"Alice Haskell? Stonefort? I can't go there, can't leave. I've missed too many classes already. I can't drop out. You don't know what school means to me."
And again Caroline seemed able to read her thoughts from her face. That wry smile and head shake said she'd heard too many people trying to dodge medicine that would help them. How old was this girl?
"It's hard to find trust again, isn't it? Once someone has stolen it from you? That's why the Haskell Witches learned to make trust easy. Morgan men learned the trick to get in close and rob you blind, Haskell women learned it to bring scared women home to safety. And here we end up with the two families mixed together. I wonder what the hell Mom thought she was doing . . ."
Another head shake, and she chewed on her lower lip for a minute before smiling. "Outpatient clinic. Gary can bring his car up here and take you there on weekends. He'll tell you about Aunt Alice, about the Haskell House. Don't just take my word for it. Which reminds me — we still need to find that boy." She fished at the neck of her sweater, pulling out a silver chain and then a pendant.
Silver. Dragon. Red jewel. Shit! "That's Gary's! You tricked me! You have seen him."
A trap. The alley cat took over, Jane was backing away, shoulders sliding along the wall, eyes and feet frantic for the nearest exit. She felt the jaws snapping shut around her and she didn't have a gun, she didn't have a knife, she'd been a fool thinking she could trust some stranger . . .
"Easy, easy, don't panic." Caroline had slid in front of her, she'd left enough room to pass her, didn't block the way, didn't close the trap, but she held the pendant out so Jane could see it clearly. "There are five or six of them, all a little different, Morgan dragons. This isn't Gary's. It's mine."
The silver dragon grabbed her attention. It twisted around its stone, twice around, head and open jaws tucked into the center like a coiled snake and holding the blaze-red jewel. It curled clockwise, just like Gary's. She'd seen his glowing on his chest when they lay in bed together. It had looked so old, so beautiful, so precious, so mysterious with the stone that seemed to pulse its own light rather than reflecting. She could see it like a photograph in her head. The left front paw curled down on this one. Gary's curled up.
It wasn't the same.
She slumped against the wall, shaking again, chilled enough that her teeth chattered. Here she was, swept downstream in the spring ice-out, drowning, someone threw her a rope, and she saw it as a snake. Something brown swam into the blur in front of her, Caroline's face, and water glinted on her cheeks. Rain from the hurricane raging around the calm?
Tears looked strange on that strong Indian face. "Fuck. My first solo, and I'm blowing it. Something as simple as a goddamn Morgan dragon . . ."
Off the wall again. "Solo?"
Caroline pulled herself together, almost looked like grabbing bits of her brain out of the air and stuffing them back into her head. "Solo. Like a student pilot. I've done the takeoffs and landings and cross-country and pulled out of a faked engine failure and all that, but I've never flown alone. I've always had Aunt Alice in the other seat, ready to save my butt. Save the kid we were trying to reach. I'm screwing up."
Jane forced herself to straighten up, back braced by the cold wall behind her, and reached out to the girl in front of her. They ended up in a hug. "Not you," she whispered. "Me. Broken safety, just like that gun. Same reason I ran away from Gary. Hair trigger, go off at a touch. Hint of trouble, smell of a trap, I'm gone. Wild animal. It saved my ass out on the street. I've got to learn to turn it off."
Caroline held her. Jane held Caroline. Warmth crept through her body, the first non-sex touch she'd had in years. People passed, back and forth and detouring around, hall of the Memorial Union, Jane finally pushed away and noticed the sideways glances they were drawing. Screw 'em. Take it up with the campus Gay Alliance.
Not that Caroline was making a pass. Jane would know. She'd slept with Tina, slept with Cindy, a couple of other girls. Felt better than the Johns, mostly safer, nothing like what she'd felt with Gary.
Caroline shook herself and stepped back out of Jane's space and gave that wry half-grin again, the one that looked like Gary when he poked fun at himself. Sister, no doubt about it. Not quite twins, but close.
Gary. Jane took a deep breath and let it out. Another, looking for that blessed calm again. "You can use your dragon to find Gary?"
That changed the half grin to a half frown, another Gary face, Gary when he came across a problem in the code. "I think so. Normally, I could talk to him. Call it magic if you want, the Morgan dragons talk to each other. But I don't think he's wearing his. He wants to hide, from you or from his family." She paused, as if wondering how much weird stuff she could say before Jane threw another fit.
One thing might help . . . "His father is looking for him. I saw him in the dorm, I'm pretty sure he didn't recognize me. Not 'vivid' enough to notice. Father or Dad, one or the other."
Caroline nodded. "Father, most likely. Yeah, they're different people. His father looks more like him, more like me. So you know about that. Good. So Gary took his dragon off, hiding. Thing is, he wore this one for a while. Then he gave it
