Authors: Deborah Cooke
All the time.
I swear she was taking inventory of who was looking.
But her smile dimmed when she saw Meagan. She watched Meagan go into the bathroom – oblivious – and her expression turned mean. She waved off her minions and strolled in after Meagan.
I had a really bad feeling about that.
‘Good luck in the game, then,’ I said brightly to Derek, remembering a bit late that he was still there, waiting. I smiled at him, grabbed my stuff, slammed my locker, and headed down the hall.
‘Thanks.’ His single word seemed to follow me.
Like old-speak, almost.
That caught my attention. Old-speak is dragon stuff, speech uttered at a lower frequency than humans can hear. It slides into your thoughts, mingles with them, starts to seem like your own idea.
But only dragons can do it (yes, some better than others) and Derek wasn’t
Pyr
.
By the time I looked back, Derek was striding toward the guys’ locker room.
As if he’d forgotten me, too.
At that moment, though, I had bigger mysteries to solve than guys and their presto-chango interest.
Meagan. No coincidence that the first time I’d made even a partial shift to dragon form had been in defense of Meagan.
When Suzanne had picked a fight in gym.
I wasn’t going to let Suzanne bully my friend again.
I opened the door to the bathroom silently, freezing when I overheard Suzanne’s words.
‘Listen, Jameson.’ There was menace in Suzanne’s tone, a menace I would have heard even if I hadn’t had sensitive hearing. The sound of it made me shiver. ‘We’re going to come to an understanding right here and right now.’
‘B-b-but I-I-I—’ Meagan stammered, the way she always does when she’s nervous. I closed the bathroom door quietly behind myself. I turned the dead bolt – silently – so no one else could join us, then stood completely still as I listened.
Lucky for me the bathroom was designed to provide some privacy. There was a short wall opposite the door, one that hid the stalls from the hallway even when the door was open. I lurked in that space, invisible to Meagan and to Suzanne, too.
And I eavesdropped.
I could almost hear Meagan sweat.
‘I need to pass this trig test or they’re going to cancel my extracurricular activities,’ Suzanne whispered.
‘Th-th-that’s too bad.’
‘It would be, if it happened, but nobody takes cheerleading away from me.’ I heard Suzanne take a step. ‘So, you’re going to help me.’
‘Are you c-c-coming to the math lab for t-t-tutoring?’
Suzanne laughed. ‘No. You already sit in front of me in math. Tomorrow, during the test, you’re going to pass me the answers.’
‘I can’t do that!’ Meagan was too horrified even to stammer.
‘Can’t you?’ Suzanne’s voice was low and silky. Trouble. ‘Maybe I haven’t made myself clear. This isn’t optional.’
‘I t-t-told you last year, I wouldn’t help you ch-ch-cheat.’ Now there were shuffling footsteps – Meagan retreating.
‘Maybe I can change your mind.’
‘N-n-no …’ I heard Meagan gasp, then something smash.
That was followed by a muffled thump and a moan.
Something heavy fell to the floor.
I peeked around the wall to see Meagan doubled over and Suzanne aiming another punch at her gut. Meagan’s bag was on the ground where she’d dropped it. Her glasses were shattered against the far wall, where Suzanne had thrown them.
So Meagan couldn’t see the blow coming.
Suzanne had always been a contender on my Incinerate Now list, but with this move she zoomed right to the number one slot.
I wasn’t going to stand aside and let my friend get thumped for doing the right thing.
It was dragon time.
I summoned the shimmer, let it rip through my body, and shifted shape with a dull roar.
I’ve got to tell you that it feels amazing to shift shape. It’s kind of spooky at first, because the sensation is so powerful. Your instinct is to try to control it, to manage the transition, but that’s not really possible. You have to go with it.
You have to abandon control and trust your body.
Maybe it’s like surfing. You have to get on the wave the right way, but then you just ride and ride and ride. Over time, the getting-on-the-wave bit becomes instinctive and you just look forward to the ride.
It’s exhilarating stuff.
It was no different this time, even in a plain old taupe and white high school bathroom. The change ripped through me with lightning speed, surging through my veins and filling me with ferocious power. One minute, I was zitty Zoë of the virtually nonexistent breasts, and the next, I was an enormous white dragon, my talons stretching for Suzanne before she had any clue what was happening.
She took one look at me and screamed. I did enjoy that. She fell back against the metal wall of the cubicles, shrieking. She apparently didn’t dare look away from me – she slid her hands along the edges of the cubicles, feeling her way as she put distance between us.
I heard her cronies – Trish and Anna probably – bang on the door. ‘Suzanne! You okay? Let us in!’
Suzanne couldn’t even answer them, she was so shocked. Her mouth was opening and closing, but just a little whimper was coming out.
She crossed herself then, which made me laugh.
I breathed fire as I laughed, which made her turn even more pale. I did ensure that the plume of flame roared right over her head. I wanted to scare her, not hurt her. Not really – mostly because I didn’t want to deal with repercussions. I slashed in her general direction with one claw. I sent a playful little plume of flame to burn her skirt and she screamed again.
She stumbled over her own feet in her anxiety to get away. She grabbed the door to the next stall, and it swung open suddenly beneath her weight. She lost her balance, shouted, and fell.
She landed sprawling on the toilet, then covered her face with her hands. She looked so graceless that I nearly laughed out loud.
I took a step closer and smiled, letting her see all my sharp dragon teeth. She peeked through her fingers and trembled.
‘Don’t hurt me!’ she whispered.
I reared back, showing off my full dragon-scaled magnificence. I gripped the walls of the cubicles and gave them a mighty shake, ripping them loose from their moorings.
I was just warming up, but Suzanne fainted.
Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped against the wall. Her elbow hit the lever and the toilet flushed, getting her cute little skirt wet.
‘Suzanne! Are you all right?’ Trish shouted, as the banging on the door grew louder.
I had one minute to think I had done something right, and then I glanced toward Meagan. She’d retrieved her glasses and was peering through the broken lenses at me.
I knew that look.
I called it her Einstein look.
She got it when she was figuring something out, connecting the dots, finding the key to the universe. My heart clenched, because Meagan is pretty much the smartest sixteen-year-old I’ve ever met.
‘Open this door, right this minute!’ someone shouted sternly. It sounded like the principal. I heard the jingle of keys.
Meagan turned to the door, panic in her expression. The Einstein look was gone so fast that I wondered whether I’d imagined it. ‘I’m c-c-coming,’ she said, sparing one last look at me.
I had to get out of there ASAP – and without Meagan seeing more than she had.
No pressure.
I raged fire at the ceiling, a great orange plume of crackling fire. I heard the paint blister and crack. Meagan covered her eyes against the brightness of the flames, which was all I needed. I conjured the image of exactly where I wanted to be and willed myself to be there.
And when I opened my eyes, I was on the roof of the building where my family’s loft took up most of the top floor.
In salamander form.
My heart thundering.
I took a shaky breath, crawled into the shadows by the air-conditioning units to give myself cover, then shifted to my human form.
As usual, it felt good to just be a skinny chick again.
And it felt awesome to have frightened Suzanne.
She’d deserved no less.
Being a dragon shifter completely rocks.
Just in case I haven’t mentioned it.
I grinned as I rummaged in my pocket for that granola bar. I needed a sugar hit before I could figure out whether I had technically broken the Covenant again or not.
* * *
The covenant is a creed all we dragon shifters have to swear. Essentially we are forbidden from revealing ourselves in both human and dragon form to humans, and when some human does know us in both forms, my dad – as leader of the
Pyr
– adds that person’s name to his list.
Those people-in-the-know are not always trusted, and he makes decisions on a case-by-case basis, but this theoretically creates a Go To list in case one of us gets targeted or stalked. My dad remembers our kind being hunted almost to extinction in the Middle Ages. He likes us staying under the radar, so to speak.
He’d let it go when I partly shifted the previous spring, mostly because he was glad I was finally starting to shift and also because it had been only a partial shift seen by one person. Also, the punishment was tough stuff – exile, for as long as my dad decreed, to his location of choice. Corralled by his dragonsmoke, which is invisible but burns if crossed by a
Pyr
without permission.
That would be the exiled dragon.
As I snacked – and it snowed – and I thought about it, I was pretty sure I was in the clear on this incident, too. Neither Suzanne nor Meagan had seen me enter the bathroom. Neither of them had seen me before I shifted shape, so technically they’d seen me only in dragon form. Even if they suspected that there was a dragon shifter among them, they didn’t know that Zoë Sorensson had become that dragon.
I could have believed all of that, if Meagan hadn’t given me that look.
Had she really guessed the truth? I wasn’t sure.
I was confident that I could argue the technicalities with my dad. I halfway believed I could win. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t exile me for another comparatively small transgression. And I wasn’t afraid of Suzanne or what she might tell her friends.
I was most worried about Meagan.
The standard solution for inadvertently revealing oneself as a dragon shape shifter is to beguile the human in question. But it seemed like a complete betrayal of my friendship with Meagan to beguile her. I didn’t want to do it unless it was absolutely necessary.
I also wasn’t sure it would work.
Because I knew Meagan and I knew that look. If she was convinced she’d seen a dragon, a whole pack of beguiling
Pyr
wouldn’t persuade her otherwise.
I guessed she wouldn’t tell the principal what she’d seen. After all, the school administration might think she was delusional. No, she’d come up with some story about Suzanne falling, and let Suzanne be the one to sound delusional.
And in the meantime, having shifted in defense of a human made me feel much more optimistic about the chances of convincing my mom to let me go to the concert. There’s just something about becoming a dragon that makes me feel invincible.
Omnipotent.
In charge of my universe.
It is the good stuff.
I should have guessed that my High Queen of the Universe moment couldn’t last. I got all the way to the door to our loft before I sensed trouble.
Big trouble.
As soon as I unlocked the door and walked into the apartment, I got slammed with glacial temps. The next ice age had begun.
The mood between my parents in recent months had made home feel as cozy as a meat locker at times, but the tension between them hadn’t escalated – until now. I had no idea what they’d been fighting about and didn’t really want to know. Now I stopped on the threshold, scared to take a breath, much less step inside.
Would it be smarter to make a dash for my room?
Or should I just bail and come home again in an hour?
My mom came raging out of the master bedroom with a suitcase before I could decide. The suitcase wasn’t what initially surprised me – not even the way it was only half-closed, with clothes hanging out the edges.
It was her tears. My mother was
crying
. Not pretty crying, either, like the kind you see in movies. Nope, she was gulping and grimacing, and the tears were running down her face and dripping off her chin.
She froze when she saw me, like she’d been caught in the act of doing something horrible, and stared at me.
A suitcase? How could that be good?
My dad emerged from the kitchen and stood behind her, looking shaken. ‘Eileen,’ he said quietly, but she ignored him.
I might not have the Wyvern’s powers of foresight (yet), but I had a pretty good idea of what was about to happen.
And it sucked.
It sucked so badly that I couldn’t really believe it.
My parents couldn’t be splitting up.
Could they?
But I knew the truth as soon as I thought it, knew it with that absolute certainty that makes me think maybe I do have a bit of Wyvern stuff going on. It made me want to puke and at the same time turned me numb. It made me want to cry or scream – or just freeze this moment in time and make it stop. My mom watched me, then bit her lip.
‘I’m sorry, Zoë,’ she whispered. She caught me in a tight and abrupt hug. I thought she might break my ribs, but I didn’t dare pull away. My father watched with narrowed eyes but didn’t move.
‘I’m not abandoning you.’ My mom’s voice was thick when she spoke and I could feel her shaking. ‘But I have to leave for a bit, Zoë. I’m sorry. I have to go away and catch my breath and try to remember why I love your father so very much.’
Sometimes being right completely sucks.
Life as I knew it was ending – and I couldn’t fix it, even though I was a dragon shifter. Those particular superpowers didn’t come with the
Pyr
package.