dream all by itself.
I shoved a rib in my mouth, gnawing on the bone far harder than pleasure would have demanded. At least my stomach was happy. We hadn’t eaten since driving back from Bend the day before, and I’d woken up at noon, ravenous and with no food in the apartment that hadn’t been thrown on the floor and trampled.
“You all right?” Dimitri asked.
“I’m just trying to figure out how I’m going to collect everything I need to get when I don’t even know how to get down there.” The restaurant was busy with people eating at tables close to ours, so I refrained from mentioning dark elves and secret underground tunnels. “Did you really not wake up at any point last night when Zav was in my apartment?”
“Nope. I was passed out.” He’d woken up even later than I had.
I’d had to prod him off my couch with the promise of food.
“He really asked you to fetch some, uh, bad guys for him?” Dimitri glanced at one of the side tables where the couple was cheerfully chatting about their plans to visit the Chihuly Museum and go to a Mariners game. What must it be like to have such a normal life?
“Yes. I don’t get it.” I leaned closer and lowered my voice. “Couldn’t he smash through the building or street or whatever is on top of the tunnels and reach in and pluck them out? You didn’t see him on the rooftop. He’s huge.”
“Maybe he’s not supposed to destroy cities to do his job.”
“Even if that’s true—and I have a hard time imagining his justice court caring about lowly vermin cities—then why couldn’t he walk down there as a human and get them? Why send me? A puny little mongrel.”
He lowered his voice. “I’m sure you know more about dragon shifters than I do—”
“Not much more. This is my first one.”
Dimitri raised his eyebrows. Maybe I did have a problem with interrupting.
“I wonder if he’s less powerful in that form and worries that an entire clan of dark elves—how many live down there?—might overpower him.”
“He incinerated bullets and froze me in my tracks while in human form. He froze Sindari, too, and he’s at least moderately resistant to magical attacks.” I didn’t want to contemplate the possibility that Zav was afraid to go down there, not when I had no choice but to go in.
“I said less powerful, not a wimp.”
“I don’t know.” I scraped collard greens onto my fork and shoveled them into my mouth while I considered. “He’s so arrogant that even if he was less powerful, I think he’d still believe he could kick all of their asses.”
“Maybe he’s just busy then. Long list of criminals to catch.”
I snorted. “He does sound aggrieved by that. And pissed that it’s forcing him to visit our lowly world. Who gave him this task, do you think?”
“Someone higher up on the totem pole?”
“His mom?” My snort turned to a snigger as I imagined Lord Cocky getting taken by the ear—the horn—and being given the to-do list as punishment.
Dimitri’s mouth twisted with skepticism.
“He did mention that female dragons are powerful and run the show. Maybe that’s why the males, embittered by their pitiful status in society, take their aggressions out on smaller species.”
“Maybe you can run that hypothesis by him next time he lands on your roof. If he kills you, at least you’ll die at home.”
“Flattened like those poor deck chairs.” I set down my fork as a new unpleasant thought surfaced. “What if he’s still pissed at me for interfering with his arrest of the wyvern, and he’s trying to get me killed? By giving me an impossible task?”
“Couldn’t he have killed you last night in your apartment if he wanted you dead?”
“Or any of the times we’ve met, yes, but maybe that’s against the laws he’s upholding. I don’t think he killed any of the werewolves, though the ones that caught fire might have eventually died.” I grabbed another rib. “You know what I should have done? Told him he’d have to come with me down into that lair and that I’d help him get his dark elves, but only if he and his bullet-incinerating body stood in front of me while I hunted down the alchemist.”
The baseball couple glanced at me. Maybe I hadn’t lowered my voice enough. The waiter brought their check, which they hurried to pay without waiting for change and then hustled away from the table with a few backward glances