Day of the Dragon Read online

  “Years of arguments before the bench, my dear,” Laura said. “What were we talking about?”

  “The fact that handsome men like the one who ran into me don’t have the time of day for the average person,” I said swiftly, changing the subject away from my appearance. I knew what I looked like—I didn’t need Bree and Laura to dissect the weirdness that was my genes.

  “Right. Let’s go over this point by point,” Laura said.

  I laughed. “Your lawyer is showing.”

  “You’re just jealous because you’re stuck inside all day poring over moldy books while I get to wear power suits and have expensive lunches on the lead attorney’s dime.” She accepted the beverages and food, and plucked a sodden chicken wing from a plate before shaking it. “Your hypothesis is that handsome actor types don’t seek interaction with those of us of more average looks.”

  “That’s correct, Your Honor,” I said, stifling a little giggle. That definitely was the gin.

  “More booze! Excellent!” Bree said, making obnoxious slurping noises as she hastily guzzled the last of her three drinks in order to make room on the table for the fresh glasses. “I had a boyfriend last week, but then I found out he was just using me.”

  “Oh, Bree,” I said, patting her hand. “I’m so sorry. Men are dogs.”

  “They truly are,” Laura agreed, and shoved the plate of wings toward me. “Eat, Tha.”

  I picked a piece of celery from the plate that didn’t appear to be smothered in the gloopy red sauce. “Did you dump him?” I asked Bree, more than happy to move the subject away from my life.

  “I had to.” She leaned close to my head and said breathily, “Fallen angel.”

  I blinked at her a couple of times. “Pardon?”

  “He was a fallen angel.” Her nose wrinkled. “Nephilim, you know?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said slowly, and waited for her to focus on the food before sending another round of eyebrow semaphore to Laura. This time she caught my look, but totally misinterpreted it.

  “What? Oh, sorry, I got sidetracked by the food. What proof do you offer to validate your hypothesis?”

  I sighed to myself and took another sip of my drink, ignoring the second one that sat untouched. As I was about to speak, a small group of people entered the bar, pausing at the entrance to glance around. There was something about the way the two men stood, looking as if they owned the place, their body language speaking loudly of arrogance and confidence. I nodded toward them. “Your Honor, I would like to enter into evidence Thigh Dress, Sparkle Bosom, Auburn Man With No Manners, and his friend Tall, Dark, and Possibly Dangerous, who at the very least isn’t beyond picking up a woman’s purse even if he doesn’t bother to look at her when he gives it back.”

  Laura turned around to look at the foursome. Bree put both hands on the table and leaned across the glasses and plates to stare at them. “Holy shitsnacks,” Laura said, getting up and hurriedly moving over to my side of the table, taking the empty chair next to me so she could look without being obvious. “That red dress Sparkle Bosom is wearing is gorgeous. The thigh one isn’t half bad either, but would you look at those men? Hoobah! Which is the one who ran into you?”

  “Auburn Hair,” I said, picking up a menu and pretending to look at it so I wasn’t staring so obviously at them. The women in the party didn’t seem to be any too taken with this bar, but Auburn Hair gestured toward the back, and the ladies slunk forward with the sort of forward-hip-action runway walk that I associated with fashion shows.

  “Man, he’s something, isn’t he? And the tall one isn’t bad either.”

  “I like Tall, Dark, and Dangerous,” Bree said, still perched over the table. “He’s pretty. I like the way his hair swoops back. Men who have swoopy hair like that are usually really good lovers.”

  I blinked in surprise at her, not saying anything, other than agreeing with her assessment that he had nice hair. It was glossy, straight, and swept back from a slight widow’s peak. My fingers suddenly itched to touch it.

  “I like them both,” Laura said, making a little purring noise softly to herself as the foursome strolled toward us, clearly heading for a bank of booths behind me.

  “Bree,” I whispered harshly, trying to get her to sit back in her chair lest they see her gawking, but she just stayed where she was, her face filled with merriment.

  “Oh, my Lord.” I half covered my eyes, too embarrassed for words as they approached us.

  “Erp!” Laura said with a hiccup, and hid behind another menu.

  The two ladies passed, the look on their faces reading smug enjoyment of being the center of attention. Auburn Hair was hot on their heels, saying over his shoulder in what I recognized as the archaic Old East Slavic language, “Take your enjoyment tonight. It will ease the sorrow.” The tall man trailed them, and it was he who gave Bree an odd look from the corner of his eye as he passed by.

  “Hi,” she said, grinning like a maniac. “Nice tail.”

  The man paused for a minute, his eyes first widening in surprise, then narrowing on her. Through the screen of my fingers, I could see that he had pale blue eyes, very pale, so pale that it was really just a ring of blue color on the outer edges of the irises, fading almost immediately into an icy gray just barely tinged with color.

  As the man’s gaze slid over Laura and me, I hurriedly slammed shut my fingers, making sure they covered up the half of my eyebrow and lashes that lacked pigment. To my intense relief, he walked on without saying a word, joining his buddy at the booth behind us.

  “See?” Bree said, giving the four people a little wave before sitting down. “He noticed us. Thus and therefore, you were wrong, Thaisa.”

  “Holy shit, Bree! I can’t believe you did that,” I murmured under my breath, my eyes filled with oodles of meaning when Laura moved back to her original chair. “And to say something about the man’s ass…that’s sexual harassment, you know.”

  Bree’s eyes widened until her resemblance to an anime girl was almost overwhelming. “I didn’t say anything about his butt. I said he had a nice tail.”

  “He didn’t have a tail.” I felt obligated to point out the obvious.

  “Not in this form, but you never know what he gets up to when no one is looking,” she said sagely.

  Once again, I had no answer to that comment. I looked to Laura for help with her neighbor.

  Her eyes slid past me to the men for a moment; then she took a long pull on her drink and shrugged. “Well, you have to admit, Bree did get TD and Dangerous to look at her. That does officially disprove your hypothesis.”

  “Bree looks nineteen, is adorably cute, and could charm a lifelong misanthrope,” I pointed out.

  Laura thought about that for a moment, eating another chicken wing. “Yes, but you didn’t include that exception in your opening statement.”

  “We reject your evidence,” Bree said, nodding, then suddenly squirmed in her chair as she dug through the pocket of the black-and-white-striped jersey short skirt, pulling out a handful of what looked like a wad of fabric scraps. “I forgot, I have presents!”

  “Er…” I said, watching as she deftly separated the bits of colored fiber, pulling out an object that I immediately recognized from my childhood.

  “Friendship bracelets!” she announced, presenting Laura with a diamond-pattern cloth bracelet, done in rainbow colors. “Here is one for you, Laura, because you are my neighbor, and friend, and you take me out to watch movies and have booze.”

  “Wow, I haven’t seen one of these since we were in fifth grade,” Laura said, laughing, but immediately slipped it on. “You remember when we spent that summer making them, Tha?”

  I made a face. “My gran has boxes of the embroidery thread we bought stashed away in her basement.” Pain stabbed at me as I spoke. “She did have, anyway.”

  “And here’s one I made for you, because you are my new friend.” I looked up to see the little blue and green circle she held before me.

  �
��Oh. Uh…thank you.” She dropped the twisted cloth bracelet onto my palm. From the middle of it, a dark, tarnished little metal charm dangled, about the size of a dime, but oval in shape, with a crudely scratched sun visible on one side. “It’s very pretty, but you don’t have to give me anything, you know. I’m happy just to have you as a new friend.”

  She just grinned. “Sasha said I should give it to you because you never know, right?”

  “Sure,” I said slowly, at a loss as to what and who she was speaking about. “Do I know who Sasha is?”

  “No, but that’s all right. You get me instead. I hope you like it.” She looked expectantly at the bracelet.

  “It’s lovely,” I said, quickly putting it on so that I wouldn’t hurt her feelings. She had to be slightly squiffy, but I decided to just embrace her oddities and not worry about trying to understand her conversational leaps.

  “Now,” she said, beaming at us both. “Our friendship is sealed and cannot be broken. Zizi’s pink nipples, is that right?”

  I looked where she was pointing to a big clock hanging above the bar.

  “It looks like it’s accurate,” Laura said, who had her phone out and was tapping on it, obviously sending a text. “Quarter after midnight. Yup, that’s right.”

  “Gotta go. My ride is here,” Bree said, leaping to her feet. “People to do, things to see. Thank you for the movie. See you tomorrow!”

  Before Laura or I could say anything, she was off, racing through the bar like a gazelle, all artless long limbs and fluttering clothing.

  “Wait, she has someone picking her up? I didn’t see her texting anyone. She’s had a lot to drink.…Maybe we should go see who this ride is,” I said, half rising.

  “Damned prosecuting attorney. If she thinks she can pull that shit on me— Hmm?” Laura looked up from her phone, a faint puzzle between her brows.

  “Bree,” I prodded her, gathering up my purse and slipping the strap across my chest.

  “What about her?”

  “Who is her ride? She’s so young, and she’s had an awful lot to drink. I wouldn’t want someone to take advantage of her.” I pulled out my wallet and dropped a few bills on the table. “I’ll just make sure she’s okay, then wait for you outside, all right?”

  “Sure. Just give me five to ream this prosecutor a new hole; then we’ll see if there’s a ride to be had.”

  I hurried out, pausing to look back, curious to have one last glance at the fabulous four. The lights were dim in that part of the bar, but I could see Auburn Hair holding out a hand to Thigh Slit, obviously taking her to the minuscule dance floor. My gaze slid over to the other couple. Sparkle Bosom was leaning across the tall man, angling herself so that her breasts brushed against his arm. His face was turned toward her, where he was quite clearly giving her all of his consideration.

  I heaved a little mental sigh, wondering what it felt like to have the complete attention of a man like him, being the most important thing in his life. “Someday, maybe,” I said aloud, trying to cheer up my suddenly glum spirits. “It’s not like it’s out of the question that at some point, I’ll find a man who makes me happy.”

  As the last word left my lips, the tall man turned and looked straight at me, his eyes almost glowing in the dim light as his gaze caught mine.

  I stumbled backward, blinking, fighting the urge to run, a few seconds later giving in to my brain’s panicked demands that I get the hell out of Dodge. I turned and hurried out to check on Bree, feeling as if I’d been seared down to my soul by those eyes.

  It was a disconcerting experience. One that, oddly, I wouldn’t have minded repeating.

  Chapter Three

  THE RIDE FROM THE MERIT HOTEL TO ROSSE, THE suburb to the west of the Bay where I lived, was slow, even given the fact that it was after midnight and the local bridge was fogged in.

  “—and I told her that there’s no way I’m letting him testify, because the prosecutor will crucify him. It’ll be a bloodbath, a literal bloodbath, if she gets him to admit to the conviction eighteen years ago. Boy, this is taking us forever to get home. What are you doing?” Laura, now slightly snockered, turned in the darkness of the back seat of the car we’d eventually managed to hire, the bluish white lights along the roadway flashing on our faces and down onto our laps. Unlike Laura, I wasn’t fretting about the time it took to get us home; the slow pace allowed me a few seconds for each pool of light to illuminate the book that lay across my thighs. “Are you writing down what I’m saying?”

  “Of course not,” I said, waiting for the next patch of light before adding a description of Bree’s behavior in the bar, and after a moment’s thought, a note that the man who’d picked her up, the one I’d managed to question before he drove away, did indeed look sober and not at all like a white slaver. Or worse. “I know Bree is just your neighbor, not a close friend, but do you think we did right letting her go off to spend the night with Ramon? He looked nice enough, but she’s so young…”

  “Bah. How could she have bought the bungalow next to mine if she was too young? I think she just has one of those perpetually young faces. You sure you didn’t write down anything I said? Because if anyone found out I was talking about a client, my goose would be cooked.”

  “I changed everything you said so that it was non-identifiable and pretty generic,” I said, smiling. “The last thing I want to happen is for you to be defrocked, or whatever they do to lawyers.”

  “Disbarred, and let me see.”

  I hesitated a second, but there was nothing I’d recorded about the evening’s events that she didn’t know, so I handed the journal to her and pointed to the evening’s conversation. Good friend that she is, she just read those parts and handed the journal back to me without glancing at the rest. “Thanks. I hate to be suspicious, but I’ve had too much to drink and I don’t want that to haunt me.”

  “No one but you and Gran know I journal every day, so I doubt if the prosecutor is going to demand anything I’ve written about you,” I pointed out.

  “You don’t know her. She’s positively psychic at times. What were we talking about?”

  “Bree and her evidently new boyfriend, Ramon.”

  “Oh, yeah, that. I’m sure she’s fine, but call her in the morning if you are worried. Do you mind if I get dropped off first? Like I said, I’ve had a bit too much to imbibe, and if I see Edgar, I’m likely to punch him in his smug face, and I really don’t want to end up having to deal with an assault charge. Judges tend to frown on that sort of thing.”

  “Your ex-husband is, I’m happy to tell you, on the East Coast on a big buying trip. He’s not due back for another ten days.”

  “Oh?” She brightened at that thought. “So the cat’s away, eh? Maybe we could have lunch tomorrow. Or dinner. I want to talk to you about this need you have for a man.”

  “Laura, please—”

  “I am determined to see you happy, even if I am miserable. Lunch tomorrow?”

  “Can’t, I’m afraid. Edgar’s acquisitions have been arriving almost daily, and I have to log and catalog them, not to mention translate anything that is within my purview, and then there’s taking pictures and scanning, and a million other things. As well as dealing with anyone who comes into the shop. I just sold one of the items today for some big money, so tomorrow I will have to make sure that it’s packed up properly for the buyer.”

  “That’s what you have Jamie for,” Laura said. “Is he still pimply and awkward and prone to standing in corners staring at you with his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like he’s a human-ostrich hybrid?”

  I laughed at the description of my boss’s nephew. “He’s gotten a bit better about the standing in corners and staring bit, but other than that, he’s pretty much the same.”

  “Dinner, then. Surely you can do dinner? I really want to talk to you about finding you a man.”

  I sighed, but agreed. “I’ll see Gran at five, but if you can hang on until six, I should be free.”

&n
bsp; “Awesome.” She sat back, and within five minutes, she was snoring. I continued writing, feeling that my day was never complete till I’d taken down the thoughts and happenings of the last twenty-four hours.

  By the time I made it home, it was almost one-thirty in the morning. I tipped the driver, and after a quick glance around the street, slipped along the side alley where the stairs to the apartment above the shop were located. I trotted up the stairs as quietly as possible, so as not to waken the other occupant of the top floor, an elderly woman beset with insomnia, and made it into my apartment with a sigh of relief.

  I slipped into a filmy pale blue satin negligee before stopping by the bathroom to do my nightly ablutions. I stared at the mirror for a few minutes, trying to see myself through Laura’s eyes, but in the end, I just shook my head and clicked off the light, intending on going straight to bed.

  A thin line of light showed under the door that opened on the stairs leading down to the shop. “Oh, Lord, if Jamie’s left the lights on, Edgar will be furious.” Pausing only to punch in a security code at the top of the stairs, I hurried down the wooden staircase barefoot, the satin nightie making the faintest whisper of sound as it swept each step behind me.

  The light in one of the back rooms was on. I tsked at Jamie’s slipshod store-closing habits and clicked it off, making my way around tables of secondhand books, a couple of knockoff copies of objets d’art, and a back wall filled with vintage posters cling-wrapped onto large pieces of cardboard. When I opened the door to the office, two things struck me at once: the first was that it wasn’t very smart to go downstairs in the middle of the night when I was alone and unarmed, not even so much as my trusty bottle of pepper spray to hand, and the second was that the man with the pretty pale blue eyes was much better on closer inspection.

  Not that I recognized him at first.

  “Hey!” I yelled, startled to find two men in Edgar’s office, one digging through the crate of items that had evidently arrived after I’d left to meet Laura and Bree. “What the hell do you think you’re do— Awk!”