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“Perhaps compared to you.”

“Really? Miss bashes doors in and charges into a civilian house, gun cocked, with no communication. Didn’t look too competent to me. Sloppy is the word I’d use.”

Oh, she was fuming now. “I don’t have to answer to you,” Helen said disdainfully. “And the last thing we need is a bunch of druids on our case. Our job is simple and easy and yet you still need backup. You truly are unimpressive.”

“How can you be surprised Dom’s sending backup? I’d almost think you’ve never worked with him before, but you have. You’re being completely illogical, actually.” I studied her, but didn’t know her well enough to read anything on her face. “What’s going on with you?”

She sneered but at least kept her eyes on the road. “Let’s just finish up and head back, and don’t think we’re spending a bunch of time looking for some random lost child.”

“I’ll tell you what we’re doing and when we’re leaving, and if I have to pull rank to do it, I will.”

She muttered something very unflattering under her breath, and I ignored it.

The druids were already there when we arrived at the site of the first fire. There were eight of them, and Helen glared daggers at me as soon as she saw them.

Helen stayed in the car to make a phone call while I followed the druids to the spot. It was a large square hole where a building used to be.

“This is arson, not dragon fire,” I told them after a few seconds. “On to the next spot.”

“We’ll ride there with you,” one of the druids said. I just shrugged and led two of them back to the car. The rest of them headed to their cars.

Helen just shut her door and glared at the two druids with me like they’d personally offended her. “Why are they riding with us?”

I was sick of her, so I just said, “Doesn’t matter. This one wasn’t dragon fire, and we’re headed to the next. Best to be thorough.”

“Perhaps I wanted to check it for myself.”

I waved behind me. “Then do it, princess, and make it snappy.”

She got back behind the wheel and off we went. We were nearly to the next spot when I saw that one of her hands was shaking.

“You okay?” I asked her. “Need me to drive?”

Her lip curled. “Of course not. And we’re nearly there.”

We arrived at the next spot and investigated and again it was very obviously not dragon fire.

I was annoyed when I realized Helen was on her phone again and had wandered off a few blocks, but I just called her back and off to the next spot we went.

We eliminated them all perfunctorily, but my mind was more on steps to find the missing girl than on the fires, which were clearly simple arson. Those were a dead end, and none of this was dragons, but the mission had turned into a search for the missing girl.

At the last site we finally hit upon something but again, not dragons. Someone was calling out for help from the building next to the one that’d burnt down here.

It sounded like a young girl, and I was in the building and up a flight of stairs before my mind even caught up to what I’d heard.

In a strange twist we found the missing half-angel girl tied up in a room by herself next to an open window facing the spot where the building had been burnt.

It felt like a setup, and I told everyone to be on alert, but we extracted the girl with no trouble at all.

The druids searched the building thoroughly and found nothing.

The girl seemed shaken, with no memory to speak of, but she was unharmed and was, in fact, half-angel. I’d seen an angel once, and this girl had enough of that aura to confirm the connection. She was blond, beautiful, and delicate, but that’s not what made her angelic. It was the subtle gold glow that surrounded her, head to toe.

There was some resemblance to me there, especially if I was fresh from a long dragon trance. I could almost see how Dom’s loving eyes had made the mistake in thinking I was one.

I left the poor thing with the druids, knowing they would take care of her as much as anyone could a young girl who’d been kidnapped and freshly lost her adopted family.

I relieved the team Dom had sent us and told them to brief him and that we were headed home. I knew he had a lot of meetings, and I had a knack for calling him right in the middle of them. He’d always answer me no matter how important the meeting was or how trivial my call. Better to delegate the task to them.