Page 26 of Cruel Daddy Dragon

“What’s this about, though?” Kaius asks.

“What Roscoe had this morning was a small ring—copper,” Sarah answers, “I remember Lena’s shop was oncebroken into for copper rings because Eclipse thought they were relics. I just wanted to investigate the matter further.”

“Oh, right,” Kaius says, “Now you mention it, Roscoedidtake a ring from Rufus a short while ago, and I haven’t got it back yet.”

“I see,” Sarah replies, “And what did this ring look like?”

“I… don’t remember,” Kaius admits.

“Okay,” Sarah says briskly, “Well, I’ll investigate anyway and let everyone know if it was a relic or not. Can you bring Rufus over? I need to ask him about his ring. Can I rely on you to bring Cyrus up to speed about all of this as well?”

She’s barking orders like a true cop—again, I’m grinning in satisfaction as Kaius comes clumping toward me. When he meets me on the stairs, I must have the biggest shit-eating grin matching his light scowl.

“Your mean wife wants to see you,” he grumbles.

“So I heard,” I reply, “I heardeverything!”

I’m laughing at him now. I pass by him on the stairs and then look over my shoulder at him:

“Oh, and on your way back from updating Cyrus, I want that box of my stuff back.”

Kaius groans.

“Fine…” He groans, “Both of you are such buzzkills, mygod!”

I cackle as I walk down the stairs to meet her. She’s standing there in her full police uniform. The one that gripsjustenough of her curvaceous body to tantalize but not enough to truly give anything away; it leavesjust enoughfor the imagination.

Well, it would if I hadn’t already seen more than that. I stride over to her with a big grin on my face.

“I liked how you handled Kaius,” I say, “He can be a tough one.”

But she doesn’t smile back at me. Her eyes are stony—not necessarily cold, but not warm either. Why is she looking at me like that?

“So… how are you?” I ask, for lack of anything else to say.

“I’m very well,” she answers, only politely, “I just needed to ask you some questions about this ring that went missing a few days ago.”

I’m oddly numb. She’s talking to me like I’m a stranger…

Maybe she just wants to talk about thisfirst…

“Erm, it was just a regular ring. It was just annoying that Roscoe took it,” I say briefly.

“What did it look like?” she asks, making notes in her little police notepad.

“Er, it was just kind of thick and copperish,” I reply.

“Mmhmm,” she murmurs, “And did it have any gem settings?”

“No. It was just flat all the way around, and it had some kind of Celtic knot on it.”

“I see,” she says, “And was it actually made of copper?”

“I don’t think so,” I reply, “It was just colored like that.”

Sarah nods, making notes as she does. Then, she looks up at me:

“All right,” she says, “I don’t think that was the ring I saw Roscoe with this morning, but I’ll keep an eye out for it.”

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