Page 20 of Magpies & Mayhem
“Oh, right. Yeah. The dragon decided my little brother needed some… personal grooming.”
“He burned off mychest hair!” Josh shrieked from his bedroom.
“I said I was sorry!” I hollered back. It felt like Jordan’s eyes were drilling into the side of my head as he stared at me, and I hunched my shoulders in an ineffective effort to shrink away from him. “It’s fine. We heal fast, and he’s got an ice pack,” I said to Jordan.
“It’snot fine, Sidney!” Josh bellowed. Hewouldbe fine, but he was super cranky because burns hurt like the devil until they healed. Also, we found out that dragons hate getting wet, and Josh was blaming me for all the new claw marks. All the more reason for us to high tail it out of here.
I squinted at Jordan. “Youareactually fireproof, right?”
“Yes?” he answered like it was a question.
“I need your help,” I admitted through gritted teeth.
Jordan’s eyes were still flitting over the damage to the living room as he answered me distractedly, “That’s what Levi said, yes.”
I hauled the dragon out from behind the door where he was hiding and shoved him at Jordan. “Take this.” He stuffed his helmet under his arm and awkwardly took Huck in his hands. “He started flaming this weekend, and then he got the hiccups this afternoon and couldn’t control it. The refuge can’t take him while their security is still compromised, and we have to get him out of here. I’m packing a bag so we can go hang out in the desert where he can’t set anything else on fire.”
“Take the baby carrier! Humphrey Herbert Hucklebee, the Fierce, loves his baby carrier!” my brother yelled from his bedroom.
“That’snot his name!” I screamed back, but a mischievous image of Jordan wearing the baby carrier popped into my brain, so I grabbed it as I crammed a few more items into my backpack. Jordan looked entirely confused as he stood in the doorway holding a squirming dragon as big as a medium-sized dog. “Let’s go,” I said, and I pushed past Jordan and headed for the stairwell.
I heard him stuff his helmet back on his head as he trailed behind me, and his voice was muffled when he asked, “What, exactly, is your plan here?”
I didn’t have a plan, so I ignored his question as we stepped outside of the building. “Here, give me the dragon.”
Jordan handed me the baby as it whacked him on the helmet with its flapping wings. “What did your brother say its name was?”
“Huck.” I passed him the baby carrier. “I need you to put this on.” I used every ounce of mental strength I possessed to keep my face straight.
“It was definitely a longer name than that.” He held the carrier up by one of the straps. “I don’t know what this is. Why do I have to wear it?”
I did my best to shove the loops over his arms with one hand while keeping a grip on the dragon with my other arm. “Because you’re fireproof, and I’m not. He keeps trying to turn me into birdie-barbeque. I can’t buckle it with my hands full. You need to buckle those two straps hanging at your waist behind your back.”
Jordan obeyed as if he were on autopilot, or just too confused to argue, but either one was fine with me. “The refuge still hasn’t fixed their security?” he asked as he snapped the buckle into place.
I held up Huck and then dropped him down into the pouch on Jordan’s chest, cringing to the side as I did in case he decided to torch me in the face again. It was sheer luck that I still had my eyebrows right now. We threaded his tail through the hole my brother cut in the bottom and tucked his wings through the side openings. He was going to be too big for it soon with how quickly he was growing. I gave it a few tugs to test that he was firmly in place while hanging from Jordan’s chest. Huck gave a happy sounding trill.Okay, they do look kind of adorable like that.
“No, their employee told me on the down-low that their security isn’t fixed, and they’re still relying on simple padlocks at night to protect their animals,” I said as I walked around to snap the last buckle into place behind his shoulders. Jordan flinched when it clicked into place. “Sorry,” I said, jerking my hands off the buckle.
He didn’t respond.
“Has your team figured out who broke in yet?” I asked, skittishly waving him forward to walk with me. I was only half afraid he would turn around and snarl at me. We were going to have to figure out how to exist in each other’s presence somehow, if only just to get me out of this weird dragon situation.
“We don’t have proof yet,” he said in a rough voice, “but we figured it was Phantoms trying to recoup their loss. The refuge is the most likely place for Enforcement to take wild animals, so it wouldn’t be hard for them to figure out where they went.”
Ugh.“Do you have any ideas where to find the ones that were stolen?” I asked.
“Not yet, but my team has eyes on all the locations we’ve found them working out of so far.”
“And they won’t need you for tonight?” I shot him a look, wondering if I was majorly inconveniencing him with this.
“Nah, I’m the new guy. I try to help with scouting, but they hired me for literal firepower. They can call me in if they find them.” The word ‘scouting’ filled me with a wave of nostalgia for a time I’d never known. For thousands of years, long before I’d been born, my people had been scouts and spies within the shifter tribes. Something ancient and primal called to me about it and made me wish for half a second that I could help with that. Until I remembered that I already had a job that I liked very much. I blinked it away with a wistful sort of longing.
There weren’t many people around as we paced down the dirty sidewalks, which was a little unusual for this time of night. It took me a few blocks to realize I was focusing so intently on Jordan and his every movement that I’d failed to notice the sound of beating drums in the distance. “Ooh! The desert people are here!”
Chapter 13
Icutleftontothe next street and had to restrain myself to keep from running with excitement. This was one of my favorite occasions in Dry Gulch. Every year the People of the Sand—nomadic villagers who lived in the desert mountains—would come down to the city once or twice to gather extra water and trade goods with the locals. They also sold bootleg liquor that would peel the paint off the side of a building. Not that any buildings in Dry Gulch had much paint.
