Catcher rolled his eyes. “It’s kale, and it’s good for you.”
“I don’t see how it could be,” she said, and I grimaced on her behalf. It did look like grass clippings.
“Any signs of the dragon?” Ethan asked, as Jeff took a bottle of water out of the fridge, brought it to my grandfather.
“No,” my grandfather said. “There’ve been patrols across the city. No sight of it here, or in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana. They’re running patrols across Lake Michigan, and there are copters in the air over the city.”
“She’ll bring it back,” Catcher said.
“Undoubtedly,” my grandfather said, uncapping the water and taking a long sip. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. “Let’s debrief,” he said, and we walked him through what we’d seen on Northerly Island.
“You think you were there so she could use your power?” my grandfather asked Mallory.
Mallory nodded. “Even with the power sink, she didn’t think she had enough power to manifest the Egregore.” She looked at me, eyes full of emotion. “And Merit was the incentive in case I didn’t play ball.”
I nodded. “She was working that theft magic pretty hard last night.”
She paused, blinked, then looked at me. “Did you Rick-Roll me?”
“Yeah,” I said. “To block out some of her chanting. You were sweating it out pretty bad. Did it help?”
She considered. “I think, yeah, a little.”
“Then sorry, not sorry.”
“So she gathered up all that energy, and waited for her moment to give the Egregore physical form—to manifest it into the dragon,” my grandfather said.
“Yeppers,” Mallory said.
“Magical Trojan horse to Egregore,” Ethan said. “And Egregore to dragon.”
“Pretty much,” Mallory said.
“And the dragon,” my grandfather said. “What do we know about it?”
“At the moment, not much,” Mallory said. “We know it’s theoretically under her command.”
“Theoretically?” my grandfather asked, and worry came into his eyes.
“It’s a monster created from the collective unconsciousnesses of lots of Chicagoans. It’s angry and ornery, and she finished the magic in a hurry. I’d say it’s unpredictable, at the least.”
“So we have a dragon in Chicago, and a rider with an attitude,” my grandfather said.
“It’s a shitty time to be a Chicagoan,” I said. “But a great time to be a medieval scholar.”
They all looked at me. “I’m just saying,” I said, and hunched my shoulders a little. “We read manuscripts about dragons—fearing them, fighting them. There are dragons painted in the margins, gilded with gold. Dragons everywhere. You work assuming they’re fictional, trying to figure out what they represent. Turns out, they may not be so fictional.”
Ethan smiled. “You’ve been fighting monsters for more than a year, and you only just thought of that?”
“I’ve had my mind on other things,” I pointed out. “Including those monsters I’ve been fighting.”
“And speaking of manuscripts and fighting,” my grandfather said, looking at Mallory, “I don’t suppose your manuscript has anything to offer?”
“If Portnoy wrote about how to deal with a rampaging Egregore,” Mallory said, frustration souring in her voice, “we haven’t found it yet. Maybe that’s because it’s not in there; maybe it’s because we haven’t arranged the damn foldout pages in the damn right positions to trigger the damn magic. Screw Portnoy.” She pointed her index finger in the air angrily, like she could stab it into his chest. “Screw him and his manuscript.”
“And Sorcha,” Jeff said.
“And screw Sorcha!” Mallory agreed, pointing again.