All the more reason to throw the dragons on the fire and run away, but how could I do that? They were entitled to have their kids no matter what the museum thought about it. They were entitled to their siblings. It wasn't like I was helping someone under child services investigation get their kid back; I was trying to help a fairly rare species continue to survive.
Though I hesitated on blaming the museum fully, we often came into the possession of precious items. Rarely were living people attached, but I certainly had mixed feelings on our ownership when they were. For instance, we'd done a gorgeous display of Cherokee artifacts to help educate the public. Yet, the tribe had been less than pleased. They'd recognized a piece of clothing as belonging to one of their artists that was still alive. When the artist had requested her work be returned to her, it had turned into a legal battle.
And I'd been glad when we lost it.
Curation was a tricky subject, but this was as black and white as night and day. The dragons deserved the eggs.
Convincing Nicole that they were eggs in the first place was going to be... tricky.
"If I told you something insane, would you trust me?" I asked.
She sighed on the other end of the line. "You already have been. Try me. What can be worse than 'Nah, it was my doppelganger.'?"
"They're dragon eggs. The guys who were with me are dragons. And last night, we tried to hatch them. Nicole, I have to help these people. I might be the only one who can help these people in the tri-state area. I don't know how many other people are bonafied wi-"
"You know, we have free therapy, too."
It was like an arrow in the heart. Worse, a month ago I would have said the same thing in her shoes. I tightened my grip on the receiver. "Please, Nicole, you don't understand."
"I understand plenty. Some hot guys waltz in and you don't want to deal with your buddy's boyfriend blues. So, you run off with them and they decide they're above the law. They're using you, Olly. And I'm not going to sit around and wait for you to realize it. Call me when you're out and sane. There's no such things as dragons."
The line went dead and I sighed. I offered the receiver back to the officer, who only shook her head at me. "Dragons?"
"Yeah. From outer space. They're gonna infest the planet," I told her, deadpanning for all I was worth.
She shook her head. "Saw something weird in the sky a few days back. Looked big enough to be a dragon but the local news said it was the military doing some kind of night operation."
"It was a dragon," I told her, too tired to be anything but blunt. How did people in noir-style novels live with no sleep?
The cop left, still shaking her head, and I hunkered back down on the bench and put my face in my hands. I wanted to go home. I wanted to go home and lay down and have my mom make a giant pot of chicken stew, made fresh from a chicken killed from the yard.
I wanted to go play with the whelp I'd accidentally hatched. I wanted to do research to help the dragons hatch the rest of the nest, despite the fact that they were the reason for my current situation. Maybe, if I finished up the job I'd been hired to do, the rest of this would just slide away and I could have a quiet life again.
Most of all, I wanted to see Eskal deck that cop again. Nariti hadn't done too bad of a job, either. I hadn't really thought he'd had it in him, but he'd taken down two by himself. Eskal had needed five guys to hold him down, Nariti had needed four. The cops had needed to call for back up.
I'd been a good girl and ducked when they shoved my head in the car, just like they'd told me to do. There wasn't a lot to be gained by fighting cops, but watching someone else do it was amazing.
Not that it'd gotten me out of jail, and it seemed like the museum had turned on me. I kicked my feet as I sat there, trying to figure out a way to get out before I turned into a mushroom.
But nothing seemed very likely to work.
Something off in the distance crunched, loud enough that I was pretty certain someone had just had an accident outside. A car wreck is painfully loud, even if you're inside when it happens. People just aren't used to that kind of noise anymore.
I knew I was wrong when the wall next to me punched inward. I coughed from the dust and scampered to the other side of the room, staring at a dragon's eye peering at me curiously through a hole that was nearly large enough for me to squirm through.
"Stand back," Vadriq ordered from somewhere outside.
I plastered myself against the other side of the tiny cell, covering my eyes. This was going to get me into so much more trouble, but could you really tell a dragon no? They were going to do what they wanted and they were the ones who had the money to cover the problems associated with it.
Another smack happened and the whole damned wall fell in, showering me with dust and bits of stone. I stepped out through the hole as the microscopic debris rained down, frowning up at four very large dragons in
