Somewhere between the bread aisle and the canned vegetables aisle, Megan Reiser finally found the dragon she’d been looking for.

“Bingo,” she whispered, doing her best to look casual as she pushed an enormous shopping cart down the aisle of the giant superstore. She had loaded the cart with a variety of food, clothing, and household items, none of which she actually intended to purchase. But she hadn’t wanted to look suspicious as she wandered the store for the last three hours, so she’d tried to act like just another shopper, interested in the endless sales the superstore offered.

She’d been tempted to give up on her quest an hour ago, feeling foolish and like her plan to track down this dragon had been a giant waste of time. But it had been months since she’d managed a confirmed dragon sighting, leaving her desperate enough to wait here all day if she had to. She needed the money that a dragon sighting would bring, and she knew that if there was a dragon shifter in this town, he would eventually have to come grocery shopping at the superstore. This store was the only place in this small Texas town that sold groceries, and dragons were always hungry. Megan had told herself not to expect success on the first day, but she’d been hoping for a quick sighting, anyway.

Now, she could hardly believe her eyes. All of the research she’d been doing for the last few months had led her to believe that a dragon shifter must live in this town, but this shifter had been the hardest one to find of all the seven dragons that Megan had tracked down.

“Whoever you are,” she whispered under her breath, “You definitely did not want to be discovered. Too bad. I’ve got you now.”

She pushed her cart closer to the dragon, feigning an intense interest in a sale on canned corn. Megan had become an expert on this part of the game. She could sneak within a few feet of a dragon shifter, take his picture, and be gone before he started to suspect that he was being stalked. That’s probably why the Shifter Search Specialists, better known as the S.S.S., considered her the top dragon bounty hunter in the country. No one else had managed to find more dragons than her. This dragon had nearly beaten her, though. When he’d gone into hiding, he’d done a damn good job of leaving a very confusing trail behind him. He’d clearly wanted to give anyone who followed him the slip, and he’d almost managed to outsmart even Megan.

Almost.

She’d been patient and persistent, and now she’d found him. From here, things would be easy. She’d start by getting a picture of him to confirm to the S.S.S. that she’d sighted a dragon. This would earn her a hefty paycheck. Then, over the next few weeks, she would gather all of the information the S.S.S. requested. Usually, they asked for the dragon’s schedule—where he lived, where he liked to shop, whether he had any hobbies that regularly took him outside of his home, and where and when he worked, if he did, in fact, work. Some of the dragon shifters were independently wealthy, which allowed them to keep to themselves even more than usual. Once Megan had given the S.S.S. enough information, they would reward her with another hefty payday and tell her they’d take it from there. Megan never knew exactly what they meant by that, and she didn’t want to know. The S.S.S. didn’t like to be asked questions, and they would quickly stop working with any bounty hunter who got too nosey. Megan liked having money in her bank account, so she kept her mouth shut and her head down, and did her work without allowing herself to wonder who exactly the S.S.S. was and why they were so interested in dragon shifters.

Megan glanced up and gave the dragon shifter a friendly smile as he walked past her, his cart piled high with food. From the looks of his cart, he tried to pack all of his grocery shopping into a weekly trip. Maybe a biweekly trip. He was buying a ton of food, even for a dragon. No wonder she’d had a hard time finding him, even once she suspected he did indeed live in this tiny town. There was almost no record of him, or of his being a dragon. But now that she had seen him in person, she had no doubt that he was a dragon.

Megan didn’t use the revealing spell that some of the other wizard bounty hunters used to determine whether a specific person was a dragon. The spell supposedly let you check, with nearly one hundred percent accuracy, whether the person in front of you was a dragon. But Megan thought the spell smacked of dark magic, and she wasn’t willing to go down that road. Even though she was living a somewhat rogue lifestyle, and even though she suspected that the S.S.S. didn’t have the best of motives for tracking down dragons, she drew the line at spells that occupied that gray area between normal magic and dark magic. Megan had seen enough shit during the Great Dark War to know that she would never touch dark magic.

She put her hand in the pocket of her jeans and felt for her magic ring. Her fingers brushed over the stiff metal and firm stone, and she felt a familiar rush of courage. She never wore her magic ring on her hand when she was hunting dragons. That would have been the most rookie mistake in the book, since any dragon who hadn’t been hiding under a rock for the last five years knew that wizards existed, and knew enough to be wary of a strange wizard suddenly appearing in their space. A magic ring would have been a dead giveaway that Megan was a wizard. But even though the ring wasn’t visible, having it in her pocket gave Megan comfort. She knew she could defend herself if she needed to. And she had needed to on several occasions. Bounty hunting could be a dangerous occupation.

But a lucrative one. And Megan was about to have another payday. She didn’t need a revealing spell to know that the man who had just brushed past her in the canned vegetables aisle was a dragon. The telltale signs were all there. He had those swirling, intense eyes that all dragons seemed to have. His were green, the most common color for dragon eyes, although on occasion Megan had seen blue, gray, or even violet-colored dragon eyes. He also had an ever so slight elfish bent to his ear. This was a leftover feature from the days when dragons themselves had been able to do magic. These days, magic no longer ran in the blood of dragons like it did with wizards, but dragon shifter ears still showed that they had once been capable of magic as well. And, of course, the man was tall—abnormally tall. This was a feature of all shifters, not just dragons, although dragon shifters did tend to be on the taller side even for shifters. With all of these features combined, Megan had no doubt that the man who had just walked past her was a dragon. Now, to take his picture without him seeing her. She had to be very careful. If he saw her and suspected she was stalking him, he’d be spooked and disappear from this town almost instantly. If that happened, she might as well give up and start searching for a new dragon altogether. Spooked dragon shifters were impossible to find.

As quietly as possible, Megan pulled her Smartphone out of her purse. She unlocked the screen and began to pretend she was typing out a text, but in reality she was opening the camera app. Taking a deep breath, she glanced at the dragon shifter, who had paused in the aisle to load his cart with several cans of beans. She waited, patiently, continuing to “text,” until he had turned just slightly enough in her direction for most of his face to be visible. Then she pretended to sneeze loudly, and used the crook of her elbow to cover her mouth as she sneezed. She pushed the button on the camera app just as her hand was held up near her face while she covered her fake sneeze with her arm.

It was a move she’d practiced hundreds of times. The “fake sneeze picture shot”. Usually, the person she was taking a picture of barely glanced up at her sneeze. If they did happen to be looking at her, she didn’t look anything like someone who was taking a picture. It was the perfect cover. It wasn’t easy to get a good shot like this, but Megan had practiced so many times that she almost always managed to get a good picture the first time. If she didn’t she could sneeze a few more times without drawing too much attention, passing off her sudden sneezing fit as a reaction to the dusty store shelves or whatever else happened to be around that might be sneeze-inducing.

This time, though, Megan had hit the bull’s-eye on the first try. She looked down at her phone and pretended to go back to texting while inspecting the picture. Bingo. There on her screen, clear as day, the dragon shifter was glancing toward her. His face was three-quarters of the way visible, and one of his elfish ears was in clear view. To the trained eye, this photograph provided clear proof of a dragon sighting.

Megan’s heart leapt as she slipped her phone back into her purse. She would be getting a payday from the S.S.S. very soon, and, more importantly, she had finally found this elusive dragon. She would stalk him home from the store today and learn where he lived. From there, things would be easy. Megan had confidence in herself. She was the best in the business at dragon shifter stalking. She didn’t even know this dragon’s name yet, but within a week she was going to know everything there was to know about him—and he would never even know he’d been followed.

Feeling smug, Megan turned to walk down the aisle in the opposite direction of the dragon. She needed to find a good spot to abandon her cart full of stuff, while making sure she still kept tabs on where the dragon shifter was. She felt bad leaving a stuffed shopping cart for a store employee to deal with, but she’d had no choice but to “shop” in order to keep up her ruse. Once her cart was abandoned, following this dragon would be easier than ever.

Megan allowed a small smile to play on her lips as she turned the corner away from the aisle she’d been in. But that smile froze in place when she felt a strong hand gripping her upper arm.

“What are you doing and who do you work for?” a gruff voice asked her.

Megan whirled her neck around to see who was confronting her, expecting it to be a security guard from the store. She’d been accused of shoplifting before, since she frequently snuck around stores while following dragons. Overzealous store security often mistook her sneaking as proof that she was trying to steal something. Over time, she’d gotten better at not looking suspicious, but maybe she still hadn’t quite mastered that skill.

Reminding herself to remain calm, Megan prepared to defend herself to the security guard, but all her plans and calmness disappeared in an instant when she saw who was holding her. This was no security guard. There, right in front of her face, was a second dragon. His barely elfish ears, tall height, and swirling green eyes left no doubt in her mind. This was a dragon.

But who was he, how had he seen her, and, most importantly, why did he look so angry? Megan had seen a lot of angry shifters in her time as a bounty hunter, but she’d never seen such deep fury in a pair of dragon eyes as she was seeing right now. In an instant, she panicked. She, Megan Reiser, who was known as the bounty hunter with nerves of steel, lost her nerve.

And who could blame her? Dragons didn’t just appear out of nowhere, especially not in the same territory as another dragon. The dragons who were hiding out in human towns were loners who had lost their clans during the war. They weren’t interested in hanging out with other shifters, especially not other dragon shifters. They wanted to stay as far away from that world as they could.

Before she could think about what she was doing, Megan reached into her pocket and slipped her magic ring onto her finger.

“Magicae fragor!” she yelped out. Instantly, a rush of powerful energy shot from her ringed hand and toward the display of salsa on the end of the next aisle. The jars all exploded, sending glass and splotches of red and green salsa everywhere. Nearby customers shrieked and covered their heads, and a baby started crying at the top of its lungs. The worst part, though, was the aftershock of the spell. Megan had cast it so powerfully that several sparks of magical energy shot into the air from the ruined display, like tiny fireworks of pink, green, and purple.

“Oh, shit,” Megan said, when she realized that the magic shooting into the air would be visible from almost anywhere in the store. A moment later, she caught a flash of movement to her left, and she saw the first dragon shifter go sprinting by. No longer blissfully unaware that he was being trailed by a wizard, the dragon shifter ran as fast as he could toward the exit. He was more spooked than Megan had ever seen a shifter in all her time as a bounty hunter, and she knew she’d just lost any chance of getting paid for finding him. He’d be skipping town right away, and she’d never find him again. She was so disappointed that, for a moment, she completely forgot the reason she’d freaked out in the first place: the second dragon shifter. But then he cursed loudly and startled her into remembrance.

“You fool!” he yelled at her. His angry eyes frightened her, and she raised her magic ring, ready to defend herself against him. Her hand trembled. She knew dragons could be dangerous, but she’d never had to face one before. All her training in self-defense seemed woefully inadequate in that moment.

But the dragon did not attack her. Instead, he let go of her hand, and then he, too, took off running.

“Jasper! Jasper, wait!” the second dragon yelled. But the first dragon did not turn around or slow down.

Megan watched them disappear toward the front of the store. “So his name was Jasper,” she said aloud. It didn’t matter now. The S.S.S. wouldn’t be interested in paying her money for a dragon she’d scared off.

She turned her attention back to the ruined display of salsa, where now two security guards were arriving. Several customers were speaking with the guards in excited tones, and pointing in Megan’s direction. With a sigh, Megan raised her magic ring again.

“Magicae invisibilia,” she said. Instantly the world around her became blurred, as though she were underwater. She saw the faces of the security guards and customers registering shock as she instantly disappeared from their view under the cloak of the invisibility spell. With her heart still pounding in her chest from the shock of seeing a second dragon, she turned and headed toward the exit. She knew that by the time she got there, both dragons would be long gone—as would her reputation as the best bounty hunter in the northern hemisphere.

Word traveled fast in magical circles.