Page 6 of Midnight in the Garden of Okay and Meh
“Yeah, but I wasn’t always a demon.”
“Oh.” I thought for a moment, then patted it on the head. “That’s right, you told me you were a sprite before you became a demon. I’m sorry that I didn’t realize it is your birthday, Jim. I never thought you had one, or I would have made note of the day, and we would have celebrated. I guess since this is such an important day, I can drop your lactose ban. Would ice cream heal some of the hurt caused by my ignorance?”
“So, you have actual parents?” Ysolde asked when Jim graciously accepted my peace offering. “Human ones?”
“Human?” Jim’s face scrunched up, reminding me how amazing I found it that a dog could be so expressive. “I assume they looked human. My mom was from what’s now southern India, while my dad was from somewhere in the Balkans. Bulgaria, I think.”
I gave a mental headshake to clear my stupefaction. “As fascinating as this is—and Jim, I absolutely want to sit down with you when we get home, and hear all about your parents—we’ve strayed from the mastermind brainstorming. To recap, we need someone superpowerful. What about the First Dragon? He’s very big and bad when he wants to be, and, considering the number of times he resurrected Ysolde and Baltic, clearly has a serious array of powers.”
Ysolde had her phone out before I finished speaking, texting someone.
“You’re not texting the First Dragon, are you?” May asked, her eyes wide. “That seems ... he texts? We could text him? Is he on Instagram?”
“We most certainly cannot text the dragon sire,” Gabriel said quickly at the same time Drake jerked backward at May’s suggestion. “It’s not even something I want you contemplating.”
May pointed at Ysolde. “She’s texting him.”
“Ysolde is special,” Gabriel said, giving May what I knew he thought was a quelling look, but really was pure adoration with a bit of protectiveness thrown in. “She is the mate of his son. She is accorded rights that are not granted to the rest of the weyr.”
“Meh,” Ysolde said, still tapping on her phone. “That’s not really true, but before anyone gets riled up, I’m not actually texting the First Dragon—to be honest, I’m not sure that he has a cell phone. You’d have to ask Baltic about that, since he seems to have a mysterious way to contact his father that I don’t know about. Right now I’m asking Charity if she thinks the First Dragon would be able to help.”
“We do not need help from the dragon progenitor,” Christian said in almost as much horror as Gabriel. “Much though we appreciate—”
“Charity says she’ll ask, but she thinks not. Evidently he’s lost one of his kids, and is trying to find out where he is. Oh.” Ysolde looked up at Baltic. “She says that Baltic did something with one of his brothers, and now he’s missing. I thought all the Firstborn—except you—were dead eons ago?”
“They are.” Baltic came perilously close to an eye roll. “They were. The First Dragon demanded I help with the eldest of them. I did as he asked, and brought him to the mortal world, gave him money, and offered to house him in Dauva. He refused all, and left. If that is ‘doing something,’ then yes, I tried to help him. That is all, and you can stop looking at me like I’ve murdered someone.”
Ysolde returned his annoyed expression. “I’m not looking at you like that. I’m looking at you like you kept the fact from me, your mate, the one who has loved you for the last several hundred years—minus the time my memory was wiped—the mother of your children, and who you claim is your favorite person on earth, and yet you did not bother to tell me you fetched one of your dead brothers from the afterlife?”
“Which afterlife?” Adam asked. “I have friends in most of them, if you need help finding your brother.”
“It was a griefscape of his own creation,” Baltic said, waving a dismissive hand. “The point is moot. I do not know of Yrian’s whereabouts, but I did no harm to him and, thus, am not responsible for him going off on his own. Ysolde, stop glaring at me. There was little to tell you.”
“Yrian?” Gabriel said in a voice so strangled, everyone turned to look at him. “Yrian Shadowson? The first of all the Firstborn? The dragon who created the black sept from the chaos of primal dragonkin?”
Drake swore in Magyar under his breath.
Baltic said nothing, his standard inscrutable expression firmly affixed. “I did what the First Dragon asked me to do. What Yrian does is not my responsibility.”
“Oh, we are so going to have a chat in the car going home,” Ysolde told him.
I tried to stifle a giggle, but enough slipped out that May leaned toward me and asked, “What’s so funny?”
“Now it’s Baltic’s turn to wear the martyred expression,” I said in a near whisper. “The one that all the men seem to share.”
“If we do, it’s because we have mates who push us to the limit of our patience,” Drake said not very softly.
“That’s right, Drake,” Ysolde said in a drawling tone that made me give another nearly silent giggle. I knew that tone, and judging by Drake’s expression—full-on martyrdom—he did, as well. “But patience has never really been one of your strengths, has it? I seem to recall how impatient you were that time in Prague when we rolled into town for a sárkány, and found you in the square about to be hanged for an orgy involving several wives of the town council, and one councilman.”
I gave the love of my life a long, long look. “I didn’t know you swung both ways.”
“I don’t,” he said quickly, a little wisp of smoke escaping one nostril. “I never have. The man Ysolde and her annoyingly accurate memory is referring to was evidently fluid with regards to gender, not that was recognized hundreds of years ago. And it was not an orgy.”
“There were eleven women and the mayor. That sounds like an orgy to me,” Baltic said as he leaned back in his chair, a glass of dragon’s blood in hand. He looked almost happy.
“The whole town was up in arms. They most definitely were going to hang him,” Ysolde told the table with what I suspected was great relish. “But then other green dragons arrived and saved the day.”
“Ancient memories aside,” Drake said hurriedly. I put a hand on his leg again to let him know I supported him, no matter how horn dawg he had been in the past. “It does little to forward the situation. I suspect that what Christian says is true, and that we are out of our depths with a thane.”
