Battle Bond: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #2) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,40
colonel assigned you to find this dragon?” Nin was nibbling at her sandwich.
“Not yet. She promised I’d have an assignment coming, but I think it was related to those dark elves, not dragons. That was before people went missing.” I set down the phone, realizing Nin might be wondering why I was obsessing about this rather than researching her problem. “I ran into Zav this morning. Or maybe I should say he stalked me down. We made a deal. I’m helping him find the silver dragon, and he’s going to help me negotiate with the panther brothers.” Assuming I succeeded in assisting Zav in dealing with his foe first, and the silver dragon didn’t kill us both.
“Negotiate? Are dragons good at that?”
“He mentioned hurling fire and brimstone as a tactic.”
“Hm. I wish the Pardus brothers would simply leave me alone. I have no wish to see anyone burned or otherwise harmed.”
Remembering the brothers’ willingness to force me to have sex with them, I had no such objections. “We’ll figure something out. Promise.”
“Good. I like it here, and I am making progress at saving up the money I need. I do not take any days off, because I am working toward a goal.”
“Nin, you should take days off. People who don’t know how to relax develop health issues and end up being prescribed a bunch of drugs and being tortured by breathing loudly through their glottis because their therapist insisted.”
She gazed blandly at me. “I do not know what a glottis is.”
“I don’t either. I think it’s in here somewhere.” I waved at the front of my neck. “Take it from me, you need to enjoy a day off now and then.”
Nin pushed her plate to the side, her sandwich only half-eaten, and linked her fingers on the table. “I want my family to come to America. I am appreciative that technology lets me see and speak with my mother and sisters, but their lives are not good. They are cramped in their apartment, because work that pays well is so hard to find there. And I am… missing something. In here.” She touched a hand to her chest. “Because I am not with them. I grew up with all my siblings and my mother and grandmother. It is difficult not to be with them.” She blinked moist eyes. “You must have a family. Do you understand?”
“Our situations are a little different…” A pang of self-doubt and regret filled me as I thought of Amber again, of her working on a book report this weekend while I was tramping around the city, dealing with hostile shapeshifters and arrogant dragons. “But I understand.”
“This is why I must work a lot, and this is why I cannot let the Pardus brothers drive me out of the city. After many years, I am established here. To start over would be very difficult. It would delay everything.”
“I know. I get it. They’re not going to drive you out of the city.”
“Thank you.”
The waiter brought boxes for our food—I hadn’t finished my mountain of fries—and I paid the bill, then reached for my phone to look at the map again. My fingers paused mid-air.
Did I really need to spend my day researching for Zav when I knew exactly where the people who were threatening Nin were? Yes, Zav would make a good ally were I intending to negotiate with them, but I’d handled dens of shifters on my own before. With some high-powered grenades from Nin and the element of surprise, I could take out the Pardus brothers and their house and weapons supply. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t killed magical beings before. I just didn’t make a habit of doing it if they hadn’t been condemned as criminals and someone wasn’t paying me, usually the government. Freelance stuff was iffier, but I’d always been careful to stick to criminals where footage or other strong evidence showed their evil-doing. I’d never counted crimes against myself as a justifiable reason to kill someone, since they all hated me. But was there truly any doubt about the Pardus brothers? They’d threatened Nin, not just me.
“The glottis,” Nin read from her phone, saying the unfamiliar word carefully, “is the part of the larynx consisting of the vocal cords and the opening between them.”
I shook away my musing and smiled. “Yes, that sounds right. Thank you.”
“Perhaps I will recommend it to my word-of-the-day apps.”
“Is that how you learned English?”
“I took night-school classes. I thought I knew English when I