Page 4 of Forked Tongues Are Fun
Tavis silenced the rest of his coughs by breathing into his elbow, his gaze, bright with humor, trained on Calhoun.
“Don’t you fucking say it,” Calhoun warned.
“I’ll mark that as a no.” I made a checkmark under the appropriate column as if it mattered. “On a scale of one to ten, how familiar are you with the Isbon brand?”
“Someone’s coming,” the third shifter said from the living room shadows.
Tavis turned to face the direction of the front door, one bare arm braced against the table. Calhoun tensed, his neck muscles straining against the collar of his Henley. Was this how they’d reacted when they’d seen me coming? Who exactly was this Mack person they were waiting for? I was no expert about dragon shifter psychology, but because they were the most powerful shifters, whatever could make them this twitchy definitely wouldn’t be good for a lowly human like me.
“I need to use your bathroom,” I blurted.
Calhoun slid me a distracted look as he stood from the table. “Now?”
I shrugged. “It can’t be helped.”
He jabbed his finger toward a dark, narrow hallway that led off the kitchen. “Back there. Don’t open any of the window blinds.”
Okay, seriously, what was their deal? They could look out, but didn’t want anyone looking in on them? It made sense, I supposed, if they had something to hide. Their troves, likely, but those were usually protected by powerful magic. Maybe they were trying to protect themselves? Buthello. Dragon shifters. They didn’t need to protect themselves.
Anyway, not my circus, not my dragons. I had a key to find, and the clock was ticking toward tonight.
I stood and started for the hallway Calhoun had indicated. Angling my body so the light behind me from the kitchen lit my way, I found the bathroom just as the doorbell rang. Another Isbon vacuum saleswoman who was after a key? Wouldn’t that be a crazy coincidence if it were? Or was it this mysterious Mack? Something told me I needed to hurry.
With a quick glance over my shoulder, I fumbled for the light switch inside the bathroom and closed the door. Then, I hiked up my pencil skirt to retrieve the little glass vial taped to the inside of my thigh. It was a more secure place than between my slippery boobs, because one drop of dragon fire would be deadly for a human like me. I’d had to trade a lot of stolen tech and a jar of peanut butter to a spunky lady named Bad Mama January to get it. I also had a lot of other thiefy—as Asa liked to call them—items strapped to my legs. Just call me Inspector Yara Gadget. Actually, don’t.
The vial was shaded black to contain its glow and thermal protected with magic so I could touch the glass, but the power inside still buzzed into my fingertips. It was meant to track anything I desired, which was how I’d found this house. After cracking open the bathroom door, I slowly unscrewed the top of the vial and knelt, releasing a single drop to the space between the hallway carpet and the floorboard. A line of orange liquid fire blazed forward into the darkness, its speed driving a blast of heat into my face. I lurched backward, fearing the worst for my eyebrows, as the fiery line zipped left. Down another hallway? Through a door and into a treasure trove? I couldn’t tell.
Shouts echoed from somewhere inside the house, the not-happy kind, but I couldn’t make out what the words were. It couldn’t have anything to do with me, because if it did, I would already be kabobbed and thrown onto the proverbial grill.
After corking the vial again and securing it with tape to my leg, I shut the bathroom door behind me to make it look as though I was still inside. Then, I followed the line of orange dragon fire that was already fading into a lacey wisp of smoke. It led to a door, locked, probably with a lot more than a key.
“D’oh se alapa,” I whispered.
The door swung open into more darkness. Despite how much of a bad idea it was to steal from dragon shifters, I knew my shit. Actually Bad Mama January knewhershit as one of the human leaders of the underground resistance to dragon shifters. She’d lost her daughter to the dragon shifters many years back and had offered to help me even before I’d finished telling her what had happened to Asa.
Too bad that little spell she’d taught me didn’t work with every door. I started inside but stopped. This was too easy. I’d also traded a jar of boysenberry jam, Bad Mama January’s favorite, for a vial strapped to my other leg—fairy dust, aka fairy corpse, which was a lot less rare and dangerous than dragon fire. I retrieved the vial, held my breath, and uncorked it. The fumes put humans into happiness comas, which weren’t as great as they sounded, so I’d heard. I poured a huge pile of the fine, sparkly pink corpse bits into my palm, and blew it toward the doorway. What had once been invisible motion sensors now glowed red in the glitter storm raining down on top of them. Just as I’d thought. Too easy, but not anymore.
The sensors zigzagged across the doorway in a complex pattern, and if I didn’t find and memorize a way through before the dust settled, the sensors would be invisible once again. Sure, I had more dust, but not more time.
Just as I spotted a way through that would require me to bend in half or lose a few limbs, the whole house shook violently. Metallic tinkling sounded from inside the dark trove. I’d picked a great time for the shifters to be distracted by someone else, but the distraction could make things a lot more complicated too. Time would tell, and quickly. The house trembled again, shaking down the fairy dust even faster. It seemed as if the whole house was under attack.
And I still had to find the key and get out.
The sensors disappeared, leaving just me and too many body parts to try to wedge myself through them. Thinking nimble thoughts, I bent over and lifted my leg to where I thought the opening was. If I tripped the sensors, maybe it wouldn’t matter so much because the shifters were handling who knew what at the front door. Unless, of course, the sensors were actually lasers meant for maiming.
Good times.
Bent as I was, I poked my arms into the trove, my right raised higher than the left to avoid hitting the invisible sensor/laser I thought I remembered there. Boy, if Asa could see me now, slowly folding myself into three dragon shifters’ treasure trove like a bizarre contortionist, he would collapse into a heap of breathless laughter. My heart grew heavy at the thought, threatening to tip me over and face-plant me into a whole lot of misery.
Focus.
One more leg and I would be through. My pencil skirt was hiked up to my belly button, revealing my glittery black thong and all of my thiefy supplies taped to my inner thighs. Quite the compromising position.
I held my pose in a half crouch. My muscles quivering, I slowly pulled my last limb into the trove without moving the rest of my body. All of my weight settled on the tiptoes of one foot, and those delicate bones screamed in protest.
The whole house shook again, punctuated by shrieks. Dragon shrieks. They’d shifted from their human forms. Because I was almost in the trove?
Shit.
