Page 9 of Death Trap

“I can see why,” I said, my gaze roaming over the lush plants. The flute’s soft melody floated all around us. “And I got a one-room apartment over a Cuzzins’ Pizza & Pasta. I think I got gypped.”

That got a half laugh out of him, and I smiled. Over the last couple of months, he had been relaxing some around me. There was something rewarding when a person who barely cracked a smile laughed at one of your jokes. I mean, I thought I was hilarious, but my sense of humor was something else. Not many people got it.

“The home you were assigned suits you,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if I should be offended or not. My apartment in Fairport was more like a college dorm then an actual home. A small kitchen with a two-burner stove and a mini fridge, and a boxy living room with one window overlooking the street. My bathroom and bedroom were nothing special, either. I didn’t even have decorations or pictures hanging on the walls. Not so much as a curtain.

Was he trying to say I was plain as sin? Empty?Unwelcoming?

He’d be right. But still.

Simon turned to me slightly. “You’re hardworking. Barely home. Simple and selfless.”

Oh.

Now I just felt silly.

But Simon always seemed to see better in me than I did in myself. No clue where he came up with this stuff, but I wasn’t going to argue.

“What’s with the dragons, too?” I asked. I was really pushing my luck for more information on the mystery that was Simon. Hell, I didn’t even know the guy’s last name. “The fountain, the front gate… I even see some decorating the outside of the temple-house thing. Are you…a were-dragon?”

Were there even such things?

Simon’s eyes widened.

Did that mean I had hit it on the head? Did dragons even exist? I’d never reaped one before, but who knew? After all the things I’d seen just recently, it wouldn’t surprise me.

“There is no such thing as dragons, Jade,” Simon said, gesturing to the garden. “At least not like the ones I have here.”

“So…you’re not a dragon, then.” I couldn’t help the disappointment leaching into my tone. It might’ve sounded ridiculously kid-like to say, but that would have been awesome to know a real dragon.

“Not in this sense, no.”

I let out an aggravated sigh. “Oh, come on, Simon! Out with it already! Enough with this beating around the bush bullshit.”

He held up a finger to his lips to silence me, and I tried my best to calm down, even though I was sitting on the edge of my seat.

“If you really wanted to know what kind of supernatural I was, all you needed to do was ask me. I have nothing to hide.”

Would kicking myself right now be too obvious? All this time and all I had to do wasaskhim?

Well, great. Good thing to know.

“Can you tell me?” I asked. “Please?”

“I don’t know what your obsession with my were-creature is all about.”

I gave him a deadpan look. Was he stalling? It seemed like he was. “Plain ol’ curiosity. Humor me.”

Simon’s chest inflated and then deflated, his shoulders sinking, as if he had just taken a deep, calming breath. The simple gesture threw me for a loop because I thought I was the only one still holding on to the living habits like breathing.

“I am a were-komodo dragon,” he said.

I blinked, taking in his words. Komodo dragon. Those evil-looking giant lizard things that had massive claws, poisonous bites, and no natural predators?

Um, what?

Staring at Simon—this tall, slender-framed man with a bald head, high cheekbones, and the most unemotive expression—I didn’t see it. At all.

He was jerking my chain. He had to be. But when I searched his face for any hint of the lie, I found none. Stoic as ever.

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