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I was twenty-two. I couldn’t even balance my checkbook or escape this house. How could I deal with a powerful, psychotic being? How could I even deal with dragons? How could I deal with the fact that I wasn’t nearly as human as I’d thought I was?
Even Murtagh, who seemed to have nerves of steel, had sojourned into the pantry shortly after Caspian got sick, and he was probably already on his fourth bag of chips. He was surely still munching his sorrows away with something salty and uncomplex.
“How are you holding up?” Miles asked softly, his voice laced with concern.
I sighed, my fingers idly tracing the edge of the bedsheet. “It’s a lot. To think that I’m… that I’m part of something so… dark. That this monster, Seraphus is my father… And what does that make me? An evil half-djinn or something?”
Miles nodded, understanding in his eyes. “Your father may be a creature with malicious ambitions, but you’re not bound to his path.”
His words were a small comfort, but the weight of my father’s legacy pressed heavily on me. I looked up at him, my mind swirling with questions. “Is there a way to stop someone like him?”
Miles pondered for a moment, then spoke. “I only know what Caspian told me ages ago, sweetheart. That and what I’ve gained when eavesdropping around our visitors. But in my experience, great power comes with its own set of weaknesses. Every creature, no matter how powerful, has vulnerabilities. We just need to find his. Luckily, Murtagh found a crew that seems to know things, as unsettling as they are. Because Caspian certainly doesn’t know how to navigate a problem like this. Caspian always thought the upside of this realm was that Seraphus wasn’t part of it.” He frowned and added with consideration, “That man is going to need a stiff drink after this…”
“Well, if you know about Seraphus, tell me more about him. I need to understand who… what I am dealing with.”
Miles took a deep breath, choosing his words with care. “Did the witch and demon tell you anything?”
I shrugged. “They mentioned towards the end that he was leading some cult-like army, but that was after Caspian had to check-out. Morale was low.”
He shrugged and said, “I could see that. But Murtagh and Caspian know about him, and so I do know some things about this particular djinn. Seraphus is not renowned for his restraint. His pursuit of power knows no bounds,” he continued. “He’s cunning, ruthless, and exceptionally intelligent. He’s not just a threat because of his physical strength but because of his ability to manipulate and to bend others to his will. That’s probably why he’s been leading a secret cult through the centuries.”
I leaned back, trying to process this new, overwhelming information. “So, what am I supposed to do? How do I even begin to deal with something like this?”
“Well, you haven’t passed out yet. That’s better than I’d be doing in this situation,” Miles informed me flatly. “I’d be looking for a hole somewhere to hide in.”
I blinked. That was actually sounding pretty good right about now. “Know any good, comfortable holes?”
He frowned thoughtfully. “No. I know some uncomfortable ones,” he offered, which I imagined might be an actual hole in the ground.
I took a deep, calming breath. This wasn’t going to defeat me. I was Zazie Fucking Henderson—even jewels couldn’t compete with how much I wanted to survive. “Well, I got something to find, then,” I considered. “That’s step-one: Find a comfortable hole.”
“That’s the spirit,” he told me with a smile, and then I laid back on my large, squishy luxury bed and passed out.
Two weeks later
I was finally getting used to my new life. It was a life maintained within the small boundaries of this very large mansion. The good news? Caspian hadn’t undersold the amount of gems he had around this place. And it was a nice mansion. I had a butler. I had a theatre room. I had as many snacks as I wanted. I didn’t work—didn’t have to.
The bad news?
Me being their mortal enemy had really shaken up my freshly-awoken sex life. Funny enough, me knowing they were dragons did not make them lose their appeal.
They were sexy dragons. An absolutely mouth-watering man-sandwich.
But they were also grumpy dragons, so I didn’t want to push. They were often tired; by the time they got into bed, they had been working so hard at “improvements” to the mansion, that they’d come into my bedroom at night, curl their arms around me, and promptly pass out, sometimes while they were talking, in the middle of a sentence. They’d often smell like dirt or smoke, too tired to do anything but fall into bed.
Okay, so perhaps ‘improvements’ was the wrong word for what they were doing. They were fortifying. The windows? Gone. Boarded up from the inside. Tunnels were getting excavated in the basement—an almost impossible feat in New Orleans, but they were somehow doing it. And they were making more than one.
When I mentioned to Miles that I felt like I was living all by myself in a prison, he told me, “This is what dragons do. They feel safe when there’re no openings. I saw them do this when the second world war was brewing up, and they were a lot more certain that they could have handled themselves back then than they are now. They’re scared.”
“They can just leave.”
“Scared for you,” he assured, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Do you know how emasculating it is for a man to have a woman who’s in half as much danger as you’re in?”
That was where I was confused, because I had spent a lot of time in the theatre room not being afraid, just watching the new season of Stranger Things. “I don’t think they need to go overboard.”
“They’re not,” he assured me, and that did not make me feel good.
I wanted to start the conversation again about maybe just looking for the things they needed to get back to their realm, but they never listened to me. I didn’t think they understood that I wasn’t just a clever gem-detective. I was batting 1000. Yet they wouldn’t use me, wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t consider leaving, and when I’d tried to push it at one point, they took out the paddle, and I immediately silenced and agreed with them.
