A Shade of Dragon Read online

  I glanced over my shoulder and caught Theon staring at me.

  “I don’t think that you will,” he said.

  I cracked a wry smile. He was right. I knew where we were; I could use the walk; I wasn’t particularly eager to be around other people at the moment, even briefly; and I was in no hurry to return home to my irate father.

  I turned back to the door.

  “At least use the pendant that I gave you, if you so desire,” he said behind me.

  I paused again and reached into the back of my sweater dress, unlatching the delicate chain and unstringing it from around my neck. “It’s of no use to you anymore that I have this,” I told him coldly. “Trust me. Whatever you receive from women for giving them these mystical gifts—you won’t be getting any from me.”

  Theon stared at me in disbelief as I lowered the chunk of mirror into his palm.

  For a moment, I saw him searching for his tongue, and almost broke in sympathy for him; I almost took the pendant back just to stop that look in his eyes. How had the gold become so impossibly dark now? It was closer to the dark caramel of petrified wood than to the shade of honey in sunlight.

  “I can show you the mirror,” he said.

  I shook my head. “What does it matter if you show me a mirror?”

  “Not a mirror. The mirror.” Without waiting for a response, he gripped my wrist and tugged me through the apartment den and kitchenette again, through a corridor which would doubtlessly lead to the bedroom. I resisted when I realized this, but he’d already entered the room and turned on its light. And I saw the mirror from which this pendant must have come.

  It was a circular mirror which bore no gilding whatsoever. In fact, it didn’t appear to be polished. It was a natural mirror, formed of minerals so pale and yet so solid that one’s image was thrown faintly back. It had been cracked at some point, or had he merely bought an expensive mirror with damaged glass, removed its framework, and then touted it as his last-ditch effort to score with skeptical females?

  Only a small portion of it was missing; it was possible that the portion was the exact size of my necklace itself.

  Strangely excited again—I supposed his little fantasy did fulfill some deep-seated desire for excitement—I advanced toward the mirror and, lifting the pendant from Theon’s hands, I held at the ready. I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t know what I would’ve done if it had slid into place as perfectly as a puzzle piece, confirming that Theon had told me the truth at some point. But then, what did it prove? That I was gullible? That he’d drawn me back in? That his use of props was impeccable?

  But it didn’t matter, because I raised the sliver of crystal on the end of my chain to the missing chunk of glass and determined that it was a close fit, but imperfect. For all I knew, it was coincidental. Perhaps he’d bought the mirror first, and the necklace second, and then he’d rigged the necklace to inspire curiosity and excitement… I mean, I’d heard about these kind of men. They dedicated their entire lives to building this false persona which could successfully bed bored beauties.

  “Sorry, Theon,” I said, turning toward him. “I just don’t believe it.”

  Theon swallowed. “Can I see your pendant again?”

  I relinquished the necklace, slightly offended that he was asking for it back, even though I’d been trying to give it back. Maybe, in some tiny way, I just wanted him to fight for me. But he was being so damn reasonable about everything. “Sure,” I said, dropping the faintly glowing gem into his palm.

  His fingers folded over it and he strode toward the mirror.

  Part of me wanted to leave and never think about this night again. But an even larger part of me needed to stay. A larger part of me needed to know why Theon needed the pendant back.

  He lifted it to the crack and examined the piece, specifically noting the shape of the negative space which remained between the mirror and the pendant.

  “When it was broken,” he whispered, so softly that I could barely hear him, “it didn’t break into just one piece, as I’ve always assumed…” His voice trailed off, seemingly lost in thought for several moments before continuing. “It… It broke into two pieces. One large, and one very small. I never realized this ‘til now.”

  I smiled. It wasn’t a real smile. I couldn’t take any more revelations tonight. Deep down, okay, yes, it was breaking my heart that this seemingly perfect man had been a liar all along. I exhaled long and low. “Sure,” I muttered to myself. “Why does that matter?”

  “It matters because someone could be aware of our movements,” he answered, still examining the pendant. “I worried that a member of the crew might have betrayed me, but now… The truth of the matter could be so much worse.”

  “What’s the significance of two—” A stupid question; halfway through my sentence, I saw its true meaning. If the material created a window into the mirror from the pendant and vice versa, then it must have created a window for the second missing piece. If that piece of material fell into the wrong hands, whoever that person might be, they would become privy to the inner workings of Theon’s plan: the queen for whom he searched.

  Me?

  And had that been the purpose of the harpy attack?

  “There’s no such thing as harpies,” I whispered aloud to myself, eyes darting from the mirror, breaking its spell.

  “What? The significance of the two pieces lies with another story altogether. And it’s a much, much longer story.”

  I felt the sensation of standing on a precipice again, with Theon in front of me and a long drop behind. I could advance toward Theon—and this strange, fantastical bubble he purported to exist in—or I could descend the mountainside and return to the world as I knew it below. Although made dark by the distance, the safety and predictability of Beggar’s Hole remained beneath me.

  It wasn’t too late. I could still set myself free and return to what I knew.

  I shook my head and turned, striding from the bedroom. An actual harpy could have come crashing through his front window and I would have stalked from the premises and slammed the door on my way out.

  I just couldn’t do this. I’d hit my limit an hour ago. I felt safer walking with no phone through this bitter Maine night than I felt staying one more second with Theon Aena of Iphras.

  I mean, come on. What did he expect of me? I was only human.

  As my boots clapped down onto the cement, I set off in the direction of my dad’s street. I occasionally flicked a glance over my shoulder, and deep down, I knew that I was scanning the sky for the silhouette of a harpy.

  My hand instinctively went to my chest, where it started groping for the pendant and holding it in times of insecurity, even though the pendant had been returned to Theon for good now. I started at its hard sensation beneath my hand and plucked that same shard on that same chain from beneath my top. How was it possible . . .?

  He must have given it back to me without my noticing. He must have.

  Chapter 26: Nell

  I spent the next three days mired in a depression so deep, even being guided through a self-help meditation with Zada didn’t brighten my spirits. Even when she coaxed me to feel all the slime from “total skeezewads” melting off of me, I didn’t crack a smile. And I didn’t know what was wrong. If I asked for anyone’s opinion, they would assure me I had done the right thing, the only thing that I could have done.

  And yet I felt torn, as if I had been the one to make a mistake. When we hurt at the loss of even toxic and corrosive things, how did we know when to embrace pain as necessary, numb ourselves, and wait for the time to pass, or to run away from it, bottle it up and force the mind to other things? Was I just aching because I’d been forced to dump a gorgeous psychopath, or was it because…

  No. I did whatever I could to respond in the first way: the positive way. I let myself eat all the pizza in the house. I lay in various positions on the couch and watched every romantic comedy in the DVD library, crying when they first kissed, when they ine
vitably parted ways over a misunderstanding, and then bawling when they realized what terrible mistakes had been made. I ignored everyone else in the house, unless they were offering to freshen my coffee, and I slept for ten to twelve hours two days in a row.

  Forty-eight hours after our ill-fated first date, Dad broached what would clearly be a shaky topic.

  He entered the den and rested his hip on the edge of the couch. I didn’t acknowledge him. He cleared his throat, and I tore my eyes from the screen, wiping at the tear which had trekked halfway down one cheek.

  “Hey, kiddo,” Dad greeted.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I muttered.

  Dad sighed. “You know why I didn’t punish you after you came home from running off with that guy? The ‘prince’?”

  “I didn’t think about it, honestly.” I decided this conversation was happening, no matter how badly I wanted to avoid it, and paused Friends with a begrudging sigh.

  “I didn’t punish you because I know you… and I know you must have really cared about that guy to leave with him.”

  “He was all right, I guess. It’s not that big of a deal, actually.”

  “Did something happen?”

  “Not really.” I felt Dad linger at the side of the couch, and slanted a glance over my shoulder at him. “What?”

  “I don’t know, Nell.” Dad sighed again. “You’ve been acting like something happened.”

  “Okay, well, I guess he said something that I thought made him sound crazy.” I shrugged. “You were right, okay? There are no princes from distant islands roaming the coast of Maine in the winter. He’s just some creep with an elaborate background story.”

  Dad settled onto the couch beside me, and I stifled the urge to roll my eyes. I had finally gotten bad enough that my father, the maestro of ruined relationships, was offering me advice. “It’s interesting that you’re so sad about losing someone like that... So what happened?”

  “Auuugh.” I did not want to do this, especially not with Bryce O’Hara. “He… I got scratched by this big bird on the beach.”

  Naturally, I neglected all the other details. How the bird had picked me up and carried me onto the cliffside, where it had dropped me into its massive nest. How it had resembled a woman. How it had spoken to Theon… He must have drugged me or something. Maybe he’d hypnotized me. Who knew what kind of tools a con artist could employ?

  “Anyway, he claimed that the wounds were psychic, and they were infecting my chakras, or something,” I muttered, refusing to meet my father’s eyes. I could only imagine how high his eyebrows were right now. “And he wanted to heal them with his, like, sacred prince energy, or something. Honestly… I… I mean… He must be crazy, right?” I shook my head and stared off into space, genuinely wondering. “He must be crazy.”

  Dad, unbelievably, chuckled. “Yeah… That was what I thought when I first met Zada, you know.”

  I shot him a glare. “Are you trying to convince me that he’s not crazy?”

  “No, no, no… That’s up to you to decide. But I’m just saying that your reaction belies how much he meant to you, even though you’d only just met. I wouldn’t even be talking to you about him now if you’d moved off of the couch in the past two days.”

  I bristled. “I’ve moved.”

  “To go to the bathroom or raid the fridge. Not to take a shower, or change clothes, or anything else done by people who aren’t fabulously depressed.”

  My shoulders sagged.

  “Anyway,” Dad continued, “I’m just saying that first impressions can be misleading, especially to people like us.”

  “What do you mean, ‘people like us’?”

  Dad sighed. “We’ve lived… special lives, you know? Meemaw and Peepop were lucky. They were born to people with money, they went to Ivy League institutions, and when they had me, they… trained me in the way of their culture. But, Nell—what you think of as sanity is actually just perspective. You and I were both raised in painfully conventional households, and other people think we’re the crazy ones.”

  I pursed my lips. That much was true. I recalled the reaction of other Shenandoah Institute students to my politeness, my formality. They thought I was ridiculous.

  “So, when I met Zada, I automatically judged her,” Dad went on. “I had been given her card by a colleague. I called her, and she came over with her little table, and her oils, and her meditation music. Of course, she’s gorgeous, but it wasn’t just that. It never is. She was wearing a Ralph Nader t-shirt, first of all. And sandals made out of rope. And patchwork, parachute pants she bragged about making herself. And then, when she started working on me, she started talking. She talked about how certain sounds would unlock the energy in my spine, and with enough effort, I’d be able to see the secret, invisible world of spirits surrounding us.” I scoffed, but Dad cast me a stern look. “The thing is, Nell, it’s no different from us, claiming that a little piece of green paper is more important than, say, the tree it’s made from—even though that tree provides oxygen and absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Without the trees, we would all die out, but cash is an invention that is less than two thousand years old.”

  I scrunched my nose. “It’s not really the same thing.”

  “But it is, Penelope. The reason money is important to us is our belief in it. It is green paper. It hasn’t even represented gold in over a hundred years now. It is just printed from the Federal Reserve and moved into circulation. Even if it did stand for gold, what is the real worth of gold? Can we eat gold? Can we breathe it? It’s just another idea. It only has value because we believe it does. It’s nothing but a mineral, the same as coal, or zinc, or feldspar.”

  My frown deepened. I could tell Zada had been filling Dad’s head with her thoughts. “Fine. Maybe our beliefs are the result of our upbringing, and it’s not the same as really being crazy. Are you saying madness is just an idea we use to ostracize outsiders, or what, Dad?”

  “There’s my little debate star,” Dad said, winking at me. “No, there are definitely real crazies out there. People who get infuriated in traffic. People who hear voices, or want to hurt other people, or think that they’re Jesus. But—Nell—did he do anything that really made you feel unsafe?”

  The memory of Theon rushing past me to battle the—the harpies—came flooding to the forefront of my mind.

  “I guess not,” I whispered. My hand went to the pendant, still beneath my shirt. “I felt safe with him.” I lowered my eyes and felt a pang of remorse. Things had felt natural with him. Real. Important.

  “That’s a pretty big deal, Nell. You’re almost making me regret kicking him out.”

  “Yeah, it is kind of weird how you didn’t want me to be with him, and now that I’m not, you do.” I looked at him and slanted my mouth to the side. “Maybe it’s just your contrary nature coming out. You always want the other thing.”

  “First, I resent that.” Dad raised a finger in the air. “And secondly, if you don’t believe me, then maybe you should talk to Patty about this. You’ve always trusted her advice over mine anyway.”

  I grimaced and nodded. I hadn’t talked to my mom in almost a week. I had wished her a merry Christmas before I’d left, and then I’d lost my phone… and although my father was a strong proponent of happiness over self-control, my mother would easily represent the other side of the spectrum. It was probably wise to consult her, especially if I was tempted to agree with my dad and go to Theon now.

  Theon would open the door and take me into his arms, and that mysterious heat would sweep through my body again, and his mouth would descend onto—

  I shook my head and cleared my throat.

  Yeah. It was time to call Mom. She’d talk this nonsense right out of me.

  Chapter 27: Nell

  I borrowed the landline that night and gave Mom a call. I could just imagine what she was doing right now, in our little house just outside of DC’s urban center, the night before New Year’s Eve. She was undoubt
edly garbed in some kind of luxurious robe. Fireplace roaring. Classical music moving through the house. And utterly alone.

  Sometimes I thought my mom sounded badass, and other times, the thought of her made me quite sad. She was so beautiful still, however severe and aristocratic her features. She had amassed a small fortune. And yet I was certain she would never have a partner with whom to share her life. She must’ve been terribly lonely without me there.

  The phone was in the middle of its third ring when she answered.

  “Hello?” Her voice, not unlike Michelle’s, was throaty and cultured with a measured kind of coldness to it.

  “Hey, Mom,” I greeted.

  Her voice instantly warmed. “Baby. I tried to call you, but it went straight to voicemail.”

  “You might not believe this, but my phone is actually in the ocean somewhere. I would’ve told you, but I—I met somebody. And he kind of took over my time for the past week.”

  “You met someone?” She didn’t even try to keep the surprise out of her voice. “Who? What’s he like? Oh, God, don’t tell me it’s the son of one of your father’s friends. Nell…”

  “He’s not local. He’s… actually… He’s foreign.”

  “Oh?” Mom’s voice was gilded in both curiosity and suspicion.

  “And I really liked him,” I blurted.

  Mom paused before clearing her throat. “Liked him. Past tense.”

  “Well… I still like him, kind of,” I explained. “But we went out on a date, and we started really talking, and I realized that he was… very different… from us.”

  “In what way was he different?” The stress in Mom’s voice spiked higher.

  I sighed. I hated to explain it again. It was so embarrassing. “Well, he actually—he said that the world is built up of different dimensions, and all kinds of fantastic creatures, and… he even believes in harpies, Mom.”

  “The eagles?”