Hekla pushed past that group of Vandy students who’d been at the bakery. The college kids were all talking at once and taking a million pictures.
“You all okay?” she asked us. Then she leaned in close, grabbing Lucus and me. “Was that the curse too? Why is it doing this?”
“Did you see it happen?” I asked.
“I did. I was right beside you.”
“And?” I had a sneaking suspicion she had not seen what I had.
Hekla’s eyebrows bunched under her thick black bangs. “What?”
“Did you or did you not just see a big, nasty snake dragon blow fire into the sky?”
Hekla paled, her rosy cheeks going white.
I swallowed and looked at Lucus. “A glamour,” we said simultaneously.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Hekla waved her hands around like she was trying to smack information out of the very air around us. “Tell me the things, people.”
The crowd had thinned, and we were alone. Aurelio and Ami stood at the door of the bakery, helping an old man get his walker through and onto the sidewalk.
I filled Hekla in as we watched emergency services bring in equipment to deal with whatever they thought might have caused the eruption. About a billion trucks and neon-jacketed workers and supervisors flooded the area.
Hekla blinked. “A dragon.”
I held up a finger. “A demon dragon.”
“That most likely wishes us harm.” Lucus raised an eyebrow. “Don’t forget that element of the situation.”
“Thanks for that, Sammy Sunshine,” I said. “Well, one person will be loving this.” I looked around for Nancy. She’d be eating this up, and there would be a great blog about it tomorrow. “So basically this demon dragon—”
“It’s technically a wyvern,” Lucus said.
Right. Like the ones on the Mage Duke’s heraldry above the castle door. It all made sense. His magic, twisted by Lucus and me, had turned into the beast his family viewed as their mascot. “This wyvern has a glamour that only some of us can see through,” I said.
“Aurelio might see through it because he’s fae like you,” Hekla said to Lucus.
“True,” he agreed.
“Is it good or bad that no one can see what we’re actually dealing with? I mean, don’t they need to know what’s up? Searching for gas leaks ain’t going to take down a dragon.”
“Wyvern,” Hekla added.
I waved her off. “Yeah. Whatevs. Franklin needs an armed helicopter and a tank.”
Hekla pursed her lips. “I don’t think we have those.”
“We could though. If we asked the right people.”
“How is that going to go exactly, Coren?” she asked. “‘Hey, policeperson. There is actually an invisible dragon doing this damage, and he might eat some of us unless you ask the government for war stuff,’” she said, using a fake deep voice that sounded like Titus when he had a cold.
That reminded me that I needed to check in with my friend. He’d been so busy with new students at his MMA school that he hadn’t even come by the bakery like he usually did.
“Coren?” Concern pulled at Lucus’s features.
“Sorry. I was just thinking about our friend, Titus. I feel the urge to keep tabs on all the people I really like, seeing as there is now a dragon to add into the evil fae brother and rogue vampire mix of danger we’ve got going on here in this delightful boutique town. Okay, listen. First things first. Is there any way we can find out where the dragon is hanging out? It would be good to keep a keen eye on him.”
“The trees will tell me,” Lucus said matter-of-factly.
I shook my head. “Of course they will. Where can we go to get you to enough trees to do the trick?”
Hekla raised a hand like I was her high school English teacher. “Ooo, I know! Pinkerton.”
Pinkerton Park was just past the square and the railroad tracks. There were some big trees by the river. “Perfect. Can you keep the bakery going while we do some supernatural snooping on the demon?”
Hekla sighed. “That sentence. I can’t…”
I shook her gently. “Hey. We’ve got this.”
Her eyes opened to show their dark depths. They almost seemed to shift in color, and I belatedly realized they’d always looked that way, light then dark, depending on the illumination in the room, maybe?
She put her hands over mine. “We do.”
We bumped fists like we did before climbing and returned to Sweet Touch.
Lucus set a hand on the small of my back as we slipped through the bakery, hurrying so we didn’t get stopped by anyone.
As we got on my motorcycle, I wondered if we’d ever have more than three days of peace again. I was beginning to think peace was a big joke and my life was the punch line.
3 Hekla
After hanging her apron on its hook, Hekla pulled Ami into the kitchen. “You’re in charge. I’m going to look for Titus.”
“Got it, boss lady.” Ami popped her gum without her normal pep.
“It’s going to be okay.”
“You sure?” Ami coughed. She’d accidentally swallowed her gum. “That explosion was so close to us.”
“No sense in worrying about it. Not unless someone tells us to, right?”
“I suppose. How long will you be gone?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“Uh. A lot of things. I’ll text you.”
Hekla gave Ami a quick hug, then left her with Aurelio, who was trying to learn a knock-knock joke from a policewoman who’d come in to question them on what they’d seen. As usual, the fae looker had charmed her into asking decidedly fewer questions than she’d most likely had planned. Good thing, because reporting a wyvern dragon probably wouldn’t make Nancy Striffer less curious about their new friends.
Hekla patted her Volvo lovingly as she headed toward Titus’s gym. “That woman is trouble. Mark my words.”
As she walked down the side street behind the strip of stores and restaurants, Kaippa’s face drifted through her mind. Her stomach lifted like she’d
