Chapter Thirty-One
For a while, none of us said anything. My heart hammered, my hearing still too sharp for comfort. The roads of Boston were mostly empty, traffic low this time of night. Twice, police cars with screaming sirens shot past us, probably on their way to the mansion of Ddraig Goch. Had the dragon found his unconscious security chief yet? Had they located the remnants of the burnt rope, tied on the roof? Had they checked the security feed from the evening, looking for us, only to find it had been deleted in its entirety?
I kept going over the evening in my mind. Did we leave anything behind that would lead them to us? No fingerprints, no security feed, no names. Despite the evening’s mishaps, we’d handled ourselves well.
We had broken into a dragon’s vault, stolen the contents of his safe, and gotten away with it.
I let out a small giggle, the sudden feeling of euphoria blooming in me. Then the giggle morphed into a rolling wave of laughter. Sinead joined me, and we both laughed helplessly, tears clouding my eyes. Just as I was about to calm down, I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw Kane’s face as he gaped at us, aghast, which made me collapse into a new fit of laughter.
“Stop,” Sinead begged amid bursts of laughter. “I’m going to pee myself.”
“I also have to pee,” Isabel said. “I drank a whole thermos of tea.”
This made us start laughing all over again.
Sinead slowed down as we approached a gas station.
“What are you doing?” Kane asked, incredulous.
“We all need to pee,” I said. “And some celebratory ice cream couldn’t hurt.”
“We have a dragon, a vampire, and the police looking for us,” he pointed out. “And we have the dragon scales in the car, which are very incriminating—”
“We. Need. To. Pee,” I explained again. “We’ll only be a second.”
If he argued, the sound of it was muffled as we slammed the car doors. Sinead and Isabel went to the bathroom while I stayed outside, breathing in the smell of gasoline while watching the car, just to make sure Kane didn’t decide he was better off running with the loot. When they came back, Sinead went inside the all-night store to get us some ice cream while I went to the bathroom. The tiny space stank, but I found a reasonably clean stall and peed for what felt like a blissful eternity.
When I came out, Sinead and Isabel were already back in the car. I quickly got in, smiling at Sinead.
“What did you get?” I asked.
“One container of chocolate chip cookie dough, and one peanut butter and fudge.”
“I love you, Sinead.”
“I love you too, sweetie.” She started the car, and steered it back into the sparse night traffic. I turned on the radio, and Katy Perry’s “Chained to the Rhythm” filled the silence. I raised the volume a notch and leaned back, shutting my eyes.
Something rumbled, followed by a patch of static, the radio hissing loudly. I tensed, could almost feel the predatory eyes from above.
“What was that?” Sinead asked.
Katy Perry was singing again, and I wanted to say it was a small earthquake, or distant thunder, but I knew better.
“The dragon,” I said. “It’s hunting for us.”
Another rumble, a roar. Did I imagine it, or did the light outside dim as the dragon’s body blocked the moonlight?
“Can it sense us?” Sinead asked. “Can it feel its scales?”
“I think we’re about to find out,” Kane said.
I could almost feel the oppressive weight of the dragon’s searching gaze. I imagined him above us, watching the tiny car, so easy to incinerate with one breath. Or he could swoop down, pluck us up, fly with the car in its clutches back to his lair, where he would take us apart, limb by limb. Fear thrummed through my chest, and wisps of smoke floated from my palms. I tried to breathe deeply, to calm down, clenching my fists as if that would stop the fires from erupting.
What did the regular citizens of Boston make of it? Did they think it was some sort of plane, flying low above the city? Were people pointing at the sky, at a dark shape far above them, thinking it was some sort of bird? Did some of them suddenly realize there were monsters in the night, that the world was a much darker place than they had originally thought?
And then came another roar, much farther off. The dragon was flying away. He could not sense us, could not find us. I let a victorious smile materialize again. We’ve done it.
Harutaka reached the meeting room of the Hippopotamus Hunting Trips office a few minutes before us. When I walked inside, a huge smile broke across his face. It mirrored my own smile, and I approached him, thinking of shaking his hand, or maybe slapping him on the shoulder. Then Sinead whisked past me and caught Harutaka in a long, squeezing hug.
“You wonderful, magical man,” she said, grinning at him. “You were amazing.”
He gave her an embarrassed smile, and then glanced at the shopping bag in her hands. “Is this it?” he asked, his voice full of awe.
“Yes, Harutaka,” she whispered. “The dragon’s safe had so much more than you’d ever believe.” She lay the bag on the table, and opened it to display the contents. “Not one, but two ice cream containers. One is peanut butter and fudge.”
Harutaka blinked, and I let out a snort of laughter. Kane strode forward, shaking his head in amusement, and drew the leather pouch from his coat pocket. “I have the dragon scales right here.”
He opened the pouch and poured its contents on the table. We all strained forward, looking at the small pile in awe.
“They’re beautiful,” I said softly.
On the smooth wooden table lay five scales. They seemed to be mostly blue, though they caught the light strangely, the color at the edges seeming to move and change constantly. Green, yellow, orange, red. Tear-shaped, each the approximate size of my palm. They glimmered hauntingly, emanating their own ghostly light.
Harutaka picked one up between thumb and forefinger, and raised it to the light. The scale’s light reflected in his eyes, giving them an eerie color.
“What about the box?” Isabel suddenly asked. “Do you have it?”
“Yeah,” I said, and pulled it from my pocket. I hesitated for a moment, then lay it on the table. I turned the key in the lock, and lifted the lid gently. Inside was a white crystal sitting atop a black velvet material. A thin golden chain was latched to it, a necklace, the crystal its pendant. I slid a finger under the necklace and lifted it, plucking the crystal pendant from its velvety home. A strange orange glow seemed to pulse inside the crystal, but I couldn’t decide if it was really inside it, or simply a reflection of the ceiling light.
“Is this the Yliaster crystal?” Kane asked. “Is there a soul inside?” His voice was intense, almost eager.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “As far as I know, the Yliaster crystal is a myth. I’ve never even seen a picture or drawing of one.”
The crystal mesmerized me. I watched it, slowly convincing myself that the light really was within. A warm, pulsing, orange light. I had an urge to clasp the crystal, to touch it to my chest.
Instead I lowered it back to the box, closing the lid and locking it shut. This was Breadknife’s part of the loot.
“It’s ice cream time,” Sinead declared. She opened both containers and retrieved a dozen plastic spoons from the shopping bag, which she scattered on the table. I picked up one, and dug into the peanut butter and fudge container. The world is flawed and full of pain, and the only perfect thing in it is peanut butter and fudge ice cream. I put it in my mouth and closed my eyes, inhaling through my nose, becoming one with the euphoria in my mouth.
After a few minutes of eating, Sinead left the room, and returned with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a stack of plastic cups. She poured half a cup for each of us and toasted to Ddraig Goch.
Ice cream and whiskey blend well.
It’s a special kind of feeling, to come out victorious with a good team. It brings you closer, cements a special kind of connection that’s hard to explain to outsiders. That night, as we sat and drank and ate ice cream, a pile of treasure on the table, my heart filled to the brim. Too often in my life I felt as if I were alone, but now I was part of a unique, wonderful group, and I had to blink away the tears of gratitude that materialized in my eyes.
At some point, when the ice cream was gone, Sinead put on music and, to my amazement, Harutaka jumped atop the table and began to dance. It was a clumsy sort of dancing, full of twisting limbs and ridiculous hops. Sinead, not one to be beaten at partying, joined him on the table and tried to teach him some basic salsa moves, to no apparent success. I just watched them, smiling, feeling content and calm and full of warmth.
Then a chilly breeze brushed my cheek. I glanced aside and saw Kane standing by the window, a cigarette in his hand. He had cranked the window slightly open, letting in the cold night air. He gazed outside, his body still. He took a drag on his cigarette, its tip glowing against the dark cityscape, and breathed a plume of smoke out the window.
“Scrumptious, isn’t it?” Sinead whispered in my ear. She was kneeling on the table, her lips by my ear.
“What?”
“His ass. You were staring at it for the past minute.”
“I was not!” Blood rushed to my face.
“Uh-huh.” She stood back up, and shook her head despairingly at Harutaka’s latest attempt at the basic salsa steps.
I got up and sidled over to Kane. My heart beat fast, and I told myself it was because of the sugar rush from the ice cream.
His eyes had a sad glint in them, as if his mind was somewhere far away. I thought of his tales about his sister, playing her viola. He had the same look now as he’d had then, when he’d told me about her.
“Would you mind giving me a drag of that?” I motioned to his cigarette.
He handed me the cigarette, our fingers brushing. “You said you didn’t smoke.”
“I don’t.” I put the cigarette between my lips, tasting the tobacco, knowing his lips had touched the same cigarette. I took a quick drag and returned it to him, keeping the smoke in my mouth, imagining that I tasted Kane and not just tobacco and smoke. “But I used to. And occasionally I get an urge.” The smoke made my voice heavy, raspy.
“I hope this won’t be the cigarette to make you fall off the wagon.” He smiled at me. “These things can kill you.”
“What do you think?” I gestured at the Boston cityscape. “Beats every other city, doesn’t it?”
“Does it?” He took one last drag of the cigarette and dropped it in his almost empty plastic cup. “I prefer New York.”
“Were you born in New York?”
“Born and raised.”
“And your sister? Is she still there?”
He tensed. “Yes.”
“What happened to her?”
“She’s… in a coma.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. How did it happen?”
His jaw tensed. “That’s not something I want to talk about.”
“With me?”
“With anyone.”
I touched his arm gently. “If you ever change your mind—”
“Thanks, I won’t.”
We stared outside in silence. The city was a myriad of lights—radiating from windows and streetlights, the moon glowing from above. The plethora of lights reflected in the river below, a blurry second city, its skyscrapers pointed downward, the rippling shape of the moon below it.
“My parents died when I was eight,” I said. “In a fire.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You probably think it’s ironic. A girl whose hands regularly burst into flames lost her parents in a fire.”
“I didn’t think that, Lou.”
“I was in school. And a teacher… I don’t even know her name… she came into my classroom and escorted me out. She took me to the principal’s office. It’s probably hard to believe, knowing me now, but I was a good girl back then. I’d never been in the principal’s office before. The principal sat with the woman from social services… I didn’t know it back then, of course. She was a stranger, but the way she looked at me—as if she knew more about me than I knew myself… It chilled my blood. And they told me. That our house burned down, and my parents died.”
Kane offered me his cigarette pack. I shook my head. He seemed about to take one for himself, but then changed his mind, sliding it back into his pocket.
“We had no living relatives, and my parents had no will. Not a lot of money, either. Many years later, I found out they had left me something”—a book, with alchemical recipes. The Tenebris Scientiam—“but back then I thought I had nothing left. You’d think I’d focus on the fact that I’d lost my parents, that they were gone forever, but I distinctly remember that there was a dress I had gotten for Christmas a few months before. And I kept asking about that dress. I was really upset about losing that dress. My mother loved it when I wore that dress.”
I blinked a tear away, the memory as fresh and searing hot in my mind as the day it had happened.
“They put me in foster care. The first couple were fine, I guess, but I was still in shock, didn’t talk to anyone. After a while, they moved me around and I ended up in the second house, where my foster father slapped me the first night for not answering a question he asked.”
Kane’s eyes sparked in anger, and I saw his reflex to lash out at the past, to find that man and make him pay, to shelter that scared, nine-year-old girl.
“After that… well. It wasn’t the worst place I ended up in.” I suddenly didn’t feel like talking anymore.
“That sounds rough.” Now it was his turn to touch my arm, his grip strengthening me.
“I guess it was.” I cleared my throat, trying to banish the past. This was a night for celebrating, after all. I wiped my eyes. “So… what will you do now with your precious dragon scale?”
“I’ll take it back to New York,” he said. “I know someone who might be interested in it.”
“Oh.” I tried to ignore the wave of disappointment. “You’re not staying here?”
“I don’t think so. I have unfinished business in New York.”
“Right.”
“It was a pleasure to work with you, Lou Vitalis.”
I was about to tell him I felt the same when he suddenly bent forward, tilting his head, his lips meeting mine. A small peck and he drew back, looking at me, gauging my reaction. I licked my lips, breathing heavily, and then leaned toward him, pulling him closer. Our lips met again, and my tongue darted, feeling for his.
He tasted of tobacco, and smoke, and man.