I wrinkled my nose at him. "Of course I am. She's my friend. You don't watch your friend fuck unless you're in that kind of a relationship with them."
And without giving him a chance to respond, I led us to the elevators and stared at them. Would the ding give us away? Would we be better off in the stairwells? Or would there be even more cameras to take down if we went that way? I rubbed my tired, aching neck and looked back at the dragons. Eskal gave me a glance and pressed the up button on the panel.
Fine. That was the way he wanted to do it? All the better that he chose it. I couldn't be held responsible for it if it all went tits up, then, I guessed.
The elevator slid down the shaft and opened its doors invitingly. I followed them inside and smacked both the third floor and the door close button with my palm all at once. There was, blessedly, no ding. All that happened was that the doors swung shut and lifted us the three stories at an alarmingly quick rate.
"Never fails," I sighed. "Every time I come home from a dig; I forget how fast this thing goes."
The dragons didn't answer me. I assumed they were used to some ridiculous amount of g-forces if they were the sorts of dragons who could fly. Were there other types? How much of the supernatural world had I forgotten?
Questions everywhere and I felt as though I just kept finding more. I wanted answers, but how was I going to dig them up?
We arrived on the third floor and there they were.
Five crates, all of them still packed from the dig site. I walked to them and ran my hand over the top of the black one I'd been holding when all of this had started. It felt warm beneath my fingers as if the wood were keeping the heat in from that scorching day.
"If we each carry one, and someone picks a second, we can get them out of here all at once," I suggested.
Nariti nodded at the bay windows on the far side of the floor. "Do those open? It may be easier for one of us to go out, shapeshift, and carry the entire load down at once."
"No, they're permanent windows. Insurance was too much if we allowed them to be reeled open. You know, suicide divers and stuff like that," I explained. "Though I guess you could cut one of them if you had to? They aren't any thicker than they have to be to meet building codes."
"Then carry it is," Eskal said, opening one of the crates.
He pulled out a green egg and cradled it in in his arms. Bit by bit, we opened each crate and placed the eggs together in a group, the way that they had been before the museum had gathered them. Even in the low light, I had an appreciation for just how pretty they were. No wonder most of my co-workers through they were some kind of gemstone. I'd been the one to suggest that they were opals, hoping that they actually were and that I was losing my mind.
But I hadn't been. I was surrounded by dragons in the shape of men, holding their future in my hands. I lifted the black egg and held it to my chest. I wasn't a soft-hearted type, but it was hard to be cold to them when there were tiny lives inside of those shells.
Iyadre was left carrying two while the rest of us got one each. Everything was going so smoothly that relief washed over me like a rainstorm. "I didn't really want to do this, but at least it's straight-forward and it's going well."
"You're going to jinx us," Iyadre whispered, shaking his head as we walked back downstairs.
I flashed him a grin; he was easy to talk to, and continued on my way. The eggs were heavy, but not so much that they left me huffing. When you dug in the dirt all day, you got some pretty serious muscles pretty fast. People didn't really understand how rough the work really was.
Ditch diggers, for example, were another one who spent all day moving soil. The stuff is heavy, no matter whether it's wet or dry. It's hard. It's surprisingly sharp. I had so many scars all up and down my arms from slipping or slicing myself on a random rock or pointy part of dirt that I hadn't noticed, I looked like a road map.
And because I was all caught up in myself, I didn't see the flashlights coming our way until it was too late. Eskal threw his arm across my chest to stop me from walking directly into the security guard. I stared at him.
He stared at us.
Then everything went to hell. He screamed and pulled out his radio. The four of us ran back up the stairs, me drawing up the rear as they headed for the elevator. We couldn't get down from the top floor any other way and everything was fucked. We were so fucked. Panic flooded me as we ran and I tried to control it.
The museum would press charges. We would be apprehended. We were going to fucking jail for this.
Nariti hammered the down button, his egg resting on the ground. The stairs echoed with steps behind us, at least a few peoples' worth from what I could guess. Maybe there were already cops on the property; and if that was true, we were triple-fucked.
The elevator swept open to three more security guards and I screamed, backing away from them. The dragons put themselves between me and the security team until I saw Eskal's head turn and look at the mirrored bay windows across the room.
"At the count
