She vanished. No slow dissolution, no cloud of obscuring smoke. She was there and then she was not.
Zee stared into the darkness until his eyes ached and burned. He thought he saw something large and serpentine, but when he ran after it there was nothing there. Only a trick of the shadows. He tried to tell himself that it had been a dream, but her scent and that of their lovemaking lingered on his skin. When he looked up at the sky, the stars no longer offered comfort. The constellations were subtly wrong. An unfamiliar planet hung low in the sky, pulsing red and ominous.
Zee lifted his arm to hurl the dagger into the pond, but at the last minute he held back. A good throwing knife was invaluable. And the old woman had clearly feared it. He would use it to survive now—for hunting and protection, and when he found her, as he would do, then his promise would no longer be binding and he would kill her with her own blade. The thought gave him pleasure, though it did nothing to assuage his guilt.
A low moan of pain drew him back to the moment and his responsibilities. He pulled on his cotton breeches and the T-shirt, slightly dew-damp and full of holes but clean at least, shoving the knife into a pocket for safekeeping.
Jared was worse. Heat radiated off skin dry and so hot to the touch it seemed one tiny spark would send him up in flames. When Zee called his name, his eyes flickered open but there was no recognition in their depths.
Zee knew he had been a fool. But he had wanted so much to believe, had made it so easy. And since Vivian wasn’t here, it fell to him to do what she would have done, which meant trying to keep Jared alive even if he couldn’t heal him. Holding his breath against the ungodly stench of the wound, he grasped his enemy under the armpits and dragged him into the pool, hoping it might cool the fever.
Twenty-two
What do you mean, the book is missing?” Weston demanded.
Deputy Flynne rubbed a hand over his jaw and then back over his head. “It was locked up in evidence. I have no idea how somebody could have got to it.”
Vivian felt like an emotional pressure cooker about to explode. Enough already. The locket, the spheres, the Key, and now some book that held valuable information. All stolen. She was tired of being considerate, tired of trying to think the best of people. And the evidence pointed clearly in one direction.
“Grace took it.”
Both men stared at her. It was Brett who finally answered. “Grace? As in Jennings, deceased, whose body you just dug up?”
“Grace, as in Jennings, who was not the body in the coffin.”
“I thought we weren’t going to tell him—”
“You’re saying there’s an unidentified body in the coffin? That’s not possible.” Brett’s face belied his words, and he ran both hands over his head as though it ached.
“You don’t know what you’re saying.” At any other time, Weston’s face might have frightened her. The only evidence she had that he hadn’t murdered his family in cold blood was his own word on the subject, and at the moment he looked sufficiently like a wild man of the mountains to be well outside the law.
“She had access to your father’s dreamspheres, and plenty of time to study sorcery. She left you a secret message to let you know that she was using the dreamspheres.”
“Goddamn it, Vivian, Grace is not a sorceress. They’re born, not made.” But there was doubt in his voice, and Brett jumped in.
“The woman was burned up in a house fire. I saw the body.”
Vivian fixed him with her full attention, not missing the way he took a step back under the pressure of her gaze. “How could you have seen the body? How old were you?”
“I had a habit of sticking my nose in where it didn’t belong. The fire was an obvious point of fascination, and I was seventeen and already obsessed with crime. Fire trucks, cops . . .”
“And the scene wasn’t off limits?”
“Please. This is Krebston. I shoved in with an offer to help. They knew me, were happy for an extra pair of hands. I saw her body—”
“It wasn’t hers.”
Brett sighed. “Oh come on, Vivian—if it wasn’t her, then who was it? No missing people in Krebston.”
“Could have been from anywhere. She has access to dreamspheres, do you hear me?” The rage was fire in her veins now, heating her body from the inside out.
“But when did she get them?” Weston sagged into a chair. His face looked old and haggard. There were smudges of dirt on forehead and cheeks, flakes of it in his beard.
“From your father’s coffin. She was found with the body before he was buried. From what you told me, I doubt she was grieving.”
The old man shook his head, but Vivian pressed on. “Her behavior that night made people so uneasy they sent her off to an orphanage.”
“I should have gone back for her.”
Brett looked from one to the other. “You guys seriously expect me to believe your friend here is what—a hundred years old?”
“A hundred and three.”
“Right. Well, you’ll understand if I have a problem with that.”
The room had shifted into sharper detail. Vivian could see into all of the shadowed corners, could smell Brett’s fear and Weston’s grief.
“Read him the note we found in the coffin,” she said. She wasn’t asking, and after a brief hesitation Weston complied.
“‘I tried to wait for you, but then the cancer came and I had to go. I took one of the dreamspheres—hope you didn’t need it. There are giants in it, so we’ll see how that goes. As for the body, I didn’t kill anyone so don’t fret. Come find me.’”
“Perfect,” Brett said. “Thank you so much for sharing. What am I supposed to do with that? We can’t take her word for anything—now I have to try to place this body.”
“I wouldn’t,” Vivian said, closing her eyes. “You have no idea where that body has been.”
“Might not even be human,” Weston added.
His voice sounded distant, the words close to meaningless.
It could be so simple, really. Allow the dragon fire to spread and grow, to bathe her cells in transforming heat. Give permission for the shift that was always there, always waiting. There was more to being dragon than scales and wings. There was power and a trick with doors. As dragon, maybe she could get through the doors and into the Between. Once there, she could track down Grace and take back the Key by force. That, and her pendant.
Simple.
And dangerous.
Mellisande, the dragon corrupted by Jehenna, had killed how many humans over the years? Even the young dragon, the one Zee had slain, had killed. Dragons were glorious, beautiful engines of destruction. Just considering the possibility, predatory thoughts flickered through her mind. A thirst for blood sent saliva flooding over her tongue.
Maybe she could exert control where the others had not, maybe the rest of who she was, Dreamshifter and sorceress, would make a difference.
But there was one more thing.
Zee. The look of hate that came onto his face when the word dragon was spoken. She remembered the paintings upstairs, lined up side by side. If she shifted again, she would lose him forever, if she hadn’t already.
But if she didn’t find a way to rescue him, he was also lost. And the dragon self was powerful beyond expectation.
“Vivian!”
The voices calling her name were distant but insistent. Her tongue felt thick, her skin tight. Inside something laughed. While she’d been debating the point her blood had escaped her control, had begun to make the change without her will and consent.