Battle Bond: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #2) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,31

asking for a favor. I’ll pay you for your time. Why don’t you translate the pages, find out what the information is, and then give me a fair price? I’ll decide if I’m willing to pay it. If I’m not, maybe someone else will be so you won’t have wasted your time.” I wondered if Willard’s department had funds dog-eared for information on the dark elves.

“Has it occurred to you that the dark elves might want their notebook back, and that I could be in danger while translating it?”

Actually, it hadn’t. The alchemist was dead and their lair was in disarray. Who would even know the notebook was missing?

“I am assuming that you stole it from them,” Zoltan continued. “They wouldn’t give this to their closest ally, much less an enemy. You are a robber, aren’t you?”

“I am not.” Memories of Zav calling me a criminal came to mind. I had stolen the notebook, but my mind refused to accept that it had been an ignoble act. “The alchemist was trying to kill me. I only grabbed that because I was seeking the ingredients to make a concoction to fix my lungs. You were the one to tell me the ingredients for that, by the way. Thank you.”

“You are most welcome, but I am positive I didn’t list dark-elf diary pages among the ingredients.”

“Is that what you think those are? I assumed they were from an alchemy recipe book.”

Zoltan smiled enigmatically. “We shall see.”

11

Sunday morning found me with my bare feet and hands planted on a mat in a downward-dog position. The fence manufacturer in Woodinville, my only lead, wasn’t open on the weekends, and Willard had told me to stay away from the Pardus house, so my investigation was at a stand-still.

What better use of my time than to contort myself into strange positions that caused my T-shirt to dangle about my head? Now I understood the need for a yoga-specific wardrobe. We’d been holding the position for five breaths, supposedly, but I was positive it had been five minutes. I was thinking about my daughter instead of listening to the instructor guide me through an unpronounceable form of breathing that involved channeling Darth Vader and the back of my throat.

While waiting for the class to start, I’d seen a social-media post from Amber, not the usual swim-meet information, but something about a book she was struggling with for her last school essay of the year. I’d read it, even though it had been long ago, and had the urge to call her and ask if she wanted to talk through her ideas for her paper. But it had been ages since we’d spoken, and she would probably hang up or be horrified if I called.

Mary, the therapist I’d seen a few times now, wanted me to reestablish a relationship with my daughter, even though I kept assuring her that was a bad idea. I made new enemies every month—every time I walked into someone’s moss-covered, sagging mobile home. It was better that none of them knew I had a family.

Knowing that didn’t keep me from feeling regretful and wishing things were different. I’d also caught a post from my ex-husband that morning mentioning that he and Amber were planning a trip to a lake in Northern Idaho this summer. I couldn’t help but imagine hanging out with them on some dock, having a normal familial relationship…

“I can’t hear you, Val,” the instructor said in a sweet sing-song voice.

She was walking between the staggered yoga mats, saying a few words to people about their downward dogs—thankfully we were done flipping the dog now—and paused beside me.

“Uh?”

“Breathing. We’re working on our Ujjayi breathing. You need to inhale through your nose, fill your lower belly with air to activate your first and second chakras, then move the air up to exhale through your nose. You move your glottis as the air passes in and out of your throat to make the ocean sound.”

I rolled my eyes at the talk of chakras, made a note to later look up glottis, and wondered what it said about me that I would rather be fighting with the panther brothers than doing this. “Right. Ocean breathing. I’ll work on it.”

“Excellent. I want to hear you.” The instructor wandered off to harass someone else.

A clank, followed by glass breaking, came from a window at the front of the room. I jumped to my feet, reacting before the projectile—a grenade, damn it—hit the bamboo floor. Startled shouts