Excerpt: Wing Dancer

He walked across the darkening desert from the direction of the shallow canyon that cut across the land, where he’d probably descended. He was dressed in his usual black suit and long duster coat, looking utterly comfortable in them. The night was cooling rapidly, but it was still warm for so much clothing.

The man’s long black hair was in a neat ponytail, which accentuated the sharp bones of his face. He had dark skin and dark brown eyes that became very black when he forgot he was in human form instead of dragon.

I had to admit that Drake was attractive, and I understood why my half-sister, Gabrielle, had once made a play for him. She’d then dumped him for Colby, who actually has a sense of humor, as well as a warm heart.

Drake halted about twenty feet from me and waited for me to approach. As I neared him, I saw that he was carrying what looked like a bowling bag. An ordinary, blue canvas bag, made for a single ball, with a yellow starburst stitched into one corner.

I stared at the incongruous bag so hard that I nearly ran into Drake, who had to steady me with a firm hand.

“I need to speak to you, Janet.”

I hadn’t figured he’d flown out here from the Dragon Compound for a singalong.

Drake as dragon was satiny black, with no markings at all. When he turned human, his wings became a spreading tattoo on his back, its inked ends rising up his neck to embrace his cheeks.

He was a beautiful dragon and a handsome human, but he’d only stare at anyone who told him so. Drake had no ego about his looks.

About his intellect, on the other hand … Drake believed he was more intelligent than anyone else on the planet. Probably off the planet too, if he thought about it.

“All right, then,” I said. “Speak.”

Drake frowned, never pleased with my glib tone. “Inside. Where we can be private.”

“In the hotel? I have a number of guests at the moment.” I spread my arms to indicate we stood on empty land. “There’s no one out here.”

“That does not mean no one can listen,” Drake said. “You or your manager can make certain we aren’t overheard inside. Or seen.”

He had a point. The desert was quiet, but any number of animals who flew or skittered by might be Changers, and there were other beings who could hide in the dark.

I was intrigued by Drake’s need for privacy but still wary. “I need your promise that you won’t try to burn down my hotel or destroy anything or anyone in it. I’ve already had one incident today, and I don’t need Cassandra passing out when she receives yet another repair bill.”

Drake lifted his brows, but he didn’t ask about the incident. Shit happened at my hotel all the time. If it didn’t involve him, he wasn’t interested.

“You have my word,” Drake said.

I didn’t have to ask for a handshake or a contract written in blood to believe him. If Drake vowed to keep his flames to himself, he would. He was the most painfully honorable being I’d ever met, even when he was doing his best to kill me.

“All right, then.” I turned away and started walking back to the hotel. Drake followed in utter silence.

The night had cooled, the breeze growing sharper. We could experience some serious wind out here, gusting up to fifty miles per hour on any given day. Drake’s long coat didn’t seem so foolish as the evening temperature steadily dropped. The bowling bag was still weird, though, unless he’d used it for carrying his clothes. I’d expect Drake to have a fine leather suitcase for that, monogrammed, with a brass lock and a little key.

I started to lead Drake to the back door of my hotel, to my private suite, but he stopped me. “No. Somewhere your magic mirror won’t listen and where Micalerianicum’s aura hasn’t permeated.”

“Mick warded the entire hotel,” I said in impatience. “His aura has permeated, as you say, everywhere.”

“Not as deeply as in your bedchamber. He is your mate, after all.”

It still weirded me out to hear Mick and me referred to as mates. Not partners, lovers, or boyfriend and girlfriend, but mates. Like we were wolves. I supposed one day I’d get used to it.

The turquoise, onyx, and silver ring I wore gave a little throb. Mick had put a bit of his own essence into it, a piece of his true name, something dragons trusted no one with. The ring tingled sometimes, when I thought of him, letting me know he was all right.

“Fine,” I said. I didn’t really want Drake in the bedroom where Mick and I made sweet love, anyway. “My office.”

I led the way through the back door and along the narrow hall past my bedroom and into the hotel itself.

I ushered Drake into my office, removed the shard of magic mirror that sat on my desk, and took it out to Cassandra. “He wants to be private,” I whispered to her when she gave me a look of amazement.

“Not fair!” the mirror wailed. “Drake’s so pretty.”

“Deal with it,” I told the mirror, returned to the office, and shut the door.

Mick and I had taken shards of the original mirror, which hung broken in its frame in the saloon, to use as communication devices. More reliable than a satellite phone, though only to those it was bound to. Mick and I had awakened the magic mirror one night, and it had latched on to us. Mirrors were very, very powerful talismans, but I still debated whether us stumbling upon it had been good luck or bad.

I couldn’t trust that the mirror wouldn’t broadcast whatever Drake said to me to other magical people in the building. A handy thing if Drake put me in danger, but the mirror also might decide to let others eavesdrop just to be a pain in the ass.

Drake moved to the long window and closed the slats of the wooden shutter, blotting out the brightening moonlight. I turned on the lamp on my desk, illuminating my closed laptop and the photo of my dad, stiff and unsmiling, in its silver frame. Pete Begay hated having his picture taken. He’d only let me snap that one because he loved me.

“What’s this all about?” I asked Drake.

Drake turned to the desk and set the bag on top of it. I was right—it was a bowling bag, one large enough for a single ball and accessories, zipped shut.

“I need you to keep this for me,” he said.

“Your favorite ball?” Nervous laughter bubbled inside me. I couldn’t imagine Drake donning bowling shoes and tearing up the lanes in Santa Fe.

“It is not a ball,” Drake said tightly. “It is an item of great delicacy.”

Better and better. Why couldn’t a powerful dragon like Drake take care of something fragile? My suspicions rose. He would only come to me if he couldn’t trust other dragons—or anyone else, for that matter—about this.

I couldn’t take the suspense anymore. I undid the wide zipper and peered inside the bag.

Tucked into the foam recess meant to hold a heavy bowling ball was an oval object made of what looked like jade. Its color was pale, with only a hint of green. The white jade piece was encircled by crisscrossed bands of gold embedded with tiny green jewels where the bands intersected. I hoped they were simply sparkling green stones, but I suspected that they were real emeralds.

“You’re trusting me with a Faberge egg?” I asked. “A really big one.” The original Faberge eggs were about were the size of ostrich eggs. This was about a foot in diameter and eighteen inches tall. “Is this from your hoard?” I had a worrying thought. “Or did you steal it from someone else’s?”

Dragons could fight each other to the death over a small necklace, Mick had once told me. I so didn’t need to get between dragons battling over a trinket.

“It is not a Faberge egg.” Drake was losing patience with me. “It has nothing to do with a deceased Czarist Russian jeweler. This is a dragon egg. It needs to stay somewhere safe, and this is the most secure place on earth I could think of.”

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