I manage to croak out a, “No.”
“Good. Then I got the cream on in time. It’ll heal up.” He pauses, then lets out a long breath. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you do that. It was—”
“Necessary,” I finish before he can. “You got what we need?”
He nods. Then he gets up, walks over to the closest apothecary benches, and picks up three giant red things, which I’m going to assume are scales.
Pell walks back over to me, bends down, setting them on the floor just below my eyes so I can get a good look at them. And then he resumes his care of my back.
I just stare at them for a little while, enjoying his attention as I study all the different colors in the red. There is silver in there. And yellow. And green. Even some blue. “Wow. They’re pretty.”
“They are. These things are worth like…” He pauses to think. “Fuck. These days? I don’t really know. Millions, possibly billions of dollars. That book we’re gonna get, this is why it’s so special. Everything in that book runs on dragon scales. And he’s the last one. Tomas is the last living dragon. So even if other magical people have these spells, we’re the only ones who can use them.”
“Pell, why couldn’t Grant break the curse?” I have to turn over a little to see him. But my back really feels great from the lotion, so it doesn’t hurt. “If the spellbook is that powerful, surely there is something in there that can free you.”
“Grant never got a look at that book. It’s inside Tarq’s tomb, remember? You still have to go get it.”
“Shit, I forgot about that.”
“I never trusted Grant. I never trusted any of them, actually. But especially Grant. He was way too nice when he came here. Way too eager to please me. And that’s not how it’s supposed to be.”
“How’s it supposed to be?”
“Me trying to please him. Eros, remember?”
I think about that for a few moments. My brain isn’t a hundred percent yet, but finally I catch up. “Wait. You didn’t act like that with me. You hated me immediately.”
“Yeah.” He breathes out a little sigh. “I’ve been thinking about that myself.”
I sit up a little, self-consciously rearranging my hair so it covers my breasts. “So”—I pause again—“you should’ve acted with me the way I acted around the sheriff?”
Pell and I stare into each other’s eyes for a moment. His are yellow, the color of lava, and they are asking the same question. “Yeah,” he finally says. “I should’ve… loved you.”
“And you didn’t.”
“I mean”—he pauses—“I just wasn’t prepared to wake up that night and find Grant gone. It was a shock.”
“But that doesn’t explain why you didn’t swoon over me. If I’m an eros, you should’ve swooned.” My mind doesn’t even need to be a hundred percent to take this idea to the next level. It’s just kind of obvious. “And if I was an eros, then I should not have swooned for the sheriff.”
It takes him several beats, but finally Pell nods. “Yep.”
“So. What am I?”
“I don’t know.” Pell has a look of ‘uh-oh’ on his face. Like he’s expecting some big freakout from me.
But I’m not freaking out. I nod. “I’m not an eros.” And then I smile. “I’m a human.”
Again, he pauses.
“What?” I ask.
“Maybe?”
“Maybe? There’s no maybe. I was born a human so I’m just human.”
“With magic moths and a talking bird.” He smiles. “Pie. I don’t care either way. I’m swooning over you now. Whatever you end up being, I love it.”
It’s a nice response. But it doesn’t answer any questions. “So why are you trusting me with this information now?”
“Well. The simple answer is, I don’t think you’re going to fuck me over. I think we’re on the same side.”
“OK.” I like this answer.
“And I’m telling you, the answer to my curse is not in that book, or I would’ve taken my chances at one point. It’s not in there. That book holds the spells of all the gods and it belongs to the great alchemist, Ostanes. But she didn’t put this curse on me. Juno did.”
“Juno?”
“The goddess. Saturn’s wife? They had a nasty divorce—”
“What?” I huff. “This curse is some kind of settlement issue?”
“Not quite. But a little bit, yeah. Saturn and Juno sponsored the chimera breeding program. Ostanes was the alchemist who did the work. This is her book and it holds a lot of secrets. Not just how to make chimera monsters, other secrets too. She belonged to all the gods—but Saturn and Juno head up the pantheon, so they were kind of her bosses.”
“And she didn’t want to take sides.”
He points at me. “That. And, well, you can’t ever trust a god, ya know? They have enough powers already. It needs to be spread around a little more fairly. Ostanes was the balance.”