AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Seventeen
When I got home, Pansy drooled all over me, licking me over and over again, maybe to get off the vampire blood spray. I definitely needed a bath. When I got to the bathroom, I stared at my reflection. I was pale as a ghost, my hair was absolutely terrible, tangled and stuck up in odd places where it wasn’t still in the tortured half bun, and I had bits of vampire all over me.
I shuddered and turned on the tub. I had to soak and then use a strainer to catch all the bits so they didn’t clog the pipes, and then I’d take a nice shower to get off everything else, and then I’d go to bed and never get up again.
I was curled up in the tub the first time I sneezed. I’d used too much allurement on Marshall and the Scholar, which always weakened my immune system. Throw in my icy night ride, and I was due for a nasty cold. Well, at least that would give me an excuse to avoid the Scholar until I could strategize an exit from his claws. Had he been stalking me for four years so that he could add me to his hoard? What kind of dragon collected translators? Should I protest being collected when his other employees were so happy in his care? Had he told them that he wanted a personal relationship? I could ask them.
I sneezed violently and groaned, sinking into the water. I’d figure it out later.
The next morning, I dragged myself out of bed when Pansy threatened to rip my pajama pants, threw on a robe, and took him outside for a brief walk in my biggest, warmest coat, and then came back in, fed him, and went back to bed. That day was blurry, and the next, and the next, but by the fourth day, I was healthy enough to worry about what to do with a dragon.
He hadn’t come by, hadn’t had anyone check on me for him, hadn’t made the slightest move towards me. Was I being paranoid? I took a minute to sneeze violently, stuffed my tissues into my pockets and then ran through some fighting drills that would never be sufficient to kill a dragon. I was like that, poised for a decapitation with my slender file when Cross came in from the bathroom, no doubt having slipped in through the window. I threw my file at him.
“Haven’t you heard of knocking? You scared me to death!”
He stared at me, frowned at my rumpled pajamas, the coat I wore over my pajamas, tissues peeping out of the pockets and said, “You’ve been hunting? How did it go?”
I shook my head, took a tissue out, and blew my nose. “I’m not dead, so I guess that’s a win? What brings you to town? I thought you were keeping a low profile, so Mother Mercy doesn’t know that you gave her a corpse.”
“When is the last time you’ve eaten?”
I stared at him, then I remembered the mashed potatoes and I sniffed, but it wasn’t from my cold. Everything had been so beautiful, so perfect, and then it had all gone to dragons.
“Cross, do you know how to kill a dragon?”
He came over and put his hand on my forehead. “You have a slight fever, but you might be mad from hunger. Where is your phone?” He found it face-down, turned off behind the books on my shelf closest to the door, where I’d left it once I’d come down from the roof the night of the mashed potatoes.
“I don’t want my phone; that’s why it was hiding.”
“I can’t use my phone to order food to your house. Think what kind of gossip that would cause, strange men coming and going at all times of the day and night.”
“Just night,” I said, but I didn’t stop him from opening my phone and ordering Chinese, then calling another place and ordering chicken in all its many incarnations, then a sushi place and ordering way too much sushi for me to pay for now that I was out of even my part-time job. I couldn’t go back, or I’d never leave. Not that I’d mind. I stared off into space, thinking about ancient Persian poetry and oranges until he bumped me with his elbow.
“Now, let’s talk business. Mother Mercy is coming here for your book. I’ll only be able to delay her for a few days, a week at most.”
I stared at him. “My treatise on morality?”
He raised a finger. “What kind of treatise on morality bleeds magic like that?”
“The kind I did experiments on. It didn’t use to bleed magic. It used to be like a teddy bear that I held at night to keep away the nightmares.”
He flicked away my words with his fingers. “You’re talking like a rational person. Someone has convinced Mother Mercy that your book holds the key to bringing Heaven to earth for all eternity.”
I stared at him in horror. “Everyone with a hint of darkness would die.” Like the half vampire dragons who seduced innocent assassins and then didn’t bother them for days afterwards. Maybe he’d been talking about his own hairy heart.
He shrugged. “Eventually, after a millennium of burning. Heaven’s not for the faint of heart, but Mother Mercy is convinced that it’s the only way to save the last dregs of humanity.”
“Okay. Take it.” I headed for my kitchen and put on some water. I should make tea, not that I had tea. I could drink hot water. Everyone knew that the benefits of herbal tea were mostly psychological, anyway.
He followed me, frowning. “Take it? You’re fine with Mother Mercy taking one of the few things she hasn’t already stolen from you?”
I leaned on the counter and then thought that maybe I had a lemon. A squeeze of lemon would be good for my cold. I went to the fridge, but he held it closed above my head.
“What do you want, Cross? I’m tired and tired and tired.” I collapsed against the fridge and blew my nose a few times.
He fussed with my hair for a bit, studying me. “Why did you turn off your phone, Angel?”
I should tell him that the Scholar was half dragon, just so he’d help me figure out how to kill him, but Michael hadn’t come over in days, so maybe he wasn’t the possessive kind of dragon, and I couldn’t just tell assassins about my scholar’s secret life. I mean, he gave me advanced pay in spite of my ineptitude, and he’d fed me a lot of sushi. No, I wasn’t going to tell Cross any of my scholar’s possible vulnerabilities because he’d laid the perfect trap for me, and I was emotionally invested in his well-being. I always did fall for the absolute worst guys, but a dragon was a new impossible.
