Shaking off the feeling, she crossed the road, then rounded the side of the brick building that held the MMA gym. This place had once been a frozen yogurt store with the cutest displays in the windows. It was funny how it had gone from adorable to tough in a matter of weeks.
The shades were drawn over the windows, and the front door showed no lights and none of those new students Coren had thought were keeping Titus busy. Hekla eyed the schedule stuck above the door handle. He should’ve been open right now.
Hekla looked over her shoulder at the flashing lights and the crowd. Maybe when the dragon had started all the chaos going on currently over there, Titus had locked up and left.
Checking to be sure no one was paying her any attention, she took her lock picking tools from her sling purse. Not even Coren knew that Hekla had once been a petty thief. It wasn’t something she was proud of. It had been a way for her to get spare change and a snack once in a while as a teen. Things at home had been…not fabulous. Her cold older brother had been the same then as he was now—in and out of town without a word to Hekla. She never got anything out of him, and she preferred to ignore the fact that he existed. Her dad had been drunk every minute he hadn’t been at the factory, and her mom had hardly been home. Weeks would go by when neither one of her parents remembered to get groceries, so Hekla had been hungry. A lot.
With the length of metal inside the lock and a good bump, the tumblers turned, and Hekla was inside. The air was stale, like Titus hadn’t been here in ages to spray his favorite brand of Febreze. And it was too quiet. Stacks of targets lined the wall leading into Titus’s office. She flipped on the light to see his laptop there. Still open.
“I do not like this.”
Closing the laptop, she peered around the ancient printer and the highlighted list of current students where Titus marked who had paid for what and when. Normally when he visited the bakery to demolish a tray of Napoleons or cinnamon scones, he had this list on his clipboard. Would he have left work without his laptop and the student sheet too? It was weird. No doubt.
She pulled her phone out to text him again, worry creeping over her shoulders to put clinging hands around her throat. The screen flashed Low Battery.
Answer me right now, dude, she texted. Or I’m calling the police.
Three dots appeared.
“Oh, thank everything.”
The dots just kept blinking. Hekla’s thumbs flew over the phone.
Answer me right the hell now. I’m damn serious.
Stop worrying, gorgeous. You should go home and take a long, hot bath and relax. And by relax, I mean, relax.
Ew. “Titus, what is your story? That’s creepy, man.” Her phone gave up warning her about its low battery and shut down. “Damn it.”
She slid her phone back into her purse beside her lock picking tools and left the office. Light spilled onto the mats and turned the hanging punching bags into dark forms like hulking men. Swallowing, Hekla hurried out of the building and turned the lock before shutting the door.
When she returned to the back of the bakery, she climbed into her Volvo and plugged her phone into the dash charger.
“It’s that Suzy chick making him act weird, I bet.” she said to the car as she started toward the bank to make a deposit. “I don’t trust anyone that gives up sugar.”
But Titus hadn’t dated Suzy in a while, so was she really to blame for that weird text and Titus’s distant behavior?
At the bank’s drive through, Hekla put her window down and tucked the money from the bakery’s register and the week’s deposit slip into the tube. “Thanks!” she said to the teller.
If Titus didn’t text again normally by tonight, she was going on a full search. Dragon or no dragon.
4 Coren
A strange fog crept into the streets as we made our way toward Pinkerton Park so Lucus could get info from the many trees there. The silvery plumes of mist settled into storm drains, draped along the eaves of Civil War era houses, and turned everyone’s cute, front porch jack o’lanterns into creeptastic décor that reminded me of the nobles at Arleigh’s unseelie court.
Taking the back way to Pinkerton Park—because of the damage the demon dragon had done to the square—gave me a little time to think. Lucus was quiet behind me, his distress humming almost as loudly as the Yew Bow tucked between us had at Arleigh’s feast.
When searching for Baccio and Kaippa, I’d found the Mage Duke’s spell book right where I’d left it in the casting chamber. Since then, I’d pored over the recipes—I’d decided that was what spells were to me and I was just going to keep them that way in my head—in every spare moment. I’d learned how to make my voice carry in odd ways, figured out lift, and worked it like a champ with Nora’s help before she’d left. And I’d developed the ability to call up lightning, which I could hold in my palm and chuck at people as needed. I’d tried to use the Yew Bow to shoot arrows made of that bizarre amethyst-colored lightning we mages wielded, but so far, I hadn’t been able to make it work. The lightning bounced away from the Bow and never took on the form of an arrow. I mean, who knew if the Yew Bow even really worked that way? All we had to go on was the legend that Nora had recited back in the unseelie fae kingdom.
I remembered it more clearly than almost any memory, the way her voice had undulated like the legend was
