A Shade of Dragon Read online

  “Fantastic.” I tried as hard as I could to put some oomph into it. “What’s she making?”

  “Tabouli salad,” Dad answered with an equal amount of fakeness.

  Zada was “into” spirituality. For Dad, this meant that his diet of beer and take out food was being steadily undermined with wheatgrass smoothies and, well, tabouli salad. She meditated, she did yoga, and she was probably into reggae or trance or jam sessions… okay, I couldn’t pretend to really know what “New Agers” liked. I was certain that this relationship would be short-lived, so it wasn’t like I’d have to learn.

  After twenty minutes of driving in near silence, listening to the radio, Dad glanced at me from the corner of his eye. I caught a flash of uncertainty there.

  “Now, cupcake, I do have a little surprise for ya,” he announced as we pulled off of the main road. “I think you’re going to love it.”

  “Oh?” I asked, raising one eyebrow. “And what’s that?”

  His Mercedes slowed and pulled off onto a street.

  “We got a new place!” Dad cheered, toggling his brights so that I could see the beach house exposed in them.

  I sagged, disappointed. I didn’t know why I found this so disheartening. Perhaps because it was so typical. When would he settle down? “That’s awesome,” I said, trying to infuse my tone with some more false cheer. “A beach house. Wow, Dad. I bet it has a great view.”

  “It does,” he assured me as the car pulled off the gravel road and into a two-car garage at the base of the beach house. “It’s a little smaller than the cabin, but I think the downgrade is totally worth it. I mean, we’re doing tai chi on the beach at sunrise, Nell.”

  “In December?”

  Dad cleared his throat and threw open his car door. “Well, we haven’t actually done it yet. But we will!” The trunk came open and Dad muscled each bag onto his back and under his arms. “Let’s head on inside, sugar plum. I know Zada and Sage can’t wait to see you.”

  Just up the garage steps, through the back door, a female voice shrilled, “Not in my house!”

  Chapter 3: Nell

  I climbed the stairs behind Dad, wanting to spot him in case his foot slipped with so many bags loading him down, then grabbed the door for him to enter. The beach house was freezing. That was my first impression. My second impression was Zada, marching from window to window, waving a fuming smudge stick of sage and followed closely behind by her progeny, also named Sage.

  “Honey bear,” Dad coaxed, dumping the bags unceremoniously on the floor. I frowned. My laptop was in one of those. “What’s going on? Why are you smudging the house?”

  “I saw a UFO,” Sage announced, trundling past us without acknowledging me. Naturally—he was fourteen, and it was hard for any fourteen-year-old to notice anyone not reflected back at them in a mirror. He had wild, frizzy auburn curls, which were growing out into a serious afro, wire-framed glasses, and braces. “Hey, Nell,” he called over his shoulder without looking.

  “Hey,” I replied, lackluster.

  “There’s no such thing as aliens, because we live in an interdimensional, spiritual reality, not a linear, spatial reality, like ‘science’ claims.” Zada marched to the garage door and smudged it. “When we see a UFO, Sage, you know what we’re really seeing is a demon, right? This world is filled with them! Haven’t you seen the news lately?”

  Dad laughed. “You mean those hoaxes out in the Pacific?”

  “They’re not hoaxes!” Zada cried.

  I believed with all my heart—or perhaps with all my brain—that the videos which had recently emerged in the news were, in fact, hoaxes. Vampires. Werewolves. Blah, blah. It was nothing that couldn’t be rigged together by a crew of pranksters with some video-editing software and access to the drama department’s wardrobe closet.

  “Honey?” Dad prompted. “Remember… dinner?”

  Zada turned and, for the first time, seemed to really see both Dad and me. “Right,” she answered, smudge stick still peeling in her hand. “I’ll go get it. It’s so good to see you again, Nell.”

  “You, too,” I offered.

  Zada Brinkley had long, wavy copper hair, accessorized with dreadlocks, beads, and feathers. She was a petite but muscular woman, her figure sculpted from likely years of clean eating and low-impact, but consistent, exercise. She seldom wore a stitch of makeup, and her typical attire was a loose, floor-length skirt—particularly patchwork—and shirts with messages about conflict diamonds, palm oil, and sweatshops.

  “Come on into the dining room and settle down; you can always unpack later,” Zada invited, ignoring the spots of coffee which still speckled my white sweater. Though annoyed by the offer, I had to suppose that my father’s fiancée was speaking from the goodness of her heart, and ignored the urge to refuse.

  In spite of how chill the house was—as you could only pump so much heat to combat the icy spray coming directly off the Atlantic—the dining room did achieve a sunny atmosphere, with its walls the color of coral and its fabric wall hangings with peaceful sayings crocheted into them. Bless This House & Make It a Home, was one of them.

  I settled into the chair my father pulled out for me and beheld the hideous tabouli salad. It looked like a greenish mish-mash, though I had to admit that it smelled all right. From a distance. “What… is this, exactly?”

  “It’s Mediterranean,” Zada explained, dipping tongs into the mess and extracting a nice, goopy pile for my plate. “The health benefits are phenomenal. Of course, what I really like about eating meals that are high in vitamin K and manganese is that they help decalcify your pineal gland.”

  I nodded and poked at the salad. “I thought calcification of the pineal gland was a normal part of puberty,” I offered, though I couldn’t say why I’d ever enter into a debate with Zada, except that maybe I had a bit of a tic about irrational beliefs. “After all, the intense hormonal secretion is no longer really necessary.”

  “That’s what they want us to think,” Zada cried. Meanwhile, Dad uncorked a bottle of red wine and filled her glass to a generous depth. “But the truth is that the pineal gland, which secretes DMT, the spirit molecule, crystallizes only because we drink fluoridated water.”

  I nodded blithely and took a bite of the tabouli salad. I had to admit, I could see how it might be good in a parallel universe in which Zada had not prepared the dish herself. As it was, however, she’d gone overboard on the garlic, and I couldn’t help but cringe as I swallowed.

  “Garlic is great for decalcification,” Zada went on pointedly.

  “It sure is, pookie,” Dad placated his fiancée. “Nell? Sage? Does anyone want something to drink? Juice, or water?”

  “I’ll have water, unless you have hot tea, unsweetened,” I said.

  “Oh, I love hot tea!” Zada cheered. I ignored this, and Dad placed a water at the side of my plate. He delivered Sage some cranberry juice, at Zada’s command, and then poured himself an equally generous portion of red wine.

  “So,” I asked innocently, “is wine also great for decalcification?”

  Zada, who had been drinking deeply, pulled the glass away from her mouth and glowered. She might have been a bit zealous, but her sensitivity gave her a keen ear for insults. “It can help you handle stress.” Zada cleared her throat and took another drink.

  “Isn’t it true that even NASA recently confessed to capturing some anomalies on their satellites?” Dad asked before taking two rapid sips from his wine glass. I had to wonder if he was a little nervous after all. Dad? Nervous? The more I considered it, the more preposterous it seemed. My father didn’t care about anything except women, a good time, and money. And he only barely cared about those things. “Maybe Sagey here did see an alien.” Dad winked at Zada.

  I cleared my throat and tried to refocus. Dinner conversation. Not disgusting Dad flirting. “Well, an ‘anomaly’ is a very vague term. It could easily be a natural phenomenon. Are we seriously thinking that Sage actually had an encounter of some sort?” r />
  “Because of the UFO I saw. It was right outside, up in the sky. Saw it go across the moon, couldn’t have mistaken it, not like that.” Sage had the same zealous, defensive manner of speaking as his mother. It was amusing that some Buddhist masseuse would be so much more high-strung than a powerful CEO like my father, who constantly acted as if he’d only freshly napped.

  “Well, lots of people think they’ve seen a UFO at one point or another.” I choked down another bite of the garlic-heavy tabouli. “All it means was that there was something in the sky, and it wasn’t necessarily a plane.”

  “Um, hello, does anyone listen to me when I talk?” Sage shrilled. “Because I already said, A, it was oblong in structure. B, it had extensions on either side. C, it had an irregular flight pattern. And, uh, D, if I was to use the moon for scale, the thing was huge, yet maneuverable! Not a plane. Not a balloon. Not swamp gas!”

  Zada drank. Neither she nor Dad seemed to be willing to touch this one, so I fielded it.

  “Well, Sage,” I said, “it’s very difficult to gauge size by using the moon, itself a distant object with a scale we find cumbersome to comprehend. I mean, what you’re talking about is something that astronomers do, carefully and with intense calculation. Not something they blurt out from a windowsill, no offense. Considering the other attributes you described, I’d consider it most likely to have been a bird, particularly an eagle. They’re very big, and they live in Maine—”

  “It was not a stupid eagle, Penelope!” Sage cried. I was impressed that he actually knew my full name. “I’m not trying to make some classic UFO claim. It’s just what I saw, and it was not a bird. It had a cockpit!”

  “Did that cockpit resemble in any way the head of an animal?”

  “Stop being such a bitch!”

  “Sage!” Zada’s eyes bulged. Her wine glass had emptied itself. These two were drinking their dinners. “We do not use derogatory, goddess-hating language! All women are mothers, daughters, and sisters.”

  “Goddess-hating?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “So, Nell, are you excited to see all your old friends again?” Dad downed the last of his wine glass in one gulp, though he had yet to touch his tabouli. “Michelle and that boy?”

  Michelle and that boy. Huh. I wondered what the next glimpse at my phone would bring.

  “Sure,” I lied. “I’ll probably call her as soon as dinner ends and see if she wants to hang out while I’m in town.” Also untrue. The thought of seeing Michelle…

  I mean, she knew I liked Andrew. Although we had agreed that it wasn’t anything serious, she hadn’t even asked me. There’s a certain order to things, you know, Michelle. You can’t just do whatever you want, whenever you want! How could you? How could you, when you knew that I would be in town in a few days, and when you ALREADY TOLD ME THAT THE DATE TO THE STUPID BLUE CHRISTMAS BALL WAS JUST AS FRIENDS!

  “… reminds me so much of Patricia,” Dad murmured off to my left. I jumped, realizing that I’d been staring at my glass of water, my fork still hovering over the tabouli slop.

  “What?” I asked, my hackles already rising. After what Dad had done to her, even so many years ago and even though the marriage had already been destroyed, I was always ready to rise to Mom’s defense.

  “Patty was always such a sourpuss,” Dad went on, oblivious to my glare as he refilled his glass. Mom hated being called Patty. “She’d stare off into space, grimace, purse her lips, shrug her shoulders, sigh… Augh, it was just awful. I’ve never met a more unhappy person. Anyway, you were almost her spitting image just then, staring at your water.”

  I bristled, but Dad wasn’t looking at me anymore and couldn’t see the fire in my eyes. Instead, Dad addressed Zada.

  “You know, I have no idea how the marriage lasted as long as it did.”

  My eyes bulged. Even Zada, the same woman who would put the word ‘science’ into air quotes, stiffened and shifted her gaze to me.

  “I’d ask her what was wrong, she’d say nothing, every time—”

  “Maybe that was because you never cared what was wrong! You just wanted her to either be perfect or get out!” I shrieked, shocking even myself. I shot to my feet. “All you ever cared about was yourself!” With that, I stormed through the dining room into the den, and, finding a door there, out into the cold, dark night.

  Chapter 4: Nell

  The beach at night was stark and exhilarating. The wind clawed at me, slicing through my clothes, and the scenery came out in monochrome. The sand was gray, bleeding into the darker gray of the roaring ocean and night sky beyond. Waves blossomed white at the shoreline, ribbons which marked the boundary between sand and sea. I wrapped my arms around myself and refused to turn back. I would let the foam of the sea and its biting mist clear my head. Then, after getting nice and numb, I’d find my way back inside. In the morning, I’d chew down Dad’s bloodshot apology.

  No one came to stop me from walking in these freezing temperatures. Even Zada, who was supposed to care so much, stayed inside. I strolled until the house faded out of view and another house was closer than my own. It was constructed of some rough-hewn wood, giving the architecture a hip, rustic edge. The windows were alight—it was probably sometime after nine—and colorful figures moved inside. The distance made them seem tiny.

  One of them, a woman with dirty blond hair in a ponytail, had her back turned to me. She was busy washing dishes in an oversized cable-knit tunic and leggings. A man entered the kitchen, brown-haired, thin and gawkish. He leaned on a doorframe, watching her and talking to her animatedly. I stopped walking so I could watch them from the deserted beach.

  He went to collect some dishes from the table, and she shifted away from the sink to grace him with a quick kiss of appreciation. She was very pregnant.

  I tore my eyes away, advancing further along the beach.

  Hope it lasts, I thought to myself bitterly. Maybe that baby will be much happier than I ever was. Who knows?

  I was glad, in my own callous way, that the fling with Andrew was over. It had been safe and comfortable—but not in a good way. In a boring way. It was a blow to the ego to lose him, but I had to admit that there’d never been any of that accompanying madness, the stuff of romance novels and bad poetry. There’d never been any sleepless nights staring at the moon over DC, wondering what he was doing. He had just been palatable, like ketchup. Ketchup had its merits. But no one would ever fill a bowl with that stuff.

  I passed another home, this one all dark. There were no more houses on this strip. There was no more anything.

  My fingers were pink and numb now, as was the tip of my nose, my lips, and my cheeks. I walked further still, wanting to make it to the end. The beach was cut off by a jagged mountainside, covered in sand and weeds. I wondered idly if my parents had ever embraced like that couple in the window had, over her belly, while I had been in there.

  I smiled joylessly at the notion and admired the large, pale rocks, jutting up like teeth in the surf before piling together to form the cliff above.

  I picked my way between the rocks, edging closer and closer to the sea. I didn’t know why I felt such an urge to get to the end of the reef—as if something waited just out of sight. But there was nothing. The moon, the rocks, the sea. A silhouette of a trawler. It was several miles away. The sea was deceptive like that. It made you feel like the edge of the earth was right at your fingertips, but you’d die before you ever got there.

  A snowflake nipped at my cheek, dissolving as it connected with my warmth. Another kissed my nose, and I looked up to the sky. I could barely discern the particles settling around me. They glimmered briefly in the moonlight and then disappeared again.

  I climbed onto a bridge of rocks, which seemed to have petrified together, and stared out across the panorama before me, letting my legs dangle down. I dug the tips of my fur-lined, suede moccasins into the sand, but my mind was a million miles away. This was all so beautiful, but in a melancholy way. It felt fitting for the snow
to be falling. I couldn’t think of anything lonelier.

  It was a shame Andrew wasn’t here to enjoy it with me. He would’ve liked it.

  Ouch! I gasped and retracted my moccasin as the tongue of a wave lashed over it. I wiggled my toes as hard as I could. They went numb.

  The tide’s coming in, my shoulder angel interrupted my self-pity. A swirling eddy of saltwater collected at the base of these rocks. Better get back inside. They’re probably worried about you. And if I stayed much longer, they’d have good reason to be. My rock bridge was becoming hemmed in by saltwater. The cold buffeting off the oceanfront was so intense, my fingers were stiff.

  The shore beneath my rock bridge foamed with incoming waves. I was going to have to climb to get to dry sand… or ruin my moccasins and get frostbite. Mom would be hysterical. Dad would delight in doting over my nerve damage.

  Just as I was pointlessly fantasizing about this scenario, I heard a strange, rhythmic rumbling behind me and twisted to scan the profile of the craggy mountainside.

  Chapter 5: Nell

  I squinted. Was that a narrow cave, nestled in the shadows at the base of the cliff? The sound was coming from there.

  I stood up on my rock, which had quickly become closed in by water, and crept over onto the next formation, an abutment to my natural bridge. The rumbling sounded like breathing, but labored. What if someone needed my help?

  I dug in my pocket, extracting my cell phone, and opened an application called Flashlight. A narrow pin of blue-white light speared the darkness. All I could tell for sure was that there was, indeed, an opening in the side of the cliff, and it was filling with water just as steadily as the formations around me.

  The sound still hadn’t stopped. The tide was coming in, and it was late. There were only three houses along this strip. No one else would come this way tonight. If someone really was hurt—they’d die before they were found.