“Unfortunately, Leidolf hasn’t invested in its members’ education sufficiently. I don’t have anyone within the clan who can handle the sort of transactions I’m interested in.” He wouldn’t mention just whom Lily’s father had recommended. More fun to surprise her, if things worked out. “Will you be going to the hospital right away?”
She grimaced. “I need two of me. Maybe three. I’ll get to the hospital, but not yet. I had an idea while I was showering. A way to guard Cullen pretty damned effectively that doesn’t involve me or Cynna, and it just might help with something else, too. Uh . . . I wondered if you wanted to go along. If you drove, I could get some work done on the way.”
Amused, he tugged her hair. “You wouldn’t be trying to guard me, would you?”
“Maybe a little. I don’t really think she’s involved. According to what Cynna told us it’s unlikely, and besides, she would have tried for you or your father. Or that’s what I think, but maybe I don’t know how an Old One with a really big grudge lays her plans, so . . .” She shrugged. “Either way, I can use the drive time to read some stuff I requested. Research is getting me a list of suspected professional hits that might match this perp’s MO.”
“All right.” Since he’d already planned to find a way to intrude himself into her day so he could guard her, that worked for him. “Where are we going?”
“Well.” She sipped, smiled . . . but it was a complex smile, woven of many strands of emotion. “I dreamed of dragons last night.”
SIXTEEN
HAD it been up to Washington, San Diego would not have received a dragon. True, it was home to a major naval base, and there was an Air Force base just north of the city. But after the Turning hit and ambient magic levels began rising, lots of cities wanted a dragon. Dragons were immense magic sponges—they soaked up all the free-floating magic that interfered with technology. The government had, not unreasonably, wanted a dragon sopping up excess magic in L.A., not the smaller city.
It hadn’t been up to the government. The Dragon Accords that Grandmother had negotiated awarded each dragon a permanent base, but made an exception for one of them: the black dragon, the eldest of them, known to Lily and Rule as Sam and to others as Sun Mzao. Officially, Sam’s territory was wherever he happened to be.
In practice—and in the eyes of the dragons—Sam’s territory included much of the West Coast, down into Mexico. He’d agreed to overfly Los Angeles frequently, and Sacra mento occasionally, but he laired just outside of San Diego.
At slightly under half a mile high, San Miguel Mountain wasn’t the largest peak around, but it was close to the city and highly visible. To the consternation of environmentalists, that was where Sam had dug his lair—in the west side of the mountain, facing the Sweetwater Reservoir. An unusually large dragon needed a great deal of fresh water, after all.
That’s where Lily and Rule headed shortly before eight A.M. that morning, taking Highway 54 out to Reservoir Road. There was no guarantee that Sam would be home, but he usually flew at night, so they had a good chance of catching him.
Or he might know they were coming and either wait for them or leave to avoid them. Lily didn’t know what the limits were on his ability to touch other minds or read thoughts outright. Distance mattered, but she didn’t know what his range was. Earth and stone mattered, too, which was one reason most dragons liked a rocky lair. It cut out the ambient mind-noise.
On the way, Lily made a couple calls, then took out her laptop. She pulled up the list of suspected professional hits that headquarters had sent her, skimmed it . . . and thought about dragons.
In the Western world, dragons had been considered a myth for centuries. Lily had certainly believed that—right up until one seized her in his talons and carried her off. That happened in Dis, otherwise known as the hell region, where the dragons had emigrated more than three hundred years ago when Earth’s magic grew too thin for them.
And now they were back.
At least some of them were—twenty-three, to be precise. Lily had the idea there might be more dragons in some distant realm. Sam wouldn’t say, but they must have a home realm. She was pretty sure dragons weren’t native to Earth.
Sam’s bunch had lived here a very long time, though, before temporarily relocating to Dis when Earth’s magic grew too thin for them. How long? No one knew except the dragons, and they weren’t saying.
Lily did know a few things about dragons, at least about the ones living here. They were compulsively curious, hoarders of knowledge more than gold—but they liked gold, too. Part of their fee for overflying their assigned territories, soaking up excess magic, was a measure of gold dust. No one knew why they wanted it.
She knew that dragons were mostly solitary, but they got together at times that fit some internal rhythm rather than the calendar . . . and sang. They sang to fulfill needs she couldn’t guess. They also sang to work magic.
That’s how Sam brought them all back from hell. The dragons couldn’t open a gate themselves—which did not make sense, because they’d left Earth once, so why couldn’t they make a gate? But dragons weren’t big on explaining, so that question resided in Lily’s find-out-one-day mental file. Sam had either taken advantage of the arrival of Lily and Rule in Dis, or he’d in some obscure way been counting on it so he could use their gate.
Only their gate had been far too small for dragons, and they hadn’t been able to open it for reasons that had to do with there being two of Lily at the time. Lily had taken care of the latter problem the only way she could. Sam had handled the first problem, singing the gate large, singing it open long enough to bring his people home . . . and with them, Max and Cullen and Cynna and Rule. And Lily, of course.
One of her. Most of her. She tried not to think about that too much.
She also knew why Sam had chosen San Diego for his lair. Li Lei Yu lived here. Therefore, so did the black dragon.
Lily wanted badly to know what her tiny, indomitable grandmother had shared with the enormous black dragon back in China so long ago. But Grandmother was impervious to questions—a trait she might have learned from Sam more than three centuries before Lily was born. Until this year, Lily had known Grandmother was older than she appeared; she hadn’t known how much older. She assumed Grandmother’s longevity had something to do with her interlude with Sam, but she didn’t know what.
Lily supposed to she had no real right to ask for details. but dammit, she wasn’t good at not asking questions.
Is there a verb for that? she wondered as she closed her laptop. They’d left the highway for Reservoir Road, and she knew from experience coverage was spotty here. Maybe she should call it minding her own . . .
Her phone sang out the first bar of “The Star Spangled Banner.” She answered. The caller turned out to be Ida, Ruben’s secretary, rather than Ruben himself. Her news was not welcome.
“She’s going to what?” she exclaimed. “That’s crazy. I can’t be sued for performing my duty.” She listened a moment. “That’s crazy, too. Jesus. Okay, sure, thanks for letting me know.”
“You’re being sued?” Rule said.
“It’s that Blanco case.” Lily dragged a hand over her hair. Earlier this year, she’d stopped a killer with a strong Earth Gift. When Lily tackled the woman, Adele Blanco had used her Gift to try to bring down the mountain on both of them. “She still blames me for the way she burned out her Gift. Claims I sucked it out of her.” Which wasn’t possible, of course, but making the earth shake so you could kill your enemy along with yourself was not the act of a sane and balanced person.