“Does that mean anything?” This had been my last shot. If fire didn’t work, I didn’t know what I was going to—
Yong’s body spasmed on the floor, making me jump. I scrambled away the second I recovered, ducking behind the Spirit of Dragons in case he woke up roaring and ready to fight. But he didn’t wake up. Instead, his mouth opened to let out a billowing cloud of smoke. There was so much, it filled my bedroom. I was starting to choke when the gray-black clouds suddenly condensed, pulling together like joining beads of water to form a familiar, humanoid shape.
Eyes still watering, I poked my head out from behind the dragon spirit’s flaming haunch.
“Dad?”
The shape looked up when I said his name, and my eyes went wide. It was my dad. My father, the Great Yong, Dragon of Korea, was standing in front of me, except he wasn’t. His body was still on the floor. What I was staring at was a figure made of smoke. A transparent shadow in the shape of my father.
“Oh my god,” I whispered, pressing my trembling hands to my mouth. “He’s a ghost.”
“Huh,” the Spirit of Dragons said, reaching out to pass a fiery claw through Yong’s transparent head. “Didn’t expect that to happen.”
The smoke shadow looked up at the spirit’s voice, and his face—also smoke, but every bit as detailed and expressive as the real thing—pulled into a furious scowl. “You!” he snarled, stabbing a transparent hand at the dragon of fire.
I jumped again. Before this point I hadn’t been entirely convinced, but that was my father’s voice for sure. It really was him standing there! Just, you know, made of smoke.
“Is that how you speak to your god?” the Spirit of Dragons asked in a dangerous voice.
“You’re not my god,” my father spat, his smoke eyes moving to me. “Opal, get away from that charlatan.”
“She’s not a charlatan, Dad,” I said nervously, staying right where I was. “And she’s helped you a lot, so maybe you should show a bit of gratitude.”
“Why should I be grateful for this?” Yong demanded, holding up his see-through arms. “What happened to me? And why is my body on the floor?”
“The first is too obnoxious to answer, but the second’s a good question,” the Spirit of Dragons replied, squinting down at my father’s comatose body. “It seems you’ve gotten disconnected somehow.” She shifted her glare back to the Smoke-Yong. “How hard have you been trying to wake up?”
“With all my might,” he replied. “My sister tried to kill me, my territory is unprotected, and my daughter is still living in this trash heap of a city. What did you think I would do? Lie there and take it?”
“Spoken like a true dragon,” the spirit said, turning back to me. “He dislocated himself.”
“Is that fixable?” I asked nervously.
“Hard to say,” she replied, poking my father’s body with the tip of her burning tail. “His physical form seems unharmed, or at least no worse than it was before, except he’s no longer in it. Normally dragons are trapped in their bodies because that’s where their fire burns, but you just gave him a new source, so…” She trailed off with a shrug. “My best guess is that he was so eager to move, he jumped up to grab the fire you were offering and got stuck.”
That didn’t sound good. “So I trapped him outside his body?”
“He trapped himself,” the Spirit of Dragons corrected. “You didn’t do anything wrong. He’s just a greedy dragon.” She flashed Yong a burning grin. “See? You are mine.”
“I am no one’s!” my father said, but the Spirit of Dragons wasn’t listening.
“I think we can still count this as a success,” she told me. “You know what dragon magic feels like now, and the curse connection obviously works. Great thinking on that, by the way. Really out of the box. And I’m dead serious about the job offer. Just let me know, and it’s yours.”
“I’m good, thank you. But what do we do now?” I pointed at my smoke dad. “He can’t stay like that.”
“He won’t,” the god assured me. “Just keep feeding him magic and he should get strong enough to reenter his physical body eventually. Or he’ll disconnect permanently and die. It’s up to him. You’ve already done all you can. Until he puts himself back together, though, he’s going to be entirely dependent on you for fire, so consider yourself haunted, I guess.”
My eyes went wide. “You mean he has to stay close to me? As in follow me around?”
“Pretty much,” the spirit said. “You were keeping him alive before, but now you are literally his life’s fire. And considering how much of that a dragon his age needs, he’s going to be stuck on you like a baby koala for the foreseeable future.”
This could not be happening. “How am I supposed to live my life with the ghost of my dad following me around?!”
The Spirit of Dragons shrugged. “Dunno. If it helps, I’m pretty sure only spirits and other dragons will be able to see him like this. I’d call that a plus, but pretty much every dragon in the world wants to kill Yong of Korea at the moment, so maybe not so much.”
Definitely not. “Can he be killed in this form?”
“I don’t know,” the god said. “Let me try.”
Before I could stop her, she lashed a burning claw through my father, completely dissipating his smoke. I was about to scream when he suddenly re-formed, his transparent body coming back together even faster than the first time. Faster and angrier.
“How dare you!” he roared.
“He’s fine,” the dragon god said, turning back to me. “Just make sure you don’t die. Until he gets himself back together, you’re his lifeline. Also, I’m pretty sure you don’t want to die for your own sake. Most mortals don’t.”
I absolutely did not want to die. Especially not for my ungrateful bastard of a father. Unfortunately, it looked as if my
