The waitress cleared her throat. "It's all yours. And it's twenny-three bucks if you don't finish it in two hours. Good luck."
Good luck. Piffle. What I needed was cold, hard logic. What I needed was to wake up and throw some cold water on my face.
What I needed was a giant pile of cold milk processed with enough sugar to ruin my pancreas in one sitting. I grabbed my spoon and dug right in. The door chimed, but I was busy.
"Dragons, are we?"
I smacked spoon and all over the notebook, fighting to close it. Eskal loomed over at me with not one, but three other men at his back this time. They surrounded the booth, none of them giving me a way to get out. This was the sort of stuff that showed up on those Lifetime movies right before everything went to hell. "You're more of an annoyance than anything."
For once, he wasn't wearing sunglasses. And his eyes looked perfectly human, for all they were the color of lava. Some small part of me relaxed; I was just going crazy. That was fine. There was medication out there for that. But I couldn't get rid of dragons with a little pill that put me back on the right track.
Better yet, maybe I'd just caught his gaze at an odd angle. Right? Right!
"You should leave her alone," said one with a blue mohawk whose spines nearly reached the ceiling. "We're here for Blitzers, not to harass her."
"But I so enjoy watching her jump when we sneak up on her," Eskal said, visibly amused.
The expression looked weird on him; as if the only smile he should be able to accomplish was a snarky, sneering one. He just didn't seem to have the temperament to be what anyone would call nice.
Iyadre cocked his head at me. "You must live nearby. There were no cars in the parking lot."
"I'm/She's staying at the bed and breakfast," Eskal and I said together.
My heart jumped into my throat and the ice cream, the notebook, none of it mattered anymore. I'd been followed, or worse, had Eskal been that thing I'd seen in the sky last night? I'd come back and pay the lady for the sundae. That much cash would hurt over time, especially for some dumb dessert, but I had to get out of there.
I pushed myself to my feet and dove out between them, running for the door and completely forgetting my umbrella. I dashed into the rain, droplets stinging my face as my sneakers splashed along the sidewalk. Behind me, I heard the door chime again in the distance.
Then four sets of feet splashed along behind me.
I was too far from my bed and breakfast to make it to the door before they caught me. As I ran, I tried to find somewhere I could dash into. Why had I left the safety of the ice cream shop? At least the waitress could have called 911 if Eskal and his men had decided to try to shake me down or something.
God, were the dragon eggs really worth it? The opals? No, no whatever they were. It wasn't worth dying for. My foot hit a slick grate and down I went in a heap, ice exploding across the sidewalk as I landed. The magic left my hands feeling like pins and needles had taken root; as if I'd been sleeping on them wrong for the past two days. I tried to haul myself back up again, but Iyadre grabbed me by the arms.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my last defense. My bottle of bear spray would probably fuck me up, too, but it was better than laying down and dying for them. I ripped off the cap and hit the button.
Nothing happened.
"Here," said Iyadre.
He snatched the bottle from me and screwed the top down tighter. There was a satisfying popping noise as the canister pierced internally. I drove my elbow into Nariti and reached for the bear spray once again.
But I was caught off-guard when Iyadre tossed it to me with a shrug. I snatched it, held it, and stared at the four tall, admittedly gorgeous men surrounding me; though Iyadre was rubbing his side. "What do you want? I already told you, Eskal. I'm not what you think I am. I'm nothing. I'm nobody. I'm just a paleontologist."
"Is that why there's ice on the ground when it's 75 degrees outside?" he asked, then he considered the spray. "We find ghost peppers to be comforting, my little witch. That will be nothing more than a hot shower to us."
He wasn't even trying to hide it from me. Wasn't that against their rules? I swore I remembered some kind of law or something that prevented supernatural creatures from harassing people like me, especially in action as their true selves. It was a secrecy pact of some kind that was bound with normal people using witchcraft and I-
I shook the thoughts away as hard as I could. I wasn't going to end up like Mom. I wasn't going to go down that path again and start pretending that fairies were lurking just around the corner. The secrecy pact was the excuse why we didn't see unicorns hurtling down the highway beside us when we were driving. It was the excuse when a spell didn't come together or when you saw a weird shadow on the moon at night.
Everything in that world proved itself because it said it did. It was flawed, wrong, impossible. I rubbed my temples and slowly lowered the bear spray. There was no reason to use it if it wouldn't work. More than likely, I'd end up with a face full of it and choking. I didn't want to be incapacitated around these freaks.
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