12. Carol

12

Carol

She had her clothes on again, which felt like a step forward and a step backwards at the same time.

A step filled with an irritating amount of sand, either way.

"Prr rrr?" Maggie chirped curiously as Carol picked at her bra strap and brushed more sand off herself.

Carol sighed. "A problem you won't have to deal with for a long time." She paused, wincing, as though the universe might hear her and decide that was another problem she needed. Maggie spent most of her time in dragon form, and by most , she meant ninety-nine percent.

In dragon form she was mobile, could scamper and fly to her heart's content, and digest almost anything. If she turned back into her human baby form?

She would be the equivalent of a three-month-old human infant. And Carol's stress meter would go so high her head might explode.

Better not to think about it.

Moss was out on the rocks. In human form. He hadn't said anything about it, just stripped down to boxers and strode out into the waves, like it was the obvious thing to do. Maybe it was. He'd tied his shirt to use as a bag and was filling it with shellfish. Harder to do that as an octopus. Probably.

She narrowed her eyes. The more she heard about his octopus, the less she believed it. And not only because every time he mentioned it, a flash of grief passed over his face like a cloud over the sun.

If he wasn't an octopus shifter, what was he? And why was he hiding it from her?

"What do you think, Maggie?" she whispered. "Should I be afraid of him?"

Maggie chirruped and peered up at her, then turned and stared out to where Moss was diving in the waves. "Pree-ooo," she whistled dismissively.

Carol snorted. "Yeah. We both noticed how you freaked out when I went in the water but couldn't care less if he went in."

And it wasn't as though he was the only one hiding things. Her mission to reunite Maggie with her uncle was technically a secret mission. She told herself that was why she hadn't explained any of it to Moss.

Not because she was worried the minute she started telling him the truth, she wouldn't be able to stop.

"Pffft." Maggie wriggled on her back, digging herself into the warm sand. Her head flopped back, then popped back up. "Eeoo?"

"Hmm?"

Golden eyes focused on hers, and an image flashed into her mind: the warmth and brightness of the sun on the sand, somehow rolled up and tucked into the shoebox Maggie kept her treasure hoard in.

"I don't think sunlight works that way, sorry."

Disappointment radiated from every slumping spine on Maggie's head. She curled herself up into a ball and started thinking about what she did have in her hoard box, to reassure herself.

Carol watched and listened, fascinated. Except—it wasn't really watching or listening . It wasn't even meeting minds, the way her and Moss's minds touched when they spoke telepathically. Maggie thought loud. All she had to do was sit and pay attention, and all the tiny dragon's big thoughts were right there.

She remembered how the metal bird shifter had tried to communicate with her. Like a radio tuned to the wrong station, receiving messages in a code she didn't have the handbook for. Where had they come from?

Where had they gone ?

She looked up at the sky. It was still empty, a pure, gorgeous blue.

"It's a nice day to be stuck on a deserted island, at least," she murmured.

"What's that?"

She looked up, and the man of her dreams looked down at her.

"Um," she said, her face blooming red and her eyes darting everywhere but at the mostly naked man standing in front of her.

"‘Scuse me." He sat down next to her, grinning, and held up the shirt-bag. "Plenty out there the storm didn't smash. How do you feel about mussels straight off the rocks?"

Was it more awkward to stare at your soulmate's naked, dripping chest, or more awkward not to stare at it? What was the proper etiquette here? "Um, I feel good about it?"

"It'd be a different story if we had something to go with them. Lemon, or garlic, or—you're really okay with this?"

Her lips twitched. "You're not the only one who grew up on the water. This isn't my first beach bonfire picnic without a bonfire."

"I'll work on that. Can't be too hard. Humanity discovered fire in the first place without using matches, right?" He frowned. "What's Maggie thinking about?"

Images hazed from the little dragon's mind, surrounded by strong feelings of happiness and contentment. Carol closed her eyes, sinking into the feeling. "She's thinking about her treasure hoard. She's a dragon, you see, so she's very strong and powerful and has a very impressive hoard all of her own."

"Oh, yep. I see." His brow wrinkled. "In a… shoebox?"

"I don't think my boss knew how important the box would be when he picked it out for her. He just needed a place to store all the shiny things she kept picking up."

"Shiny things like…"

Maggie's head shot up, and she trilled excitedly. The hazy images sharpened as she prodded them directly at Carol and Moss's minds. Moss winced slightly. "Ow. Okay. Beer bottles? How old are you, kiddo?"

"Prrrr-RRRRR," Maggie growled possessively. The bottles had very shiny labels.

"Books with gold stuff on the covers, okay, got that. A library hoard. I like it. Some tinsely stuff. Teaspoons, really? A necklace…"

Carol's breath caught as Maggie remembered the thin gold chain around Keeley's neck. Her memory of the woman who'd cared for her since she'd hatched was so warm and loving that tears filled Carol's eyes.

"Pree-oo?" Maggie chirped. The vision wavered, and then Lance was there next to Keeley. Maggie wanted to keep them both in her hoard box, but they were too big. They wouldn't fit. Even though they should fit, because it was a box for her hoard and they were part of her hoard. Even if they were too far away.

All the way over there.

Carol stopped breathing. Maggie looked back at her over her shoulder, chirped, and then stared out over the ocean again. Neck straight, whole body pointed. The same way she had when she kept trying to tell them where her uncle was.

"Maggie—" Carol licked her lips carefully. Moss's eyes flicked from her to the dragon, but he didn't say anything. "Is that where Keeley and Lance are?"

"Lance?" Moss said under his breath.

"Prr-rrp!"

"What about—what about the big dragon?"

BIG DRAGON! BIG! Carol and Moss both winced, and Maggie puffed herself up as though determined to show them that she was a big dragon, too. Her head whipped around. South. "Pree!"

"He's that way, but Keeley and Lance are…?"

"Eee-oo!" Maggie whipped her head around to the north again.

Holy shit. "And they're—they're okay?"

"Crroooar?" Maggie croaked, tilting her head to one side and staring at her in confusion. Her scaly face screwed up and Carol saw…

The only word she had for it was stars. Clusters of light and warmth and joy. It was like looking at beating hearts through her own electrosenses, except it wasn't heartbeats she was seeing, it was… whole lives. Soul and mind and everything that made Maggie's loved ones themselves.

MINE , the little dragon announced, then peeped sadly. They were all hers, but they were so far away.

Carol pulled away from the vision, her breath shaky. She rubbed her face, and her hands came away wet. "That was—you found them. They're alive. They made it out."

"That was Lance MacInnis ." Moss sounded like Carol had felt, so often these last few weeks. Like a wall had caved in on his perception of reality. "I know him. He was best man at a wedding I catered. He—you're working for Lance MacInnis ?" Emotions warred on his face. "Hell—were Grant and Irina on the plane, too? Are they—?"

"Grant and Irina Diaz?" She stared at him. The puzzle pieces that hadn't lined up before were even more misplaced now. And the puzzle was a lot bigger. "No? I don't know them very well, but—Mrs. Diaz is pregnant. She isn't travelling. And they don't even work for Lance, why would they—?"

"You work for him. He was at the wedding. If we'd met there…"

Moss sounded dazed. She wasn't sure he'd even heard her garbled response.

"I wasn't at the wedding," she said quietly. "I wasn't—I don't get out much."

He shook himself. "That's crazy, though, isn't it? It takes something like this to bring us together, but all the time we were only separated by a few acquaintances. It's a small world." He looked as though he was going to say something else, then his eyes dropped to Maggie, and he frowned. "How long has MacInnis had a baby dragon around?"

"Not so long."

Moss breathed a curse and sat back, running one hand through his hair. "This is… a lot to take in."

Carol sat back, too, steeling herself. "It's more to take in than me falling out of the sky with a baby dragon in my arms?"

He went still. A shadow passed over him, but it wasn't a cloud going over the sun—the shadow washed over him like water, then faded back into his skin. She shivered.

Definitely not an octopus.

"Admit it," she said, her voice soft and unaccusing. "You must have thought something was up. And—" She fretted her lower lip over her teeth, not quite hard enough to break the skin. "I've seen a lot of shifters see Maggie for the first time recently. You were surprised to see her , but you weren't surprised to find out that dragons exist."

He shook his head. "You got me."

"You already knew dragon shifters were real? How?"

"The same way you and your family know about other shifters in your hometown, or—stories your grandparents tell, maybe, about how much more magical and mysterious the world was back in the old days." His smile was crooked. "I grew up on Te Waipounamu, the South Island of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Just a short, chilly swim from our neighbors the shadow dragons. Well. Maybe a long swim. Never made it that far myself."

"You… you all know about them ? " Lance was going to flip his lid. The discovery that dragon shifters existed had overturned everything they all thought they knew about shifters—but everyone in New Zealand just already knew about them?

"Don't get me wrong. I never met a dragon before the marvelous Maggie. So maybe they're more like the neighbors who live in that old, boarded-up house at the end of the creepy path you dare each other to go down, but you never actually get to knocking on their door." He shook his head. "I knew the shadow dragons existed as some far-off thing, hidden from the world by their magic. But seeing one in person? I never thought that day would—anyway," he added quickly, "you seemed cool with her, so, y'know. I didn't want to act like the only one who had no idea what's going on."

Like I have any idea what's going on? She licked her lips. Maybe she could give away a little of the truth, without blurting out all her secrets.

"We're taking her back to her uncle. Taking them , I should say. The other eggs haven't shown any signs of hatching, but if they're anything like Maggie, it'll come out of nowhere."

"Their uncle. Not their parents?"

She shook her head. "They only have their uncle."

Moss looked weary. "At least they have someone."

"And we know where to find him. You saw Maggie just now. She's been tugging at the leash since she first sensed him, halfway across the state. Whatever power tells her where he is must have an incredible range, if she can locate him across an entire ocean now."

"And MacInnis and—what was the woman's name?"

"Keeley."

"She can sense them, too. Because they're part of her…" He frowned. "Hoard?"

"Right. Did I not warn you about that? Be careful, or she might decide you belong to her, and that she gets to put you in a little box with the rest of her treasures."

Moss snorted. "Small chance of that, I reckon, the way she threw me to the fishes earlier."

Maggie made a small, dismissive noise, and he laughed outright. "We're distracting ourselves from the important thing here," he announced.

Carol nodded. Now that she knew for sure Lance and Keeley were still alive, and what direction to find them, it was even more important that she swim to find them, without letting Maggie see and freaking her out more.

But before that…

"Food?" Carol suggested, and Maggie's eyes opened wide.

"Food," Moss agreed.