“Whose bone?” she interrupted me.
“What?”
“Which dragon’s?”
I thought for a moment. “Aedothrax,” I said. Godric had killed him seventy years before I had been chosen as his apprentice; the bow had seen good service by a dozen Dragonslayers before and since and had come back to me. “Dragonbone is excellent for these kinds of weapons. Very springy, but resistant. It never breaks.”
“Dragons never break bones?”
“Not under normal circumstances. I told you, they are tough bastards.”
Ellie nodded, taking in the information with her usual concentration. I pulled the bow back to its full extension, a use of strength I hadn’t attempted in years. I only just managed, but I refused to allow the strain to show. I loosened it just as slowly, then handed it back to Ellie and took out a quiver from the other half of the wooden case. In it were a dozen handmade arrows, all of the same dragonbone, tipped in sharp iron with viciously pointed heads. The fletching was a vivid red, as hot as it had been the day I’d stripped and dyed the feathers. It hadn’t faded at all.
Unlike me. But then, I hadn’t been shut up in a box for a hundred years. It only felt that way.
Ellie reached for it. I pulled it back out of reach. “Not yet. First, you learn to string and unstring the bow. Then we go on to target practice.”
“But I want to learn to shoot!”
“Of course you do,” I said, and rolled my eyes. “And I’m certain you know nothing at all about it. Your generation is taught nothing that’s of any practical use at all, are you?”
“Hey, I’m really good with computers!”
“I rest my case.” I nodded at a heavy padded target in the corner. “Fine. I’ll let you shoot—carefully. Carry that, too. We’re going to practice.”
Ellie’s face screwed up in frustration, but she managed to balance target and bow without much difficulty. I carried the quiver, a folding chair, and the water bottle. Comfort and survival. Let the apprentice do the heavy lifting.
In the car, as we drove out to our usual desert practice area, I found myself saying, “How do your parents feel about your new calling?” Small talk? Whatever demonic spirit had just possessed me to make small talk? I stared straight forward through the dusty windshield, frowning, appalled at myself.
Ellie, though, responded instantly like a puppy to a pat. “Mom’s very devout, so, you know. Just the fact that the Pope actually called the house . . . I mean, even Dad was impressed by that. And the money, of course. Everybody’s impressed by money.” She sounded a little bitter and ironic about that. I approved. “Mom’s worried about me, though.”
“You’ve not told her!”
“Oh, no—I mean . . . no. I said I was doing some training. Like Special Forces stuff. Army of God, all that stuff. She won’t tell anybody.” Ellie fell silent, nervously tapping fingers on the steering wheel. “Hey, Lisel?” When I didn’t answer, she swallowed and continued. “Do I get to have, you know, friends? Boyfriends? A life?”
“Can I stop you?” I turned my face away, staring out at the passing desert. The flickering landscape connected to something else, and I changed the subject. “Are you using the Dragon’s Eye as I told you?”
“I check it every day,” Ellie said. “For about an hour. He doesn’t do much, does he?”
“He’s old,” I said. “And tired.”
“But I thought he was clever and dangerous!”
“Oh, he’s those things as well. Dragons can lie dormant, consumed by their own affairs, for a hundred years or more, and then suddenly take a notion to destroy half of Chicago. Never assume that lazy equals weak.”
“Did you ever make that mistake?” she asked. Which was a very good question, and one I did not want to answer.
“Once,” I finally said.
“What happened?”
“London,” I said shortly. “In 1666.” She gazed back at me with perfect, milk-fed blankness, a placid cow of the new age rich with information and remarkably poor in actual knowledge. “The Great Fire of London.”
Then she surprised me with a very small smile. “I thought it started from that guy’s bakery. On Pudding Lane.”
“And I thought children your age knew only what appeared on your Twitter page about history.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t on Twitter.” She lifted one shoulder in a charming, self-deprecating shrug. “I started reading up on disasters. I figured some of them must have been caused by dragons, right? I wanted to know what I was up against.”