Page 34 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
This is all beginning to feel like torture, so I try to remember the world outside this conversation. The bookstore. SmallBusiness Saturday. The fact that I am in the ruling coven now, and they are a disgrace.
“Did you all come in for something specific?” I ask sweetly. I gesture toward the nearest table. “All the fairy tales arebuy one, get one free. And there’s a fifty-percent-off sale on—”
“As usual, Emerson doesn’t carry what we were looking for,” Maeve says, clucking as if she’s deeply disappointed. From somewhereinside her purse, I hear an echoing gurgle. No doubt her poor pigeon.
I want to ask her why they’re here, but I don’t. I want to say all manner of things, but instead I just smile at them, brightand happy and as ditzy as possible, and offer no more conversation.
The silence stretches out. It’s uncomfortable. But nothing can compel me to act like I notice. I keep right on smiling atthem. Azrael beams.
If they want to break the silence, they can.
“Well,” Carol says after an eternity. “It’s good to see you back, Georgie. We can’t wait to see what you can do.”
That sounds like a threat, I think, as Carol flicks a glance at Azrael. But she only turns and walks away, dodging the sea ofcustomers as she goes. Maeve gives another little sniff, hoists her panda purse higher like her feeble pigeon is a shield, and then quickly scurries along in Carol’s wake. I swear a little chunk of hair falls off of her head as she goes.
I guess we know the spell worked, I say, and I wonder if Azrael heard that in his head, because when I turn to look at him, his expression is back to madand disapproving, as if our run-in with the Joywood hadn’t occurred.
“When will you tell Emerson?”
“About what?”
“Don’t play dumb, Georgina. Nothing makes me angrier.”
Which pokes at my own anger. “Then you need more things to be angry about.”
“Why won’t you tell her? She is your best friend.”
Like I need a lecture onmybest friend. I move away from him, around a small witch family who are staring a little too intently in my direction. I finda few more stray books, but Azrael is following, and I’m afraid if I don’t answer him, he’s going to make a scene.
“It’s embarrassing,” I say quietly. “Now, can we—”
“So what?”
My temper snaps. Just like that. I whirl on him—human and witch families around us be damned. “So what?I don’t want to be embarrassed. Who does?”
He crosses his arms over his chest and shakes his head. “Your mother really did a number on you.”
I feel a bit like I’ve been slapped. Mymother? “What do you know about my mother?”
“Enough,” he says with a kind of dark menace that makeszerosense for a dragon who’s been cursed into a newel post for something like a century.
I remember myself enough to cast a quick spell to make sure no one can hear what I say to him, because there are already too many curious eyes in this store. “My mother hasn’t beenalive long enough for you to have known her before you were cursed, Azrael. So how could you possibly have an opinion on her? Or her effect on me?”
His gaze gets a little shifty then. Some of the anger turns into that sly distance someone uses when they’re lying. “She usedto make... Wilde House visits. And as established, I saw and heard plenty while in my post.”
“Visits?” That makes absolutely no sense. My mother likes to talk about the Wilde family’sprominenceandposition, but they live next door to each other and barely interact. “What? Why?”
He starts to walk away, down the stairs toward the front of the store where Emerson is checking people out. But he talks ashe does it.
“There was a time, before you were born, that your parents were quite good friends with the Wildes,” he says, casually, likethat’s well-known information. Like magical creatures and true covens.
But I have literallynever heard this. Not that I ever thought that they were enemies. Just that there was always a careful and polite distance between Emersonand Rebekah’s parents and mine.
I trail after him. “Friends? What kind of friends?”
Azrael cuts through the crowd as if it’s a figment of my imagination, making his way to the front of a long line of peoplewaiting to check out. He earns a few dirty looks and muttered remarks when he ignores all of them, leaning over the counteras if he’s one-hundred-percent cutting in line.
But he’s not. Or not to buy any books, anyway. He gets Emerson’s attention instead. “I believe it’s time your best friendtells you whatactuallyhappened between her and that Sage person.”
