Battle Bond: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #2) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,13

I’ve tried it a bit.”

“Excellent. You mentioned being willing to try yoga too. Have you gone to a class yet?”

“I’ve been busy.” I eyed the smoking windmill. The roof was burning heartily.

“Well, make room in your schedule. I was at a class this morning, and I learned of an opening at the Lotus Leaf Studio in Ballard. It’s a membership-only facility, and the instructors are very good. They really care about their students. They don’t just arrange your body in the right positions while in class but work on changing your mindset and teaching you to bring the tenets of yoga into your life as a whole. Of course we’ll continue to work on the personal issues you’ve acknowledged, but I think it’ll really help you if you can learn to take that philosophy into your daily life.”

What would really help me would be if dragons would stop trying to set me on fire.

6

A salty breeze tugged at the strands of hair dangling free from my braid as I leaned on the railing of the ferry taking me back to Edmonds. My Jeep was down in the car compartment with boxes of hard cider, wine, and chocolate in the back, gifts from the grateful orchard owners.

The children had made it back safely, though I didn’t think their parents had believed their story of being locked in a windmill by a dragon. Ayush, who must have had more encounters with magical beings in his life, had listened with wide terrified eyes. He’d been concerned that kobolds were still in the area and had spoken of listing the property and going back to being a software engineer in Seattle. I hadn’t had the heart to tell him that far worse things than kobolds lurked in and around the big city.

Seagulls squawked as they flew overhead, and I couldn’t help but look up to make sure they weren’t fleeing a dragon. The sky had cleared and the sun had come out, so it would have been easy to spot the new one and even easier to see Zav’s black form. Neither dragon was in sight.

How was I going to contact Zav? It wasn’t as if he’d given me his cell phone number before disappearing.

Normally, I wouldn’t care about delivering a message to him, but if there was a new, meaner, and more vindictive dragon in the world, he was the only one who could deal with it.

Fezzik’s bullets hadn’t done anything on that magical hide, and even Chopper had barely cut it. I imagined fighter jets launching nukes at a dragon and wondered if even that would do the job. Dragons could probably make a shield that bombs would bounce off before they got close.

My phone buzzed, and I groaned. Who, now? I’d given Colonel Willard a verbal report of the incident—as usual, she wanted a typed report sent in by morning—and told Mary I’d go to a yoga class and see her later in the week for a session. I didn’t want any more obligations, or to talk to any more people.

But when I saw Nin Chattrakulrak’s name on my phone, I answered right away. Nin, owner of the Crying Tiger food truck and creator of magical weapons, never called me.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Val? I need to hire you.”

It was after eight, but the June sun still hadn’t set when I reached Occidental Square, the spot where Nin’s food truck was parked today—and most days. The dinner rush had subsided, but kids wandering over from the busy outdoor Ping-Pong tables stood in line, paddles and ten-dollar bills clenched in their hands.

Nin’s assistant was handing out paper-wrapped packages of the truck’s signature beef and rice dish while Nin worked outside with a brush and bucket of soapy water. She was scrubbing graffiti off the side of the truck. Most of the message had already been cleaned off, but I could still read the word DEATH next to a noose around a clumsily painted skull. Despite the poor art, the message was an ominous one.

“Val!” Nin dropped her scrub brush in the water and rushed forward to grip my arms.

The kids in line looked curiously at us, or maybe at the polar opposites we represented. Five-foot-one Nin with her brown skin, tiny frame, and black hair currently dyed fuchsia versus pale, blonde, six-foot me looking like someone out of a comic book on the Valkyries my mom had named me after. I’d never been able to see much of my elven heritage in my