“What is it?” Zav gingerly held the cone, the purple ice cream too pale to match his violet eyes, but the thought made me grin anyway.
“Huckleberry Heaven. I got the same thing.” I held up my single scoop. I’d gotten him a double out of some notion that men always ate more. He must have burned a lot of calories flying that massive dragon body over the mountains.
“Mine is larger.”
“Yeah, guys usually prefer that.”
He scrutinized the ice cream, then eyed me over the top of it. “Was that a sexual innuendo?”
“No. We haven’t reached the stage of our relationship where that would be appropriate.” I grinned, stuck my tongue out, and swirled it around the scoop in a gesture that most men definitely would have found sexual.
Zav watched, but I was fairly certain he was more puzzled than turned on. Maybe that elf he’d supposedly had a relationship with—Dob had mentioned it in a chatty moment—hadn’t been into fellatio.
Zav tentatively stuck his tongue out and touched his ice cream. Then made a face.
“It’s too sweet. Like the brown squares you gave me.”
“The lavender chocolate? You actually tried it? I wondered.”
“I tried it.”
“That impressed, huh?” I had found it a little odd too. Not so odd that I hadn’t eaten it. A woman needed chocolate after she was shot and her apartment was ravaged.
“The blood-colored beverage was better.”
“I hope you weren’t disappointed it wasn’t actual blood.”
He hesitated. “I do like the fresh blood of a kill, but it was not entirely unpleasant.”
“You and Sindari have a lot in common.”
“The Zhinevarii are not ignoble creatures. Dragons are, of course, far superior.”
“Of course.” I grinned and licked the ice cream normally. It was sweet, but the tartness of the berries made it good. As did having company.
I was oddly delighted to have Zav sitting across from me. Was I that starved for companionship? Companionship that could take care of himself and I didn’t have to stress over?
A low whistle came from a guy ambling across the patio and looking at me. Judging by the stupid lewd grin on his face, he’d seen me tonguing my ice cream suggestively. Either that, or he was just a dick. Probably both.
“Hey, baby.” He came up to the table, puffing out his chest so I couldn’t miss that he and his pecs spent a lot of time in the gym. “You want to go for a stroll along the lake this evening?”
Zav rose from his seat, exuding power and almost bumping chests with the man. Before my would-be date got a good look at Zav, he lifted a hand, as if he would push him back down into his seat. But the man froze when he saw Zav’s face—it had gone flinty. And that dragon aura of his must have registered for the guy, because he stumbled back even before Zav’s eyes flared with violet light.
The man tripped over his feet and crashed onto the hard pavement. I dropped my face into my hand.
“You will not seek to acquire a female that is sitting in my presence.”
The muscular guy scrambled to his feet but not to fight. He threw his open hands up apologetically.
“Sorry, bro. I thought you were gay.”
“I am clearly not gay.”
“You can’t blame me for thinking that with those slippers, man.” He waved at Zav’s feet, but he backed away quickly.
Only when he’d scurried out to the street and out of sight did Zav sit back down. I sighed and lowered my hand. We were going to have to have a chat.
“What is gay?” Zav asked. “I thought cheerful and lighthearted. That is what your dictionary says.”
“How old was the dictionary you looked at?”
A car drove by and he pointed at it. “When I first visited your world and learned your language, your people’s wheeled boxes were pulled by horses.”
“Uh huh. Gay means homosexual now.”
Zav looked down at his slippers in thoughtful consideration. The expression made me want to laugh, not lecture him on boundaries. But I also couldn’t let him think he could dictate who flirted with me.
“While you’re contemplating a wardrobe change, and eating your ice cream because that’s going to start melting soon, let’s have a chat. By chat, I mean that I’ll talk and you’ll listen.”
His gaze shifted from his shoes to me, his eyes narrowing. “When you talk at me, you never show the respect proper for a lesser species communicating with a dragon.”
“I know. And I think you like it, because you haven’t threatened to incinerate anything of mine since the day we met.”
“I do not like it,” he said coolly. “I tolerate it.”
“Yes, why?” And why was I letting him veer away from the subject I wanted to discuss?
“You have occasionally been useful to me.”
As bait. Right.
“You don’t think I could be useful to you if you forced me to be a mindless drudge existing only to do your bidding?”
“Are you open to that?”
“No, I am not.”
Zav leaned back in his seat. “You got my hopes up.”
I grinned at him.
A melted bead of ice cream slithered off his cone and onto his hand. He frowned at it. With a tiny poof it went up in smoke.
I had better not push him. He was in the mood to incinerate things.
“I’ve been an independent person for a long time, Zav, and even though I take jobs for the government, I’m used to calling the shots and being in charge of my destiny. I’ve fought a lot of magical beings, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you’re dead if you show them weakness.”
“It is not weak to show respect to dragons. Elves are among the most powerful of the lesser beings, and they know to be respectful to their superiors.”
“Well, I’m half human.”
“Do not remind me of this taint.”
“If you treated me with respect, I’d probably treat you with more.”
“Probably.”
“You’re kind of fun to tease.”
“Lesser beings do not tease dragons.”
“How boring. I bet you’ve missed being teased your whole life and that’s why you’re here spending time with me.”
“I am here so Shaygorthian will not read your thoughts, kill you for killing a dragon, and tattle on me to the court for withholding that information.”
“So my playful teasing is just a delightful perk?”
“More a hazard of the job.” Zav turned his frown toward the sky. “He is here again.”
“Shaygor?”
“Yes.” Zav laid the melting ice cream cone sideways on the table and stood up. “I will go answer his questions and attempt to get him to leave this world.”
“Any chance it’ll work?”
“It is doubtful.”
I’d been afraid of that. We hadn’t had our discussion about boundaries, but it would have to wait for another time.
“Do not forget to activate your charm when I am not around.” Zav strode off, shifting into dragon form and flying away, before I could tell him I’d given it to Amber. Maybe I wouldn’t tell him that.
13
I lay in my tent, aware of Zav’s presence at the edge of my senses. He was off to the east, probably curled up in the forest, or maybe on someone’s rooftop, in his dragon form.
Knowing he was in the area made me feel comfortable enough to take off my armor and boots, something I rarely did when camping out on assignment, and slide into my sleeping bag. As much as I hated relying on someone else, in a world that now housed dragons, the most logical thing was to have a dragon on one’s side.
There was something lonely about imagining him by himself in the forest, but I supposed it wasn’t any different from me being by myself in a tent in a campground, listening to the murmured conversations of nearby families. Did dragons feel loneliness? Or were they independent creatures, not social ones like humans? He had a family, a mother at least, but how close were they? It was hard to imagine a dragon clan coming together for holiday gatherings and gossiping about the neighbors while trading pumpkin pie recipes.
My phone buzzed, a call managing to get through on my anemic cell signal. It was a local number. Who was calling me after ten? Thad? Amber?
“Yeah?” I answered.
“It’s me calling from the house phone,” my mother said.
“Hi, Mom. What’s up? Did Amber and her friend make it back?”
“Yes. With an interesting story.”
I waited for her to share it, curious what Amber’s version had been. Though if she’d called me a gun-happy loon in combat boots, maybe I didn’t want to hear about it. It was true, but I would prefer she play up the part where Sindari and I nobly rushed down in the nick of time to save her.
But Mom didn’t expound. I couldn’t remember her ever gossiping about the neighbors while sharing pumpkin pie recipes, so I wasn’t sure where I’d gotten that notion about how families worked. Probably from television.
“Are they okay?” I finally asked into the silence.
“Jarred but unwounded. Before this, Amber didn’t realize that her elven blood—Thad never wished me to discuss that with her, by the way—gave her the ability to sense magical beings and see dragons.”
“I’ve only recently learned it gives me the ability to see dragons,” I said dryly.
“She asked me a few questions about what kinds of abilities she may have inherited. I pointed out that you would know more about that than I.” She sounded wistful.
Mom was so stoic, private, and self-reliant that it was hard to know what she felt, but I’d always gotten the impression that elves had fascinated her even before she’d met my father, and that she wished she could have left with him instead of staying on Earth. Since she didn’t have a lot of ties with people here, I was surprised she hadn’t. Maybe it hadn’t been an option. Or maybe she’d felt compelled to stay because of her parents. Her mother had passed away thirty years ago, but I had vague childhood memories of an even more stoic and self-reliant grandmother.