“Don’t tell anyone I did that,” the dragon god warned, swiveling her head around to glare at me menacingly. “If word ever gets out that I gave away fire, every dragon in the world will be on my tail trying to pitch me dark bargains in exchange for power. I’ll never have a moment’s peace again, so lips shut!”
“I’ll tell no one,” I promised, truly moved by her generosity. “Thank you.”
The god rolled her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not doing this to be nice. I’m just extremely curious if your plan will work. Now get a move on. That ember won’t burn forever, and I’m not giving you another.”
I nodded and dropped back to my knees, reaching out to cup my hands around the precious spark she’d given us. It was a spark too. The glowing dot of magic on my father’s nose was barely larger than a grain of rice, but that wasn’t the point. As the Spirit of Dragons had said earlier—and Dr. Kowalski constantly reminded me—magic wasn’t “parts is parts.” This was the sort of spell that Thaumaturges with their homogenizing circles couldn’t do. Even with the curse connecting us, if I wanted to feed magic back into my father, it was going to have to be in a form his body could accept. It had to be dragon fire. As a human, I couldn’t make that myself, but I could mimic the power I saw flickering in the glowing dot the Spirit of Dragons had given me.
At least, that was my theory. For all that I mashed around handfuls of it every day, Shamanism was normally about changing the spell to fit the magic, not the magic to fit the spell. I wasn’t sure I could shape the oily, slippery city magic of the DFZ into something that mimicked dragon fire, but the ember she’d breathed out was already fading, so I chucked my insecurities and went for it.
Picturing the pumpkin I’d used earlier today in my mind, I reached out to grab a handful of the rich, chaotic power of the DFZ that constantly churned through my apartment. The city’s wet, chaotic magic seemed as far from the pure, hot dragon fire as you could get, but—as Dr. Kowalski also loved to remind me—Shamanism was all about being creative. With no circles or spellwork to smooth everything out, we had to work with what we had. Fortunately for me, the DFZ and dragons had a lot in common.
They were both ruthless and intolerant of weakness. They both loved money and power. They were both unfair. Just like fire, the city moved constantly, and both could eat you in a second if you let your guard down. The similarities were everywhere if you stopped being literal and left yourself open to interpretation, and I was a magical art history major. Finding abstract concepts in literal representations was my jam, and the more ways I found for these two to overlap, the more the magic came together in my hands, growing and heating and turning over on itself until the spark was no longer a spark, but a roaring ball of dragon fire precisely the size—and, oddly, the shape—of a pumpkin.
“Nicely done,” the Spirit of Dragons said, swiveling her head to observe the ball of fire that was floating above my father from all angles. “Not quite sure I understand the shape, but that feels more like dragon fire than anything I’ve ever seen a mortal make. You’ve got a real knack for this.” She looked at me greedily. “Are you sure you don’t want to switch divine patrons? I don’t know what the DFZ is offering, but I’m positive I can do better.”
I shook my head, too focused on controlling the pumpkin of fire raging in front of me to answer in words. This was the hard part. I’d practiced holding magic with Dr. Kowalski, but now I had to actually send that power into my father—without smothering his own flames—and that was something I’d never done. I supposed I could have compared it to putting magic into a circle, but I was terrible at that, so I banished the thought and focused on the curse instead.
I’d felt it before, that oily shadow of draconic magic crawling over my soul, but even knowing what I was looking for, finding it was hard. My father’s magic was so subtle, I hadn’t even noticed I was cursed until another dragon had pointed it out. That made finding it now, when it wasn’t powered, pretty much impossible. For once, though, my obsession with my dad’s meddling in my life actually worked in my favor. I might not have been able to actually feel his curse anymore, but I remembered exactly where it was, so that was where I sent the flame, channeling the ball of fire into my own chest, through my magic, and up the connection I knew still hung like a shadow between us.
Once I got it going, the transfer was actually easier than I’d expected. I’d thought sending fire to my father would be a fight for every inch, just like everything else between us. In hindsight, I should have known better. My dad was my dad, but he was also a dragon. The moment I offered him a flicker of power, he started sucking it down with classic draconic greed. Seconds after I began, the pumpkin-sized ball of fake dragon fire I’d created had been drained dry.
And he still wasn’t moving.
“Did it work?” I asked breathlessly, crouching over my father’s unconscious body, which still looked exactly the same.
The Spirit of Dragons leaned over him as well, breathing in deeply. “He
