With their noses inches apart, Jennifer let the shape of her face change just enough for the blue scales to surface over her human features, and the reptile to peek out from behind her gray eyes.
Her voice was only a whisper. “When my mom wakes up, she and I are going to march right into city hall and kick the ass of every crazy loon on that council of yours. And then my dad and I are going to burn that building down, sick ceiling artwork and all! You wait.”
She willed herself calm, flexed her features fully back to human, and stood up straight. “Now go back and tell your friends I don’t want them swinging by to pay respects or anything else!”
“Ms. Scales, please. I regret—” But the mayor was already backing out the door, which made it all the easier for Jennifer to slam it in her face.
A few seconds later, the door opened again. Jennifer turned to shove it closed when the elderly features of Martin Stowe appeared. He was wearing a custodian’s jumper and had his hospital employee badge on his belt. The failing eyes were wide as he set his mop against the doorframe and tried to take in the comatose shape on the bed.
“Gerry told me your mom was hurt.”
She eased away from the door, still wary. “Yes, Mr. Stowe. Come on in.”
“I’ve been on shift,” the man explained. “I didn’t believe Gerry right away, but the nurses told me he was right. What do the docs say?”
“Not much.” She supposed it was unfair, but she was still not entirely convinced about the man’s grandson.
He nodded slowly, staring at objects in the room but not, Jennifer guessed, truly seeing them. She still felt compelled to adjust her hospital gown.
“Gerry tells me you kids have been awfully good to him at school. You and Susan, especially. I wish there was something I could do.”
Jennifer didn’t quite know what to say to that. Of course Susan talked with Gerry, but she had never thought of herself as Gerry’s “friend.” For a new kid with no parents, though, who knew how much good an occasional smile from a random girl at school would do?
He wringed his hands. “The docs really have nothing to say?”
Jennifer shook her head. “Nothing helpful.”
“I can’t see her too well, but from what I can tell, she seems restful,” Martin almost whispered. He took a tentative step forward, but could not summon the courage to get closer than the foot of Elizabeth’s bed. He turned to Jennifer and gave a wan smile. “You’ll tell her I was here?”
“Sure.”
“Are you…uh…feeling all right yourself?”
“Sure. I’m fine.” She just wanted him to leave now. “Thanks for coming by.”
The custodian nodded and backed out of the room. “I’ll tell those nurses to keep an extra eye or two on you both.” He waved a hand in front of his weakening eyes, grinning wryly. “For me.”
Jennifer nodded gratefully and gently closed the door. Five seconds later, there was another knock on it. Who now?
It was Susan, in tears. Seeing her like that made Jennifer start to cry again.
“Oh, Jennifer!” She rushed in with a hug. “I got your message and came as soon as I could. Is your mom okay?” Without waiting for an answer, she looked past her friend’s shoulder at the patient’s bed. “Oh…she looks so peaceful…”
“Don’t say that,” Jennifer snapped, immediately feeling bad. She softened her tone. “I mean, that’s what they say about dead people.”
“I’m sorry. Hey, it’s okay.” Susan tightened her embrace. “I understand.”
Of course she does, Jennifer realized, remembering Susan’s own mother.
Susan backed up a step and dabbed her cheeks with a sleeve. “What—was it—”
“Yeah, it was the thing you saw yesterday. Which I’m so sorry about! It wasn’t after you, it was after…Listen, Susan, I can’t keep any more secrets from you. You’re my best friend and it’s too much.”
Susan nodded, found a chair, and sat down. “Okay. Go.”
“Okay, first thing. Remember that day last spring I told you I was a dragon and so was my father? Well, I learned something else about myself. Later on. It has to do with my mother.”
“Well, she must be a dragon, too, right?” Susan’s look of complete innocence and trust broke Jennifer’s heart.
“Um, no. It doesn’t always work out that way. It turns out…well, she’s a beaststalker. So I’m part beaststalker, too.”
Susan’s expression was unreadable.
Jennifer had to say something. “Um, anyway, I just thought you should know that. I haven’t told Skip yet, because my mom killed his dad. But I’m going to tell him soon, I swear.”
More staring. The sounds of the hospital rolled over them—hustling nurses, patients muttering to visitors, voices calling through the speaker system.
“Also, um, funny thing, Skip and I share a half brother. Kind of a half-dragon, half-spider thing. That’s, um, that’s what you saw in the street. You know, uh, earlier today. Which I’m really sorry about. Again.”
Susan’s mouth gaped open.
“Yeah. Um, one last thing. This half brother’s from a completely different dimension. He’s already killed my grandfather, and he wants to kill everyone close to my dad. Including me. And that’s it. That’s everything. Just wanted, you know, to keep you up to speed on things.”
Somewhere in the distance, someone called for Dr. Evanston, whoever he or she was, to get to surgery immediately. Susan didn’t budge. Her expression was one of tear-streaked awe.
She can’t handle it, Jennifer was certain. She’s going to bolt, just like she did when she found out I was a dragon. But I will not judge her, I will not blame her, no matter how much I need her to stay. She never signed up for this.
Suddenly her friend’s features firmed up, and the tears were gone. Susan Elmsmith stood up, took her best friend’s hand, and kissed her on an astonished cheek.
“Okay, Jennifer. So I’m here to help. What do you need?”
Susan’s agreeing to keep watch over Elizabeth made it easier for Jennifer to leave the hospital, but going back home to the awful mess was still difficult. She had just begun surveying the wreckage inside the house when she heard someone approach the front doorway. Phoebe—who had stuck close to the house even with the door kicked open—barked at the noise and ran out of the destroyed dining room. Jennifer followed closely, weapons in hand and adrenaline surging as she saw the winged shadow approach before the hovering afternoon sun. This is it. He’s back for me. Come on, you. Let’s go. I cannot wait to bury you.
“Jennifer!”
“Dad!” He was still in dragon form. Phoebe was whining around his hind legs. Jennifer raced through the door and hugged him.
“I got the message from Joseph. Where is she?”
“At the hospital now. The doctors say…” She trailed off, unwilling to continue. Somehow, telling him would make it more real—even more real than watching her mother asleep.
“She’s still alive?” His gray eyes shone a bit. “She’s not dead?”
Jennifer shook her head, sniffling, and told him about the coma.
He folded her in his wings tightly.
After a while, he let go. “I should go to see her. If she’s alone when she wakes up…”
“Susan’s watching her. She’s got my cell phone number, and a cell of her own.” Jennifer patted the device on her skirt belt. “I thought I should come back here and figure out what I could.”
“Good instincts, ace.” He looked over his shape ruefully. “Okay, I suppose we could take a look around first.”
They picked through bits of plaster, fabric, and wood, looking for clues that would tell them the story of the fight that took place here. Phoebe settled down in the front doorway, content to see part of her pack home, and stood watch.
Stepping carefully through the living room, Jennifer spotted a small marble ornament on the floor—the dragon carving Susan had given her for her fifteenth birthday. Her parents had let her put it on a fancy end table, which was now in splinters across the room. She picked up the miniature dragon and cradled it in her hands for a moment, before gently placing it on the windowsill. Then she continued her investigation.
In her peripheral vision, she caught her father wiping his face several times as they surveyed the wrecked furniture and damaged walls.
“Wow, she really kicked his ass,” she offered in the way of comfort.
Jonathan sniffed quickly and looked up with red eyes. “What makes you say that, ace?”
“Well, look at these marks on the table.” They were in the dining room, and she pushed aside some hanging fragments of wallpaper as she pointed. “These look like thrust marks from Mom’s sword. They’re covered in blood—and Mom didn’t have any major wounds when I found her. Not even any minor ones—scratches at worst. She must have slashed him at least five, maybe six times, in this room alone. And with all these claw marks, it looks like he was struggling to get away. He left the dining room and went into the kitchen—see the direction of the bloodstains?—and I can’t imagine he’d be chasing someone who was stabbing him over and over.”
A corner of his mouth raised. “She had him running away from her, at one point.”
“I can’t figure out what happened here, though.” Jennifer examined the remains of the kitchen table and chairs. “She had him backed into a corner. See where the paintings got knocked off? By wings, or legs, up against the wall. But then she got her sword stuck here in the floor, which seems too far away from her target. And I found her…I, uh, found her over there.” She pointed vaguely this time; it felt almost like bad luck to get too specific.
“I know what happened.” Jonathan sighed. “She reached out to him.”
“What do you mean?”
“She drove her sword point down to show Evangelos she was done fighting. She showed him mercy.”
“And in return, he attacked her.” Jennifer felt the back of her neck get warm. “When she didn’t even have her sword.”
“Yes. A cowardly act. But then he did something extraordinary, Jennifer.”
“What’s that?” Now it was her turn to wipe her eyes.
“He left her alive.”
She cleared her throat and scanned the kitchen. “I haven’t seen much sign of Skip.”
Rubbing her shoulder for comfort, he silently agreed to the shift in investigation. “The door to the basement stairs is still open,” he pointed out after a few seconds of investigation. “But it doesn’t look like there was much fighting over there.”
“We usually keep it closed, don’t we?” Biting her lip in fear for what she may find, Jennifer jogged down the hallway and peered down the stairs. “Skip! Are you down there?”
There was no answer. The wood paneling and carpeting were intact, and it was clear Evangelos had not entered this part of the house.
As her father folded his wings and squeezed behind her, she crept down the stairs. Only the hum of the furnace was audible. The stairs turned a corner at the landing, and Jennifer held her breath as she peeked past.
The basement was empty, save for the cardboard boxes where they kept seasonal decorations, and a few spare clean clothes piled up by the washer and dryer next to the furnace.
Her father immediately moved past. “Back here.” He led her past the furnace and motioned toward some carpet remnants that had been pushed from their normal position. On the floor where they used to be was something Jennifer had never seen before—a metal trap door in the cement floor. The tunnel, Jennifer remembered from her conversations with her grandfather and mother.
It was open. Jonathan approached it and flicked a wing claw against the sharp corner of the metal square.
“Skip hurt himself squeezing through.” He drew the claw back and showed Jennifer the thickening blood he had scraped off. “Not seriously, I don’t think. In any case, I doubt we’ll find him anywhere near here. Not the way he is now, anyway.”
Jennifer looked closer at the blood. Trapped in the substance was a dark hair—not thin and wispy like the sort she could run her fingers through on Skip’s scalp, but unnaturally thick.
She had seen that sort of tactile hair before—on the spindly legs of Otto Saltin. Now his son had them, on whatever shape he took under the crescent moon.
“His first change,” she whispered.
“Ms. Saltin, I just want to talk to him for a sec. Please?”
The voice on the other end of the line somehow managed to be both friendly and terse. “Goodness, Jennifer, I don’t think so. He’s really not inclined to come to the phone right now.”
Jennifer imagined a large bulbous form, a female version of Otto, hovering over the phone in the dark with the shades drawn, plying the buttons with a spare tarsus. Perhaps in a corner of the same room, another bulbous shape would be cowering in fear of what had just happened. Is he as scared as I was my first time?
“Can you tell me at least, is he all right?”
“Oh, how sweet of you to ask.” Was that sincerity or irony? “He’s fine, dear. In fact, I don’t think he’s ever been stronger.”
“Will you tell him I called?”
Tavia made a sound—it might have been clearing whatever throat she had under a crescent moon, or a clicking of mandibles, or something completely different. “He knows you’ve called, dear. He knows everything now.”
Jennifer’s blood chilled as the line went dead.
Her father put a comforting wing around her shoulder. “I think we’ve done all we can for him today, ace. It’s time I went to see your mother.”
With careful use of Jonathan’s camouflage, they maneuvered through the hospital hallways and made it to Elizabeth’s room. Susan looked relieved to see Jennifer, but started in surprise when Jonathan appeared behind her.
“Oh, I didn’t see—Mr. Scales, that’s you, right?”
His reptilian head bowed slightly. “Susan.”
She turned to the patient. “She’s not—she hasn’t—um, there’s been no change.”
Jennifer watched him creep toward her mother’s bed, as though he were afraid to wake his wife. His wing gently skimmed the bedsheets, brushed Elizabeth’s face, and smoothed out the whitened locks on the pillow. Leaning down, he whispered something to her. Elizabeth did not move.
Finally, he lifted his head. “Susan, I can’t tell you what it means to me that you stayed here with her.”
“Of course.” She blushed. “I could stay longer, if you need to—”