He helped Tina into the back. The doctor had Aaron in the wheelchair, unconscious and drooling. No shirt, but a bandage had been slapped on top of the brand in his chest. He and the driver rolled him into the front seat. No one walking past seemed to pay attention. It was early evening, the time of day when shadows rolled in and lights turned on, and all anyone wanted was to get home from work.
The driver stomped into the building, where Eddie and Lyssa waited, watching. Maybe they hadn’t been followed here, maybe it didn’t matter if they had, but it seemed to Lyssa that being seen out in the open with Jimmy and his mother might classify as bad luck for them. Just in case it mattered.
“Where do I dump the trash?” asked the driver.
“Someplace frightening,” replied Eddie.
The man thought for a moment. “Yeah. He’ll be terrified.”
And then he grinned, and Lyssa saw that all his teeth were capped in gold.
Lyssa hugged Jimmy and kissed Icky on the head.
“You be good,” she said. “Take care of your mom.”
“I will,” he replied. Eddie crouched and shook his hand, giving the boy a steady, warm look.
“Remember,” he said.
Jimmy swallowed hard and nodded.
Five minutes later, the boy and his mother were gone, along with the doctor. Eddie and Lyssa watched the street, the slow flow of traffic, women chatting on phones. It was all so normal. She didn’t know how the world could be so normal when everything she understood was just the opposite.
“Now what?” asked Eddie. “What are we doing?”
I’m falling in love with you. I’m getting my heart broken.
“I need to do some magic,” she told him.
“Magic?”
“Don’t get too excited,” she told him dryly, though on the inside the butterflies were already forming. “I made a mistake when I was with Mandy. I could have done something then that might have let me track back to where she had been taken. It’s been so long since I even thought of using. . magic. . that it didn’t cross my mind until it was too late.”
“Is there a risk to you?”
“Why?”
“Something in your eyes when you talk about it.” He reached for her left hand, stripping off her glove and tucking it into his back pocket. His skin was smooth and warm against hers, the heat between them instantaneous. “If there is, don’t do it.”
“I have to,” she said, and then, softly: “You’ll stay?”
Eddie leaned in and kissed her, with a sweet hunger that made her sag against him with a sigh. How many times had she been kissed in her life? So few, and she had never enjoyed the experiences. Felt so little, in fact, that she had decided that it was lies, lies, and more lies that a kiss could rock a person to the soul.
But she was rocked — and now she understood.
“Come on,” he said, against her mouth. “I still have the key to the apartment.”
They went back upstairs without seeing another person. The apartment felt hollow, ugly, without anyone else there. Furniture overturned, glass still on the floor. Eddie closed the curtains and turned on the lights, while Lyssa knelt, away from the wreckage.
She began stripping off her right-hand glove, but stopped before her deformity was completely exposed.
“I’ve never. . done this,” she said, not quite looking at him. “Shown this part of me. . on purpose.”
Eddie was silent a moment. “How long have you been. . caught in a bad shift?”
“Ten years.”
“It must have been difficult on you.”
“Summer is a pain.”
“I can look away.”
Lyssa wondered how long it would take her to finally put on her big-girl panties and not care about this sort of thing.
“You know,” she said, “I once read a magazine article about loving your true self. But I don’t think looking like something out of a freak show was what they had in mind.”
“You’re stalling.”
“I’m on a twelve-step program to self-discovery. This is not easy.”
“Just rip off the glove, Lyssa.”
“I suppose it would be silly to pretend you hadn’t seen. .”
“You,” he said, gently. “I’ve seen you.”
She sighed and stripped off her glove.
Lyssa expected him to stare, and he did. It was okay. He didn’t act weird about it, just curious. Maybe, after all these years, she didn’t find her own hand entirely freakish. . but it was so far away from human, it created a disconnect even inside her mind.
Golden claws curved over the tips of her slender, scaled fingers: red scales, crimson as rubies, catching light as though burning from within.
“Boo,” said Lyssa.
Eddie tore his gaze from her hand. “Sorry.”
“At least you don’t need smelling salts.”
He smiled. “What next?”
Next I do something crazy.
Lyssa let out her breath — and before she could change her mind, raked a claw over her left palm, cutting it open.
Blood welled. Eddie muttered a curse and reached for her hand. She pulled back, but he still managed to grab her wrist.
Heat flared between them, wild and throbbing. He let go, but that warmth remained, sliding down her spine into her stomach: liquid sunlight or lava. A slow fire, burning.
Lyssa shuddered. “Why does that happen when we touch?”
“You can’t really control fire,” Eddie murmured. “All you can do is focus it. Give it a direction.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been around anyone who does this to me.” He cleared his throat. “Your hand.”
“It’s part of what I need to do.” She tore her gaze from him and, with a great deal of trepidation dragged a claw through the blood dripping down her palm. It had been more than ten years since she’d done anything like this, but she remembered exactly what to do as though it was only yesterday. That frightened her almost as much as casting a spell.
Her mother had always called her a natural.
Her skin tingled, like pins and needles. Lyssa hesitated for one last moment, asking herself what the hell she was doing. . but again, before she could change her mind, she opened her mouth and placed a drop on her tongue.
It was like being swallowed up in acid. Not drugs, but real acid. Her entire body burned away — the first flash of pain so intense her voice broke before she could scream. All she managed was a rattling sound that made her feel as though she were choking on her own breath.
The tremors began — first in her shoulders, wracking the rest of her so violently her teeth clacked. A golden haze fell over her vision, and she squeezed shut her eyes — burying her head against her fists, rocking, rocking.
This isn’t even the real reason I hate magic, she thought, as the air warmed, and a wave of heat pulsed off her body. A whimper escaped her, long and pained, pulled from her with such force it scared her.
But with the pain, tremors, and the heat — came power.
It trickled into her veins, as though she was hooked to an IV of pure sunlight — dripping into her system with a slow burn that went deep as her soul. It felt like being alive on the best day of her life, only more, more alive, shining and brilliant with the world at her feet.
You could have the world, whispered the dragon. The world is in your blood.
No, thought Lyssa. . but for a moment, she couldn’t remember why she was doing this. Only that it felt so good, so wonderful, she couldn’t imagine living without it.
Suddenly, she could hear her own heartbeat, thundering, and the hard beat steadied her focus.
Where are you? Where the hell are you hiding, Georgene?