Fire Song (City of Dragons) (3 page)

“Look,” I said. “They thought I had a talisman. They thought I was a mage. Anyway, it’s not important. It’s only a matter of time before Alastair finds me.” I pushed past Felicity and into the hallway. I started up the steps to my apartment.

She followed me. She lived up here with me too. We’d been attached at the hip for a long time. Even when she was the cleaning girl, I used to follow her around and ask her questions about what it was like to be outside of dragon culture. Back then, humans had seemed exotic to me, and I’d been curious.

I’d cultivated the friendship because I was being a rebellious kid, but that didn’t mean that it hadn’t become more than that. Especially after Felicity had become a drake. She’d had no one to turn to, but she’d come to me. And I’d protected her ever since.

We were devoted to each other. Always would be.

“You don’t even know for sure that he’s in town,” she said as we emerged in our living room. She threw herself down on a couch. “Argh. I’m starving.”

“We’ve heard rumors,” I said.

“But he hates the ocean,” she said.

“Apparently not anymore,” I said. “You want me to try to cook something?” I veered into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.

It was bare, as usual.

We didn’t eat much here. We had most of our meals at the adjoining restaurant, the Pink Flamingo Cafe. Our friend Ophelia Diaz owned it. We’d worked out a deal with her to offer a continental breakfast for our hotel patrons in her back room. More often than not, that was where Felicity and I ate breakfast too.

“No, that’s okay,” she called. “Don’t worry about it. The Flamingo will be open in twenty minutes.”

I came back into the living room. “I can cook, you know. I took that class in the fall. I’m good at it.”

She smiled. “I know you are.”

I sat down opposite her. “You’re patronizing me.”

“No, I’m not,” she said.

I eyed her. It wasn’t worth fighting over, and besides, I was noticing she was still in last night’s clothes. “Where have you been all night?”

Her face broke out into a wide grin. “I am officially part of a couple!”

My lips parted. “You… you are?”

“Oh, Penny, don’t be like that.”

“I’m not being like anything.” I got up and began fluffing pillows on the couch. For some reason, I didn’t want to look at her. “So, you have a boyfriend. Congratulations.” What kind of boyfriend could she have? What man was attracted to drakes? Sure, Felicity was still lovely in her own adorable way, but most people would see her as a monster. I didn’t want her to get hurt. I didn’t want her to get used.

“You sound so completely sincere.”

“I
am
sincere.” I fluffed another pillow.

“Stop doing that and look at me.”

I paused. Sighed. Sat back down and faced her. “You never mentioned that you were dating.”

“I don’t bring this stuff up to you.”

“Why not? We’re best friends. We share everything.”

“It’s just because of how you are.”

“How I am?”

“About men, you know?”

“How am I about men?”

“Well, you’re wary.”

“Wary?”

“Understandably,” she said, smiling. “Of course you’re wary.”

I studied my fingernails.

“I want you to meet him,” Felicity said. “Will you have dinner with us?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m sure he’s great.” I forced myself to smile. When I met that guy, I was going to make sure that he never hurt my friend. If he did, he’d have me to contend with.

“So, I said to him, I said, ‘What have you got against gargoyles?’” said Connor Beckett, leaning on the counter in the lobby.

“Do you think it looks okay in here?” I said, leaning on a broom. I’d been sweeping up all day, it felt like. I’d had my staff checking people in by walking them directly from their cars to their rooms, avoiding the lobby entirely.

But now it was night, and I wasn’t going to ask the people I employed to go roaming around after dark in the parking lot, asking anyone who parked if they were checking in.

“He says, ‘It’s not about the fact you’re a gargoyle, it’s about the fact I’m straight,’” Connor said.

“I mean, there’s no window, but it’s the beach,” I said. “So, who needs windows at the beach?” I stuck my arm through the place where the window should be.

“But you tell me,” said Connor. “Anything that I said, did it sound like I was coming onto him?”

“Someone will come and fix the window in the morning. And if anyone says anything, say it was an accident.” I turned to look at Connor.

He furrowed his brow. “You aren’t even listening to me.” Connor was six feet four inches tall. He was moving and talking now, but his skin still had the grayish hue of stone. He sported small wings at his back. He was a gargoyle, which meant that he could only work at night, on account of the fact that he turned to stone all day and everything.

“I’m listening,” I said. “Guy sounds like a homophobe.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Thank you.” Connor was a gay gargoyle. He’d come out to his family and been disowned. They weren’t very open to alternative lifestyles. Anyway, now he lived at the hotel here with me and Felicity. When he’d told me what happened, I hadn’t had it in me to let him live on the street. “That’s what I said. But he didn’t like that very much.”

“You called him a homophobe to his face?”

“I’m just sick of these fugly men getting all hot under the collar because I happen to be polite to people. I would never have hit on him, not in a zillion years. And I could tell he was straight.”

I waited. Maybe there was a point to this story?

Connor folded his arms over his chest. “Anyway. Just saying.”

“So, you’re okay in here? Even without the window? Is it too cold for you?”

“Girl, please. I’m a gargoyle.”

“Right,” I said. I started back out of the lobby. “Well, if you need anything, call me.” I paused in the doorway. “So, you don’t feel cold?”

“I feel it,” he said. “Just doesn’t bother me.”

“Interesting.” I thought about that for a second. “Because you’re made of stone.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, shrugging.

I guessed this was why I had to insist on keeping Connor clothed. If it were up to him, he’d run around in a pair of cut-off jean shorts and nothing else. When he was working, though, he had to be dressed.

“You leaving me here alone?” he said.

“I’ve got some things to work on,” I said.

Connor snatched the remote control up off the counter and switched on a television set that hung over the door. Miraculously, the vampires hadn’t gotten to it last night. However, it was the third TV I’d purchased. Vamps had smashed its predecessors. Felicity said I was an idiot for continuing to put it back up in the lobby. She might have been right. It was the principle of the thing, though. If I didn’t put the TV back up, the vamps won.

“… another body washed up on the shore late this afternoon, similar to the first body that was found last night,” said the TV. “This may be the work of a serial killer.”

I whirled to face the screen.

A newswoman was standing out on the dark beach. She was smiling. “Police are hesitant to say if there is any connection to the previous body, but the victim was another young female, just like the body found last night. Back to you, Jim.”

I wanted to wipe her smile off her face.

But Jim was already back on the screen, babbling on about the weather over the weekend.

Another girl. Was she also a dragon, like Elena? Was this a pattern? Was someone out there targeting young, dragon girls?

*

“Oh, you’re here to see Flint?” said the woman at the desk in the police department. “You his sister or something?”

“No,” I said. “It’s about the dead girls. The ones that have been washing up from the ocean?”

“Oh.” The woman nodded. She had red hair, which was actually more a shade of mahogany. An obvious dye job. “Shoulda figured. He ain’t got any family. I knew right off you weren’t his girlfriend or nothing. No way could a woman put up with that man. Easy on the eyes, sure, but once he opens his mouth, you wish he wouldn’t.”

“Really,” I said. This was bizarre. “Can I see him, please?”

“I’ll call him. Let him know you’re here. What did you say your name was?”

“Penny Caspian,” I said.

She picked up her phone, hit some buttons.

I waited and listened as she relayed the information into the phone’s receiver. Then she hung up. “You can go on back. Just through that door.”

“Thanks,” I said, and went through the door.

I entered a big room that was filled with a bunch of desks. There was one long middle row, all facing forward, almost like in a classroom, except the desks were all the size of teachers’ desks and covered in computers and knick knacks and filled with men and women in uniforms and suits. The other desks flanked the walls, but they faced inward. There were aisles between the middle row and the inward facing desks.

I saw Detective Flint right away. He was wading through the left-hand aisle toward me. Then he spotted me. He stopped. Motioned me over.

I crossed the distance between us.

“Ms. Caspian,” he said. “I was under the impression you were a very busy woman.”

“Was she a dragon? The other body?”

He gestured to the back corner of the room, where a bare-looking desk sat all by itself. “You want to join me at my desk? We can have a little chat if you’d like.”

Sure, fine. Whatever. I strode over to the desk and sat down at the seat beside it.

He sat down across from me. He leaned forward, gazing at me intently. “Why are you here?”

“I just… I need to know. If the other body that was found, if it was a dragon girl as well.”

“Why?”

“I do, that’s all.”

He leaned back in his chair. “I can’t quite get a handle on you, Ms. Caspian.” He turned back to his desk. “Right now, I’d say you’re my top suspect.”

“What?” I got to my feet. “How could you say that?”

He shrugged. “Well, you’re not a perfect match. You’re a woman, and near as I know, women don’t do crimes like this. Women kill, sure, but it’s not for sexual dominance. Men have the market cornered on that. And everything about these murders seems to point to the idea that the murderer is doing it for pleasure, for kicks.”

“What if it’s a vampire?” I sat back down again. “Vampires can get magic from dragon blood even if they drink it while the dragon is in human form.”

“That so?” He cocked his head to one side. “See, these are the kinds of things that it might be valuable for the department to know. You’re a creature expert—”

“I’m not an expert.”

“You don’t want to help us, though. But you’re driven to be part of the investigation somehow. Perhaps because you’re involved in some way.”

“Actually, I came back because I changed my mind,” I said. “I do want to help. If there’s something I can do. If she was a dragon, I mean. If it’s the kind of case that I can even help with…” I was getting quieter with every string of words, as if I was losing faith in what I was saying. I furrowed my brow. “If I’m a suspect, why would you want my help?”

He made a tent with his forefingers and rested them against his chin. “Did you ever read
The Scarlet Letter
?”

“Maybe. In high school, I think.” I was thrown by this strange shift in subject.

“In the book, Arthur Dimmesdale, he’s the preacher who impregnated the girl, right?”

I nodded.

“Well, she’s ostracized from society, forced to wear the letter on her chest. You remembering this?”

“I guess so, but I don’t understand why you’re bringing it up.”

“Do you remember the end, where he pulls aside his shirt and he’s got his own big A on his flesh?”

“Um…” I was thoroughly confused.

Flint tapped his tented fingers against his chin. “Some people think he cut it into his own skin, but those people aren’t reading the book right. See, what Nathaniel Hawthorne was trying to say in that book was that guilt wants out. You do something wrong, and it starts to fester in you, and it strains and it pushes and it takes whatever opportunity it can to show itself. The more you push it down, the more it finds a way. So, if you really have been out murdering people, Ms. Caspian, there’s something inside you, some scarlet letter that’s trying to push its way out, and it’s what’s bringing you to me right now. I’d be a bad detective if I didn’t allow you to do whatever you need to do in order to confess to me, because that’s what you want deep down.”

I drew back. “I’m not… I would never hurt those girls.”

He smiled. “No?”

“I’m not that kind of person.”

“You’re hiding something.”

“You already know what I’m hiding.” I lowered my voice, leaned closer to him. “I’m a dragon, and I don’t want anyone to know that.”