Liam gave Gabriela a little wave with a goofy smile on his face.
She beamed back at him.
Rolling my eyes, I continued, “We need a plan for how we’ll arrive and gain access….You guys can arrive by car, as if everything is normal, but I can’t be seen. As soon as Ryan’s father knows I’m here, it’s over.”
“Then you should stay here,” Dad said. “Let us handle this. You’ve done enough. Stay here, and stay safe, where I don’t have to worry—”
“Dad, no! I can’t!” Going up to the whiteboard, I thumped on the security measures. “Gabriela passes the wall of fire and blocks the wyvern detection spell. Then I cross the lasers and crack the lock—then Worm blasts the fire beast and Liam defuses the bomb. You need me for this to work! We need all of us!”
Studying the whiteboard, Charles said, “She’s right.”
I took a deep breath and added, “Besides, it’s my heist.” After I said it, I held my breath—Dad could shoot down the whole idea if he wanted to. Or he could take control of the heist. Or give leadership to Charles as the oldest.
“How are we going to get in?” Gabriela asked. “If there’s a party going on…Last time we came across the gardens, but that won’t work if there are people outside.”
“You can’t drive in with the rest of us, that’s clear,” Liam said. “You know human photographers like to lurk outside our gatherings. Reporters will have a field day with your miraculous return to life. Mr. Keene won’t even have to see you for yourself—he can watch you on TV.”
“Obviously, she has to fly in.” Worm—Benden—helped himself to another slice of pizza. He stared at the microwave for a moment, shrugged, and ate the slice cold. “That’s how we got out.”
“I can fly in while everyone’s arriving.” I continued to watch Dad, who was scowling so hard that it looked like his face would crack. “No one will expect a thief to come in dragon form.”
“Ooh, can I see your dragon form?” Gabriela clapped her hands.
Liam was gawkingagainat Gabriela. “Is she for real?”
“She’s human,” I explained. “They’re excitable.”
Gabriela looked faintly injured. “Well, it’s exciting. Don’t you think? A portal to another world? Dragon transformations? Not to mention the fact that Sky isn’t dead. You have to agree that’s worth a little excitement.”
All of them looked at me again. “We do like that fact,” Charles said.
I tried to imagine what it must have been like for them, speaking at my funeral. I also wondered how Dad was going to explain this to the school attendance office. And, like, everyone. We weren’t going to be able to hide the fact that I’d been ruled dead….
“We will wait until night,” Dad declared. “Your brothers and I will arrive by car for the Reckoning. Benden will come as our guest, a distant cousin. And you will fly in with Gabriela.” Everyone nodded. It was the most sensible plan. But it would make the timing tight.
Tuck looked out the window. “Still got a couple of hours until night.”
Liam joined him to look outside. “Yep. What do we do until then?”
“We must wait,” Dad said firmly.
Waiting is hard.
We discussed the plan some more.
We each practiced our roles.
We ate dinner, though no one was hungry and Benden declared he felt nauseous.
We each peed a few times. I changed my outfit twice. And then finally we went outside to be dragons for a little while. I wanted to practice transforming on the ground without needing to leap off an object—I’d need to do that when we flew to the Keenes’ house—and I wanted to practice transforming back to human while in midflight (just a foot or two off the ground, of course). And Charles, Tuck, and Liam wanted to learn how to transform too.
Teaching my brothers how to turn into dragons by encouraging them to leap off the roof of our gazebo was not something I’d ever thought I’d be doing. Liam and Tuck grasped the concept quickly. Oddly, Charles didn’t.
“It’s self-doubt,” Benden told me as we watched them practice. “Worse, it’s a cycle. Once you fail, you expect to fail again. You’re lucky it came easily to you.”
The twins cavorted through the flower beds as a matched set of blue dragons with black wings and yellow tongues. Gabriela was staring at them as if she could memorize every second. I noticed she seemed to be watching Liam more than Tuck.
“Are you sure your dad will be able to distract your enemy?” Benden asked. He was eating again, an apple this time. He’d made himself sick with the pizza, but it hadn’t slowed him down. He ate as if he was afraid he’d never have enough to eat again.
