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“Can you really say you’re sorry one of your natural enemies is dead?”

“I am. And I’m sorry you had to go through that. I know we aren’t friends, but no one should have to lose a brother in such a way.”

“I don’t want your sympathy. It’s misplaced and inadequate and frankly I don’t believe a reptile like you can even conceive of what a family bond consists of and what having that severed feels like for someone warm-blooded. You’re helping us to hunt your own kin. Save your condolences for someone else. It means less than nothing to me coming from a creature like you.”

Ouch. Okay. I almost defended myself but even that seemed pointless with someone so dead set against me. “Copy that, loud and clear.”

“I can’t believe Dom is so attached to you of all things. He seemed like a perfect man other than that.”

I just rolled my eyes, letting her see it. I wasn’t being drawn into this. She was lashing out, and I’d gotten the man in the end so I could take a few jabs and stay pleasant. I had to repeat it to myself in my head a few times, though.

“You know he can never be satisfied with only one woman though, don’t you? He’s insatiable, needs a new lover every night. It’s only a matter of time before he falls into his old, natural patterns.”

Okay. That was it. I took her bait. It’s just that she was getting it all wrong, selling Dom short, and I felt the need to set her straight. “Those aren’t old patterns for him. They’re new ones, and they only emerged after I left him. Ask around and you’ll see that he’s never had a problem being faithful to me. If anything he’s devoted to a fault. I’m sorry you developed feelings for him when he was clearly on a bender to get back at me, but that’s the past and you’re going to need to find a way to get over it. He’s just not that into you. It’s not you, it’s me and all that. Even when I was gone and he hated me, he was still madly in love with me. Now, would you care to get back to the briefing, or should I turn on some music?”

I could feel her glaring at my profile for a good long while. I looked straight ahead and whistled a cheerful tune until she finally sighed dramatically and got back to her paperwork. “The lead we’re following is flimsy at best, to be frank,” she said. Oh ho, she was improvising now instead of reading straight from her notes. Some hint of a personality aside from petty jealous bitch might be in there after all.

“Why send us out to check on it in person instead of having local druids do it then?” I asked, honestly curious.

“I guess we’re more qualified to eliminate the lead, flimsy as it is.”

“And what does this flimsy lead consist of?”

“Some mysterious fires set off in the warehouse district. Sightings of something big in the sky at night. A missing female supernatural creature in the same area, which seems to be your dad’s M.O.”

“What type of creature?”

“It’s unclear. Some sort of half-breed.”

“Well, that’s certainly not much to go on.”

“We have an address for the missing girl. We’ll interview her family first, see what they know. Perhaps they saw something, though the druids are usually thorough, and it’s not in the report. From there we’ll investigate the locations where the fires were set. Obviously either one of us can determine whether or not it was dragon fire though it most likely isn’t or it wouldn’t have been extinguished so easily, as we both well know.”

She had a point. “And do we have the location of whoever saw something big in the sky at night?”

“We do not. I’m disappointed in their sloppy work, but one of the witnesses was a homeless man and it seems he got away.”

“Were they supposed to hold him hostage until we got there?”

“Ideally,” she said without a trace of humor. “The other claim came from the creature before she disappeared, so that’s a dead end. Ah, here is a note about her. They say the people who adopted her believe she’s half-angel.”

“Does it say why they think that?”

“I’m looking.” She went through the paperwork for a good long while and I drove. “They say that the being that brought her to them was divine and from that they assumed she was half-angel.”

“That’s all it says? How did they know it was divine? And how did they know the child was only half? Seems like we’re missing pieces of the story.”

“I’m looking.” A good half an hour later she said, “I’m not finding any more information about it.”

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to ask when we get there.”

We stopped to refuel about halfway and as though he were tracking me, which he was, Dom called as we paused.

“Everything okay?” he said as soon as I answered.

“Just Peachy. And you?”

“Please be careful.”