Love Burns (4 page)

“My mother protected me from growing up in a household of violence and abuse,” she said, grabbing her purse and stalking to the door.

Ermengarde and Calder followed her out, leaving Teague standing in the living room by himself.

“You haven’t filled out your report yet!” Teague yelled after her as she walked towards her car.

“Someone broke into my house. I shot him. I’ll fill out a report in the morning,” she shouted back. Then she climbed into her car and drove away.

Olivia sat in her office, yawning and rubbing her eyes. She had slept at her aunt’s and gone home that morning to get a linen pantsuit to wear to work, accompanied by a centurion to ensure that she was safe, and then she’d gone to the police station to fill out a report, and then she’d finally made it in to work.

She was reaching for her third chocolate chip espresso muffin of the morning when the door flew open with a bang, and a man marched in, carrying a briefcase.

Ermengarde rushed in behind him, swearing. “Sir, you leave right now!” she yelled.

The man ignored her and stalked over to Olivia’s desk. Ice dragon. Snooty, tall and thin, wearing a tailored suit. It was Ichabod’s personal secretary, Lemuel.

Ermengarde grabbed his arm. “I did not get any sleep last night, and you are stepping on my last nerve. You do not want to do that. You’ll need to leave at once,
sir
,” she said.

He shook her arm off. “I most certainly will not. We have wedding planning to do. Ichabod wants you to be measured for a dress,” he said to Olivia. He gave her figure a disapproving once-over. “And a corset.” He grabbed the muffin from her desk and tossed it into the garbage.

Ermengarde gasped in outrage. “Hey, I cooked that myself!”

Lemuel ignored her. “Also, the wedding is going to be thirty days from now, so you’ll need to start dieting,” he said. “Hmm. I wonder if we’d have time to schedule you for some liposuction.”

“You did
not
…” Ermengarde hissed.

Olivia stared back at him. Well, she could get angry, scream and have him bodily escorted from the office. Or…

She climbed on top of her desk and started singing at the top of her lungs. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star….”she bellowed.

The man stared up at her in horror. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

Olivia gave Ermengarde a quick wink, then resumed singing. “Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me! I look like a monkey, and I climbed up a tree!”

“Oh dear, she’s having one of her spells,” Ermengarde said, catching on quickly. “Hallucinations. Mental illness. Runs in the family. She pooped in the hallway yesterday.”

Olivia shot her a dirty look, then resumed singing. “And many moooooore!” she trilled.

“What?” Lemuel gasped in horror. “Ichabod was not informed of that. This changes everything.” He turned and hurried from the room.

“I pooped in the hallway?” Olivia said to Ermengarde as she climbed down from the desk. “You couldn’t have come up with something a little less disgusting?”

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it? Did you see how fast he ran out the door? He practically left scorch marks. Let me go get you another muffin.”

“Nah, don’t bother, I’m going to go drive around town and do some more meet-and-greets.”

She went downtown to talk to the merchants, stopping by each store to check to make sure they hadn’t experienced any more vandalism. She was pleased to hear that there hadn’t been any more incidents; Henrik’s presence in town was at least having some effect. Apparently he was going around interviewing everyone in both towns and trying to get the fire dragons to fill out complaints against the ice dragons and vice versa, and getting very frustrated when they refused. Their dislike of the Overseer was stronger than their hatred of other dragon species – for now, at least.

As she headed back to her office, she passed by the town playground. It was crowded with families, so she decided to pull over and chat with some of them.

It went pleasantly enough for several minutes until she heard angry shouting over by one of the play structures, which was made of concrete blocks and shaped like a castle. Dragons never used wood for their play structures.

She walked over and saw half a dozen teenage dragon shifter boys, probably fourteen or fifteen, surrounding a group of younger kids. One of them was Robbie, the boy who’d stolen the candy bars from the concession stand. He was standing protectively in front of two boys with different-colored eyes and a little girl who looked just like them in her facial features but had two blue eyes.

Robbie was covered with white frost, and shivering. Icicles dripped from his hair. The older boys had blasted him with a cloud of frost – not enough to kill him, but enough to make him very uncomfortable.

As she got closer to them, she was horrified to hear what the teenage boys were saying.

“Your mother’s a whore! Say it!” one of them yelled.

“No! I won’t!” Robbie said defiantly, fists clenched.

The leader of the bullies dodged to the side and blasted one of Robbie’s younger brothers, who staggered back, clawing at his face.

“Stop that!” Robbie wailed. “We aren’t bothering you! Why are you doing this?”

The little girl shifted, turning into a dragonling. She blew several puffs of icy vapor at their tormenters, but they were too small and weak to do any good.

“See!” the older boy sneered. “She’s a dragon and you’re not! You don’t even have the same father!”

“Yes we do!” one of the little boys piped up. “We all have the same daddy, but he died!”

“He was a bank robber, that’s why he died! And you’re going to die unless you say what I told you! Say your mother is a— awwwwwk!” the boy let out a shriek as Olivia furiously blasted him with ice from head to toe. He was encased, and he began squirming wildly to break the ice shell.

The other boys turned and tried to run, but Olivia directed an ice blast at their feet, forming frozen blocks and trapping them where they stood.

She stalked up to them as several families hurried over.

“You guys can go,” she said to Robbie. “I’m sorry that happened. It was inexcusable, and if they ever give you a hard time again, you call the mayor’s office and ask for me.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Robbie muttered miserably, and he grabbed his younger brothers and his sister, who had shifted back into her human form and was standing there naked.

“I ruined my dress,” she said sadly.

“Well, he’s going to buy you a new one,” Olivia said, pointing at the leader of the bullies. “It will be at your house by the end of the day.”

The leader of the bullies shrugged off the ice shell and started to shift, and Olivia blasted his feet, freezing them solid. “Shift, and I swear I’ll encase you in an ice block you can’t ever get out of,” she snapped.

“You let my Tony go right now! I’ll tell your father on you!” one of the mothers called out indignantly, pointing at the leader. Olivia looked at the woman and did a double-take. Of course. It was Maria, a cousin of hers. Typical Teague behavior.

Olivia snorted. “Your Tony is a cowardly bully, picking on children because he’s too scared to take on someone his own size.”

Several of the women nodded. “His behavior really is getting out of hand, Maria,” one of them said.

Olivia spun around to face all of them. “Not one of you came to defend these children. Not one,” she said furiously, and they looked down at the ground, shame-facedly.

“Their father caused us a lot of grief, his whole life,” one of them muttered. “Their uncle too. Vandalizing buildings, breaking into stores…”

“Their father. Not them. Again, I repeat, they are children.” Olivia was so angry that she felt scales rippling over her entire body. “I came back here because I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to provide positive leadership to this town. I wanted to set a good example. What I saw just now disgusted me. If this is going to be how you people treat the weak and the helpless, then frankly, I will step down.”

“Go right ahead,” Maria sneered. “Nobody will miss you.”

“That’s enough!” one of the women, an ice dragon named Bronwyn, said sharply. Several of the other women nodded. “Olivia, you’re right. If we see anything like that happening again, we will intervene. I’m sorry we let it get that far.”

She hesitated. Then she met Olivia’s gaze defiantly. “But just so you know, up until now, going up against anyone from your family has been a risky proposition, and Teague was all the law enforcement we had in this valley.”

“Backstabbers,” Maria spat at them.

“That is completely fair,” Olivia said to the woman. “I want you to know that things are going to change around here. I mean, they already are changing; the town council wouldn’t have voted me in as mayor if that weren’t the case. If my father abuses his authority in any way, I will personally take it before the town council and ask that he be dismissed as chief. And with Henrik Vromme in town, I think he’s going to be forced to mind his Ps and Qs anyway.”

Maria leveled a ferocious glare at Olivia. “I’m going to prosecute you for assaulting my juvenile son.”

“Oh, do let’s see how that works out,” Olivia said. “I’m going to call the police department right now and have these little punks picked up for assaulting those children, none of whom can shift except for that very little girl. I can’t wait to see how this plays out in front of a juvenile court judge.” That meant she’d have to deal with her father, but she couldn’t avoid him forever.

All of the bullies looked alarmed and struggled against the blocks of ice that held them captive.

“Mom, I don’t want to go to jail!” Tony whined. “I was just playing around! It was just a joke!”

“Tormenting kids half your size, who are completely incapable of shifting and defending themselves? That’s hilarious, all right,” Olivia said coldly. “I’m sure you’ll all get probation for your first-time offense – and it had better be the last time, too. You are all banned from this playground for the rest of the summer. I will have a security guard assigned here, and if you put one claw over the line, you’ll be spending some time in juvie.”

“Mooooom!” Tony wailed frantically.

Olivia called the police department and waited for her father to show up.

Once he’d had his patrol officers pile the little punks into a patrol car, he took her aside, turning his back so the assembled families on the playground couldn’t see his furious face.

“Why did you do that? Now I’ll have to prosecute them and ban them from the playground, or it will look like the mayor and police chief are at odds,” her father said, with that whine she so loathed creeping into his voice. “They’re
family
.”

Olivia shrugged. “So? They’re a bunch of vile little thugs.”

“And those halflings are a bunch of mutants who can’t defend themselves, which means they don’t deserve to survive and reproduce. It’s survival of the fittest, damn it.”

Olivia looked at him in disgust. “Not according to the law books.”

“Law books are for the weak,” her father sneered.

She shook her head. “Gee, it’s great to hear that coming from the Principe. No wonder relations between the two towns are in the toilet.” And she turned and walked away.

He hurried after her. “Hold on, I’m not done with you yet. What the hell were you trying to pull with Ichabod’s representative today?” he demanded.

“It worked,” she scoffed. “I’ll do it again if I have to.”

“You can’t run from this forever. You’ve got some nut-job trying to attack you in your own home, and if you get married, your husband and his clan can keep you safe.”

“I’d rather take my chances, thanks.”

“If you don’t get married, you’ll be poor for the rest of your life.”

“Only because you stole the family silver mine,” she snapped.

“It was mine by right! Your mother abandoned me.”

“No, she ran for her life.”

Olivia turned and stalked off, extending the middle-finger salute to her father as she left.

“Real mature!” her father yelled after her.

“I’ll show you mature,” she yelled back.

She let out a blast of frosty air at his patrol car, freezing his door in a sheet of ice so he wouldn’t be able to open it.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. Ermengarde kept an eye out for any more unwanted suitors, but none came.

Every time the phone rang in her office, Olivia found herself wondering if Calder was calling. But he wasn’t. There was no real reason for him to call, of course. So she wasn’t annoyed that he wasn’t calling. Nope, not at all.

She called the police station to ask if they’d made any progress in finding out who’d broken into her house, and was told that so far they were coming up empty. They’d taken a sample of the blood spilled on her floor and sent it out for testing, but it was considered a burglary rather than an attempted homicide, so that meant it was low priority. It could take weeks for results to come back.

She spent another night at her Aunt Nora’s mansion, and they invited her to move in there, but she politely declined. They had very different values from her, and she also felt that at twenty-eight, she was too old to be moving back home. She would probably go back to her own house and hope for the best, she decided.

As she drove to work the next morning, Ermengarde called her. “Just a teensy little heads-up. Maria apparently took a picture of you giving your father the finger, and she posted it online on her MyPage account with a petition to have you removed from office. It’s sort of a trending topic. Also it’s on the front page of today’s newspaper. And the reporter from the paper called wanting a comment.”

“Oh. I see. Okay. Well. I’m…I’m going to go get myself a cup of coffee. I might be a little late.” She quickly hung up the phone, then turned the ringer off.

Olivia felt a wave of panic roll over her. Why had she ever thought that she could be mayor? She had no political experience. She acted on instinct and did what she thought was right in the immediate moment, with no thought for future consequences.

I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I’ve made a fool of myself, and of our city. I’ve let everyone down.

Without thinking, she started driving blindly, and found herself heading down a dirt road that led to a fishing hole deep in the woods. Her mother used to take her there sometimes.

She needed to clear her head. When she got to the small, unpaved parking area at the end of the dirt road, she stripped down, shifted, and flapped her wings, lifting off and flying through the air over the forest.

With the air beneath her wings, she could lose herself in the pure joy of flight. All the responsibilities of her role as mayor, her tense relationship with her long-estranged father, the frustrating, confusing reaction she had to Calder Kingsley…the wind snatched and scattered them all and she gave herself over to the free feeling of soaring through the sky.

She wheeled back over the forest, banking low as she passed the first, outlying homes and businesses. Below her, the towns of North Lyndvale and South Lyndvale were laid out like a map, and from up here there was no dividing line – ice and fire dragon territories were a single, integrated whole. If only she could get the townspeople to see things the same way.

She lost track of time, letting her thoughts wander, before she finally circled back and landed in the parking lot. She was surprised to see that there were two cars there.

She was even more surprised to see Tabitha and Ermengarde standing outside their cars, waiting for her. She quickly got dressed and walked over to see what they were doing there. Ermengarde held out a cup of coffee and a bag of pastries, which Olivia gratefully accepted.

She stuffed an entire cheese pastry in her mouth; flying burned a lot of energy.

“Hmmm dmmmp yrf fmmm mph?” she asked, and took a huge gulp of coffee to wash the pastry down. Then she grabbed another pastry and crammed it into her mouth. Man, pastry was good. She might be the suckiest mayor in the history of mayors, but pastry was delicious.

“What did she say? You know her better than me,” Tabitha said to Ermengarde.

“Hum dum yorf from murph?” Ermengarde suggested.

Tabitha frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“True,” Ermengarde said, as Olivia attacked her third pastry. “Okay, maybe it was, ‘How are you doing this morning?’”

“Fine, thanks,” Tabitha said to Olivia. “And yourself? Chew your food, dear, we don’t want you choking to death.”

Olivia swallowed the last bite. “I said how did you find me?”

“Oh, I tracked your cell phone,” Ermengarde said cheerfully. “All the city-issued cell phones have GPS embedded in them. When you didn’t answer my calls, I got worried, and as I was about to leave the office, Tabitha showed up looking for you. So here we are.”

“Do you normally have hysterical fits in the middle of the day and run off?” Tabitha asked. “Not that it’s a dealbreaker. I come from a long line of thieves. My husband is stuck in our castle, finishing up his probation, in fact. And my daughter went crazy for ten years, but she’s back now.”

“A dealbreaker for what?” Olivia asked, baffled.

Tabitha looked at her as if she’d just asked the most ridiculous question in the world. “Marrying my son.”

“I approve,” Ermengarde added. “After all, I saw him starkers, and wowza.”

“Yes, I do make good-looking children.” Tabitha nodded unashamedly. “They get it from me.”

“And no, to answer your question, she’s only been in office a few days, but so far she’s acted pretty rational,” Ermengarde said to Tabitha. Then she paused to consider the question. “Mostly.”

Olivia sighed. “I couldn’t face anyone after my latest screw-up. I don’t know if I’m even going to be in office much longer,” she said to Tabitha. “I guess you didn’t see the picture in the paper this morning?”

Tabitha’s face lit up. “I certainly did. Everyone thinks it’s marvelous.”

“Well, of course you do. You’re fire dragons.”

Tabitha shook her head. “No, I mean
everyone
.” She pulled out her phone and clicked on the MyFace website. Apparently Maria’s petition was a total fail. It had one signature so far – hers. And all the comments on the petition supported Olivia – and came from both fire and ice dragons.

“Go, Olivia! Mayor for life!” one of the comments read. It was signed “Blackie Malloy” – the fire dragon blacksmith.

“Our new mayor is feisty and won’t take any guff from bullies – including her father!” an ice dragon ice cream shop owner raved.

“Olivia for president!” a comment from an ice dragon seamstress proclaimed.

There were at least thirty other comments like that.

“Good lord.” Olivia found her eyes filling with tears. “Wow. That’s amazing. I was afraid that everyone would want to run me out of town on a rail. I know I need to rein it in, but when I get mad, I just can’t seem to stop myself.”

“No, you don’t need to rein it in. You just keep being you. It’s clearly working.” Tabitha smiled as she tucked her phone back in her pocket. “Your father is not well-liked. And if anything, you’re more popular than ever before.”

“She’s right. And if you go, I’m going,” Ermengarde added. “I will retire and take my happy ass on out of there. I’ve had it with working for Teagues.”

“You guys are the best,” Olivia said appreciatively. She glanced at Tabitha. “Even if you’re dead wrong about your son. But I appreciate it.”

“You can have your wedding at our castle – it’s family tradition,” Tabitha mused, as if she hadn’t heard a word Olivia had said. “You’d look lovely in off-white. I’m thinking peach for the bridesmaids’ dresses.” She pulled a small notepad from her purse. “I’d better start writing this stuff down.”

“Riiiight. Does Calder know he’s marrying me?” Olivia quirked an eyebrow at Tabitha.

“Not yet,” Tabitha said with a shrug, as if to say, ‘Details. Mere details.’. “All right, since you haven’t been kidnapped or murdered, I’m going to swing by Birdie’s Bridal Creations to start planning.”

“Oh, me too!” Ermengarde said enthusiastically. “I love planning for weddings.”

“Don’t you have to get back to city hall? Also, don’t encourage the nice crazy lady, please.” Olivia gave her a sharp look.

“It’s my lunch hour,” Ermengarde said smugly, and she and Tabitha got in their cars and drove off.

Olivia stood there watching them go, then slid back into her car with a smile. She was finally, really starting to feel like she was home.

She had one pastry left, and she finished it, taking a few minutes to savor it this time. Then she started driving back towards town.

Minutes later, she saw a huge shadow cross the road – alarmingly close. She glanced up and saw an enormous fire dragon flying low over her car, and her heart sped up with alarm.

The creature easily kept pace with her car, keeping itself aloft with slow, powerful sweeps of its wings. She pressed her foot down on the accelerator, but it was too late – the dragon drew back its huge, diamond-shaped head, arching its neck, and directed a white-hot blast of fire at her car.

She shrieked, and swerved to avoid the jet of flame. The dragon sent another ball of fire rolling towards her, and she lost control of the car. Its tires skidded uselessly as it drifted into a sideways spin and hit the parapet at the side of the bridge.

The side of the car was punched in like a tin can. Olivia scrabbled at her seatbelt, but she had no room to shift and no time to escape. As the car tumbled, her head bounced hard off the driver’s side window and everything went black.

When she drifted back to consciousness, she felt like she was floating. Her eyes snapped open in panic as she realized her wrecked car must be in the river, being carried along by strong currents. She’d drown! But as she bolted forward against the seatbelt, gasping at the pain in her ribs, she discovered she wasn’t floating in the water…she was floating in the air. Hundreds of feet above the ground.

She caught a flash of movement in her rearview mirror and craned around, looking through the rear window to see the dragon that had attacked her flapping off over the horizon, a sinister shape like a gigantic bat silhouetted against the sky. So who was the dragon carrying her car away in its talons?

She had no intention of waiting to find out.

She unbuckled her seatbelt, wrestled open the car door, and leapt out.

As she plummeted towards the earth, the sensation of freefall unfamiliar in her human shape, she reached inside herself, grabbed hold of her dragon and
pulled
.

Wings exploded from her back. Her body twisted and contorted, scales rattling over her skin and glinting a frosty blue-white. She twisted in mid-air, lashing her tail as she fought to control her fall, and then she was flying, wings pounding the air.

She spiraled down towards the ground, losing height as quickly as she dared if she wanted to make a controlled landing.

Once on the ground, she shifted into human form and crouched, one hand on the ground, looking around warily. Her dragon shape was bigger and more powerful, but she didn’t know what she was up against. As a human she would be nimbler, and might be able to lose her pursuer by darting between the trees lining the riverbank.

The enormous red-and-black dragon holding her car in its talons set down the hunk of twisted metal. The side was stoved in where it had hit the parapet, and the dragon’s talons had torn long, ragged gashes in the roof. Wisps of smoke rose from the shattered metal. The paintwork had blackened and bubbled under the intense heat of dragonfire, and tiny flames still licked the upholstery. She could probably kiss her no-claims bonus goodbye.

The dragon landed, shimmered, and transformed into Calder – a very naked Calder, his eyes clouded with concern as he strode towards her. She straightened up, awkwardly attempting to cover the important parts of her anatomy with her hands.

“How did you know to save me?” she asked, astonished.

She could hear sirens off in the distance.

“It’s possible I’ve been sort of following you ever since the attack on you at your house,” Calder said.

She glanced up at the sky, searching for any sign of her assailant; the dragon who had tried to kill her had vanished into the clouds.

There was no denying it now. She’d been targeted repeatedly, and she was pretty sure that it had been the same dragon each time.

“Are you all right? You’re shaking. Are you cold?” Calder put his muscular arm around her shoulders, and she leaned in to him.

“It’s just the shock. Ice dragons don’t get cold.”

“We’ll find out who did this,” Calder said firmly. “And kill them.”

She glanced up at him and realized that his gaze was roving over her naked body, and she self-consciously adjusted her hands to cover as much as possible. “You’re not checking me out, are you?” she demanded.

“Totally. And I like what I see.”

She blushed and looked away. “Hardly the time or place.”

“Actually, it brings up something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“We should pretend we’re dating.”

She felt her head to see if she had any large lumps that would explain a concussion. There weren’t any.

“You should probably call me an ambulance. I’m pretty sure I’m hallucinating,” she said.