“Mom, where’s your inhaler?”

She couldn’t stop coughing long enough to answer me, so I patted the pockets of her bathrobe, but all I found was tissues and Mentholatum. I’d had the inhaler in the house. I’d taken it out of her hand. What did I do with it? I couldn’t remember. Did I give it back to her? Did I lay it down somewhere? That was an amateur move. I knew not to set anything down in her house.

I crossed the lawn and, before Officer Toby could sneer at me, I said, “You need to find her inhaler. How much stuff have they taken out of the front room? Her side table, have they moved that?”

“Do I look like I know? I’ve been standing out here.”

“Then I need to talk to somebody who does know. It’s an asthma inhaler. Do you—”

Mom stopped coughing. Just stopped. I turned to look at her, and even from that far away, I could tell something was wrong. Her face was bright red and her mouth was open, but no sound was coming out.

“You need to call an ambulance,” I said.

“What’s the—”

“Call for an ambulance. Right now!” I pulled his radio off his shoulder and put it in his hand. Then I ran back across the yard. When I got to Mom, she had her hand over her heart.

“I can’t breathe,” she said. “I can’t breathe.”

CHAPTER 14

Gentry

   ’Twas as tho my heart lay upon the table aside my bed, for I woke an instant ere my phone buzzed.

If you’re not sleeping, I need a favor, was Lady Zhorzha’s message.

I answered I am awake, my lady, and a moment after, she called me.

“I’m sorry if I woke you up,” she said. “I just—my mother had a—I don’t know. Maybe a heart attack. They’re taking her to the hospital, but the police impounded my car.”

“Shall I fetch thee?”

“If you don’t mind, yeah, that would be great.”

“Gladly,” I said. I had bathed ere I lay down to sleep, so I rose, dressed, and went straightaway to the dragon’s lair. There, a great many of the sheriff’s men gathered all ’round the dragon’s hoard that they had heaped up under the open sky. I was hard struck to see it and confounded, for what hoped they to gain of such a thing?

Near hand upon the road stood the ambulance, and beyond weren the knaves and scoundrels that came upon the first day. They had come again to inquire and stare.

In the midst of it all, the lady dragon lay upon a cart, and a physician spake sharply and pressed upon her side. My lady was there, and I think much wroth with the sheriff’s men, most especially the one called Mansur.

His deputies weren armed like soldiers, and he commanded that they should clear the knaves that the physician might take the lady dragon to the hospital. I joined them, for there was one qued who would make an image of the lady dragon as she was put into the ambulance.

I pushed him hence, but a deputy laid his hand upon my arm and, tho it me liked not, I retreated not.

“I come for Lady Zhorzha Trego. She called for me.”

“Jesus Christ! Will you let him through?” my lady called to the deputies. To Mansur, she said, “I told you she wasn’t well. This is your fault.”

“Miss Trego. I need you to calm down and—”

“Do not tell me to calm down. Whatever happens to her, it’s on you.”

“All I’m asking you to do is come inside for a few minutes and have a calm discussion with me,” Mansur said.

“To hell with you.” She turned to me, and the heat of her gaze fell full upon me. “Gentry, will you give me a ride over to Wesley?”

“My lady, I stand ready.” I beckoned her accompany me, for the ambulance prepared to depart.

“Please, Miss Trego,” Mansur said. “If we go in and talk right now, I’ll give you a police escort to the hospital as soon as we’re done.”

“You could give me a police escort right now, but instead you’re playing this game.”

“Miss Trego. I do not want to take you down to the police station to have this conversation. I would really rather—”

“Are you threatening to arrest me, you asshole?”

My lady raised her hand and I feared she meant to strike him. Hot dread filled my breast, and I knew not what to do. I laid my hands upon my neck, but found no relief.

“Thou art all that stands between them,” the Witch said.

“Better a shield than a sword,” said the black knight.

I stepped between Lady Zhorzha and Mansur.

“My lady,” I said. “Mayhap ’tis better to cede to him.”

“You should listen to your friend,” Mansur said.

“Fine. Fucking fine. Let’s go in and talk.”

My lady spake in a great dragon voice, all damped smoke and fury, and I feared for her. She wore her anger like a cloak of fire that burned none but herself.

CHAPTER 15

Zee

   The cops had emptied out almost the whole front room. Only a few pieces of furniture were left: a big bookcase; one of those particleboard pantries, which had disintegrated when they tried to move it; and, in Mom’s “craft corner,” there was a dining room table I didn’t remember ever eating at. It had a sag in the middle like a swaybacked horse, from all those years of being piled high with stuff.

“Please, sit down, Miss Trego,” Mansur said. “I don’t want to keep you any longer than necessary. I know you’re worried about your mother.”

There was a rug under the dining room table, but I couldn’t tell what color it was, because it had twenty years of dirt worked into it. I was embarrassed. Not for me, but for Mom, having people come in and see her house like that. When I was a kid, she’d always insisted that the house was cluttered, but clean. Even when I was a kid, I knew that was wishful thinking. You can’t keep a house clean when you can’t actually get to the floor. Or the walls. Or the furniture.

The problem wasn’t that I hadn’t imagined Mom’s house emptied out like that, but that I’d always imagined LaReigne would be there with me, cleaning it out, after Mom died. Now everything was turned upside down, and maybe LaReigne was dead.

Mansur pulled out a chair for me and, after I sat down, he and Smith sat down across from me. Smith had a file folder that he laid on the table between us. Close enough that I could have reached for it, if I wanted to. I didn’t.