“Not necessarily, but people like to make assumptions based on looks. Be glad you’re not blonde.”
His gaze drifted toward my hair. Then he rested a hand on the back of my neck and narrowed his eyes at Zoltan on the other side of me. He had been eyeing my neck.
“Can you read vampire minds, Zav?” I assumed Zoltan was having fantasies about my veins, not about taking me to bed.
“This one is simple to read, yes. He was a human.”
Zoltan lifted a hand. “Forgive my straying thoughts. I have not had a meal yet tonight, and you know how the dragon aura that marks you tempts me. It would make your blood even tastier than usual. And there is even more of him on you now. He has claimed you as a mate, yes?”
I thought Zav might say No or Not for long, since we’d discussed him removing his mark when he finished his work on Earth, but Zav eased closer, and his hand moved to stroke the back of my head.
“She is mine,” he growled at Zoltan.
I refused to let that growl give me a shiver. Or at least, I refused to acknowledge that it did.
“Excellent,” Zoltan said. “My dear robber, in the future, when you have work for me and realize you cannot pretend to run it through my business partner, I may ask for payment in your blood. Unless I can get you to collect some of his for me.” He looked hopefully toward Zav.
“You will have blood from neither of us.” Zav’s eyes flared with violet light.
“I am entitled to payment for my services,” Zoltan said.
“This is America,” I told him. “We use dollars for monetary exchange here, legal tender for all debts public and private.”
“Hm.”
“Dimitri, you’re going to have to start letting me use your cervical collar when I come here.” I closed the notebook, since Willard had her own copy of the data, and pushed it back to Zoltan. Then I picked up the analyses of the melted shard. “Mind if I take these with me?”
“You may. I’ll have my business partner deliver an invoice for my time.”
“Wonderful.” I imagined the payment options broken down into dollars or blood.
My phone buzzed. Expecting Willard, I started to answer it, but Thad’s name popped up.
Fear zapped me like a wet fork in an electrical outlet. He wouldn’t call this late just to say hi.
14
I ran through Zoltan’s tunnel and outside to take Thad’s call. I didn’t want poor reception to interfere, nor did I want the others to be able to listen in.
“Hey,” I answered, striving for casualness, though I had a bad feeling about this. “What’s up?”
Wet grass batted at my jeans as I stepped away from the carriage house and into the unkempt lawn at the edge of the property. A quick check ensured nobody was around. The party in the main house had ended.
“Sorry to call you so late,” Thad said, “but I got home from work late, and I just got Amber to talk to me. I mean, it wasn’t that late, but she didn’t say anything earlier. She seemed quiet and withdrawn at dinner. I thought she’d had a fight with a friend and didn’t think much of it, but…”
My grip tightened on the phone. “What happened?”
“She said someone came by the house today, asking her about you.”
I kicked the grass and swore to myself before managing to calm down enough to ask, “Blonde hair or purple?”
Thad paused. “You knew this would happen?”
“No. I would have warned you if I’d known someone would show up there. I would have camped out on your driveway with all my weapons.”
“That… would have alarmed the neighbors.”
“Which one was it, Thad?”
I wouldn’t be that worried if Lirena had been the one to visit and ask a few questions about me. Oh, I would worry about what conclusions she would draw from my ten-year absence as a mother, but I doubted she would have threatened Amber. Zav’s sister on the other hand…
“Purple hair.”
“Damn it. Did she just ask questions?” My grip tightened even further. The phone bleeped a protest.
“Amber said it was weird, and she’s not quite sure what happened. The woman… Amber said it wasn’t a woman, Val.”
“It’s another dragon.”
“I thought you said they left.”
“I thought they had. Is she okay? What did she do to Amber?” I ground my teeth. If Zondia had done that mental scouring and hurt her, I would find a way to put a fist through her skull. Or Chopper through her skull. I didn’t care if she was Zav’s sister.
“Just asked questions about you, Amber said, but she also admitted she barely remembered it. She isn’t sure what happened exactly, but she remembers bringing the woman in to show her her room.” A hint of anger replaced the concern in Thad’s voice. “She says she didn’t want to do it, but something made her. It all sounded creepy as hell to me.”
“That’s because it is.” I was shaking and in danger of hurling my phone a hundred feet. “I’m sorry this intruded on your life. I’ll figure out some way to deal with it, to stop this from happening.”
How? There was no way I could truly kill Zondia. Zav was right. The only way to fix everything was to get all dragons off Earth. Including him.
“Thank you,” Thad said. “I reported her to the police, but I’m sure that won’t do anything.”
“It won’t, but I’ll do something.”
Zav was coming out of the carriage house. I hung up and spun to face him, rage clenching every muscle in my body.
“Your sister was interrogating my daughter about me.”
I expected him to react with surprise or indignation and denial, but he did neither. He merely stood there, digesting the information, then said, “I did not expect that.”
“I want her off this planet and out of my fucking life.”
“I will tell her to leave.”
“You told her to leave before, and that didn’t do anything. You said she doesn’t listen to you.”
“I will deal with her,” he said, calm but firm.
“By opening a portal and shoving her through it? I mean it, Zav. If the problem is you having a relationship with me, then it has to stop. Today, not whenever you finish hunting down criminals. Un-claim me. Whatever it takes. I’ve had enough of my family being endangered by you asshole dragons.” If I hadn’t been so angry, I wouldn’t have included him in that group, but my fear for Amber, for what could have happened, both today and back in Idaho, kept me from thinking rationally.
“If I leave Earth, neither my family nor their political enemies should come here again any time soon.”
“Good. Then go.”
“You do not wish to see me again?” He gazed at me without any magic making his eyes glow. If not for his aura, he would have seemed to be just a man standing with me in the wet grass.
I sensed that my request stung him, but what could I do? I couldn’t choose him over the safety of Thad and Amber. What if Zondia had hurt Amber, digging through her thoughts, and made it so she didn’t remember it? The idea made me seethe.
“If that’s what it takes to get rid of dragons on Earth, yes. This was your idea anyway. You said you had to leave Earth.”
“After I collect all the criminals here.”
“That could take years. This has to stop now.” Still shaking, I turned my back on Zav and brought my fist to my mouth.
“You will have to deal with the dark elves yourself.”
“I can handle it.”
After a long, silent pause, he said quietly, “Very well.”
A silver portal appeared in the sky over the trail behind the house.
Before shifting into dragon form, Zav walked up to me and placed a hand on my rigid shoulder. In no mood to be touched, I almost jerked away from him. But through my anger, I knew he was saying goodbye and that I would regret it later if I didn’t let him.
Once I am gone, my sister should not care about you. But this time, I will do more than speak with her to make sure she leaves you alone. He shifted his hand from my shoulder to the side of my neck, brushing me gently with his fingers, then kissed my cheek.
I didn’t react or say anything. I didn’t know what I would say.
Zav walked away, shifted into his dragon form, and flew through the portal.
Realizing I had tears running down my cheeks, I wiped my face. Great. Zav had kissed a cheek smothered with salty tears. It bothered me that he would remember me as someone who cried. I didn’t cry.
15
The next morning, I pulled up to Willard’s office before eight. After parking the Jeep, I tried calling Amber again. The night before, right after Zav left, I’d tried, and she hadn’t answered. It wasn’t surprising. She’d barely wanted to talk to me at the end of our Idaho adventures—misadventures. That had been before some weird purple dragon had come along and done who knew what to her.
This time, I left a message in her voice mail.
“Hey, Amber. Your dad told me a dragon came and bugged you. I’m sorry she found you and came to the house.” I wanted to demand that Amber call me, to tell her she needed to explain everything that had happened—and let me know if she’d been hurt, physically or mentally. I couldn’t do much if she had, but at least I could let her know I understood what it was like to be a victim to dragons. Would that help her at all? I didn’t know. But I was afraid if I pushed, she would never call me. “If you want to talk about it, I’m here. Bye.”
After hanging up, I glowered at the phone in frustration. This was unacceptable. Zav was gone, but I had no idea if Zondia was. What if he’d assumed she would follow him through a portal but hadn’t actually ordered her to leave me and my family alone? I believed he cared about me and would do what I’d asked, but I worried the sister wouldn’t cooperate.
If he was gone and she was still here, that would be a double whammy. I hadn’t even wanted to send him away. But he’d been right. It was the only way to get rid of Earth’s dragon problem. To get rid of my dragon problem.