Page 55 of An Accident Waiting to Dragon

Gwen didn’t have a clear expectation in her head, but it wasn’t this.

This wasn’t…scary enough.

Based on what her mother had said and her father’s reaction to Gwen choosing to come here, she’d expected giant spiders maybe, or a hellhound, at least one banshee. She cast her gaze over what, at first glance, looked like a large boulder, but to a pixie was so obviously a massive, petrified snail shell with a small, arched door, a few tiny windows, and a chimney pipe popping out of the top, white smoke wisping out of the top.

The wooden door sat slightly askew in the frame. But it couldn’t be where desperate pixies came to commune with their dead. Could it? This looked too…cozy.

Are we even in the right place?

She glanced over her shoulder at her mother. Tall and slender, with similar coloring to Gwen’s, Mauren Moonsoar had, at one point, been a Guardian, one of the pixies selected to protect their kind from the predators of the supernatural world. She’d seen horrors even Gwen, after all her time as a courier, couldn’t imagine.

But right now, her mother stared at the little hovel with a face gone a little green, her lips pressed together in a flat line so that she looked like she was holding back words.

Was her mother regretting that decision?

After she’d learned that Asher was going to make a full recovery and ensured the eggs’ safe delivery, Gwen had come home. Finally. She’d gone straight to her parents after leaving the green dragon mountain in China. Then she’d told them everything. From start to finish. Well…save for a few key details that involved a certain dream situation. But it wasn’t until she shared her suspicion that she and Asher were fated mates that her mother had reluctantly offered this solution.

A dangerous one.

Her father, furious at his wife for making the suggestion at all, had tried to talk Gwen out of it. He’d told her that a visit to a spirit pixie resulted in death or insanity more often than anything else, and those who did emerge with their lives and minds intact often regretted going. Maybe the dead usually didn’t have good news to impart.

Made sense. Visiting the dead seemed like it would probably involve regrets and things left unfinished or unsaid. Not always kind things.

Her father had locked himself in his room when he’d failed to convince her not to come here, and refused to see her off.

Mamie had insisted on coming with her.

That both her parents feared losing another child was obvious.

I hate putting them through this.

But she wasn’t here for regrets. Not really. Just truth.

I’ll be okay. Goran would never hurt me.

“Mamie?” Gwen asked. “Are we here?”

Mauren flicked her gaze around them, like she was checking for danger, then gave a sharp nod.

“Do I just…knock?” Like they were here for a cup of tea and a friendly chat?

“I don’t know what happens next,” her mother said.

Gwen’s stomach turned a little sour. Her mother was never short on answers. She knew everything, but not this?

Gwen went to step toward the hovel, but her mother’s hand on her arm stayed her, and suddenly she found herself wrapped up in her mother’s tight embrace. “Love and family wait for you on the other side, darlin.’ Remember that?”

“You’re not coming with me?”

Her mother shook her head. “I can’t. Only one person for each of the dead. Ever.”

Only one.

Gwen would be the only person from her family to see Goran’s face again. Hear his voice.

Maybe.

She swallowed. “Are you sure you don’t want to be the one?—”

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