Dragon Fires Everywhere, page 18
“Explain yourselves,” Carol demands, cutting through the screeching. Her eyes are bright, and compared to Maeve and Felicia, she’s downright glowing.
“What would you like us to explain, Carol?” Frost asks her in frigid tones. “It seems one of our coven was once again attacked, and the sort of dragon you have taught your people doesn’t exist saved her. Imagine that.”
“Dragons are dangerous!” Gil shouts. His arm is hanging at an odd angle, like it’s fallen out of its socket. One ear is much lower on his face than the other. “Everyone knows this!”
Which is funny, because how could anyone know it when we were all taught they went extinct centuries ago?
“How dare you hide such an unpredictable monster from us,” Carol says, and she almost can’t hide the utter glee in her expression as she makes sure her voice carries to every last witch standing here on the riverbank. “This is not the Riverwood way we were promised.”
We were hiding Azrael from the Joywood, specifically—not witchdom as a whole—but I don’t think there’s any point in mentioning that.
“Dragons aren’t dangerous,” I reply instead. Ellowyn and Rebekah are on either side of me now, acting like they’re ready to hold me up at a moment’s notice. I can tell the whole coven is worried about me, but I feel fine. I’m mostly just filled with fury and anger that Carol is trying to warp an attack on me into an example of bad behavior by us.
“What was that hideous display, then?” Felicia asks, throwing a dramatic hand in the air toward Azrael. Three of her fingers are just bone. I look around, but no one aside from my friends seems to recoil at the gruesome sight.
“He saved me,” I tell everyone, searching the crowd for friendly faces. For awe and understanding instead of fear and worry. I refuse to take the mug Ellowyn is trying to push at me. “From something dark trying to pull me under the water.”
“And yet two of our coven are missing,” Carol says, rolling her eyes. “You are all here and accounted for. You can pretend to be a victim all you like, but those of us with even an ounce of intelligence can see right through you and your melodramatic fake threats. The water is fine. Have a look yourselves.”
A couple of witches move forward and peer down at the river, using muttered light spells to show the water in the quickly falling dusk, and a murmur seems to go through the crowd. Because the river looks normal. Cold and brown, as it should look on a frigid December night. Whatever attacked me and then escaped Azrael’s grasp hasn’t just retreated. It’s taken away all signs it was ever here.
I don’t know why I bother being surprised.
“She was burned,” Jacob tells the crowd in his steady, serious way, and surely that has to turn the tide. “Burns I’ve only seen on people attacked by black magic. The dragon clearly saved her from it being worse.”
“They will use this dragon against you,” Carol counters at once, watching the ever-multiplying crowd the same way I do. “He’s their paid muscle. We never trucked with ginormous magical creatures who are known to prey on children.”
“No, you prefer biddable rodents,” Frost says coolly, and gets the full force of her glare.
“This is getting out of hand,” Emerson says then, wielding her powerful voice and unshakable certainty. “Azrael is not going to hurt anyone, I can assure you. We’re not sure why or how he was freed from the curse that jailed him in our newel post, but he’s not a threat.”
“Says you,” Carol accuses, her voice echoing out through a crowd that only grows larger every time I blink. I see Sage with a couple of other teachers, looking entirely too smug, and I want to hurt him.
“Yes, says me,” Emerson replies in a tone that suggests Carol is unhinged. Carol is unhinged, but we’ve all learned that making direct statements about such things will backfire. No one likes a direct woman. The horror! Emerson keeps going, sounding almost soothing now. “If Festus and Felix are missing, we can look into that, but it has nothing to do with the dragon.”
“I thought you wanted everyone to have a say, Emerson.” Carol smirks. “I thought the Riverwood was built on everyone working together to form the best community we can.” She’s quoting something Emerson said at the ascension trials. Everyone seems to know it. And then she titters. “Not sure death by dragon is best for any community.”
Emerson doesn’t say anything for long, ticking seconds that I can measure by the pounding of my heart. She surveys the crowd. Carol has gotten most of them worked up. There are a lot of fearful gazes in Azrael’s direction, even though all he’s doing is standing there, arms crossed, in his human form. Jacob didn’t fully heal his injury, but it’s no longer actively bleeding. And it’s been stitched up in some way.
But people don’t see any of that, I realize. They don’t care that he’s been hurt, that he’s done something brave.
They’re afraid.
“You must destroy him!” Maeve shrieks. When she stomps her foot, her heel crumbles straight off. The actual heel of her foot, not her shoe. She reaches down, picks it up, and shoves it into her purse.
No one besides us seems to notice.
Did everyone see that? Rebekah asks quietly.
Maybe she’s found a new way to feed her weird bird, Ellowyn replies.
“We will never rush to end someone’s or something’s life,” Emerson is saying, loud enough so the whole crowd can hear. “What we need to do is find out why we thought magical creatures were extinct in the first place, only to discover that many of them have been cursed into the everyday objects in our homes. Give us some time to do that before we rush to judgment, with our assurances that Azrael will bring no harm to anyone.”
Carol staggers back as if Emerson took a swing at her, and cries out, “You can’t let a fire-breathing dragon cavort about the town! More people might go missing!”
“You’re engaging in hysterics, Carol,” Emerson says, bright and inordinately patient. She moves her gaze out to the crowd again. “I said we take responsibility for him. I meant it.”
“I don’t feel comfortable with this!” Joanne Walters yells. Not a surprise, as the woman loves to complain.
“Our kids walk these streets,” Cailee adds from where she stands next to her husband. She’s wringing her hands together, and she looks suitably terrified.
“None of you have kids,” Dane blusters, right on cue. “Yet,” he adds as an afterthought, gesturing at Ellowyn’s belly. “You don’t know what it’s like to worry for your children.”
I could tell them I am innocence personified. It does not matter, Azrael says in our heads. Don’t waste your breath.
“Emerson is right,” Holly Bishop says then, pitching her voice to carry through the crowd. “Even if we have concerns, we can’t just kill him. That’s over-the-top.”
Carol’s gaze is sharp, magical, a direct contrast to her crumbling and missing coven. “Imprison him, then.”
A murmur of something too close to assent goes through the crowd.
Emerson nods. “If you think Carol speaks for you, and you’d like to see the dragon imprisoned, raise your hand.”
“That isn’t fair, Emerson,” Corinne Martin says, a little too calmly for me to be able to dismiss her outright the way I’d like to. “Carol doesn’t speak for me, but I have concerns about what I saw with my own two eyes. Fire-breathing. Huge claws. If he wanted to take us all out, he could.”
“He could burn down the whole town!” Joanne cries. “Who would stop him? Who could?”
It’s all right. I’ll agree to another one of their prisons. Azrael’s voice is in our heads, and we all turn to look at him—except Emerson. She’s still gazing at Corinne. Not in betrayal, exactly, but certainly with some hurt, as I know she thought the other woman was a friend.
But then, things change when you’re the friend with all the power.
No. I say it firmly so everyone in my coven can hear it reverberate in their heads. We’re not bowing down to mob mentality. To the Joywood’s manipulations. What was the point in winning the election if we’re still genuflecting to them?
Azrael’s eyes are pure gold, and his voice is only in my head then. Trust me, Georgina.
It isn’t fair.
No, he agrees, and offers nothing else.
“I accept these conditions,” Azrael says to the crowd before Emerson has a chance, and he does it in that lazy way of his that I’m sure riles up as many people as it comforts. “I won’t fight you. Lock me back into the newel post.”
“Oh, no, not in Wilde House,” Carol says at once, with a hint of her former titter. “We can’t trust these sympathizers with a dragon in their home. We’ll imprison him at my house.”
“We’re supposed to trust you with access to a dragon you want destroyed?” I demand of Carol. “I don’t think so.”
She smirks at me. “My, my, Georgie—we’re awfully touchy about it, aren’t we? For a woman who was only moments ago very seriously entangled with one of our honorable high school teachers.”
I don’t look at Sage. I won’t give him or Carol the satisfaction.
“The cemetery,” Frost says, interrupting whatever Carol is trying to get at. “It’s across the river and safely apart from St. Cyprian. Off the bricks, yet sacred. No one should be able to do anything untoward there.” But he raises a brow at Carol, as if already accusing her of something.
“How could we possibly trust your spell?” Felicia asks, her canny gaze on the crowd, gauging their responses. She’s wearing an overlarge hat, and I find myself wondering if she has any hair under it.
“We’re supposed to allow you to do it?” Rebekah asks with a laugh.
“We’ll each choose three people not in either one of our covens,” Emerson says. “Anyone here in the crowd can nominate and vote on a seventh. Then they’ll speak the spell that imprisons the dragon across the river in the cemetery until we can prove to you all he is not a threat. Because he isn’t.”
“And how will you determine this, Emerson?” Carol asks, her voice a slithering thing I can feel down my spine. “With your feelings?”
“The way we intend to determine everything that matters to this town,” Emerson replies with that admirable calm when my blood pressure is skyrocketing by the second. “A vote where all voices can be heard. And tracked by everyone in witchdom. As the days go forward, we’ll endeavor to communicate all the reasons Azrael is not a threat to you. If your minds change, and you wish to see him freed, you only have to send me your change of vote. Once we have a majority, he’ll be freed.”
Felicia sniffs. “And if you never reach a majority?”
Emerson looks at Azrael, and her expression is hard to read. This is the leader she is, I know. Always fair—but fairness isn’t always easy. And being a good leader isn’t always doing the thing you feel is right the second you want to do it.
I hate it.
“If the tide has not changed by solstice and our full ascension,” Emerson tells the crowd in the same calm way, “we will have a meeting to determine his fate.”
Azrael does not have any reaction to this. Not like me. I want to tell Emerson she’s out of her mind, but I can’t do it here in front of a crowd. It’s never been harder to keep my mouth shut.
With everyone’s agreement, our two covens choose three people each to do the spell, with the crowd nominating the seventh. Emerson picks Jacob’s sister, Ellowyn’s mother, and my . . . well. The man I grew up thinking was my father.
Carol picks Joanne—no surprise there—then Dane Blanchard, and my mother.
I stare at her as she takes her place with the Joywood’s choices. She doesn’t look at me and I think, Okay then. I guess she has nothing to say to me now that I know the truth. Not just who my real father is, but who she is.
Cadence Pendell isn’t as good and respectable as she wants the world to believe. I could ruin that for her, couldn’t I? I could do it right here, right now.
There are a lot of lives I could ruin with a few words, I think, and the desire to do just that washes over me when I see the smug way Sage is watching me from his little group of teacher friends I never liked.
But Azrael comes to stand beside me. He puts his hand on the nape of my neck in a way that is not likely to quell any rumors about us, but I love it. I lean into it. The heat, the strength, the certainty that all these lives have come and gone, but we remain.
And he says nothing out loud or in my head, but I somehow know not to speak.
The Riverwood choices stand in a line facing the Joywood picks—Ellowyn’s mother, Tanith, and mine in a sort of face-off—and then the seventh choice, calm Corinne, makes them a circle. They begin the simple containment spell, joining hands and chanting the familiar words together.
Easy but effective words. A good, clean spell. Magic swirls in the air, and I want to sob.
Not sobbing hurts, like that horrible burning all over again, but this is nothing a Healer can cure. This is witch justice, exactly as we promised, and Goddess help me, but I hate it.
Azrael squeezes my neck, then reaches down to move the ring around my index finger. Be safe, Georgina.
And then he’s gone. Not in some grand puff of smoke, nothing dramatic or dragony.
Just not here anymore.
Imprisoned, once again.
All because he saved me.
19
“Georgie—”
But I’m not listening to Emerson or anyone else who calls my name just now.
I immediately fly across the river to the cemetery. Most of the coven are right behind me, but Emerson has to stay and deal with an angry mob. I’m sure I’ll feel bad for ditching her and leaving her to it later.
Maybe.
I land outside the cemetery with the determination to do something pounding in me—
But I stop short.
Because just behind the iron gate marking the entrance to the cemetery, where there are usually a few trees, there is now a giant dragon statue. As if he’s guarding the entrance to the local dead, and it’s suitably terrifying. It’s a gigantic display of stone, showing off towering teeth and sharp claws.
It is meant to terrify.
“Those assholes.” But there’s barely any heat behind it. That’s how truly outraged I am.
Zander lands beside me and shakes his head. “That’s a bit much.”
“A very purposeful bit much,” I return darkly. “I can’t believe . . .”
But I don’t have words for all the things I can’t believe. I want to cry that he’s stuck again. Cursed. Because he revealed himself to save me, which feels like a kind of deep echo inside me, like he’s done just that before. Then, as now, because people want to see the worst in him.
And in everything, no matter how much we work to try to make things better.
Because, in this time, the damned Joywood makes sure of it.
Even now when they shouldn’t be any kind of a factor.
I move toward the statue then. But before I can put my hands on it, the mass of stone . . . shakes a little. Like it is having its own quiet earthquake.
And then Azrael, in man form, appears at the side of the stone.
Relief swamps so deep, my knees almost give out. “You can get around the spell.”
“Not exactly,” he says, pausing at the cemetery gates. “The statue isn’t my confinement. The cemetery is.”
His eyes are gold and on mine in a way that feels like a touch. I take a breath. Then I make myself take stock. Not of what I feared across the river, but what is happening here. Azrael can’t leave the cemetery grounds. That’s not great, but it’s better than being stuck in a statue, unable to communicate.
I’m clinging to whatever silver lining I can.
Until this moment, I don’t think I knew how much I have come to depend on this man. My dragon. My newel post confidant brought to beautiful life. It isn’t just the book. Fate. The lure of other lives, hard losses, and a love so deep I sometimes imagine it’s threaded into my bones.
I just like him.
I really, really like him. This man who is funny and irreverent and so dangerous—while always being a safe place for me. This man who pretended to be a human and helps us whether we want it or not and happily took his place in our coven—in our lives—before we knew he belonged here.
This man who taught me how to fly like a dragon, and that was only the beginning.
Like doesn’t begin to cover it.
I can’t remember him through other eyes. I’m glad I can’t, because I like this view so much.
This dragon is definitely worth being tied to throughout time.
“Did the Joywood fail to imprison him in stone on purpose?” Frost asks in a musing sort of tone, his icy-cold gaze moving from the statue to Azrael and back. “Or is this because their power is fading?”
I don’t care. I launch myself forward, through the gates, directly at Azrael. And he catches me. He’s sturdy and warm and here.
He wraps his arm around me and holds me like no one’s cursed or ever could be. And I can feel that he is holding on to make sure I am okay, the same way I am holding on to make sure he is.
Like really isn’t the word.
“I’m betting on the latter.” Azrael looks out over the stones, and the statues of familiars. “Though I wouldn’t trust that the power fading will last.”
“How would they get it back?” Zander demands.
“Destroying you lot.” Azrael looks down at me. “Something attacked her, and then me. They have power somewhere, still. Black magic, at a guess.”
“I tried to reach out to everyone,” I say.
“They blocked you. Isolated you in the hopes of picking you off.” Azrael looks at me, his eyes gleaming with that hot gold. “The usual Joywood playbook.”
“If she couldn’t reach out to us, how did you get the message she needed help?” Rebekah asks him, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.
But I already know the answer. I look down at the ring on my finger. “What you gave me are the only crystals on my body that didn’t burn me.”
Frost frowns at that. “The burns weren’t from the water?”
