Page 8 of Dragon in Denial
Chapter 3
Ketu stared into the mirror, scraping the hair off his cheeks.Mamáwould give him hell if he showed up to dinner with a five o’clock shadow.
Like that was the biggest of his problems at the moment.
Yeah,Mamá’srules were important, but shit. The tough-as-nails eighteen-year-old girl he thought had been devastated over her best friend’s death was now messing with the stuff that killed her? How the hell had that happened?
Was it money? She’d had a crappy home life, as he recalled, and she hadn’t ever talked about her dreams about the future like Eulalie always did. Eulalie had wanted to be an astronaut, a chemist, a lawyer—all sorts of human career paths that, in truth, might have been attainable if she hadn’t taken that first dose of dragon’s blood.
Antoinette had no dreams and no money, so had she figured out a way to forget what it had been like while Eulalie went through her downward spiral into the pits of dragon’s blood-induced hell?
Clearly, considering how healthy she looked, she wasn’t a user unless she’d only recently started. Eulalie’s trim good looks had degraded quickly once she became addicted to the drug.
And I pretended not to notice.
You were away at school, his dragon reminded him.Trying to figure out what you wanted to do with your life.
It had all gone to hell that summer when he returned home and finally acknowledged his sister was a user. An addict.
I should have come home sooner. I should have scared off that weasel, Darius, like I had every other guy she’d ever dated.
Except Darius was his reeve’s son, and dragons didn’t mess with their reeve’s children unless they wanted to face dire consequences.
Even if the reeve’s kid was a drug dealer, apparently.
Ketu shook his head to dislodge the frustrating thoughts, but all that happened was a shift to current, equally as maddening worries.
So if Antoinette wasn’t a user, what was she? A dealer? Despite everything that happened to Eulalie, she’d tripped over to the dark side, too?
Ketu clenched his fists and resisted the urge to shift into dragon form for no other reason than to burn off steam. He couldn’t believe it, yet the evidence was there. A pocketful of dragon’s blood and a healthy complexion and shape could only mean one thing: She was doing to other kids what Darius had done to Eulalie. Was that her version of revenge?
He wanted to track her down, talk some sense into her. Tell her about his being shocked into temporary paralysis when he found his sister’s dead body. How he’d stood there for long, long moments, staring down at her, crumpled on the ground, her hazel eyes wide and unseeing, yet it had felt like they were staring at him. Accusing him of not saving her.
He wanted to tell her how it felt every single time he thought about Eulalie, how each time it was a jolt when he realized he would never see her again. She would never age beyond eighteen years old. The whole world had moved on these past ten years and Eulalie was nothing but a ghost, a memory, a reminder of what had been, what would never be.
Did Antoinette really want someone else’s brother to go through that?
Or… Or he could use this new knowledge to his advantage. Well, his reeve’s advantage. And, hopefully, eventually, the Rojo colony’s, too. If Antoinette was a dealer, that meant she knew where to find Delilah. Maybe, if he played his cards right, he could convince her to lead him to the distributor, and he could shut the witch down. Then Antoinette would have no choice but to quit dealing.
It was a plan, at least. It was closer than he’d been a few hours ago to doing what Gabe had sent him down here to do. Now he just had to convince himself to follow through with it. Because being nice to Antoinette and trying to win her favor wasn’t going to be easy. Not with their shared history and her very stupid decision to go into that business despite everything they’d both gone through.
He rinsed off the shaving cream and patted his face dry. Hanging the towel on the back of the door, he left the bathroom and walked into his hotel room to get dressed. Before he could enact his plan, he had a date.
Dinner. With his parents.
Yet another task he both dreaded and anticipated.
***
His dad’s truck was parked in the driveway when he arrived later that evening. The same S-10 he’d had when Ketu had been in high school. It probably still ran great, too. The man had a way with vehicles. His magic touch was the reason he was the most referred mechanic in their little section of New Orleans for more than forty years running.
Papa had been the most vocal mourner of them all when Eulalie died. He’d wept, he’d shouted, he’d screamed, and he’d stormed over to their reeve’s home and attempted to confront the man whose son had fed Eulalie’s addiction. The reeve had refused to believe him, and when Simeon Ormarr wouldn’t leave, Trennon Redd had summoned his guards and had him bodily removed.
And then Simeon’s shop had burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances. And then the fire marshal had accused him of doing it himself to collect on the insurance policy, so he could pay for his daughter’s funeral expenses.
And then Simeon was jumped while sifting through the rubble of the business he’d built with his own grease-stained hands.
And Simeon’s voice became gradually quieter and quieter until one day he whispered, “She did this to herself,” and the next day he received a check from the insurance company for double what his policy had been for.
