Sinister Magic: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #1) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,105
of Dimitri’s big sausage fingers.
It was only after Zoltan and Dimitri were gone that I remembered the notebook I’d taken from the dark-elf laboratory. I assumed it was written in that special alchemical language of theirs and that Zoltan was the only one around who could read it. I wished I’d thought to ask him to take a look. Oh, well. He hadn’t needed it to concoct Willard’s formula. If I saw him again, I would ask him about it. It was probably just a recipe book, but one never knew.
“Feeling any better?” I waved at the nearly empty IV bag.
“I’m not sure,” Willard said, “but my veins are tingling.”
“That must be the dragon blood. Zav is…” I groped for a way to explain the electricity of having his aura nearby. “Tingly.”
“Tingly?” Willard raised her eyebrows. “When the wedding invitations come, make sure you spell my name right.”
“Ha ha. I don’t even know your first name.”
“Good.”
She lay back and closed her eyes. I dismissed Sindari for a night of rest, then pulled up a chair for myself.
Epilogue
“I must admit, I didn’t think you’d be back,” Mary said.
“It’s been a rough week.” I sat in her chair—this time, she had it turned so the back didn’t face the door—and looked out on the sun beaming down on the lake.
From here, the sinkhole in Eastlake wasn’t visible, but recent news reports promised that construction crews were working around the clock to fix it. The media hadn’t mentioned dark elves, statues made from bones, or upturned vats of blood, but a few citizen reports had made it onto the various social networks. The Loch Ness monster—now the Lake Union monster—was being blamed even though the damage was several blocks inland. Tourists and locals were flocking to the sinkhole for closer looks, and the police were busy shooing them away. Nobody had tried to arrest me. I kept expecting it, but maybe Willard had pulled some strings.
To my surprise, only a couple of people had posted footage of a black dragon in the night sky, and all of it was blurry. There was an argument in the comments section of one video about whether it was a dragon or a UFO streaking chemtrails over Seattle to poison us all.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Mary asked.
“Not specifically, but maybe we could look at some ink blots or something.”
She snorted. “We don’t use those anymore.”
“You’re disappointing my preconceptions.”
“So sorry. Do you want to talk about your family this time?”
I bit down on my instinct to say no. If I wanted to figure out how to master my stress and get healthier—and make sure my new weaknesses weren’t a liability when fighting bad guys—I had to take this seriously. And probably all the other stuff my doctor had recommended too. Yoga. Deep breathing. Meditation. I wanted to gag, but I would try it all. I had to try. I couldn’t afford to have weaknesses.
“Sure,” I made myself say.
“Good.”
I let myself talk about my daughter and admitted that I didn’t like the distance I’d created, but after so many years, I didn’t know how to fix it. Besides, nothing had changed as far as my job went. It was still dangerous to know me, or even stand next to me. I wondered if Mary would one day be used against me, and a half hour into the session, I felt more bleak instead of better.
A honk came from the street below the window. At first, I didn’t think anything of it, but my phone buzzed. Mary frowned at the interruption when I checked it and lurched to my feet.
“I’ll be right back. You can keep billing me.”
I ran down the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator and burst out onto the sunny sidewalk. Corporal Clarke, one of the army couriers who occasionally delivered orders and physical materials to Willard’s office, stood next to a black Jeep almost identical to the one I’d lost. It was newer than the one I’d lost.
“Ms. Thorvald? This is for you, from Colonel Willard.” He waved at the Jeep and handed me an envelope.
Pleasure spread through me for more reasons than my fondness for Clarke’s Jamaican accent.
“She said to show you the manual, PMCS forms, and mileage log, and to make sure you know it’s a government loaner until you replace your personal vehicle. Or until a dragon hurls it into a tree.” His dark eyes twinkled. Clarke had always been someone I could sense coming, so I was certain he had a magical ancestor.
“Are you supposed to know about the details of my missions?”
“I’m the courier. I know everything.”
“You’re a corporal. Corporals rarely know how to find their asses in the dark.”
“I’m special, ma’am. And my ass practically glows.” The eyes twinkled again. Definitely magical blood. Probably fae.
“Colonel Willard isn’t back at work already, is she?”
“Still receiving treatment, but she’s doing better. I witnessed her issuing orders briskly over the phone while blowing open a scandal that… will be classified, so I’m supposed to pretend not to know about it.”
I imagined a pit-bull version of Willard taking a chomp out of General Nash’s ass—I was sure his didn’t glow—and approved, even if Willard should be resting.
“Much like with dragons hurling Jeeps into trees?”
“That’s right. Colonel Willard also said to inform you that your name has been cleared with the police, and you’re back on the job. You can expect new assignments soon.”
I wanted to hug him. No, I wanted to hug Willard. But now that she was on the mend, she’d probably go back to barking orders and being terse with me, no touching between colleagues. And that was fine with me.
“Here you go.” Clarke tossed me the keys, waved at the binder on the seat, and headed to a waiting car that looked a lot like the one I’d borrowed from Lieutenant Sudo.
“Corporal. Is that Sudo’s vehicle?”
“Not anymore.” He smirked over his shoulder. “He’s been reassigned to South Korea, up near the DMZ.”
“Has he? That’s a shame.”
“The shame is mostly that he didn’t clean his vehicle before dropping it off at the motor pool. There was weird cat and dog hair all over the inside.”
“That is weird.”
I clasped my hand around the keys, tempted to take the new Jeep for a spin. But Mary was waiting for me to return for the second half of my therapy session. If Willard was contemplating new assignments for me, I needed to get as healthy as possible as soon as possible.
As I walked back toward the building, the twang of a familiar aura plucked at my senses. High above, almost indistinguishable from an airplane, a black dragon flew over the city.
I needed to get as healthy as possible for a lot of reasons.