Winging It (32 page)

My dad’s hoard was housed in a windowless room with only one entry. It was located roughly in the middle of the loft – by design, not accident – nestled between the kitchen and the walk-in closet adjacent to the master bathroom. The master bath wrapped around the other side of the room that held the hoard, and if you hadn’t been thinking about space, you might not have realized that an entire room was secreted there. You had to slide the clothes down one bar in the closet to even see the door, which was painted the same color as the closet walls. The hoard door was locked, too.

That was enough to keep human intruders away. My dad also had defenses against dragons. His dragonsmoke was almost impenetrable around the door of the hoard— when I pushed his shirts aside, I could see its frosty glitter. Unlike the dragonsmoke that surrounded the loft itself, this barrier permitted no one to cross other than my dad.

I had never been invited into his hoard. I had seen specific items that had been removed for me to view them elsewhere in the loft. I’d always wanted to know what else was in there. I’d never had the opportunity to find out— though it hadn’t been for lack of trying. The dragonsmoke barrier had kept me out, even in my dad’s absence.

But now I could spontaneously manifest elsewhere.

I should be able to bypass the barrier.

My dad would never know that I had crossed his dragonsmoke barrier. He’d never feel it burn me for daring to go where I shouldn’t. He’d never feel it break. I would simply go around it.

I would prove that he couldn’t exile me in the traditional way.

And I would finally know what else was in his hoard.

If that wasn’t incentive, I didn’t know what was.

It was ridiculously easy. One minute I was standing in the closet, gathering my nerve. The next, the whole world was sparkling with blue light.

I opened my eyes to find myself in a darkened room. I could smell that it was sealed against the world, and against the light that outlined a door I saw the glitter of dragonsmoke.

‘Well done,’ someone said.

My heart leapt and I spun in terror. There was a radiance on the far side of the hoard, one that illuminated very little. I took a cautious step closer, mustering the cusp of change.

‘You’re learning fast, Sis,’ Sigmund said, a smile in his voice. ‘I love that you don’t mind breaking the rules.’

My dad had said that he saw Sigmund sometimes in his visions, so I had to check. ‘You aren’t going to tell on me, are you?’ I moved closer to the ghost of my big brother. He was leaning over something, cradling it in his hands. I couldn’t tell whether the faint light was coming from it or him.

‘Erik probably knows.’ Sigmund shrugged. ‘All that foresight. Maybe he guessed that you would come in here. I did.’ He smiled at me. ‘Or at least I hoped you’d have the nerve to do it.’

I looked around, my eyes having adjusted to the darkness. There were the expected piles of coins and jewelry and shiny trinkets. The gold gleamed warmly, even with such faint light, but I saw that there was a lot of silver, too. Buckets of gems. I bent and grabbed a fistful, letting them run between my fingers like dried beans.

‘It’s incredible,’ I said.

‘Just like the stories say.’ Sigmund sounded bored. ‘Over centuries, you can collect a lot of stuff. Erik was always big on financial security.’

I glanced up. ‘What was in your hoard?’

He smiled. ‘Books.’ His tone turned rapturous. ‘Books with leather bindings and embossed covers. Books filled with secrets, inscribed by hand or letterpress on vellum or parchment. Engravings and drawings and symbols and knowledge. Books. I loved them as I never loved anything else.’

‘What happened to your hoard?’

His lips thinned and he turned away. ‘I destroyed it.’ I saw him swallow. ‘I burned it all, so no one else could ever have it.’

I wondered how many things had been written in those books that might have been helpful to me. ‘Anything about Wyverns in those books?’

His eyes gleamed in the darkness. ‘You’ll never know now, will you?’

That made me mad. ‘You could have left it as a legacy. You could have helped me out a bit here.’

Sigmund frowned and tapped his fingers for a minute. He wouldn’t look at me. ‘What you want is over here, you know.’

I wasn’t sure whether he had told me that because he felt guilty, or whether it had been his plan in the first place. I went to his side. ‘How’d you get in here, anyway?’

He gave me a look filled with pity. ‘I’m dead. I can go wherever I want. Usually no one sees me, though.’

‘You always turn up when I’m in the dark, and nearly give me a heart attack.’

‘Always been fond of dark corners,’ he said. When he smiled, he looked so mischievous that it was hard to be grumpy at him. ‘And deep shadows.’ He wiggled his eyebrows, then pointed down to the shelf in front of him.

I couldn’t figure out what it was at first. ‘It’s broken,’ I guessed finally.

Sigmund picked up the bigger piece of stone and turned it for me. It was dark stone, really dark, and when he held the pieces, I could see that it had once been a polished sphere. But it was broken now, and the fact that the pieces were carefully preserved in my dad’s hoard told me that it had been important.

Whatever it had been.

‘The Dragon’s Egg,’ Sigmund supplied. ‘It used to show the location of a firestorm.’ He spun one piece, but it was lopsided. ‘The story of how it was found is lost.’

I would have bet that my brother knew how it was found, but he averted his gaze, a sure sign that he wasn’t telling.

‘What about the story of how it got broken? Is it in your book?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘Happened after publication.’

‘But you know.’

‘Once upon a time, a
Slayer
captured both the Wyvern and the Dragon’s Egg. The
Pyr
Nikolas was given the choice of saving just one.’

I looked at the broken stone. ‘He chose the Wyvern.’

Sigmund sobered. ‘He loved the Wyvern. He would have done anything for her. But it is forbidden for any of our kind to be intimate with the Wyvern.’ He grimaced. ‘It’s similar to the human edict against sleeping with one’s sister.’ He arched a brow.

I ignored his expectant expression. ‘Why?’

‘Maybe if you go back far enough, we dragons are truly all brethren.’

‘Is that why she died?’

Sigmund shook his head. ‘It’s why she lost her powers.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Presto! All gone.’

‘What?’ She lost her powers because she had sex?
Once?
I was going to live for hundreds of years, but to keep my powers I’d have to be a virgin forever? ‘But I’m just
getting
my powers!’

‘Then you’d better follow the rules, Sis.’

‘What rules? There’s no rule book or guide.’

Sigmund scoffed. ‘Don’t play games. You know instinctively what most of them are.’ Then he looked pointedly around the room to the door.

That was a telling reminder. ‘Right. You couldn’t have mentioned this need for me to follow the rules before I entered the forbidden territory of Dad’s hoard.’

He grinned and I figured he was teasing me. ‘So, did you break an important one? Guess you’ll find out when you try to leave. Think your powers have gone away already?’

I folded my arms across my chest. ‘You are not helping.’

‘We could both be dead in here. How fun would that be?’

‘Not helping.’

‘Of course, you might not waste away to nothing and die before Erik gets back. You might be alive.’ Sigmund winked. ‘Until he killed you.’

‘Hello, could we stay on topic, please?’ I indicated the Dragon’s Egg. He didn’t have to know that he had me seriously worried.

He patted it. ‘Erik could also use this like a scrying glass, see the future before it happened.’

Sigmund was too smug and I guessed he was hiding something from me. ‘Don’t tell me you can see the future, too?’

‘All the dead can.’ He smiled. ‘We just don’t care anymore.’

‘Do you care about anything?’

Sigmund straightened and looked straight at me. ‘I wouldn’t be here otherwise, kiddo. Think about it.’

I did.

Then he beckoned to me, inviting questions.

I had lots. ‘What happened to Sophie?’

‘You have the answer on your finger.’

I looked down. I’d seen a white dragon and a black one come out of the ring the previous spring. I knew they were Sophie and Nikolas. Being trapped in a ring with your beloved didn’t sound to me like an ideal fate.

I would have asked another question, but when I looked up again, Sigmund was gone, one piece of the Dragon’s Egg rocking slightly from his touch.

Scrying, huh.

Maybe it was time to give that a try.

I stepped closer to the chunks of the Dragon’s Egg. It would have been bigger than a basketball when all one piece – now five pieces lay on velvet in my dad’s hoard.

I picked up one – not the biggest, as it was half the orb – and turned it over so that the smooth outside was facing me. I could see the reflection of myself in it, distorted the same way a fish-eye lens would distort it.

I made a face at myself and my reflection made it back.

Much uglier, though.

Then I got serious. I stared into the surface of the stone. It was very black, so dark that it was easy to think that the surface wasn’t hard. It made me think of looking into a deep shadow, one that goes to depths beyond expectation.

I looked more deeply. I thought about Wyverns past and my almost complete lack of data about their history. I thought about needing to solve riddles without having very many clues.

And it suddenly seemed as if the piece of the orb I held was full of stars. It could have been a chunk of night sky in my hands. I stared more deeply and one star brightened.

It shot across the piece of stone – or deep inside it – like a falling star.

It flashed.

Then all the stars that had been in the stone disappeared.

I didn’t have time to be disappointed. A verse popped into my head. I heard the words as clearly as if someone had read it to me, but it was in my own voice.

As if I was reading a verse to myself, even though I’d never heard this one.

I put down the piece of stone, tugged out my messenger, and tapped in the verse before I forgot it.

Then I read it again. Twice.

What did it mean?

Could I be the one holding the key?

Suddenly I realized that the doorbell was ringing.

The time to find out whether I’d lost my powers or not was right now. I held my breath and called to the shimmer that let me move through space. It didn’t answer right away, as if it just wanted to make me sweat.

I did.

My mouth went dry.

The doorbell rang again.

I shouted in my mind for the shimmer, wishing with all my heart to be on the other side of the door to the hoard and the dragonsmoke barrier. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoped hard, and … presto.

It worked.

The doorbell rang a third time as I fell into the closet, making a whole pile of my mom’s shoes cascade to the floor.

I zipped out of my parents’ suite and ran to the front door. There was a delivery guy already turning to leave.

‘Oh, there is someone home,’ he said, then came back to the door.

‘Sorry. I was, um, busy.’

He eyed me, obviously tabulating possibilities, then decided it wasn’t his business. Maybe I was mastering my dad’s glare. ‘I’ve got a package for Zoë Sorensson.’

‘That’s me.’ I saw the scribbled dates of failed deliveries noted on the label; then he turned for me to sign for the box. It had been sent overnight from Pennsylvania.

I don’t even know anybody in Pennsylvania.

‘I came twice last week. The ones that require a signature are a pain in the neck.’ He looked at my signature. ‘Have you got any identification? Can’t be too careful.’

I got my wallet and he had a look at my student card. Then he waved and shouldered his bag. ‘Have a good day,’ he said, heading for the elevator.

I shut the door and leaned against it, the package in my hands. It had no return address, really, just a post office box. It was flat and rectangular, not light but not heavy, either. I leaned closer and gave it a sniff. Then my eyes widened in surprise.

Jared.

I smelled
Jared.

I ripped the box open then, making a mess of the kitchen one more time. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by its contents.

But I was. I stood there, staring at it in shock.

It was a book.

An old book I’d held in my hands a couple of times before.

The Habits and Habitats of Dragons: A Compleat Guide for Slayers,
by Sigmund Guthrie.

There was no note, but really, the fact that Jared had sent me the book said it all. He didn’t want me to contact him anymore. He didn’t want to see me again.

He was bailing on this dragon girl.

Forever.

If you don’t think that was the most depressing news I’d heard all day, you can think again. And if I was feeling a bit sorry for myself and my previously undiscovered talent for making everyone disappear from my life, at least there was no one to see it.