“I’m doomed,” I groaned, putting my face in my hands.
“Don’t be like that,” the spirit said, patting me on the head like a dog. “You’ve done an excellent job at staying hidden so far. Even I thought you were dead! Just keep it up a bit longer, keep the magic pumping, and Old Grumpy Smoke should be back on his scaly feet in no time.”
That made me feel a little better. “Will you keep it secret?”
“Absolutely. You think I want word of my kind and generous nature getting out?” She gagged. “I won’t tell a soul, and I’ll kill you both if you breathe a word about what happened here to anyone.”
She looked one-hundred percent serious, but the death threat actually made me feel better about all of this. Dragons were only trustworthy when they were threatening to kill you. “Thank you for your help, great spirit,” I said, bowing low.
“Your gratitude is accepted,” the god informed me, reaching over to grab the last liquor bottle I hadn’t emptied for the summoning. “And if you change your mind about the priestess thing, you know how to ring my bell.” She wiggled the plastic bottle of Canadian whiskey at me with a wink. “Farewell, Yong’s Opal. You’re an interesting little mortal. Don’t die too soon!”
“I’ll try not to,” I said, but she was already gone, her too-huge fiery body vanishing in a poof of acrid-smelling smoke, leaving me alone with the faded ghost of my dad.
“She’s an embarrassment to all our kind,” Yong growled, waving his hand at the smoke she’d left behind, which did nothing since he was made of the same stuff. “How we dragons ended up with a drunken, selfish, egotistical snake like her as our god, I’ll never understand.”
“I don’t know,” I said sourly. “I think you just made a pretty good argument for her divinity.”
He turned up his nose. “Believe me, there’s nothing ‘divine’ about that one. I knew her before she became a spirit, and I’d be hard-pressed to name anyone less qualified for the position.”
I had no idea what he was ranting about, and I didn’t care. Now that it was over, I was starting to realize just how much zapping my dad back to life had taken out of me. Add in my morning of intense physical labor, and I was ready to sleep for a week. As ever, though, my father couldn’t let me have a moment’s peace.
“What’s our next step?” he asked, looming over me.
“I don’t know,” I replied, flopping onto the ground. “You’re the one who made himself a ghost.”
“I’m not a ghost,” he said stubbornly. “This form is merely a temporary inconvenience. Just put more fire into me, I’ll get back into my body again, and we can deal with things properly.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t do that. As much as I’d love to get you out of my hair, I’m too tired to make fire again today.”
“Nonsense,” he said, his smoke jaw clenched. “You can’t leave me like this, Opal.”
If it were anyone else, I’d have said he sounded panicked. My dad never panicked, though, so I wrote it off as exhaustion-induced hysteria. “If you’re that eager to get moving, you should call Mom,” I suggested. “She’s the one who’d do anything for you. I’m sure she’d be happy to—”
“I can’t let your mother see me like this,” my father said, his smoke face horrified. “I’m her dragon! She serves me because I am strong. If I appear before her in this…this state, she’ll never look at me the same way again.”
I rolled my eyes. “Dad, she worships you. Like crazy cult levels of worship. You could probably appear before her as a cabbage and she’d still bow down to kiss your leaves.”
“Don’t insult your mother,” he said, glaring down at me. “How long must you rest before you can feed me fire again?”
I had no idea. I didn’t even want to think about magic right now, and his entitled attitude was really pissing me off. “You know, a ‘thank you’ wouldn’t be amiss. I’ve saved your life like ten times over in the last two months, and—”
“Two months?” my father interrupted, his eyes going wide. “You mean I’ve been lying incapacitated on your floor for two months?”
“To the day. The DFZ just gave me my end-of-the-month report this morning.”
That statement seemed to make him even more confused. “DFZ? What are you talking about?”
Hoo boy. “Remember back when White Snake had you trapped and the city helped us escape by smacking White Snake into the river?” I asked, sitting up. “Well she didn’t do that out of the goodness of her heart. I agreed to be her priestess in exchange for help.”
And debt relief, but I was going for maximum guilt here, so I left that part out. It was working too. My father looked shaken, his smoke hands trembling so hard they couldn’t hold themselves together.
“You sold yourself to a spirit?” he whispered at last. “To save me? But I thought—”
“Don’t read too much into it,” I warned, crossing my arms over my chest. “Just because I wasn’t willing to let White Snake murder you doesn’t mean everything’s hunky-dory. I’m still not going home. Ever. And now you can’t make me.” I grinned wide. “Guess turning you into smoke has benefits after all.”
This was usually the point in the conversation where my father would say something nasty about me being an ungrateful, spoiled child with no respect for her elders, but he didn’t. He didn’t say a word. He just sat there staring into the distance like a trauma victim.
It was pretty unnerving, and not just because he was made of smoke. I was so used to my father acting superior, like he knew everything. Seeing him like
