Winging It

 

O
CTOBER
24, 2024

The black envelope fell out of my locker when I unlocked the door before lunch.

I distrusted that envelope on sight.

Not because it was black. Not because it looked like an invitation. Not because I couldn’t think of anyone who would invite me anywhere.

Because it was the first weird thing to happen in six months.

I watched it fall, reluctant to touch it.

Why would someone shove an envelope into my locker instead of just talking to me? I couldn’t think of one good reason.

I’m not
that
scary.

And if I am, courtesy of my ability to shift into a dragon at will, no one at school knows it. I’m all about managing information these days. I’d been cut slack as a newbie for letting humans see me shift shape – twice – when my Wyvern powers had made their debut in April, but it wouldn’t happen again.

My dad, leader of the
Pyr
, had made that perfectly clear.

The envelope landed right side up, my name printed on the front in sparkly gold ink. Not a case of mistaken identity, then. I glanced up and down the corridor but no one was paying any attention to me, just like usual.

The envelope looked more like an invitation the longer I studied it. I lifted it with the toe of my boot, still skeptical. It didn’t look thick enough to hold a practical joke.

Suspicious, me? You bet. And with good reason. In April, we younger dragon shifters had discovered that our old enemy the Mages had concocted an evil plan – to eliminate all shifters, one species at a time. We’d found out because they’d targeted us
Pyr
, invading the boot camp held for teenage dragons in Minnesota. The apprentice Mage Adrian had turned us against each other with his nasty magic spells, keeping us busy while the superior Mages tricked and trapped the older
Pyr
. The Mages must have been thinking they could take us dragons down easily, but my friends Liam and Nick and Garrett and I had (ultimately) saved the day.

With – it must be said – the help of two humans in the know.

Jared and Isabelle.

All humans know dragons exist, of course – that’s why there are so many stories about us – and many humans know about the
Pyr
, dragon shape shifters on a quest to save Earth. The Covenant was designed by my father for our protection, to keep our identities as secret as possible. We have pledged to use the utmost discretion in shifting – to make sure that very few humans know any
Pyr
in both dragon and human form, yada yada yada.

The thing was, the
Pyr
hadn’t known until last spring that there still were other kinds of shifters in the world. Call us isolationist. Kohana – the Thunderbird shifter who’d tried to sell us to the Mages to save his own kind – had told me that there were four varieties of shape shifters left. Wolves, jaguars, dragons, and Thunderbirds. The Mages, he’d told me, had eliminated all the rest and claimed their shapes.

Like a right of conquest: exterminate a species, snag its second skin.

I still have no idea whether this is true, or whether he’d left out some important detail(s). He has an unfortunate tendency to manipulate information. I do know that the Mages somehow get a power boost once they’ve exterminated an entire race of shifters, and they also become able to assume their forms.

Without having been exterminated ourselves – and thus having actual data from the experience – details are fuzzy.

The adult
Pyr
had been predictably, well, adult about the whole crisis – after we’d saved them from certain death. My dad had negotiated a treaty with the Mages. They all thought that was that.

Please. I didn’t buy it. The
Pyr
were still in the hot seat, so to speak, at least as far as I could see. Just because we’d foiled the Mages once didn’t persuade me that they had abandoned their scheme.

That they had been completely quiet since April just made me more suspicious. (In contrast, it made my dad sure that he was right, plus persuaded a whole bunch of other
Pyr
who’d had their doubts that he was right, too.) But lying low was exactly the kind of thing Mages would do to make us believe they were reconciled to keeping the treaty.

Never mind that Trevor Wilson, the hot guy in my school who played the sax like he was making love to it, was one of them. He was an apprentice Mage, although I didn’t exactly know their education process, much less how close to graduation he was. I’d been watching him so carefully this fall that my best friend, Meagan, was convinced that I had a crush on him.

That couldn’t be further from the truth.

It also complicated things because
she
had a crush on him.

Not that anything was simple between me and Meagan these days. She has a best friend’s radar for knowing when she isn’t being told the whole truth – and I can’t confide in her, thanks to the restrictions of the Covenant.

As if that wasn’t enough, I hadn’t heard a thing from the hot motorcycle-riding rebel rocker Jared – yes, the guy who had melted my synapses with one kiss. Last summer I’d finally worked up my nerve to contact him, and he’d sent me only a short reply.

Two sentences, then silence.

Even after that kiss.

I told myself I didn’t care, that my only interest in him was that he had the one copy of the only book about the
Pyr
that I knew existed. I needed to talk to him for the sake of the
Pyr
.

Even I knew that was a lie.

The thing is, Jared has the ability to read minds, as well as being a spellsinger who had once been recruited by the Mages because of his innate musical abilities. He’d turned down the Mages, and I had to wonder whether he’d read my thoughts, not liked the view, and decided to turn me down, too.

So, back to the envelope. I was cautiously picking it up just as Meagan appeared beside me. Her timing was perfect.

Perfectly awful, that is.

‘What’s that?’

‘I don’t know.’

She tilted her head to read the front. ‘Then maybe you should open it and find out. It looks like an invitation.’

Which just reminded me of another issue I wanted to avoid with Meagan. My birthday was coming up in two weeks, my sixteenth, and my dad wanted to invite all of the
Pyr.
That meant my human friends – specifically, my very best friend, Meagan – couldn’t be invited, in case she saw something she shouldn’t.

I was really starting to hate the Covenant.

I hadn’t yet figured out how I’d tell Meagan about the party she wasn’t invited to attend.

I ripped open the envelope, avoiding the inevitable.

‘It
is
an invitation,’ Meagan said, reading over my shoulder. ‘To Trevor Wilson’s Halloween party!’ She was amazed and impressed. ‘Lucky you. It’s like a dream come true.’

Uh, no. In fact, there was a shiver of dread running down my spine. Trevor’s party was the last place I’d be on October 31. It’d be thick with Mages of all experience levels. Nuh-uh. The invitation had to be a trick, or a trap, and I wasn’t going to walk right into it – like the heroine in a scary movie who goes down to the basement by herself to check out the strange noise, despite the creepy organ music.

I read the invitation again and had a feeling Trevor wasn’t going to take no for an answer without a fight. Funny that I’d been itching all summer for something to happen but now that it
was
happening, I wanted it to stop.

Meagan poked me with one finger. ‘You must have known!’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Oh, come on. You’ve been talking to him, haven’t you? He doesn’t invite just anybody.’

‘No, I haven’t talked to him at all. You’re the one who tutors him in math.’

Meagan opened her own locker with obvious optimism.

No envelope fell out.

She rummaged a little, then gave me a look. ‘I thought we were friends. Forever.’ Her voice was quiet and I knew she was hurt.

And I’d done the hurting. Inadvertently, but still. ‘We are.’

‘So, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?’

‘There’s nothing going on that you don’t know about.’

Have I mentioned that I’m the world’s worst liar? Well, I am and Meagan has my number. One of the hazards of having known someone most of your life.

She leaned in really close and said something completely uncharacteristic. ‘Bullshit.’

I blinked.

‘Something happened on spring break, and you’ve been holding out on me ever since. You never even told me what you said to scare Suzanne so much in the locker room, when she picked on me. That was right before you went to Minnesota. Something’s changed. Don’t think I don’t know it.’

Something
had
changed. I had changed. In coming to Meagan’s defense, I’d started to shift shape for the first time. My eye and my nail had been the only things that changed, but Suzanne had seen both and freaked.

The only good thing was that it was so weird no one believed her.

Meagan took a deep breath and I saw a shimmer of tears on her lashes. Her next words were tight. ‘If you don’t want to be friends anymore, maybe because you suddenly know all kinds of cool people, then at least have the guts to say so.’

‘That’s not true!’

Her lips tightened. ‘Okay, then. Promise me that you’ve told me everything.’

Trust the math queen to put me in a logical corner. ‘Well, I haven’t and you know it, but that’s because I can’t, not because I don’t want to.’

‘Why can’t you?’

‘Because I promised not to tell anyone.’

‘Promised who?’

I fidgeted. There was no way to make this better. ‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘Sounds like the same excuse to me.’ She folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the lockers beside mine. ‘You think I didn’t notice that you haven’t mentioned your birthday party?’

Here it came. ‘My dad wants me to have a family party.’

‘For your sixteenth? I don’t believe it. Your dad isn’t a jerk.’

‘Well, he’s determined this time.’

‘Your mom would never put up with it. If he wanted you to have a family party, she’d let you have another one with your friends.’ Meagan was on a roll and it wasn’t one that made me look good. My mom and I had talked about a friends party. Problem was that most of my friends were also dragon shifters. Except Meagan. Which kind of brought us back to the same place of my dad worrying about what she might see. ‘You know what I think? I think you’re having a party and you’re just not inviting me.’

She stared at me, daring me to correct her.

And I couldn’t hold her gaze.