Page 32 of Kidnapped By The Messy Dragon

I snicker. “They’re my friends, by the way.”

She turns from her window to stare at me as we pass through town.

“Want to meet them?” I ask.

She nods eagerly.

The medical center sits at the far end of town, and I pull into the valet lane out front. Zuri scrunches up her nose at the sign.

“Oh, please,” I tell her. “Most human hospitals have valet service.”

A kid in a red vest opens her door and helps her out. I hop out and leave the fob in the cup holder. Then I peel a few bills off my clip and toss them on the driver’s seat.

A sneeze snaps me forward over the door frame. Smoke comes off my nose and both ear points, and I fan it away.

The kid pauses with his hand on the door. “Ohhh,” he says. “You caught the allergy.”

“What allergy?” I ask.

He grabs the cash off the seat and drops behind the wheel like I didn’t ask him a thing. I walk around the hood, and he drives off with my brother’s SUV.

Zuri waits for me by the entrance.

She frowns at my nose. “I’m more worried about your sneeze than my face.”

I stop in front of her and tip her chin up. “Don’t be. Nothing is more important than you. Not even me.”

I take her hand and rub my nose with the back of my other wrist as we walk in. The lobby smells like antiseptic and nervous shifters.

Then I stop walking.

Another dragon comes up the hall toward us, sneezing smoke into his fist. I’ve been making that exact ugly sound all week. It’s Roland from the ridge clan, a timber dragon built like one of his own logs, with gray coming in at his temples. He runs the logging crew on the north ridge, and his youngest hatchling is the one the school keeps sending notes home about for eating crayons.

Zuri looks between us.

Roland slows up and waves his own smoke out of his face. “Hey, Jay. I hope you haven’t been in close proximity to that Stillwater shit. It’s the cleaning solution.”

Zuri and I trade a look, both of us running the same math. I’m supposed to be the dragon who knows everything that moves in this valley.

Another sneeze rips out of me, right on cue.

Zuri chews on that while Roland moves off down the hall. “If it’s an allergic reaction, why aren’t Dorian and Malachi sick with it?”

I know exactly why.

“I’ve been around the solution. Lots of it, over at Shadow Suds. Whatever Delilah couldn’t have her ghouls steal is still sitting in Derrick’s storeroom, and I went through every case of it when I started digging.” I rub my nose. “It tracks. Malachi and Dorian aren’t anywhere near that stuff, and we don’t use cleaners from Derrick’s company either. Brandy and Jules are meticulous about who touches their things.”

Zuri purses her lips. “Hold on. Who does the cleaning, then?”

I shrug. “All of us.”

Zuri spreads her hands. “But that place is big as hell. Your cave.”

“Good thing you’ve got three dragons to handle most of the big work.” I walk around her and head for the front desk to check us both in. “Don’t worry. At most you’ll be dusting off your own dresser.”

Once Delilah is out of our lives, I plan to work on Malachi about letting Derrick’s crews take over the cleaning. That pitch got harder now that dragons and that solution turn out to be a bad mix.

Then I grin at the check-in counter. I handed Malachi the container this morning.I hope he doesn’t get any on him.