Page 4 of Dragon Fires Everywhere (Witchlore #4)

“You know a dragon?” I ask Frost. Incredulously.

“A dragon?” Emerson demands, casting a suspicious glance at Azrael. Then back at me. “What do you mean, a dragon ?”

I mean things I don’t know how to put into words, and I don’t even try.

I look at Azrael, who stands there, notably not looking like a dragon.

He’s dressed like a regular guy—if that guy happened to be that tall, that cut, and that ridiculously hot.

He’s also lounging against the far wall instead of filling the whole foyer, examining his hand as if it’s

of tremendous fascination to him.

Which is fair, because it’s not a human -looking hand like the rest of him. It was a humanish hand a moment ago, I’m sure it was, but now it’s a claw. A dangerous-looking

claw, though it’s smaller than the whole talony thing I saw on him earlier.

It’s clearly meant to intimidate Frost.

I’m not sure it works, or if Frost is even capable of being intimidated in the first place, but if they know each other...

“Georgie, I hate to break it to you, but that’s just a guy,” Zander tells me, gently.

Like I’m fragile.

I want to scowl at him, but Emerson has moved over to the shattered newel post. She touches one sharp shard. “What happened here?”

“Well.” I saw the whole thing transpire, but I still don’t have the words to describe it. To explain it. Certainly not in

a way that’s going to make sense. And that’s not getting into how it feels. I glance at Azrael. In his... man form, I guess. His absurdly attractive man form—but I tell myself to focus.

Because he was a dragon there for a few minutes.

I saw it. It’s real.

Dragons.

Are.

Real.

His mouth curves into a smile, and that may be a man’s gorgeous face, but the grin is all dragon. Everyone sees it. I can tell, because they stiffen. “Greetings, witches. You can

call me Azrael. Don’t worry, I won’t eat anyone.” His dark gold gaze slides to Frost. “Anyone important, anyway.”

“Dragons are a scourge,” Frost says coldly. “So much so, I forgot they even existed.”

“Is that why you killed so many of us?”

“I never killed a dragon.” The affront is clear in his tone.

“My mistake.” Azrael’s smile shifts, but not to anything remotely humanish. And I have to wonder if he actually looks...

hungry. “Unicorns were your victims of choice.”

Frost frowns. He doesn’t immediately reject Azrael’s accusation, which is... not great, but he doesn’t seem to agree, either.

“I don’t remember unicorns...”

He rubs at his temple. Becoming mortal did a number on his memory, and as much as I mourn the access to all that firsthand knowledge, he did it to save Rebekah. To make sure we all lived through our second pubertatum test this summer

when the Joywood was ready to kill us off, and almost had enough support to do it.

“Let’s take a step back,” Emerson says, eyeing the way Rebekah moves closer to Frost, as if fully prepared to take the newcomer on herself. “You’re Azrael? As in the dragon in the newel post? But now a real dragon. A dragon Frost knows because he was alive back before dragons went extinct?”

Emerson is clearly trying to put all this information together. She’s doing a better job of it than me. I keep getting stuck

on dark gold and all those muscles .

“He looks like any average guy to me,” Zander says, apparently not stuck.

But he’s also wrong. Azrael does not look like any average anything, but that’s really neither here nor there. I decide Zander’s lucky the dragon ignores him.

“Extinct?” Azrael scoffs at the word Emerson used. “Hardly.”

“Not extinct then,” Emerson corrects herself, but she’s not patronizing him. She’s trying to understand. “You... became

a newel post? And then a man? But how did a newel post become a dragon?”

“A better question would be, how did a dragon become a newel post?” Azrael returns. He pushes off the wall, and his claw is

a hand again. “Not all of us could be killed off.” He slides a pointed look at Frost. “Some of us were just cursed.”

“And by us you mean... dragons?” Jacob asks from where he stands, solid and strong, next to Emerson.

“I mean magical creatures of all kinds.” Azrael gestures upward, and we all look at the grand foyer’s mermaid chandelier.

A chandelier I have seen just about every day my whole life and have never paid that much attention to. Lights, crystals,

a vaguely nautical vibe, sure. But that’s not magical. Is it?

“You’re telling me there’s an actual mermaid trapped in that chandelier?” Zander asks, peering up with interest. Maybe too

much interest. When Ellowyn elbows him in the stomach, the chandelier seems to dance.

Azrael only shrugs. “Naturally. Though in Melisande’s case, maybe that’s for the best. She can be so melodramatic.”

As we watch, the crystals on the chandelier... shimmer.

“So someone cursed you into our newel post?” Rebekah asks, not as interested in the shimmering. Likely because Azrael was making threats toward her beloved, however vague. “And a mermaid into our chandelier?”

“Not someone . The Joywood. They wiped out who they could, including their own.” Azrael looks pointedly at Frost. “Then they cursed the

rest of us. They couldn’t actually exterminate the most powerful among us, but they could trap us in place. So they did.”

Another shrug, though there’s nothing lazy about it this time. “Assholes.”

The Joywood. Of course, the Joywood. I try to sift through everything I learned about dragons, mermaids, unicorns, and all

the rest of the various magical creatures that supposedly once populated witchdom. The things I learned when I was young and

could sneak such tales under my mother’s nose. She thought it was pointless to worry about extinct beings—and suggested that

maybe they had never existed at all, that these were just more fantasy stories that people told children.

I thought I remembered them. Which I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Most witches accept that magical creatures once lived side by side with witches, but long ago. Maybe back when Byzantium was

a thing, not recently enough that the Joywood could have killed and cursed them and installed them in various artistic flourishes

around a house.

But when did the Joywood actually start their reign of terror? They’ve made sure to obscure our understanding. Once I unlock

all of the witchlore archives, I’ll know. I’ll finally know all the Joywood’s dirty secrets, because the archives aren’t like

human history that changes with the victor of every war. They are many things, but one of those things is a neutral collection

of every last fact .

“How did this curse break, exactly?” Emerson asks, studying the broken newel post again.

Azrael turns his gaze to me, his eyes direct and rimmed in that gold while otherwise black like onyx. “You tell me,” he says.

“How would I know?”

He doesn’t break that intense stare. “You’re the one who did it.”

I didn’t do anything. I was just sitting there feeling pathetic and... “All I did was...” I glance back at the stairs.

At the newel post that’s now in smithereens.

“What did you do?” Emerson presses when I don’t immediately explain. But I don’t want to tell them the whole story. It’s embarrassing,

and they’ll get that poor Georgie look that has been ramping up since I started dating Sage.

Who I’m no longer dating. A topic we can broach later. Much later.

You know, once we figure out how there’s a dragon in the foyer.

“I was reading that book.” I point at it, because it’s still sitting there on the stairs where I dropped it.

“I thought I had that book,” Ellowyn says, tilting her head slightly, like she expects the book to rush at her.

“I did too,” I tell her. “But it was sitting there, and I just...” I don’t want to tell them, but I remember that I’m Georgie

Pendell, who has been known to chase moonbeams and dance skyclad in the back garden, because I long ago decided that if I

couldn’t be perfect then I might as well embrace the weird. Before I tried to grow up, anyway. And still I use that fantasy

girl as a weapon or deflection when I need to.

It’s better than touching that live-wire thing inside me that keeps reminding me it’s him .

I smile. “It wanted me to read it. Out loud. I think maybe it was lonely.”

I hope they think about that, a lonely book, rather than why ditzy, airy me was wafting about by myself in Wilde House on

Thanksgiving.

Meanwhile, I think about what I actually said out loud. Words about love. Promises. No spell. Nothing magical. Just the old

words of some fairy tale.

And I’m pretty sure I said them all with as much disdain as I could manage.

I push on, keeping ahead of any potentially embarrassing questions or my own traitorously pounding heart and giddy head.

“Then everything started to shake.” I explain Azrael’s sudden appearance in detail, because I know Emerson will demand it if I don’t.

“I don’t think I actually did anything. Reading the book out loud has to be a coincidence. ”

“A book is a spell even a human can cast,” Azrael says, as if it’s simple enough. And as if he’s chiding me a little while

he says it. “A universal magic.”

“I...” I say that all the time. Exactly that, and especially to witches who get sniffy about humans.

But Azrael has turned away from me. From all of us. He’s walking for the door.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have Joywood members to incinerate. I’ve been waiting to rain fire upon them for a long, long time.”

He says this offhandedly.

Half of my friends are still staring at what used to be a newel post. The rest of us are close to gaping at the magical creature,

the dragon , that erupted from it.

And is now sauntering off to commit a few revenge murders, like he suggested taking high tea.

He walks straight out the door. He doesn’t even close it behind him.

I assume we’re all rendered totally speechless and immobile, because I am.

But Emerson grabs me. “You have to stop him.”

“Why me?” In what world would I be able to stop a dragon ?