind his thumb. “I hope they figure out how to stop it soon.”

“They will.” My mind flashed back to being inside the shop. To Damien’s worried creases across his forehead, to the discussion of this very issue.

The teenager shook his head, looking back down at his phone. “I don’t know, man. Nothing ever gets fixed unless it’s happening to the humans.”

Ah, so he must have been a shifter. He didn’t have the jeweled eyes of a fae, and the way he spoke about dragons told me he wasn’t one of them either. Shifters came in all different kinds: feline, canine, reptilian, avian. They could fully shift into their breed or go for a hybrid shift, where they retain some of their human aspects while taking on more of their wilder ones. Maybe those tiger-striped sneakers meant more than just a cool sense of fashion that I’d never be able to pull off.

He also had a point. “I’m sure the—”

I couldn’t finish agreeing with him as the basilisk suddenly slowed to a complete halt, the momentum causing me to push forward, random and surprised shouts ringing through the snake-way.

Then came the vampires.

Chapter 8

Robby, Robby, Robby

Damien

I’d been following Robby since the moment he went down the steps into the snake-way. He looked nervous, jittery. Constantly peering over his shoulder. Even then, he didn’t spot me. Which actually surprised me. I wasn’t necessarily trying to be sneaky, nor was I the most discreet person walking through the crowd.

He wasn’t a very observative guy was he?

I got into the last row of the basilisk and sat there, watching the back of his head, wondering what kind of thoughts swirled inside. He started up a conversation with the kid next to him. He still seemed tense, shoulders high and tight, back straight, but at least he was safe. I’d tail him until he got home, and then I’d fly back.

Maybe he was right. Maybe he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He might not have anything to do with what was going on.

Then the lights flickered and went out. The basilisk came to a sudden halt, the momentum pushing me forward in my seat. A chorus of “what the fucks” and “what’s happening” filtered through the dark.