city of dragons 02 - fire storm (6 page)

I sighed. Maybe he was right. “We don’t even have to do that, you know.”

He put his sunglasses back on. He turned the key in the ignition.

I buckled my seatbelt.

He pulled the car out of the parking lot and drove. He didn’t speak again until we hit a red light. “We’ll have to come back and watch that place. If we catch the vampires in the act, that will be enough to prove that they do drink dragon blood. We have Timothy to put Fletcher at the scene. Maybe it will be enough.”

I rested my head against the head rest. “We can’t be sure that’s what happened to him.”

“No, you’re right. We need to be thorough,” said Lachlan. “We need to ask around, figure out if he had any enemies or anything like that. Where else do dragons like Fletcher tend to hang out?”

“Well, they might go to bars up and down the strip here,” I said. “Or parties that their parents throw.”

“Okay, well, we’ll see if we can get the parents to give us any information on that. Maybe Timothy knows,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

We were quiet.

He drove. We went through two more lights. Both green. Then we got stopped at the third light.

“Penny,” he said, his voice lilting and intimate. “I’m sorry I yelled.”

I turned to look at him. “I don’t like being yelled at.”

“I was out of line,” he agreed. “It’s not you I’m angry with, anyway. It’s myself.”

“Because you want to drink my blood?”

“Yes. I thought I explained this the other night.”

I remembered what he’d said about being a protector. I licked my lips. “I don’t think you need to protect me, though. I mean, I’m capable of looking after myself, and—”

“I’m not trying to say that you’re weak. I understand that you’re strong and capable and badass. It’s one of the things I find so very attractive about you, so don’t make it about that.”

“I wasn’t.”

“If there’s going to be a thing between us, I want it to be about mutual respect and enjoying each other’s company and… I don’t want it to be about my preying on you for blood.”

“It’s
not
like that,” I said.

“Maybe to you it isn’t.” The light changed.

He took off again.

I studied him in profile. Did he really feel like that? Like a predator?

That made me feel a little bit itchy under my skin. I twisted my hands together in my lap.

We were quiet for the rest of the drive.

CHAPTER FIVE

I blinked. “Melinda Irwin?” I said in disbelief.

Melinda Irwin was standing in my lobby. She was flanked by two other women I didn’t recognize, but there she was, all decked out in her pink pedal-pusher pants with a cardigan tied around her shoulders. She was twisting her hands together, and she looked uncomfortable. “Is there somewhere we could talk?” she said. She lowered her voice. “Privately?”

“Um, I guess my office,” I said. “Follow me.” I started down the hall, glancing over my shoulder to make sure that Melinda and her friends were following. What the hell was she doing here?

Melinda and I were about the same age. She and I had been childhood friends, but her destined mate had been another of our childhood friends, Paul Irwin. The two had been all over each other right after coming of age, and they’d started having children young. Maybe because of that, they’d been extremely lucky. They had three children, which was practically unheard of in a dragon family. It was hard for dragons to conceive or to carry to term.

Anyway, I never expected to see Melinda again, especially not all the way down here in the south side of Sea City.

I opened the door to my office and gestured them inside.

The three women came inside and stood together in a clump, gazing around at the surroundings uneasily.

I shut the door. “Uh, have a seat.” I had a couch that sat against the wall and faced my desk.

They all looked at the couch, looked at me, and then gingerly sat down.

I folded my arms over my chest. “What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry I haven’t gotten in touch before, Penny,” said Melinda. “I know that things have been… hard for you.”

“This is a social call?” I said. Because I was fairly sure that no respectable dragon was going to be seen with me, considering I’d left my mate and all. That wasn’t done, and it had turned me into a social outcast.

“Not exactly,” said Melinda, twisting her hands together again.

“Listen,” said one of the other ladies, “we don’t understand you. How a dragon could leave her mate is beyond any of us.”

“Well, if your mate’s pummeling you within an inch of your life on a weekly basis, it makes it easier to leave,” I said. “But still surprisingly difficult.”

The women all drew back.

“Alastair does have a temper,” muttered Melinda.

“Whatever the case,” said the lady who’d spoken, “we don’t understand it. Every relationship has problems. But your mate is the other part of you, the missing part of your own soul. Without him, you’re only half a person.”

“Well, all half of me is really wondering why you’re here,” I said. I was starting to feel a little twitchy. I had never tried to explain to a dragon before why I’d left Alastair. I had always figured it would be pointless. They wouldn’t get it regardless.

But out here in the regular world, when I said that my husband was abusive, non-dragons were nothing but supportive, so I had forgotten for a moment that dragons would never accept what I’d done.

“You came to visit my Timothy this morning,” said the third lady. She held out her hand. “I’m Nissa Fields.”

I shook with her. “Listen, that was part of an investigation with the police. We’re looking into Fletcher Remington’s disappearance.”

“Oh, we know all about that,” said the rude lady. “I told Viola that it was absolutely gauche to involve the police. As tragic as it is, we all know what happened to her boy, and there’s no reason to make it worse.”

I furrowed my brow at her.

Melinda shot her a sharp look. “Connie, please.”

Connie shrugged. “I said I’d come along, not that I’d keep my opinions to myself.”

“Timmy said you talked to him about The Dungeon,” said Nissa. “We found out about it about a few weeks ago, and we confronted him about it, and…” She pressed her lips together as if she couldn’t continue.

“My Jenna is going there too,” said Melinda.

“Jenna?” I said. “But she’s just a little girl.”

“She came of age two years ago,” said Melinda. “She’s coming along with us to Steven Whitman’s mate party. In some ways, Jenna’s so grown up, but in other ways, she’s very… well, stupid. I’ve forbidden her to go to that horrible place, but I can’t stop her.”

“I hadn’t realized so much time had passed,” I said.

“We’re so old,” said Melinda, smiling.

“Speak for yourself,” said Connie. “I’m easily twice as old as you.”

Melinda laughed. “Well, anyway, we’ve heard things about you, Penny.”

“Things?” I said.

“That you burnt up a vampire a few months ago,” said Nissa. “On the beach. He was the leader of a gang, and he was giving you trouble, so you just—”

“It wasn’t exactly like that,” I said.

“We want your help,” said Melinda.

I looked at the three of them. “My help?”

“We thought maybe you’d be willing to deal with the vampires that are preying on our babies,” said Nissa.

“If anyone could do something, it would be you,” said Melinda.

I chewed on my lip. “You three are dragons, same as me. There’s no reason you couldn’t take care of this problem yourself.”

“Oh, we couldn’t,” said Melinda. “We just… we would have no idea what to do.”

“I haven’t even shifted into dragon form in years,” said Connie.

“I don’t even remember how to breathe fire,” said Nissa.

Was this really the case? I supposed that I had spent so much of my time shifting into dragon form when I was with Alastair because I was healing myself all the time. And I didn’t know too much about the married-dragon-woman culture because Alastair had never really allowed me to have friends.

“Please,” said Melinda. “At least say you’ll think about it.”

“We can pay you, of course,” said Nissa.

“I don’t need money,” I said, offended.

“Of course not,” said Melinda, blushing a little.

I sighed heavily. “I need time to look into this a bit more. I can’t make any promises.”

* * *

“Flint,” Lachlan’s voice said over his phone, his tone clipped and closed-off. He obviously hadn’t checked to see who the incoming call was coming from.

“It’s me,” I said.

“Penny,” he said in acknowledgment. His tone hadn’t much changed.

“You were saying that we needed to talk to people who know Fletcher?”

“Uh huh.”

“Are you busy or something? You want me to call back later?”

“Why would you say that?”

“You sound preoccupied.”

“I’m not.”

“Okay,” I said. “Well, there’s a big party coming up at the Whitman’s home. I heard about it from an old friend this morning, and I did some nosing around, and it’s being held here in Sea City, and any dragon who’s anybody will be there. It’s a find-a-mate party. I mean, that’s not what it’s officially called or anything, but those things are huge.”

“Find-a-mate party?”

“Yeah,” I said. “See, when dragons get to a certain age, and they haven’t met their one true mate, a lot of times they throw a series of parties, inviting dragons from all over the country, all over the world, to come. A dragon has to meet his or her mate to know who it is. And sometimes a dragon’s mate lives very far away, and these parties are the only way they meet.”

“Interesting,” said Lachlan. “So, are there unmated dragons out there? Dragons who die of old age and have never met their mates?”

“It’s rare,” I said. “But yeah, it happens.”

“Do you think that’s because that person didn’t have a mate or just because they didn’t find one?”

“Oh, God, do not take me down that path. You sound like my stoner friends back when I was a teenager. They’d sit around and talk about stuff like that for hours.”

He chuckled. “You, of course, abstained from substance use.”

“Totally,” I said. “I’ve always been scared of that stuff. We had assemblies at my elementary school about how drugs kill you.”

“Right,” he said. “Well, you think that Fletcher’s circle of friends will be at the party.”

“Every of-age dragon without a mate will be there,” I said. “So, I think we should go. To investigate.”

“Sounds like a private party,” Lachlan said. “Can we just crash it?”

“It’s not as if they check invitations at the door or something,” I said. “There will be too many people there for them to care. Maybe we should attempt to blend in a little, I guess, but I don’t think getting in will be a problem.”

“What do you mean by blend in?”

“Just our clothes, I guess.”

“Let me guess. It’s a fancy party?”

“It’s formal.”

“That mean I have to wear a tuxedo? Because I don’t have one.”

“You can, but you can also just wear a dark suit and a tie,” I said. “Black tie means you have to wear a tuxedo.”

“Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “Why don’t they just call it dark suit instead of formal, then? And black tie should be called tuxedo.”

“Well, but you also wear tuxedos for white tie events.”

“I’m confused.”

“Look, just wear what you wear to work,” I said. “It will be fine.”

He sighed. “Okay, so there’s not much to this blending in bit, then.”

“
I
have to get dressed up,” I said.

“Right.”

“Hey,” I said. “About those vampires at The Dungeon. If they all happened to, I don’t know, disappear somehow, would that make it really hard on our case against them?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Hmm,” I said.

“Why are you asking me that?” he said.

“What if they suddenly closed up shop and stopped drinking dragon blood?”

“Are you planning something, because if you are—”

“These are all hypotheticals,” I said.

“Leave it alone,” he said. “We’ll go back and we’ll watch them, and we’ll get this all figured out. If you interfere in any way, you will screw it up.”

“I’m not going to interfere,” I said. “So, this party is this weekend. You don’t have plans, do you?”

“Of course I don’t have plans,” he said. “Promise me that you’ll leave the vampires at The Dungeon alone.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” I said.

* * *

Felicity was in the living room of my apartment, pacing back and forth and grumbling. She was in a bad mood. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t let me drive myself over here.”

“I told you to stay out of that parking garage,” I told her. “You have, haven’t you?”

“I never have a second to myself,” she said. “It’s either you or Jensen in my face, following me around, driving me wherever I need to go. I can’t even go buy myself coffee in the morning.”

“You never know if those vampires are going to show up again,” I said.

“You scared them off,” she said. “You practically killed one of them. They’re not coming back. They aren’t going to mess with me.”

“I should have killed them all,” I said.

“And I don’t even know why I’m here right now,” she said.

“I should have blasted them all to pieces, blown them up with fire.”

“I’m not working today, so there’s no reason for you to insist that you drive me over to the hotel, or did you forget that?”

“I know you aren’t working,” I said.

“So, why am I here?”

“To help me look at dresses,” I said. “Come on.” I gestured and started back the hall to my bedroom.

“Dresses?” she said. “For what?”

“I’m going to a party with Lachlan, and we have to get dressed up.”

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t realize things were picking up between the two of you.”

I made a face. “It’s technically for a case, actually.”

“Oh,” she said.

I opened the door to the bedroom. “Don’t be like that. It’s still going to be fun. It’s just that we won’t have to make awkward small talk. Instead, we can interrogate people.”