Page 4

“T oo cheap to use a plane, huh?”

“Shut up.”

Of course, to the people below, the beating of our wings probably sounds like thunder or a jet engine. I’ve heard we’re often mistaken for small planes.

“How’d you get all your stuff in that bag?”

“Traveled light. Sublet my apartment. I’m going back as soon as you’re home.” My claws tighten around a big duffle bag, the kind you see soldiers carrying on leave. It’s army surplus but covered in hundreds of patches from local bands that I’ve seen in LA.

Ian snorts, and soft wisps of smoke come from his nostrils as he circles under me, his iridescent, silvery scales shining in the starlight above the pines.

“You’re the conspicuous one, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I point out. I’m dark violet, almost black in some places, almost lavender in some others.

“I’m not worried about anything except making sure you don’t land on my neighbor’s lawn. All these McMansions look alike. Come on, follow me.”

“Like I couldn’t latch onto you? I moved, I didn’t stop being a dragon,” I huff back.

In his pure dragon form, Graham is the size of a 1960s Buick Skylark. I know, we measured. I, on the other hand, prefer to think of myself as three Harleys, end-to-end. Ian moves with silent flaps of his wide wings, gracefully swooping lower with each beat. I haven’t flown in this form much before this last week, and my wings are aching, but I won’t tell him that.

“This one! The one with the greenhouses!” he calls over his shoulder, and I watch him shift in mid-air, changing to his halfling form as seamlessly as water turns to steam.

I change on the ground, grabbing my long leather coat and wrapping it around me as I switch from dragon to halfling to human in three blinks of an eye. Ian is still striding around in the buff, his wedding tackle hidden inside his scales in his halfling form. “You’d better sort those scales out before the missus sees you,” I groan, rubbing my shoulders.

Ian just looks at me, head cocked. “The right one loves you in your scales as well as your skin. In all your forms.”

“Do you mean loves you or just accepts you?” I ask, partially because I’m the annoying younger brother and partially because I’m curious. There’s no way a human woman would ever want to make love to me in that form—I’m scaly with long, curling horns, fangs, a tail—and let’s not forget the wings. I’m sure those are ever so popular in the bedroom as they crash into everything. And in full dragon form? Forget it.

Graham hits me on the elbow. “Don’t be a pervert.”

“See? This is why I’m waiting for a dragon. I want—”

“I meant I’m not going to tell you details of our sex life,” he hisses, “not that it doesn’t happen. Wait for whatever you want, but I’m telling you—marry the person you love. You’re going to be building a life with her personality, her sense of humor, her smile, not so much her genetic code and her race.”

“Honey! Graham! Oh my gosh! It’s so good to see you!” Vanessa is suddenly racing toward us through the back door, a cute little bump making her light blue pajamas strain at the front. She kisses Ian, then throws her arms around me and squeezes. “I have breakfast ready. Pancakes and cranachan!” she carols.

I smile and hug her back, trying not to let the feelings of envy take over.

“She spoils me rotten.” Ian beams. “Honey, you should be resting!” He places a scaly hand on her belly, and she squeezes it affectionately.

“I made breakfast, not a water feature, Ian!” Vanessa giggles and clings to my brother like he’s a treasure.

Nauseatingly, he clings back, one wing spreading over her shoulder, his tail curling around her waist as they walk. Even the arrow-shaped tail tip taps and strokes against her pregnant belly.

Hoarding. All dragons develop a hoard of something precious to them. All I have at the moment is my love of money and band patches from smoky underground band concerts.

Ian found his treasure, his precious things to hoard. That woman and his child.

“It was a long, long flight across the country. Took two days of flying, plus camping out overnight. I think I’ll get a shower and a nap, if that’s okay.”

Ian nods, nuzzling Vanessa’s cheek. “Guest bedroom at the top of the stairs, right-hand side.”

“Thanks, Ian. Night, Vanessa.”

I climb the stairs, ignoring the giggling I can hear coming from the kitchen. I’m happy for my brother. Really.

This could have been yours if you’d stayed, fool.

And marry a human? No, thank you. I know my duty.

Your duty? You mean your rebellion. Stubbornness? Vanessa’s having a dragonborn. Your mate could do the same for you, especially if you claim her as your treasure, mark her as yours.

I don’t want to think about my brother and his wife being intimate, but the way she wraps herself around him, the way his tail curls around her like there’s nothing even remotely unusual about a scaly, fangy monster cuddling a human? He’s marked her and mated with her in at least two of his forms, and you can’t convince me any different.

Because love is what matters, not genes, not looks, not money, y’ young wastrel. I can hear my father’s gruff voice in my head, feel the rapping of his knuckles on my horns.

Enough. Turn the brain off and look at the room I’m staying in—in the house that could have been mine.

It’s gorgeous. It’s a little apartment, really, just missing a kitchen.

There’s a king-size bed, a shower, and a tub that would just about hold Ian in his dragon form if he squeezed himself up tight... Huge. Rich.

Traitor.

Traitor to his own kind.

What could possess a man to do such a thing?

Aye, well. I only have to think about it for a month or so.

***

“S PRING IS THE BUSIEST time. I’ll never complain about the pregnancy, but this trip—this trip could have been planned better. But, we’re on Murdo’s timetable, not ours. Best to travel now. If we wait until things die down a bit in the winter, he’ll be here.”

“Ian. I ran this garden center with you. I remember how busy spring... is...” My mouth hangs open as my brother’s mud-spattered green truck pulls into Kane Garden and Landscaping.

The little building we started with years ago has doubled in size and added a fenced-in lot that must be half an acre. Forklifts and pallet loaders are zooming about. Trucks with riding mowers chained to their flatbed trailers take up the first five spaces near the automatic door of the garden center itself.

“We have fifteen employees now, not counting Vanessa and myself. Honestly, we’re looking to hire a few more, at least for the season. We go down to a skeleton crew in the winter—no pun intended, we actually did have a Ziburini working here last summer—Lithuanian exchange student at the high school.” Ian moves around easily, hopping from the truck, plucking a withered petunia from a hanging planter, waving at a man sporting a fluorescent green shirt, and handing him a handful of cash with instructions to “Gas up your truck when you’re done with the football field at the high school! And don’t forget the baseball diamond!”

“Aren’t you Mr. Captain of Industry?” I say with a gasp, hand on my chest.

“And don’t you look like something that escaped from a punk rocker’s garage sale?” Ian snaps, tugging on my ponytail and flicking the collar of my long leather duster. “Sporting enough silver on your fingers and in your ears to tempt old Mrs. McInnerny to part with her teacakes! Is this your hoard, laddie?”

“Don’t call me ‘laddie.’ You’re not Dad, and I’m not a terrier.” But I have to smile. Mrs. McInnerny was a fierce old dragon who lived on the hill above us, and she hoarded two things—silver and Tunnock’s Tea Cakes. “Just tell me what you want me to do. Push a mower? Help carry parcels to the cars?”

“Manage the place and sub in when anyone calls out sick, or with school or vacation plans. Don’t let us go bankrupt or burn things down. Today, I’ll go over the bookkeeping and payroll software with you, then tomorrow we’ll go over the work schedule, and we’ll have a quick lunch meeting with Ezekial—he’s second-in-command for lawn and landscaping, and then Winnifred, who is second-in-command in charge of garden center and floral.”

“Second-in-command? Who’s in charge? Shouldn’t I talk to them?”

“You’re going to be the one in charge. Normally, it’s me for lawn and landscaping, and Vanessa for garden center and the floral department, but with us out of town...”

My stomach twists. My brother’s built an empire, not a massive one, but one just the right size for a modern, modest dragon. Big enough to bring in the gold, small enough to be cozy and to protect without a clan surrounding him.

I don’t want to break it, especially since I’m all the clan he has over here, and I didn’t stay to support him.

“You going to be all right, Graham? Honestly, the place runs itself. I’ve got the schedule fairly well set up until June, but still, emergencies come up, new clients call to get on our books... I ought to hire a proper assistant, maybe an assistant manager, especially because Vanessa intends to stay home with Murdo, at least for a while. But we’ll conduct all the interviews and post the job this summer when we come home.”

My brother is talking, explaining, lost in a fog of responsibility.

No way I’m jealous of all the worrying he must be doing about his wife, his business, his child...

Being a repo man is so much easier—and it works with the rage I feel all the time. The feeling that someone has something I need and they’re hiding it, or it’s right under my nose and I’m too stupid to find it.

Or worse, I missed it. Maybe it was right in front of me all along, and I just missed it.

It’s easy to drop out of the human face and slide into my halfling form, hiss and snort, blow a little ash in their faces, and bare my fangs.

“You’re not listening. I said I paid all the utilities for May. Payroll is set up for you to plug the hours in. I’m putting you in at a manager’s salary, all right?”

“Manager? I’m the default owner twice over!” I snap.

“You get room and board, free run of the house and everything in it—but you touch that bottle of Glenfiddich and I’ll break your horns clean off,” Ian growls. “Fine, manager’s salary plus 30 percent—ah, don’t be greedy. I know you weren’t making half as much in California.”

“You have no idea what I made.” My smirk is sinister, but Ian doesn’t look impressed.

“Aye, and I don’t want to. Likely what you made is trouble and bad company. You can use my car or the work truck while you’re here, but leave Van’s little red car alone. It’s her first baby, and she’s a bit sentimental about it.”

I roll my eyes. “I got it, I got it. Proper hold she has on you, doesn’t she? Right by the short and curlies.”

My brother shakes his head. “You sound more stupid every time you open your mouth, Graham. You were the clever one growing up, and I was the one plodding along, happier with a spade in my hand than a book. You’d never know it now.”

He knows how to cut me, my brother, but I can’t complain. I’ve been doing the same thing to him. I’ll be glad when he goes on his trip and happier when he returns, hopefully before I succumb to death by suburbia.

“Is Jax Alley still open?” I ask, remembering the sketchy roadhouse outside of town as the only place where you can walk the line between “good boy” and true dragon without feeling out of place in Pine Ridge.

Ian glares at me. “I’ll not have you getting soused and coming into my place of business pickled like a herring,” he snaps.

“You sound like Mom.”

“Mother would have a few choice words to say to you if she knew you were only hanging out in a CrossRealms hoping to put your seed in some dragoness—any dragoness! And what kind of daughter-in-law would that be, Graham? What kind of wife? Some crime lord’s muscle... Innocent blood on her hands...” Ian stalks around his desk, muttering.

I swallow down a retort. I like being muscle. I like knowing that there are dragon females watching me hold my own, proving myself in the darkness of a CrossRealms, where there are more evil monsters than innocent ones. True, most humans don’t know they’re walking around with monsters, but the energy of being at the intersection of the mortal realm and a hellish realm eventually makes most humans angry and dark, anyway. “Not everyone in a CrossRealms is bad. Remember, most of them are just normal people.”

“Near enough everyone! I know what a CrossRealms does to a person. You like it, you adrenaline junkie.”

“What other jobs let a dragon act like a dragon?” My skin itches, and I see scales starting to form on my arms. How can Ian stay so calm? I’m ready to lash out.

“What d’you think a dragon is, laddie? We are honorable, noble defenders, scourges of the great attack armies, guardians of the flocks, allies of the gargoyle and Orc, enemies of the—”

“My God, would you listen to yourself? You’re telling yourself fairy stories, Ian. There’s nothing and no one to defend these days. There are precious few women of our kind who even let their dragon out—and that’s the kind I want. Fierce. Accepting of my true forms. Able to bear the next generation.”

Ian shakes his head sadly. “Not all dragonnesses are dragonborn. Some human women have iron scales under their soft skin. You’re just too impatient to see it.”

I’m fuming, but I don’t say anything. Hard to pack an argumentative punch when I’m starting to wonder if he’s right.