Chapter Seven
Frank
Frank spent the entire drive to Farthingtowne chiding himself. He’d made the drive so many times he could drive without thinking, which allowed him space to think of all the ways Violet had him in knots. He was more than annoyed for letting himself get so wrapped up in Violet that he forgot to check on his home last week than he was that he was behind.
Since he was visiting at the last minute, he didn’t have time to visit his parents who refused to move out of their home in Farthingtowne. He didn’t blame them, there was something comforting about the town. He was born and raised there. He knew all his neighbors, and since it was more rural, there was plenty of space for dragons to fly around unnoticed.
Especially since visitors were heavily scrutinized before being allowed entry. It would be a cold day in hell before dragons were run out of Farthingtowne. Now a week behind schedule, he pulled into his second home on the outskirts of town, sure he would have even more work to do.
It was unfortunate, but the house in the woods needed to be looked after, even when other, more exciting things were happening in town. He wasn’t the only dragon who kept another home out here. In fact, some dragons lived there permanently, but none whp were close to Frank. He tried to come out once a month on his own.
Frank wasn’t about to abandon the work, even though he’d rather have spent the day getting to know Violet more, so he sucked it up and went up to do the maintenance. It wasn’t much: make sure the fridge was stocked but not with stuff that would spoil quickly, make sure the grass was mowed, and check the grounds for anything unusual. After a particularly hard storm or snow, he’d had to repair a broken hinge or double up the sand in the basement in case of flooding. It wasn’t anything too excessive, and afterward, he’d go flying, since the woods were so open and he was much further from the city.
He usually welcomed the excuse to do some flying, but now it just seemed like one more thing to pull him away from Violet. He didn’t want the primitive side to take over, but his back began to ache.
“Fine,” he muttered to himself and shifted to do the flyover. At least that would tell him if he needed to do any major landscaping. Even out here, where people were friendly, and dragons roamed, it was important to go invisible for the flying, and he wasn’t so mixed up that he forgot that one crucial step. You never knew what someone in an airplane could see. In the daytime, Frank learned, there was more to see than one might think.
The first half of the flyover was fine, but as he got closer to the north edge of his property, a sense of unease began to creep over him. Frank always trusted his instincts. His dragon growled, and he had the distinct feeling he was being watched.
He centered his magic and extended his sense, just a little, far enough out to see if there was anything out there. He would sense any other sentient being. He was expecting something along the lines of wildlife or a dragon hiding to see what he would do, but that was his best guess.
What he hadn’t expected was a human, well disguised in his forest, with what seemed like a sniper rifle hiding in a tree just barely off Frank’s property. No. That was not what he had expected at all, and the gall of that made his dragon furious.
Frank fought to think logically. Most likely, the gun wasn’t for him. If it had been, the human would have used it already on him or anyone of his neighbors with wings. It was probably a just in case scenario, but still, the fact was that he was being watched. Who was surveilling him and why?
He circled closer but wasn’t willing to get too close. For what felt like the millionth time, he wished he could read thoughts, not just find people. This felt like an extreme enough case that the usual protocols could be relaxed.
Frank circled back around to where he left his car, shifted back, and put on his clothes. He wouldn’t be flying this trip. He walked around to the back of the house and worked methodically, regulating everything in his body from his breathing to his movements, being certain not to look to the right where the peeping Tom lay in wait.
When he was finally done, he stood, brushed off his hands, and went back to the house, methodically thinking through how he walked. Was he walking like a human would? He climbed into the car, not stopping until he was at the nearest grocery store. He didn’t like the idea of leaving Tom behind on his property. Well, technically, he was right outside of his property with a gun and binoculars. Still.
Frank didn’t have much in his house, but he needed to buy more freezer meals. He wasn’t so good at remembering to clear out the perishables, but a dragon still had to eat, after all. He didn’t visit the place every week, just often enough to keep the house and grounds tidy and escape the craziness of the city, but when he did, he didn’t want to be bothered with cooking.
And the town would be a good place to recover from the rage. Being surrounded by dragons, or at least people who were inclined to be friendly, was the fastest way to make his dragon calm down. He’d go and chat with the store clerk, and get advice from the butcher - who always tried to get him to buy steak, even though he never had. They’d make him feel better.
He bought his usual half-dozen frozen meals, bottles of water, and half a pound of cheese. It was the assorted pack since this store didn’t carry his beloved Stilton, he didn't have a preference aside from that. There was nothing too strong, just the local variety, but it would take him the rest of the way from stressed to relaxed.
Frank couldn't help noticing one guy seemed to always be behind him and just out of view no matter where Frank pushed his cart. It was driving him crazy. He wasn’t sure if he was being paranoid or if his senses were just flashing that many warnings. He pushed his cart around to the fresh meat section.
He smiled at Tony the butcher, but Tony wasn’t in the mood to talk it seemed. He didn’t even mention they had anything new in. That was Frank’s first clue that something was wrong.
His second was that Nora, the usual cashier, wasn’t at her place behind the counter. There was a new person, a man who appeared to be about 25 years old. He was chatting with another stranger, though he never took his eyes off Frank. Frank circled back from the dairy aisle to Tony in the meat section. “Is Nora sick today?”
“Vacation, apparently. She’ll be back next week. This kid’s been filling in, but he’s not very good. His attention seems to always be on something else, if you know what I mean,” Tony muttered under his breath. “You want steak for once?”
“Yeah, give me a couple of decent ones.” Tony was fire-blooded and gave Frank updates when he came to buy cheese. Tony was also just a really decent guy, inclined to giving fatherly advice to the younger dragons. He had no advice today and handed over the steaks without saying anything else. Frank shook his head at the world and went to check out.
The kid was there, but alone now, flipping through a magazine. When he saw Frank, he smiled so wide Frank could see almost all his teeth. It wasn’t pleasant. “Good afternoon, Frank.”
Frank wasn't sure if he was impressed or disgusted by the man’s familiarity. On the one hand, he’d done his homework, and on the other hand, it wasn’t polite to mention it.
“You know my name but I don't know yours,” he said putting his things on the conveyor belt. The other cash register wasn't open.
“Charlie,” he said in such a way Frank was sure that wasn’t his real name. Charlie, the con man.
“How’s your day going, Frank?” He kept saying Frank’s name like they were friends.
“As good as expected,” he said.
“Well, that’s too bad. My day has been great. It seems like everything is going well.”
“Really?” Frank said taking his bags from the belt, ready to be done with the entire encounter.
“Yeah, man. Everything is looking up for me. You never know what’ll happen if you just have a little patience. You know? Just have to sit around and wait,” he said, leaning close while Frank looked through his wallet for cash. There was no way he was going to swipe his card and punch in his pin in front of this deranged man.
“I hear that,” Frank said to not appear rude.
“All you have to do is look up, Frank. You never know what’ll happen when you do that,” he said with another creepy smile. Frank paid and waited for the older machine to print out his receipt before leaving.
Once Frank extricated himself from Charlie’s conversation, all he wanted to do was go home, cook a quick meal, and relax for an hour or two before going back to the city. His emotions had been all over the place, and he was wrung out.
The man who’d been talking to “Charlie” was lurking by the door, and as Frank stepped outside, he fell into step and began talking cheerfully. He was a balding white man with shifty eyes.
“Well, hello, sir, it’s good to meet you, my name’s Mr. Gibson. I was hoping to take a minute of your time. Sir, did you know that there may be actual dragons walking among us? I was hoping to get your reaction on the idea of dragons disguising themselves as humans and infiltrating human towns and institutions. The evidence seems to point to dragons appearing as ordinary people, why, even people like yourself and young Charlie in the store back there.”
It took everything Frank had not to grow,l “That con-artist is NOT a dragon” at the man. He smiled tightly, trying not to show too many teeth, and tried to look as though he thought this Mr. Gibson was insane. As a matter of fact, he did think that this man was insane, but not for the reasons he was pretending.
“Why do you say that?” he asked, imbuing his words with doubt.
“Why, just the other day a colleague of mine saw an actual dragon flying around. He wasn’t able to find a dragon on the ground, which is how we discovered that they disguise themselves as humans. We’ve learned a lot, and we’re interviewing the residents of Farthingtowne this week, to try and figure out how widespread the situation it. Something has to be don,e you know? Who could feel safe, knowing that monsters walk among us?” It seemed like this man was taking up the entire sidewalk, and all the oxygen in the area.
Frank felt a strong need to take a shower. A very hot shower. “Mister, I don’t think I can help you. I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in my life.” He knew that they hadn’t “interviewed” many residents yet since Tony would have told him.
Still, the insinuation that they would was dangerous and made his blood pressure rise. They didn’t need those kinds of problems in Farthingtowne.
Frank climbed into the car and turned toward Arcadia instead of back to his house. He didn’t feel like dealing with that anymore. He was shaken up by the entire thing. He had never encountered someone who seemed to know so much about dragons and seemed to wish them harm. He knew they were out there, but so far, they’d seemed to be confined to weirdos on the internet, not actual people in real life.
He tried to remember if he’d locked his house (he always did, even when he was doing a flyover) and whether he’d left the stove on or anything. He decided that he was just trying to distract himself from thinking about Mr. Gibson, and weird “Charlie”, and even Tony. The only other thing he wanted to think about was Violet, and that seemed like a bad idea. No sense in dragging her into this. He grabbed his phone intending to call one of his friends to calm down, but his hand dialed Violet instead.
“Hey, you,” she said with so much joy in her voice Frank debated hanging up. She didn’t need any of his crazy in her life.
He switched the phone to Bluetooth. “Hey,” he said rubbing one hand through his hair while the other gripped the steering wheel.
“How are you?”
“Fine,” he said struggling to sound normal.
“Are you all right?” she asked, her empathy making his throat tight. He wanted to tell her everything.
“I’m okay. A little upset about something that happened just now, but it’s alright. How was your day?” he said.
“What? Frank, I hope you know you can talk to me about anything. Right?”
“I know,” Frank said, knowing he was tipping around the obvious open-door invitation to talk. “So, tell me about your day.”
Violet sighed. “It was all right.”
He managed to get her to talk entirely about herself without allowing her to deflect the conversation back to himself. The entire conversation was awkward and stilted. Violet was tense and monosyllabic, and Frank was talking around the actual issue, so he knew he sounded like a teenager who’d been caught sneaking in after curfew.
The pressure to keep everything bottled up was getting to him so he made an excuse to hang up as soon as he could, even though her voice made him feel better. She deserved someone who could be honest with her, and Frank knew that wasn’t him.