Page 13 of Here Be Dragons

“The day-time janitor? Yes, now that you mention it, I’m sure that’s his scent. But what would he want with Carly? They occasionally exchange a wave or a nod, maybe a few words, but that is all. There is another scent here as well. I don’t recognize it. Leonard had help.”

I showed Seth the tiny scrap of fabric I’d found on the broken picture frame. “Would you be able to use this to find her?” I asked. I was always amazed at what Seth could do with a little magic.

“I think there’s enough here for me to scry and perhaps see through the eyes of whoever this once belonged to.” He looked around the room and wrinkled his nose at the mess. “Not here, though. This place feels…wrong.”

“At my estate, then?”

Seth gave a curt nod, then with a wave of his hand, the portal opened up again in Carly’s much-too-cramped apartment. Beyond the opening to the portal was only a swirling black of nothingness, but that was because my home had a special ward that prevented portals from seeing inside. I knew this portal would lead to my library.

I went inside the fenced-in area and tried to scoop Carly’s bunny into my arms, but it grunted and bared its front teeth, refusing to leave the safety of its faux fungi shelter. I didn’t need to speak Bunny to realize this was a warning. But I also didn’t want to leave her animal companion behind in a trashed apartment, so I simply picked up the entire mushroom.

Mateo helped me gather up some of the rabbit’s supplies, and then we stepped into the swirling darkness.

Chapter 7

Carly

I furtively rubbed thebelt around my already painfully raw wrists against the sharp metal corner behind me as my two kidnappers paced the abandoned warehouse. It was clear that these two hadn’t thought beyond coming to my place and finding this elusive key because they hadn’t been prepared to deal with me at all.

The belt holding me captive had come straight off Knife Guy’s hips, and now he was constantly pulling up his pants. Luckily forme, the belt was made of fabric webbing and was relatively soft after years of use.

We hadn’t gone too far from my place—just around the corner, in fact, to an industrial area that had once been home to Darlington’s manufacturing sector. According to the large words painted on the side, this place had once been a fabric mill called Dragonscale Textiles.

The large brick building was lined with massive arched palladian windows that let in lots of sunlight, although some of the glass was broken or missing. The high ceilings were held up every thirty feet or so with thick beams, the paint on them long peeled away, except for a dark brown section near the floor. Overhead were large exposed vents, and the paint was in a similar state of disrepair.

Despite its state of disrepair, there was a certain charm about this old factory, which I’d place as being from the later nineteenth century, likely post-civil war. I wondered why some developers hadn’t turned it into an overpriced loft yet. But then I remembered how close it was to my apartment. I guess an expensive, modern, converted factory loft in a shitty part of town would be a hard sell, and this place would need a lot of work to come up to code.

As it was, one side of the brick wall was starting to cave in, and the numerous rods, chains, and pulleys attached to a large wheel overhead looked ready to fall down on our heads at any minute.

Okay, on second thought, maybe “charm” wasn’t the right word. But the historian in me appreciated the old building. What I didnotappreciate was the way Knife Guy and Leonard wereconstantly pacing in between the cast iron machinery as they talked about how fucked they were. Every so often, I’d hear them mention the “Dragon Lady.” By the way they said it, I was pretty sure they meant an actual freaking dragon and not some boss lady.

That had me wondering again about Desmon and his title as the Dragon of Darlington. I was beginning to think I was about to miss a lunch date with an honest-to-goodness dragon.

How in the actual hell had I gotten myself caught up in some dragon turf war?

That sounded like a plot straight out of a movie, which sucked because I wasn’t main character material. Main characters, more often than not, made it out alive. Side characters? Not so much.

I was smackdabin the middle of side character territory. I wasn’t particularly beautiful, or particularly smart. I was just an average girl, kinda nerdy, and a little stubborn, with an independent streak. Definitely not main character material.

“This is all your fault,” Knife Guy grumbled to Leonard for the third time. “We have a woman here we don’t know what to do with.”

Deciding I needed to be more main character than side character if I wanted to survive this mess, I spoke up. “Look, why don’t you two just let me go? If I get into work now, no one will ever know I was here. I’ll just tell them I had some girl problems and was running late. But if I don’t show up at all, someone’s going to notice. I won’t say anything, I promise. I’m helping Desmon file a few things, I’ll even look in his office for you.”

That was a total lie. I’d never help them. The second I got anywhere near Desmon, I was going to rat this two-timing asshole out. And if Desmon really was a dragon, then I hope both of them got burned to a crisp. Not only had they fucked up my apartment, breaking everything I owned in an attempt to find this stupid key, they had also threatened to make rabbit stew out of my baby.

To make matters worse, they’d left my front door open. I could only hope that Q-Tip, ever curious about the outside, had gone out to the hallway, seen that there was nothing there but disgusting carpet and peeling wallpaper, turned around, and gone home.

“He let you in his office?” Leonard sounded shocked. “He won’t letmeclean in there, and I’ve been employed at the museum for years.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Was this a good or bad thing? I didn’t want them to think Desmon and I were close because then they wouldn’t trust me at all. “Like I said, I went after lunch to give him the envelope.” I shrugged. “He asked me to help him file some papers. His office is a real mess.”

“Hey, this might work,” said Knife Guy. “If it’s in the office, she can find it for us.”

“Yeah, or she’ll tell Desmon the second she gets back, and we’d havetwodragons on our asses instead of one.”

Knife Guy looked me up and down appraisingly. “What if we pay her? We’ve seen her apartment. This girl is broke. If she finds the key for us, we can give her a cut of what Gillisandra is payingus. Money makes people loyal. And I don’t think this bitch and Desmon are close-close, you know what I’m saying?”

That had Leonard eyeing me as well. I didn’t like it.

---