“She’s stretching the fabric for us,” Gretchen said. “She’s really a hero.”
A pale arc of pink light scratched its way across the sky, and Isabelle beamed in bright satisfaction. She climbed back into the backseat, shivering with the cold and hastily pulling her gloves back on.
“There. Drive forward slowly, and we’ll end up in Ambergris.”
“Ambergris?” Gretchen said, as Cooper started inching the car forward. “Isn’t that something you get from whales?”
“Something expensive and disgusting-looking that you get from whales,” Isabelle confirmed. “Though not anymore, obviously. I don’t even know what it was for, but it was valuable enough to be a good town name, apparently.”
“Does Riell mean anything?”
“Riell was a dragon matriarch, thousands of years ago. She was supposedly so wealthy that even her scales were made out of polished gemstones. Which is ridiculous. It would have been so tacky.”
“Griffins probably have legends like that too, even if I haven’t heard them,” Cooper said, still creeping forward at what Gretchen suspected was maybe two miles an hour.
He had even more reason to be skittish about magic than she did, after all. She could tell he was talking partly to keep himself distracted from what he was doing: driving a car through a temporary hole in reality.
“Oh, you’re a griffin?” Isabelle scooted forward in the seat, her interest now sharp enough to cut through her teenage attempts at coolness. She looked like a little kid, maybe a Girl Scout about to get a merit badge for spotting rare shifter types. “I’ve never met a griffin.”
Cooper nodded. “I was mostly raised by bears, on my mom’s side of the family, but I’m a griffin.”
“He’s awesome,” Gretchen said to Isabelle, who gave her a cute little grin.
“I like mated couples,” Isabelle said, sinking back into her seat. “You two and Cousin Theo and Jillian. I’d like to have something like that someday. I’d like to have someone think that I’m... ‘awesome.’” She said the word like it was so unfamiliar she had to handle it at arms-length, maybe with tongs.
“You seem pretty awesome already,” Gretchen said sincerely. Then she added, “Fuck,” because the sky had just opened up in front of them.
Cooper slammed on the brakes, jolting them forward.
“Sorry,” he said immediately. “Sorry. I just—I think I really hate magic.”
“You’re a mythic shifter,” Isabelle said.
“I hate magic that I’m not familiar with, then.”
“Seconded,” Gretchen said.
But she had to admit that their sudden entry to Ambergris was as stunning as it was startling. All of a sudden, the battered car they’d borrowed from Ford stuck out like a sore thumb on a wide, brick-paved street surrounded by tall flowers with silky orange petals. The flowers were blooming straight out of the snow, their blossoms looking like flames you could warm your hands over. The brick street widened out about a quarter-mile ahead of them, forming a kind of town square that was already crowded with suspicious-looking dragons. Far off in the distance, Gretchen could see houses that looked like they were originally made to house English lords and ladies.
“Is Riell like this?” she said to Isabelle in an undertone.
Isabelle shrugged. “We have more varied architecture. Honestly, this strikes me as a little dull, but the gardening is nice. I don’t know how they do that.” She cleared her throat. “Should we get out and approach with our hands raised?”
Gretchen raised her eyebrows. “That depends. Do you think they’re going to try to set us on fire?”
“It just seems like it would be best to be cautious. I don’t think they’d kill us without a very goo
d reason.”
She was willing to bet that Isabelle thought that was a lot more reassuring than it was.
She looked at Cooper, who reached over and squeezed her hand. They pressed their palms together again.
“Ready?” he said softly.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
They climbed out of the car and approached the assembled dragons warily.