A Boy and His Dragon (4 page)

“I took the bus.” She was too pale, paler than Arthur, because she was inside most of the time. Arthur watched her closely as she put the dried nest of noodles into the water.

“They’ll call.” He had no idea if that was true, but she needed to hear it. Kate was young and pretty and smart, even if she didn’t believe that. “If those people don’t want you, then fuck them.” She snorted but didn’t acknowledge his faith in her. “How about you? How did your interview go?”

“It wasn’t even an interview,” he blurted out, then shut up and slid past her to remove his jacket and wash his hands in the sink. His face and neck felt hot. It wasn’t a good sign that just thinking about his new boss made him flush all over.

“So you didn’t get it?” Kate pressed when he didn’t go on.

“No, I got it.” His smile came back, bigger than before. He didn’t think even splashing cold water on his face would have any effect on his red cheeks, but whatever. At least for now he had a job, a
real
job. He turned around and put his back to the sink. Kate was studying him. The steam was making strands of her hair fly around A Boy and His Dragon

21

her face. Arthur had the same fine blond hair, and he had the sudden horrifying thought that it must have been just as frizzy in the heat of Dr. Jones’s house, making the faint waves that never went away even more pronounced. He usually just combed it and left it alone during the day, growing it to cover up his ears, which he thought stuck out a little, but he had at least tried to keep it neat under his bike helmet for the interview today.

Kate opened her mouth but seemed to change her mind and shook her head. “If it wasn’t an interview, then what was it? This was the dragon, right? The professor?”

“He’s a doctor.” Arthur had no idea what expression was on his face to make his sister blink rapidly at him the way she was doing before the noodles called her back. “He has a PhD and a house like you wouldn’t believe. Books everywhere.” And a face and body out of Arthur’s fantasies, but she didn’t need to know that any more than she needed to know that the man had been flirting with him.

“You
would
focus on the books and not the treasure.” She didn’t bother with a strainer; she used a spoon and tilted the pot over the sink, leaving some of the water in with the noodles so they could pretend it was soup.

Arthur’s smile faltered at the mention of treasure.

“There wasn’t any treasure.” Arthur scowled at her. “Unless you count those books, which I know
you
don’t. I….” It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought of treasure—of course he had. He was desperate, and people had stolen more for worse reasons than needing money.

He didn’t want her thinking of it though. He didn’t want any part of his desperation to reach her.

He shrugged when she made a face back at him for pointing out how little she liked to read.

“I don’t need it anyway,” he lied. “The hours will be better, I never have to work a graveyard shift behind that supposedly bulletproof glass at the gas station again.” He would quit without notice and not feel even a little bad about it. “And I will be around—

” He stopped, not sure whether he wanted to say
around the
university again
or
around Bertie
. There was no way he could say R. Cooper

22

the name Bertie around his sister. She would ask questions. He should say
Dr.
Jones
, or
a well-known historian
. He should tell her that he hadn’t seen the dragon breathe fire and that Bertie was an appalling housekeeper for someone with magic and money at his disposal, or maybe ask if she ever had a thing for men who smoked.

No, that he’d keep to himself. It might alarm her to think of him ogling his boss, or make her think Arthur was going to let himself get harassed by some creeper for the sake of a paycheck. It was hard to tell how Kate would take news these days. As she had told him, repeating what her sponsor had told her, without the alcohol and weed clouding her mind and messing up her brain chemistry, her mind had to relearn how to react to things, and it didn’t help that her thoughts were clear for the first time in years.

Some things seemed to hit her harder than others, so Arthur had to choose his words more carefully.

After everything that being wasted had led her to, all the trouble of the past few years, Kate was a lot more scared and protective than she used to be. Arthur was just grateful to have his sister back. He could deal with her worrying as long as it meant she wasn’t depressed again. She left the house today, had thought enough of herself to apply for a job. He wasn’t going to distract her now.

“I’ll be around someone that I have a feeling is brilliant,” he settled on, though he knew it was true as he said it, from the little thrill it gave him. He’d never met anyone who talked about history like it was alive and present. He wanted to know what Bertie might have had to say on the Woodvilles. Maybe someday he could ask.

“Well I’m happy that you’ll be doing something you like again.” Kate made a face. “And that you won’t be in that gas station all night anymore.” She got down two bowls. “Though it’s a shame you’ll never see the treasure. Imagine having money like that.” She shivered. “Maybe it’s good that you won’t see it. I’d be too tempted to steal it.”

Arthur put his head down and shut his eyes at the thought. He hadn’t thought about treasure. But he had thought, in something a little more than passing, about scales. Dragons were said to lose A Boy and His Dragon

23

their scales from time to time. He read that and although he had already wanted the job, he couldn’t help but think that picking up a discarded scale so he could sell it hardly counted as stealing. Maybe it didn’t. But even before he walked into that house and saw that beautiful, terrifying, extraordinary creature, it had felt like something secretive and wrong.

Now he saw the dragon, Dr. Jones, shirtless—the muscles of his back, the hint of shining scales along his spine—and flushed with color that he was going to blame on the weather if Kate asked.

She didn’t. She only handed him his bowl of noodles and a fork, and then went into the small space they called a living room because of the old couch against one wall. It was Kate’s bed at night.

He wasn’t doing anything wrong, Arthur reminded himself firmly. He wouldn’t be stealing, exactly. He’d do what he had to do, if it was even possible. No one would be hurt, despite what his suddenly tight stomach was trying to tell him.

He ignored it and followed Kate to the couch.

“I’ll still be working weekend nights delivering food.” Hopefully it would be a mild winter. He couldn’t afford to get sick.

That only made Kate sigh. He recognized the guilt in it and hurried on in an attempt to keep her from fretting even more about Arthur working so hard to support them.

“You should have seen him,” he offered, only to stare at his noodles when she looked up. His tone had been warm. Even knowing teasing him about a new crush might lift her mood, he hurried on. “He’s different, even for a Being, and you know how they can be.” Talking to Beings was often confusing; they could speak the same language as the humans they interacted with, but it was as if the words meant something else to them.

Like with fairies. Fairies weren’t flirtatious, they were shockingly direct. Elves were usually impatient with humanity’s slowness. But they both looked more or less human. Even as a man, Dr. Jones—Bertie—had seemed something other. Even with arms and legs and opposable thumbs, he seemed like something special.

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24

“I might stop by the library tomorrow on my way, to get his books. Professor Gibson recommended me to him, and he doesn’t do that lightly, so I should be prepared. I wouldn’t want him to get disappointed in me.”

He wondered if Kate would have found Bertie as fascinating as he had because Bertie’s magic made him fascinating, or if Arthur had found him fascinating for completely personal reasons. Not that he was going to ask her, or ever have a chance to introduce them.

She was watching him, her eyes round, and Arthur tried to remember the last time, if ever, he’d gone on like this around her.

She hadn’t been interested in his studies back when she was high all the time and running around with her asshole boyfriend, and though she guessed he liked boys back when he was in high school, he’d never shared details of his love life with her.

Not that this was about his love life. This was about work and a chance to get ahead of his money troubles, to maybe even someday go back to school. It
couldn’t
be about his love life.

“Disappointed?” Kate echoed him. “Who would ever be disappointed in you, Arthur?” She must have meant it, because the twist of her lips was shy before it turned rueful.

For the second time that day, Arthur’s mouth fell open.

He thought of a similar approving look from a man who had called him a pearl, and quickly ducked his head to stuff noodles into his mouth and avoid any more talk about his new job.

His sister cleared her throat and set about eating too, as if she was suddenly just as starving as Arthur was.

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25

IN THE morning, with the clouds momentarily parted to allow some sunshine and with Arthur no longer worried about being late to an interview, he could take a moment to study the outside of Dr.

Jones’s house, which was as old and impressive as the inside had led him to believe.

There were nicer areas just outside of town, higher in elevation the way they were higher in status. Sprawling estates hidden on the edge of the woods, though even the rich wouldn’t venture too far into the forest since a pack of weres had taken up residence there a few months ago as part of Thomas Kirkpatrick’s Reclaim the Woods movement.

When they were little and their parents were alive, Arthur and Kate used to go hiking in those woods with their family, though Kate had enjoyed it far more than he ever did. Arthur missed his family more than he missed the thought of walking for hours through the dense trees, but he did wonder for a moment about the werewolves, and if they were anything like dragons, as some said they were.

Dr. Jones most likely could have afforded to live somewhere else, in one of those bigger, pricier estates, but this was still a wealthy neighborhood: clean streets lined with orange and brown oak trees that were losing their leaves, a place where doctors and lawyers and intellectuals with family money lived.

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26

He would never have thought it was a house full of treasure from the outside. Perhaps that was why Dr. Jones didn’t ever seem to lock his door. After knocking for a few minutes, Arthur tried the doorknob and frowned when it turned. It was even stranger to get inside and notice the alarm system keyboard next to set of wrought iron hooks for keys and to read the note:
Here is your key, Arthur,
and the code to the alarm, in case I ever turn it on.
It was as if Bertie was daring people to rob his house.

Arthur shoved the note and key into the pocket of his jeans before edging in past the entrance hall. The probably antique, probably very valuable Art Deco brass lamp above him was on, as was every light inside, though there was no fire in the fireplace. It didn’t affect the heat any; it was just as warm inside the house as it had been yesterday. Arthur unzipped his jacket and then paused to listen for Dr. Jones, but there was no dragon on the upstairs landing and no man by the wide table. There were no sounds at all to indicate he wasn’t alone.

There was, however, another note on the table, and next to it, held down by the silver chest filled with those hand-rolled herbal cigarettes, a stack of money.

Arthur
, the note read—and the cursive had enough turns in it to look like calligraphy—
please be a dear and buy me more printer
paper and a few packets of things from my herbalist
. There was a card for the herbalist on top of the note and a scribbled blur that looked like a printer’s serial number.

Arthur stared at the money, certain it was too much as much as it was a test. It had to be a test. He wished he had the kind of money to throw away on tests of his employee’s virtue. But after a second, he sighed and zipped up his jacket again before grabbing the cash and the card with the herbalist’s address on it.

He stopped to take a long look around, but there was no one, no Bertie. It wasn’t exactly how Arthur had thought his first day would go. He glanced upstairs with a frown, just in case, and then sighed before turning and heading back out.

He locked the door behind him, for the sake of those books if nothing else.

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ARTHUR’S small backpack normally held a cup of instant noodles and books from the library, but now it was packed tight with printer paper and a large, wrapped bundle of herbs. The herbal place had turned out to be an occult store, the kind of place with premade-purpose candles in the front for magic hobbyists, and serious items for witches and wizards in the back, behind a curtain. The employees obviously knew who the herbs were for when he asked for that combination, because Arthur was suddenly treated to wide smiles and even given his choice of a free candle. When he chose a protection one for his sister despite the array of wealth and fortune candles right in front of him, the old man who must run the place patted his hand.