“Are you all right?” my father asked, his smoke hands sliding through my shoulders as he tried and failed to help me up.
“Am I all right?” I repeated, chest heaving as I grinned up at him. “I’m a freaking boss! Did you see him go sailing?!”
“I did,” my father said angrily. “That was very dangerous, Opal! Why didn’t you run?”
“Because I didn’t think I could get away,” I told him honestly. Then I scowled. “And because I’m tired of running. I’m sick of being afraid all the time, especially now that I don’t have to be. I mean, I just punted a dragon!”
My father’s jaw clenched, but he couldn’t argue. “I hope you punted him far,” he said instead. “I’m not sure which clan he belongs to, but he’s definitely a European dragon. They’re all scales. Tough to kill.” He frowned. “Where did that door go, anyway?”
“Lake Erie,” I replied, brushing the dirt and grass off my jeans as I stood up. “Given how fast he was going, though, he might end up in Cleveland.”
“A punishment indeed,” my father said drolly, then his scowl melted into something a parental-approval-starved nutcase like myself might have been able to interpret as a proud smile. “That was ably handled.”
“Thank you,” I said, savoring every second.
My father nodded and turned around, scanning the dark street as if he expected more dragons to jump out any second. “Now let’s get back so I can reclaim my body.”
“I thought you were staying in this form to conserve energy?”
“I was, and that’s still the most efficient strategy, but I’d rather turn to ash than be forced to watch helplessly while you do anything like that ever again.”
My father groused about my safety all the time. Normally I found it annoying and condescending, but this was different. This time, I understood he spoke out of love. Grumpy, prickly, dragon love, but that was how we’d always been, and for the first time in decades, I was okay with that.
***
There were no more whammies on our trip back to Dr. Kowalski’s house. I was eager to talk to my mentor about the Sword of Damocles curse and how we might get around it, but by the time I got my dad back into his body and gave him the dose of magic needed to keep him in it, I was exhausted.
No wonder since it was four in the morning on my second late night in a row. Dr. Kowalski hadn’t even materialized yet. Despite being a ghost who technically didn’t need sleep, she kept old-lady hours, vanishing when it got dark and reappearing at sunrise. I probably could have gotten her to pop out for an emergency, but no dragons could jump us here, and Nik’s head probably wasn’t going to get chopped off in the next three hours, so I didn’t want to play that card just yet.
“Couldn’t play it” was closer to the truth. Now that my dad was fed and we were safe, I was having trouble staying upright. I would have been hard-pressed to follow a conversation about croutons, let alone curses. Even opening a door back to my apartment suddenly felt like too much work, so since my dad had gotten his body out of Dr. K’s spare bed, I flopped mine into it, falling into a deep sleep the moment my head hit the dusty pillow.
The next time I opened my eyes, sunlight was streaming in through the attic windows. Shielding my face against the blinding light, I hauled myself out of bed with a curse, grabbing my phone off the floor where I’d dropped it to see that it was almost noon. I’d slept through my entire practice session.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” I cried, tossing my phone on the bed so I could grab my boots.
“Because Dr. Kowalski turned off my alarm,” Sibyl replied angrily. “I would have told her no, but you left me in open mode and we’re back in this internet-less hellhole so I couldn’t ping my security server for an automatic permissions update!”
I was too groggy to parse most of that, but I did catch the important bit. “Dr. Kowalski turned you off?” I said, pausing my frantic shoe-shoving. “Why?”
“I suppose because she wanted to let you sleep,” my AI said grumpily. “She didn’t explain her motives to me. She still thinks I’m just a phone.”
The disgust in her voice was palpable even through her auto-tune, but I was touched. Dr. Kowalski wasn’t a cruel teacher, but she was demanding, and like the god she served, ever vigilant against any perceived slacking. Sleeping in was for the lazy and the weak. If she’d let me do it this time, I must have looked truly dreadful.
I was up now, though, so I finished putting on my boots and headed downstairs to find my teacher sitting at her kitchen table peeling potatoes.
“Hey, Dr. K,” I said cheerfully as I sat down next to her. “Thanks for letting me crash.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, sliding her knife skillfully under the smooth red skin of a new potato the size of my fist. “But it wasn’t my decision. I believe the best cure for a
