Page 68 of Backpacking through Bedlam

“Well, it’s a priority for them,” I said. “Regardless, they knew this was your Nest, and they knew where the door was, well enough that they were watching and followed us when we came out. You’ve been being careful. ‘Careful’ doesn’t mean ‘flawless.’ If the yong could find you, who else could?”

“Humans can’t tell us apart,” said the dragon who’d objected to the idea of giving the yong access to William. “They could never have figured out which one was Cara.”

So Cara was a dragon: got it. “And have you been counting on that?” I asked, even as Verity turned to stare at her. “Very, how much of your operation security has been down to the dragons?”

“About half,” she admitted. “People are usually more careful when their children are involved.”

“Says the woman who strapped our daughter to her chest and leapt off several buildings before I could stop her,” grumbled Dominic.

I decided to ignore that. “Say the Covenant has been watching this place, whether because they had reason to suspect something was happening here, or because it’s in a range they’re surveilling for cryptid activity in general,” I said. “It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that it only matters if they see me or Verity, because of that ‘Carew look’ that Thomas likes to go on about. But we’re not the only ones here. It’s a little odd to have this many blonde women who look like sisters living in the same place. Even if they didn’t know for sure whether or not you were human—even if they hadn’t been using their little temperature scanners—there are ways of telling people apart, no matter how similar they look. Even cuckoos have distinguishing features. Sure, most humans can’t tell dragons apart facially, but do you all have the exact same hairstyle? Because I’m looking around this room, and I can tell you with reasonable certainty that you don’t. I could tell you apart, and I’ve been here less than a day.”

The dragon looked flustered. I turned my attention back to Verity. “I’m guessing this Cara never showed up.”

“No.” Verity shook her head. “She’s missing, along with five of the little boys and three of the little girls.”

How many male dragons did they have? It seemed rude to ask, under the circumstances, but we were definitely going to have a discussion about birth rates when this was over. “So I’m guessing all the yelling is because of the missing kids, and nothing else has gone wrong?”

“Some of them were sure the two of you had to be involved, and are threatening to have all the humans and human-lovers expelled,” said Verity. “Grandpa is trying to talk down the people in charge, since they’re really sure he must be involved.”

“They’ve never trusted me,” said Dominic. “For them, once Covenant is always Covenant, and he’s a figure out of their bedtime stories. Some of them believe Mr. Price carried the Covenant to these shores in the first place.”

“Uh, our family was already here when Thomas showed up. We had a two-generation head start on him,” I said, while Verity elbowed him lightly.

“He’s your grandfather-in-law,” she said. “You don’t have to call him ‘Mr. Price.’”

“I would be uncomfortable with that degree of familiarity when I’ve just met the man,” said Dominic, voice going stiff. “He may be a traitor, but his research is still taught in the Covenant. He was a trailblazer in his time, and his rank upon leaving the organization was higher than my own. He deserves my respect.”

“He deserves your respect, and my support,” I said. “Verity, if he’s trying to convince people of his innocence, I should be there. Where is he?”

“You’re just going to make things worse, Grandma.”

“I can be diplomatic.”

She snorted, then caught herself. “Oh. You’re serious.”

I scowled at her. “I can. Now where, exactly, is your grandfather?”

She sighed. “Through here,” she said, and motioned for me to follow her to a door.

Sally followed me, and we left the chaos behind us.

Well, we left that chaos behind us, anyway. There was more chaos on the other side of the door, in the form of a variety of angry cryptids, all of them yelling at once, and several more frantic dragons looking for somewhere to direct their furious energy. Verity brushed by them all with soft apologies, and Sally and I followed along behind, and for a moment, it looked like we might actually go unchallenged.

Then a skinny woman with grayish skin stepped in front of us, putting her hands up to signal Verity to stop. “Come on, Verity, you know better,” she said. “This is not a meeting for humans.”

“But it’s a meeting about a human, and I have evidence that supports his innocence,” she said, indicating me and Sally. “They came back. They didn’t sell us out to the Covenant. They wouldn’t have bothered coming back here if they’d been expecting this sort of a welcome. Come on, Kitty, you know me, and you know my family. Did you really think my grandfather was somehow behind this?”

“Your grandfather is an urban legend as much as he’s a man,” said the bogeyman who had stopped her, whose name was apparently Kitty. Kitty gave me a wary, sidelong look at the same time. “If anyone could betray us and tell his own wife to walk right back through the doors into the hornet’s nest, it would be him. He already betrayed the people who raised him.”

“If you mean the Covenant, he knew he was going to betray them from the moment he grew into his sorcery and started setting things on fire,” I said. “And it’s pretty clear he wasn’t unusual for the Price bloodline. Even if sorcery doesn’t show in every generation, they put so many protections on the family fortune that it’s a miracle anyone can get to that money. They were expecting one or another of their descendants to wind up on the outside eventually, and they took what steps they could to make sure whoever it was would be okay when that happened. I, on the other hand, have never betrayed anyone, and if you don’t want me to demonstrate exactly how poorly I think of you casting aspersions on my husband, you’ll let us into the room.”

Kitty frowned. “And this would be . . . ?”

“Alice Price,” I said, voice flat. “Verity’s grandmother.”

“And I’m Sally,” said Sally, helpfully. “Alice’s stepdaughter. Sort of. It’s complicated, I think I’ve been adopted. I haven’t betrayed anybody, either, if that’s something we’re worried about all of a sudden.”

Kitty blinked, looking at me with new respect—and no small amount of fear. You don’t get rid of a reputation like mine just by deciding you’re going to retire and be a good citizen from now on, no matter how much I might wish the world worked that way.