Dragon.
Her head throbbed briefly, and she pressed her hands to her temples as if to keep her skull from shattering into a zillion smoking pieces. “How did I get here? To my bed? Wait. Neither of you was there—oh, I don’t even know where to start!”
Bird said, “We can answer pretty much all the questions you have.”
“First, is Nikos really all right?”
Both women nodded firmly.
Jen’s heart sank, and she pushed back on the sick disappointment. Where was he? No, that was the wrong question. The man was not tied to her heel. There was no rational reason to expect him to be here—
Doris said, “Nikos would be here if he could. The reason he isn’t, well, let’s go back to the beginning, because this is going to be weird. And before we begin, I want you to know that I apologize with everything in me for holding out. Some secrets were not ours to tell.”
“Oh yes,” Bird said softly, her big eyes luminous. “I held out longer.”
&nb
sp; Jen said, “Dragon. Did I or did I not hallucinate that?”
Doris blinked, frowning. “Okay, I didn’t actually see what happened. As you know. But if you saw a huge red dragon, yes, that was real. I have seen Long Cang in dragon form. Just not last night.”
“Whoa.” Jen’s breath whooshed out. “Whoa.”
“And . . . that glowing thing. Like a pearl with its own light inside. Only bigger, baseball-size. It floated in the air, like a sci-fi movie. But it was Nikos who made it come out of the ground. And then . . . he threw it. It hit me right here.” Jen touched her breastbone. “And it went through me—not like a bullet. More like when you pour cold water over yourself on a hot day after a long run. Except I felt it inside me, somehow. It was cold, but it didn’t hurt. But everything else hurt, then—” She shook her head. “I don’t remember anything, except what felt like being hit by lightning. Right after that blue lightning-wolf thing bit me.”
Bird and Doris exchanged glances, and Bird said, “I think they might want to talk to you about the oracle stone. But we can answer the other questions—”
“Wait a minute. What they? Who is ‘they’?”
“Mikhail, Joey, and Nikos,” Doris said.
“I knew they were all friends,” Jen said. “Is there something else?”
“Let’s begin with the fact that all three are shifters,” Doris said.
“Shifters?”
Jen listened in growing amazement as Doris gave her a matter-of-fact definition of shifters. Amazement, but not disbelief. Because Jen had a vivid memory of Long Cang becoming a dragon in a blink of an eye, and that creepy blonde guy in black turning into a wolf as he lunged at her, a second before his long wolfish teeth snapped on her wrist.
These were horrible people. That they could turn into animals seemed even more horrible. But . . . kindly, austere Mikhail, another dragon?
Joey Hu, a fox?
And Nikos . . . a winged unicorn?
Her mind whirled with questions. The first one out was the easiest. “Is he a beautiful unicorn?” Then she winced at how stupid that sounded.
“He’s gorgeous,” Doris stated firmly. “Black all over, blue-black, with silver threading his mane, wings, and tail, and tipping the edges of his hair. When he moves there are highlights like pewter along the curve of his muscles. It’s amazing.”
“I want to see that,” Jen whispered.
“You will. Right now he’s in that form, which is why he’s at my house,” Bird said. “He could be here—mythic shifters can go invisible if they want to, to humans—but your rooms are a bit cramped for a horse, even without a horn.”
Jen looked around her ten-by-twelve bedroom, which was crowded with only the double bed, the tiny nightstand, and the chest of drawers. She’d seen horse stalls that were bigger. A laugh escaped her. “Yeah. But . . . didn’t you say they can change back and forth?”
“He can’t right now,” Doris said.
“There’s more,” Bird added.