“I hope so,” Rick muttered. “If those psycho gate guards don’t find us and kill us first.”
“Now you’re thinking positively,” I told him with a smirk, pinching his cheek. It didn’t have the intended effect, and he just glowered at me instead.
I looked him up and down. Rick’s usually stony, grumbly appearance had been replaced with someone looking haggard and worried. In fairness, an awful lot had happened to him in the past day or so. If I’d been in his shoes, I’d probably be confused and upset, too.
“Hey, we got past them once, we can do it again. Promise.”
That seemed to cheer him up a little bit. At the very least, he dropped the glower and stared out the window instead.
“Maybe some food would cheer you up?” I asked. “I still have those-”
“Not the eclairs again!” Rick spat.
I flinched. “Okay, okay. Got it. We’ll bring up food later, after our business here is concluded.”
Rick shook his head a few times and continued staring out the window, doing his best to avoid eye contact with me, so I let him be.
After several minutes of driving, he finally spoke again. “So where are we going, exactly? You’d mentioned it was south of Vancouver, BC, but not where or why.”
“It’s a little place on the outskirts of Surrey, to be precise,” I said.
The road sign up ahead said we were about twenty-five kilometers from Surrey. Nice. Not too much longer, then.
“And just what are we going to find in this little place in Surrey? Another of your ‘dragon’ friends?”
“Tch. No.”
I’m not sure why, but his derisiveness made me feel a bit more defensive than usual this time. After all that had happened in the past few days - being chased by mythical dogs, seeing the dead come back to life - I thought by now, his opinion on magic and the supernatural would have changed. Guess not.
Oh well, our next stop should change that up real quick.
“This may come as a surprise to you, but there’s a lot more in the world out there than your science and archaeology would have you believe,” I told him, giving him an icy stare.
“Whatever.” Rick rolled his eyes and then looked out the window. “Just drive, I guess.”
The rest of the trip passed by in silence. I thought I heard Rick snore for a second at one point, but the noise was gone as soon as it came. I made a right turn onto a small, one-lane road and finally spotted our destination. It was a humble-looking house with faded blue paint and a white, metallic door that looked to be barely hanging onto the hinges. It had a porch with a swing on it that had seen better days, and one of the steps leading up to the door had half a board missing.
Not much to look at, I supposed, but it was the place.
“Here?” Rick sneered. “We’re going here?” He had his typical haughty expression on his face. “We came all the way to Canada just to visit a ramshackle house in the suburbs? Typical.”
“Yes here,” I fired back. I wanted to punch him, but that wouldn’t do either of us any good, so I bit my lip instead. “I know it doesn’t look like much from the outside, but the owner is a nice lady. And our only real option at finding Mei for the moment.”
Rick folded his arms and looked away. “This is so not worth the money you owe me.”
I shrugged again and opened my door. “You’re welcome to wait in the car if you want.”
Rick’s eyes darted about for a moment, and he threw his hands up in the air. “No, I’ll come with you. I want to see what all the fuss is about.”
I figured it was more he didn’t like the look of the neighborhood. There were other houses on the street, but if anything, they were more rundown than the one I’d pulled up to. It struck me then that Rick probably didn’t hang out in the poorer parts of his hometown - or any town, for that matter - very much. He seemed like the type that grew up in relative luxury.
I had, too, for the record, but I’d been barely scraping by for several decades now, so I was used to the overall dirt and grime of the poorer areas.
As I left the car, my eyes darted to Grax’thor and my katana. I instinctively wanted to grab them, but I shouldn’t need them. Not while I was with her, at least. The mage we were seeing was good people. She was safe. We’d be safe. So I left them in the car and shut and locked the doors, then turned and headed toward the house.
There was a small buzzer next to the large metallic door and I pressed it gently. I could hear a series of nice chimes echo through the house. Nothing happened, so after twenty seconds or so, I pressed the button again.
“No one home?” Rick asked. “Your ‘dragon’ friends abandon you?”
Seriously, he had to get over that one. Not everyone I worked with was a dragon.
“Come in,” a lovely voice said a moment later. “The door is unlocked.”
I gave the handle a turn and the door opened easily enough. “Not so fake now, is she?” I said smugly.
The two of us entered the house with me in the lead. The interior was a little dark, but I spied a light coming from the next room, beckoning us onward. I took great care not to touch anything in the drawing room, telling Rick to do the same and making a big path around the rather ornate, paisley couch that took up half of the space in there.
What greeted us in the next room made me smile. A rather petite female sat at a small circular table in the center of the room. She was dressed from head to toe in a
