Fire Song (City of Dragons) (19 page)

It didn’t. He got out of the car, slamming the door after himself.

He headed into the hotel.

I followed him.

He pointed at the girl, Becky, who was working behind the desk. “Leave,” he said.

“Hey,” I said. “You can’t talk to my staff like that.”

He turned on me, and his expression was dark, his eyes a threat.

“Go on,” I said, to the girl behind the desk. “Take a break or something.”

Flint began to pace. “What happened?”

“I had a vamp problem,” I said. “I had to take care of it.”

“I distinctly remember asking you if you had a problem.”

“And like I told you, it was nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“Except you couldn’t handle it, or you’d be locked up right now. You killed a man.”

“A bad man,” I said in a tiny voice.

Lachlan glared at me. “Does that matter?”

“Kind of?” I winced.

He stopped pacing. He took his sunglasses out of his pocket and began to clean them on his shirt. “What happened?”

“Well, ever since I bought this hotel, that stupid vamp gang has been coming by, demanding money from me and destroying my place of business. Then they found out I was a dragon, and they escalated things. They wanted more than money. They wanted my blood. And I don’t mean that as a little saying. I mean they literally wanted to drink my blood. And they hurt Connor. And I wasn’t going to let it stand.”

“So, you killed someone.”

“I didn’t mean to, but he was trying to kill me.”

He let out a low breath. “God damn it, why didn’t you just lead with that?”

“Does that make a difference?”

“Makes it self defense.”

“Is it self defense if I went into his party and antagonized him and instigated the entire thing?”

“Well…”

“Of course,” I said. “I had made my point, and I was walking away, and he had his goons jump me from behind, and then he wanted to have a magic fight, and he tried to strangle me, and then—”

“Yeah,” said Flint. “That’s self-defense.”

I took a deep breath. “Oh. Cool.”

“But you still should never have been there in the first place.”

“I had to do something.”

“You could have come to me. I would have alerted the proper departments—”

“I don’t think the police could have handled this. They know nothing about vampires. They’d go in there and get themselves compelled. How many of the officers wear protection talismans? Or amulets? Or anything like that?”

He rubbed his forehead.

“I have a point, and you know it.”

“Whatever point you have, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Because you can’t just take the law into your own hands.”

I pressed my lips together in a firm line.

“This is the point in time where you apologize and say you’ll never do it again,” he said.

“But I’m not sorry,” I said. I sat down on the bench near the door and looked up at the space where the television used to be. I needed to get another one now that no vamps would come and destroy it. “I mean, I wish that it hadn’t come to that. I never killed someone before. But he took it there, not me. And I can’t think of any other way it could have gone down.”

He jammed his sunglasses into his pocket. “Seriously? So, tell me, how am I supposed to work with you from now on? For all I know, you’ll pump fire into anyone who you think deserves it.”

“Hey, it was
not
like that.”

“What happens if you find out something about me you don’t like? Would you kill me?”

“Of course not,” I said. “You just said it was self-defense.” There was a little whine to my voice. I didn’t like his being like this. And it was fairly strange too, because I didn’t think that I’d ever seen him so passionate. About anything.

There was a knock on the door.

Lachlan held up a finger. “Wait. We are not done.”

The door pushed open and Ophelia stuck her head in. “Penny, you in there, girl?”

I gave her a tiny wave. “Um, it’s not really a good time—”

She threw open the door and came for me, throwing her arms around me. “Oh, you sweet, blessed child, I cannot believe you actually did it.”

I let her squeeze me, eyeing Flint, who looked pissed.

Ophelia drew back and held me at arms’ length. “Believe me that I speak for everyone on the block when I say thank you for doing something about those horrible vampires. I know that everyone is grateful. This is just the most wonderful thing that anyone has done for this community in years.”

Flint threw his hands up in the air. “I can see that there’s no way I’m going to get through to you.” He stalked out the door, letting it slam closed behind him.

Ophelia furrowed her brow. “Did I say something that upset him?”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t your fault.”

She grinned again. “I just got to give you another hug, girl.”

I couldn’t help but smile back.

*

For the next several days, we were deluged by people coming by to tell us how glad we were that we’d done something about The Lost Breed gang. People dropped off cakes. They brought flowers. They gave us gift cards to their establishments.

It was nice to know that we were appreciated.

But there was no sign of Detective Lachlan Flint. I guessed he’d been serious when he said that he couldn’t work with me anymore. And I didn’t like that, because I wanted to do what I could for those dragon girls and their families. But I didn’t know how I could help if he wouldn’t let me.

If I hadn’t felt a little bit like a hero to the entire magical community of south Sea City, then it might have really bummed me out. But by standing up to Ace and his goons, I had helped a lot of people, and it felt good.

Connor and I were sitting in the lobby eating coconut cake and sorting through gift cards one evening.

“I want the free drinks to Duffy’s Pub and Grill,” he said. “You don’t mind, right? You have no social life.”

“Hey!” I said. “I have a social life.”

He snorted. “Whatever.”

“I do,” I said. “I get out. I have fun.”

“Sure,” he said. “Like, um, when?”

I bit my lip, thinking about it. “Well, I went out to dinner with Felicity and Jensen.”

“Oh, yeah, and that went so well. You didn’t even get to order drinks, because they kicked you out of the restaurant.”

“Yeah, maybe.” I plucked the gift card out of his hands. “Still, all the more reason for me to have the free drinks card. Maybe it’ll help me get out of my rut.”

“Fine,” said Connor. “But then I get the tanning salon card.”

I made a face. “Take it and welcome.” I looked him over.

“Yes,” he said. “We tan.”

“It’s only that you don’t really look like you could be, um, tan. You’re sort of gray all over.”

“If we lie the sun, we get darker gray.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

He snatched up the card. “Shut up.”

“I don’t mean to be offensive,” I said.

“You’re not,” he said. “Because you’re you. And because I’m me. But don’t say anything like that to another gargoyle, okay?”

“I wouldn’t,” I said. I took another bite of cake and chewed. Mmm. Delicious. “Hey, speaking of Jensen, when was the last time you saw Felicity?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess maybe yesterday.”

“Yeah, I haven’t seen her since then either. And she’s not answering her phone.”

“Ooh, guess they’re busy.” He giggled.

“Eew, don’t say things like that.”

He made a rueful face. “You know, after that thing with the vampires where we all almost died, I would have liked to have hot, life-affirming sex with someone.”

“Double eew,” I said. “I don’t want to think about my best friends getting laid, please.”

Connor chuckled. “That’s because you haven’t gotten any in a long time. You’re probably atrophying down there.”

I gaped at him. “What makes you think that you can say these things to me?”

He ate some cake, shrugging. “I don’t have a good filter, really. I kind of just say what I think.”

I glared at him.

“What’s going on with that detective?”

“He saved me from going to jail for killing Ace and then he told me he couldn’t work with me anymore and disappeared. Besides, I am so not ever going to have sex with him.”

“No?”

“No way. I mean, he’s kind of okay looking, but—”

“Okay looking? He’s freaking gorgeous.”

“He’s skinny.”

Connor considered. “Kind of, I guess, but he’s got a decent-sized frame, so he doesn’t look wimpy.”

“It wouldn’t matter if he were Mr. Universe. He’s weird and aloof. And he’s obsessed with making strange connections between classic literature and cases. And sometimes he does this weird manipulative thing with this velvety tone, and it’s kind of creepy. And he’s full of himself. And he’s always got to be right. The whole package negates any attractiveness about him, you know?”

Connor nodded, but he looked like he was trying really hard not to laugh.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said.

“About Felicity,” I said. “What do you think I should do?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, what if she’s in danger?”

“From Jensen?”

“Yes, from Jensen. He’s a goddamned vampire. He wants to suck her blood.”

“You don’t even know that.”

“What if he does it while she’s sleeping? What if he’s been siphoning off her blood, biting her someplace we can’t see, and what if he went too far, and now she’s dead?”

Connor rolled his eyes.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me.”

“Leave it alone.”

I ate more cake. “I can’t.”

“Are you going to be this weird when I have a boyfriend?”

“Depends. Are you going to date a vampire?”

“Only if he’s pretty,” said Connor.

I sighed.

“Seriously, Penny. Let Felicity be. She wouldn’t appreciate it if she knew that you weren’t giving Jensen the benefit of the doubt. She really likes him, and you’ve got to try to trust her judgment.”

“It’s not her I don’t trust. I allowed myself to be fooled by Alastair—”

“To be fair, you didn’t have a lot of choice there. You felt the dragon mating bond, and that made you hot for him.”

I didn’t answer, because I was thinking about exactly how hot I’d been for Alastair.

Maybe the reason that I didn’t want to move on, to try to have sex with someone, was that I was pretty much convinced that it would never be as good as it had been with the man that I despised.

Felicity woke me up the next morning banging around in the apartment.

I got out of bed and went out to talk to her. “Hey,” I said.

“Can’t talk,” she said, her arms full of clothes. “I’ve got to get my laundry in. I scheduled myself an hour with the washer and dryer before the maids start washing sheets, and that hour started ten minutes ago.”

“Okay,” I said. “Well, I’ll come with you to the laundry room.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

I held out my arms. “Can I take some of the clothes?”

She handed some stuff over.

We trooped down the steps to the lower level. The laundry room was behind my office on the first floor. There were only two floors to my tiny hotel, and the top floor was all suites.

Felicity pushed open the door. “We need another washer and dryer, you know. There is no way we can survive during the summer season with only one set.”

“We should probably get two more,” I said. “Two more washers, two more dryers?”

“That would be fabulous,” she said.

“Well, now that I don’t have to budget new windows and TVs for the lobby, since the vamp gang is out of the picture and not smashing everything on a biweekly basis, we might be able to swing it.”

“Awesome,” she said, throwing open the washer and shoving her clothes inside.

I followed suit, depositing my armful. “Hey, um, where have you been? With Jensen?”

“Yeah.” She flashed me a smile.

I hesitated. “Everything going okay there?”

She arched an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just, you know, what it sounds like.”

“If things weren’t going well, would I be late for my laundry?” she said. “It was really hard to leave him this morning.” She sighed, getting a dreamy look in her eyes. “I love this part, you know? When it’s all new and fresh and you just can’t get enough of each other?”

I licked my lips. I wasn’t sure if I knew what she meant. My relationship with Alastair hadn’t really been like that. It had been… mutual obsession? And it hadn’t changed much. If anything, the intensity had only increased with time. I didn’t know what a new, fresh relationship would feel like. I wasn’t even sure if dragons
could
feel that.