Page 40 of Dragon Charmed

Tessa was trying to keep it together for now. She sat on the end of the bed after Ben left the room and watched her leg bounce up and down. She wasn’t sure how Megan, Eric, and the rest of the clan were going to take the news she was about to tell them. But she needed to get Lily and Evelyn to a safe place, and it was better to warn them ahead of time what was coming. The birthmark Tessa had just seen on Lily’s shoulder confirmed things for her.

Megan picked up on the third ring. “Hey, Tessa. I hope this phone call means that you found something out about Mia.”

“I did. Is Eric nearby so he can listen?”

“Yes. We’re with Marcus and Sienna too.”

“You might as well let them all listen in so I only have to tell this story once.”

“Okay, we’re all here.”

“This is convoluted, so you might want to wait until the end to ask questions.”

“If Tessa thinks this is convoluted, we’re in for something,” Eric supplied unhelpfully.

Tessa started from the beginning, telling them about going to Evelyn’s hometown, the lies from the townspeople, and Evelyn finally telling them the truth about Mia bringing Lily to her.

Of course her warning didn’t do any good since they peppered her with questions anyway.

“Why would Mia do that?” Megan asked.

“Because Mia knows that dragons are real.” She took a deep breath. “Lily is a dragon.”

They all started talking.

“Wait! Not all at once! That’s not all. And you better be sitting down for this. Lily can see the future. She’s an oracle.”

Dead silence greeted her.

“Are you guys still there?” Tessa asked.

“How is this possible?” Megan said in a choked voice.

“I don’t know, but I’ve seen her birthmark, and I have also seen her in action regarding seeing things in the future. We’re bringing her and Evelyn to the clan house to protect them. Men showed up at Evelyn’s looking for Mia and Lily almost a year ago. They need protection. Lily just had a vision of men grabbing them from the house they were staying in.”

“Oh my God,” Sienna said.

“We’ll be at the clan house in the morning. I’ll text you when we’re close.”

“How much does Evelyn and the PI know?” Marcus asked.

“Evelyn knows Lily is a dragon. Ben knows about her ability to see the future, but isn’t one hundred percent convinced. I haven’t told him any more than that. But he wants to know what’s going on.”

“You can’t tell him anything, Tessa. We don’t know if we can trust him,” Eric said.

“I know. I just don’t know if he’s going to let this slide.”

“You’re creative. You’ll think of something,” Marcus said.

A couple minutes later, after explaining the highway was shut down and they would be there as soon as they could in the morning, Tessa hung up the phone. She flopped back on the bed. Ughhh. Ben was waiting for her to text him. How long could she delay the conversation? Would he believe her if she told him she’d talked for hours on the phone? Probably not, and the longer she delayed, the more suspicious he would become.

Get it together, Tessa!

She decided to brush her teeth and wash her face to give her some more time to think through what she was going to say.

She texted Ben and within a couple minutes he was opening the door.

“Did you get ahold of your friend?” he asked as he shut the door.