Dragon Call (13 page)

“I wasn’t trying to call anybody. I was
trying to sleep. I
was
sleeping until you came in,” she
complained. She tried to slink down into the blankets again.

“Cora—”

“Please,” she said into her pillow. She
wanted to return to the quiet darkness so badly she could taste her
own yearning.

Salim’s weight left the bed. Cora slitted her
eyes to watch him leave the room. The breeze of his passing
fluttered a slip of white paper that was stuck to the outside face
of the bedroom door. She sat up, and squinted at the writing on it,
but couldn’t read the words. How had she missed it before now?
Something instinctive warned her that the note was more than “out
for milk, be right back.” Worry gnawing at her stomach, she willed
the ache of exhaustion to recede and slid off the bed. She
struggled into her discarded panties and camisole, not bothering to
turn either right side out, and wobbled for the door.

Don’t sleep with either of them!! D.

Great. Now what?

Salim stopped on the threshold and raised his
eyebrows at the note. “Timely,” he murmured.

“Did you see this?”

“I only saw you.”

She snatched the handwritten note off the
door, tape coming away with flecks of wood varnish imbedded in the
adhesive. Diane hadn’t written anything else on the other side; no
clarification, no time for when she’d be back, no nothing. Worry
morphed into anxiety and sat heavy around Cora’s heart. She had to
make an effort to breathe. What had she done? She’d told Salim she
wasn’t choosing him, and he in turn said she didn’t have to. What
did that mean?

Salim radiated heat and the longer she stood
beside him, the warmer she became. When she realized the warmth was
more than mere surface temperature, she slapped the note back on
the door and backed away. “You have to leave,” she said, not
looking at him. She reached for the rest of her discarded
clothes.

“Why? Because you’re frightened?”

“Yes.” She dressed quickly. “Because I still
don’t know what to do. Because there was one thing I shouldn’t have
done, and I did it anyway.”

Salim caught her elbow while she was trying
to right her jeans and pulled them from her hands. “Tell me who you
were talking to.”

“I wasn’t talking to anybody!” She blew an
exasperated breath. “Why do you keep asking me that?”

He tightened his grip on her elbow and cupped
her chin with his other hand, lifting her face toward his. He’d
lost his glasses during their lovemaking. Without them, his pupils
dilated until only a rim of brown remained. “I left you to clean up
and when I came back, you had the phone at your ear and you were
dialing. That’s why I keep asking.”

“You must’ve seen it wrong,” Cora said. She
had no recollection of making any phone calls. She remembered the
blessed heaviness of sleep, though, and wished she could return to
it. “Who would I have been calling, anyway?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” He let
her go and reached for his clothes.

His hair was still loose and mussed. Cora
thought his cheeks were flushed, perhaps feverish, but the longer
she examined him, the more certain she became that the flush was
the physical manifestation of his dragon aspect while it was laying
dormant. A foolish romantic part of her wanted to crawl into his
arms and stay with him forever. The sex had been amazing, the
dragon was fascinating, and Salim seemed well-adjusted enough for
having lived with a dragon his entire life, and had gone on to
build an entire menagerie for himself.

“People call you the Collector,” she said,
remembering.

The comment caught him off guard, and he
raised his eyebrows. “They don’t understand what I do.”

“What—”

“Shh.” He put his fingers to her lips and
finished dressing. He spent some time looking for his glasses
before finally locating them under a carelessly discarded pillow.
Cora heard the sound of Diane’s key in the lock. She jumped to
scramble into her own jeans. Diane’s return reminded her of the
note, the warning to keep her pants on, and the romantic fancies of
happily-ever-after with Salim dissipated.

Chapter Thirteen

“I can’t believe you slept with him,” Diane
said, exasperated. “At least it was good.” She examined Cora with a
critical eye while untying her scarf.

Before Cora could respond, Salim emerged from
the bedroom behind her. Diane’s eyes widened. “I
really
can’t believe you slept with
him
,” she hissed.

Cora resisted an urge to look over her
shoulder and make sure she and Diane were talking about the same
person. She couldn’t figure out why the loathing for Salim. Sure,
he had a rep for dipping his fingers in other witches’ cookie jars,
but there had to be worse things. He could create voodoo dolls and
torture people, or sacrifice children, or indulge any number of
other despicable perversions.

“Didn’t you see my note?”

“Yeah. After.”

“Where’d Greg go?”

It seemed like forever ago that Greg had left
the apartment. Cora frowned, trying to come up with an answer for
Diane. She didn’t want to talk about this right now. She wanted a
nap, a shower, the coffee she still hadn’t managed to consume, and
another go beneath Salim. Maybe on top, this time, actually. Diane
was moving to insert herself between Cora and Salim, though; the
odds of an encore performance weren’t looking good.

“Hopefully not anywhere where he can tell
anybody what’s going on,” Diane said.

“I can’t believe I’m stuck in a goth
ton
scandal,” Cora said. She went to nuke her long-cold
coffee.

Diane followed her into the kitchen. “Alissa
and I went to do some private eye stuff,” she said. “Trying to dig
up some information about connections between Greg and Salim. I
wouldn’t have left you alone if I’d known Salim would come back. He
was nowhere in sight when we left.”

Cora shrugged. “What did you find out?”

“Nothing. Just a retelling of the scene they
made the other night,” Diane admitted. “Mom said it doesn’t have
anything to do with them, though. Apparently it’s all related to
the moon, but what isn’t when she’s involved?” She made a face.

Cora took that as a rhetorical question.
Toting her too-hot coffee, she moved past Diane and went to the
living room window. Salim apparently had the same idea.

“Some things are entirely sun-bound,” he said
when she drew near.

Behind her, Diane huffed annoyance.
“Eavesdropper.”

“Stop it,” Cora said. To Salim, she added,
“You have to go.”

He turned away from the window and gathered
up his jacket, gone before Cora had time to decide whether to ask
how to contact him. He took the dragon with him. She’d spent mere
hours with both his and Greg’s dragons; most of that time had been
divided between fear, panic, and confusion. She already missed the
brief time of connection; the absence of the dragons, now that she
had known and experienced them, left an acute sensory void. She’d
grown accustomed to them. Hell, she even
missed
Salim’s
dragon aspect. Sighing, she left the wide-eyed moon to stare at the
city and went into Diane’s bedroom to strip her sheets. Diane
followed.

“What about you?” she asked. “What did you
find out?”

Cora crumpled the sheets into a ball and
stuffed them into a wicker hamper, watching Diane from the corner
of her eye. “I saw the dragon. I want to read the diary,” she
said.

Diane retrieved fresh linens—soothing neutral
cream—from the bathroom linen closet. “This is dangerous. I can
feel it. And it’s my fault, telling you to find your spiritual side
and dragging you here.”

“I don’t think it’s your fault. Ma seemed to
think it was inevitable.”

“Yeah, well, she’s who she is.”

“And suddenly you don’t believe?”

“I didn’t say that,” Diane protested. “Just
saying that everything can’t be taken literally. The myth, the
diary – they’re symbolic, not truth. Who knows if there’s any real
truth in the Dragonkeeper legend at all? I certainly haven’t spent
my life preparing to be the virgin sacrifice, and besides, Dad
isn’t exactly draconic. Neither was Granddad.”

“I don’t think it’s something you notice
unless you know it’s there. Not consciously. I guess Ma could be
withholding information, though.”

“Do you think maybe she’s not telling us
something?”

“Possible. Probably. We need to get her to
talk. And I think I should talk to Greg again. He said he could
help me learn about the dragons.”

“I don’t even know how he got involved in
this. Or how he’s been in New York this long without anybody
noticing his spirit affinity. You realize
nobody
I know has
any idea that he’s got his fingers in more than that apothecary of
his?”

“Good at secrets.” Cora shrugged. “Whether or
not anybody knew about it, one of the dragons is his. Once a
Dragonlord, always a Dragonlord. Didn’t Ma say something like
that?”

“Yeah, but I’d
heard
about Salim. Greg
just came out of nowhere.”

“You’re the one who introduced us.”

“Not
nowhere
, nowhere. He’s been
around a few years with his apothecary and his parlor tricks, but
that’s all it’s been. Salim showed up with his reputation on his
sleeve. Everybody knows he’s a shaman, and his most powerful aspect
is the dragon.”

Cora helped Diane wrestle a fresh set of
sheets over the mattress and smooth the comforter into place. “You
said Greg was the favorite of the season. Or something like
that.”

“He started turning up with invitations to
every event is all. Not sure who he impressed.” Diane took up a
pillow into a pillowcase. A few downy pin feathers puffed away from
the seam and drifted away.

“Maybe he hid it,” Cora suggested. She
frowned as a thought occurred to her. “Maybe Salim isn’t the only
collector around.”

“Who, Greg? Not strong enough. He’s too much
of a flake. He doesn’t have the right—I don’t know. Presence? Yeah.
Not the right presence about him.” She fluffed the pillow and
dropped it on the bed. “I guess we could just ask him what’s going
on. You said he volunteered information?”

Cora nodded. She didn’t tell Diane that he’d
offered her a gentle courtship. “Said he could educate me.”

Diane snorted. “Egotistical of him.”

“Well, maybe he can. Maybe he knows what we
don’t.”

“You want to see him again.” Diane didn’t
phrase it as a question.

“No, I don’t,” Cora said, and meant it.
Likeable and attractive or not, his public outburst had put her on
edge. His intensity was different from Salim’s: scary. “I don’t
want to see him again. I want to sleep for a week. But I need to
find out what he can tell me. The bottom line is I’ve somehow bound
two dragons. I don’t want…” She stopped, about to say that she
didn’t want either of them, but that was a lie. She had seen
Salim’s dragon, had made love with it. She wanted it again. “I
don’t want to screw up,” she amended.

“Have him come over tomorrow?”

“I want to know tonight. I won’t be able to
sleep anyway. I almost drifted off, but Salim wanted to talk.
Something about phone calls. Didn’t make any sense.”

“Why don’t you call Greg instead of seeing
him?”

“Phone isn’t the right way to do it. I can’t
see his face or make a truth verses lie judgment.”

“Yeah, but you also can’t get beaten to death
or eaten by a monster.”

Cora rolled her eyes. “I’ll take my
phone.”

Forty-five minutes later, Cora exited a taxi
in front of Greg’s shop in Chinatown. Her hair was still damp from
the shower, and her body still tingled from Salim’s touch. She felt
more alive than she had in forever, despite sleep deprivation. Yet,
Greg and his dragon made her apprehensive. She didn’t want to
provoke either of them to hostility.

Greg answered shortly after her knock. Cora
took a step back, alarmed by his appearance. He looked like he’d
raked his hands through his hair over and over again, and his eyes
were red and wild. The wildness seemed to pull back, though, even
as she stood there debating whether or not to run, and she would
swear his breathing calmed as well.

He reached for her hand and, with a hint of
breathless desperation, murmured, “Come in.”

“What’s happened?” she asked, concerned.

“I was worried when you didn’t call.” Greg
led her inside and closed the door. “Come upstairs?” he asked.

Cora frowned, wondering if she’d heard him
correctly. She talked to him on the phone before she left Diane’s
in order to let him know she was coming. He’d sounded anxious then,
too. “I needed time to think,” Cora explained. “It’s why I didn’t
contact you earlier.”

Greg didn’t answer. Cora followed him through
the back of the shop and up the stairs, avoiding the eyes of the
owl at the top of the landing. His apartment was different from
Diane’s—cluttered with books and plants and strange artwork.
Through a door off the main room, she caught a glimpse of an easel,
and wondered whether the bizarre paintings were his doing. She
thought, again, of leaving, but Greg held her hand tighter.

“The dragon’s restless,” he said lightly,
dismissively. “Can I get you a drink?”

Where he touched her, she could feel the
dragon crowding close. It flowed from Greg’s hand to hers. Cora
shivered and pulled her fingers from his grasp. “I’m not thirsty. I
just need to know—”

“Anything you need.” Greg reached for her
again; she backed around the corner of a chair. He didn’t give
chase, to her relief.

“I think your dragon’s dangerous,” she said
bluntly.

“It’s…not so easy to categorize. You called
it, and it wants to be with you. It’s fighting my hold because I’m
keeping it away from you. I don’t have the same control you have—I
can’t command it to me the way you did.”