That made sense, though. Magda seemed to live every day with a storm cloud of imminent death and disaster following her around, but despite all that, she still learned her recipes, ran her diner, and made the best food Theo had ever tasted. She let the world have the wool.
This metaphor, Theo thought, was going to get loused up by the fact that there was both mutton and lamb on Magda’s menu, and after all these analogies, it felt cannibalistic to even consider it.
“What do you want thrown together?” Magda said. “You’re here at a funny time.”
“It’s evening brunch,” Jillian said.
She ordered the shrimp and rice stew, Theo ordered ropa vieja, and Magda informed them that both dishes would be no good, that the shrimp was off and the ropa tasted like the old clothes that it was named for, and then she brought them a breadbasket and immense tumblers of iced tea before disappearing into the kitchen.
“Why did she wait on us herself?” Jillian said, looking intently at the kitchen doors that were still swinging in their frame.
“That’s your first question?”
“I could ask you about her being strange, but I’ve seen that she’s strange. And she’s giving my teenaged self a run for the award for most existential angst. But none of that explains why she’s doing double-duty as a waitress.”
“Magda is...” How should he put this? “Magda’s a friend of the family, like Gretchen. She’s shifter-adjacent, she comes from a mythic bloodline. She can’t transform—or if she can, she considers it a waste of time—but she can recognize us when we show up.”
“So you get the VIP treatment,” Jillian said, grinning. “It’s like you’re royalty.”
“We try to be loyal to each other,” Theo said. There had been a time when it had sounded strange to him to say “we” and mean all shifters, not just dragons, but those days were gone now. “Shifters can get into some complicated trouble from time to time. If we don’t help each other out where we can, no one else will. It’s a bond.”
“I bet you never get speeding tickets from shifter traffic cops.”
“I have never gotten a speeding ticket at all,” Theo assured her. “You’re perfectly safe with me. But what I’d really like to do is take you flying.”
Jillian sat up straighter. “You can do that?”
“It would be my honor to show you the skies.”
In fact, a part of his mind found it almost impossible to turn away from the thought of bearing her aloft into a night radiant with starlight. He’d never taken a rider. In the valley, where dragons mated only with other dragons, to even offer to do it would have been an insult and an implication that the other dragon was incapable of flying themselves. But his heart responded instantly to the idea of giving Jillian flight. Like the mate-bond, it was something he’d never thought he would have and something he was now finding a biological necessity. He decided to do it as soon as possible. Tonight, even.
Their food came. Theo’s ropa vieja was as delicious as always, the beef falling even further apart at the slightest touch of his fork, the rich sauce soaking into the rice and running over to the fried plantains. He was used to a hush coming over the table when Magda’s food arrived, and Jillian did not disappoint him. She looked—his dragon was a little insulted by this—almost like she had when he’d pleasured her, with her lips widened in exactly the same way. The delight on her face was a fraction less, which helped his ego somewhat.
“This is divine,” Jillian said.
Magda shrugged. “Just slopped something into a bowl. Like I said, the shrimp’s going bad. You’ll probably get sick,” she said with grim confidence, and stomped off back to the kitchen.
“So the food’s great,” Jillian said, sotto voce, “but it’s the charming, hospitable atmosphere that keeps you coming back.”
“She grows on you.”
“With food like this, she’s climbing all over me like ivy. She can be as doom-and-gloom as she wants.” She stirred her stew, her beautiful face now thoughtful. “Do you think it’s true, what she said? The Tennyson quote, I mean, that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Not if the shrimp has gone bad.”
“I don’t know. I can’t conceive of losing you. Even saying the words burns my tongue.” That was an old draconic expression, meaning that the pain was so great that it burned what could not be burned. “When I didn’t know you, I didn’t pine for you, because I had never expected I would find a mate. But now that I know you, now that I know how honorable and strong you are, now that I know the color of your eyes, I... I suppose I do think it’s better. Knowing you at all is the best good fortune I could ever hope for. Every hour I spend with you is another gift. If that were ever to go, it would destroy me, but it would still have been such a gift to have you, even for a little while.”
She reached across the table and laced her fingers with his. He loved the slight coolness of her touch against his own hotter skin: it made her feel like she was shaped from the softest, most touchable marble.
“I feel the same way. I wouldn’t trade this time away for anything.” Laughter lines appeared on either side of her mouth as she struggled to hold back a smile. “I’m saying ‘this time’ because if I have to think about the fact that I’ve only known you for a day, I’ll go crazy. I’m glad you’re a dragon with magical true love-finding powers, because otherwise I would be coming on so strong and moving so fast that you’d never want to see me again.”
“Only a fool would never want to see you again.”
“Then do you mind if I step on the gas just a little bit more?”
Theo tried to remember the exact car terminology and was proud of himself for succeeding. “I don’t even want a seatbelt.”
“As bad as he was—is—for the rest of the world, I love my dad,” Jillian said. “I don’t wish I’d never loved him and I don’t want to lose him, but I want to put him behind me. When I think about my life, I don’t want to think about him in it. When I think about my family, I want to think about you and Tiffani
. But I’d like to say goodbye.” She shrugged. “Of course, I don’t know where he is, so...”