Chapter Seven

ARCHER

Somewhat to my surprise, Ollie Shaw was waiting by my car at seven o'clock. His fair hair was tinted pink by the rising sun, and his eyes glowed with joy.

And all the time, my dragon was murmuring to me in a thrumming voice. One word, over and over again. Mine . Because when Ollie shifted, he was an exquisitely beautiful copper dragon with iridescent scales that shone in the light from my phone.

The problem with that? Copper was my treasure. I knew Ollie wasn't really copper, but my dragon didn't seem to care. He wanted to take, to hoard, to keep.

I told my dragon to shut the fuck up. Grumbling, he subsided.

"Get in," I said shortly.

"That was incredible," Ollie said, as I did up my seatbelt. The wonder on his face—he looked the way this place made me feel, as if I remembered it on a level I wasn't aware of.

"The stones feel almost sentient ," Ollie continued . "I mean, not sentient exactly, but there's something there, as if they know what their purpose is and we're just too stupid to understand."

I said nothing, my concentration apparently on the road as I pulled out of the car park, but I was listening intently. Ollie's prattle was something of a stream of consciousness, but he was the first person to get there was something special about this place, and I wanted to hear what he thought it was.

"Like, they're witnesses to history. Hey, do you think maybe that's their purpose? But how would it work if we don't know how to access what they've witnessed?" He moved restlessly, his hands flying as he tried to explain himself. "But maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe it's not about us. Maybe they're not collecting the information for us, but just because information's valuable in itself. Maybe when we've all died out, dragons and humans, they'll still exist, witnesses that we were once here. And that's kind of depressing, thinking about the end of the world."

I moistened my lips. I wasn't nervous. I didn't get nervous. But this was a conversation I'd never been able to have with anyone else. "Do you have the feeling you've been here before?"

"Oh my God, yes !" He turned in his seat, blue eyes bright in my peripheral vision. "That's what I felt as soon as I was in the air, but I didn't realise it till you said it. I know this place. Do you think dragons created it? Is it buried in our collective consciousness?"

I shrugged. I had no more idea than he had. I simply knew that there was something here, and I couldn't quite believe that the first person who understood it, who felt it the way I did, was the ubiquitous, talkative, and unfairly attractive Ollie Shaw.

"What do you think happened to the missing stones? I mean, they're so big, it must have been dragons who took them, mustn't it? Maybe some dragons somewhere have a small henge in their back garden. That would be awesome ."

"Locals probably broke them up to use for building work," I told him.

He deflated, and I felt momentarily bad for doing that to him.

"Or maybe there's a henge somewhere no one knows about," I added before I could stop myself.

"That's what I think happened. That's what I'd do, if not for the fact I'd be taking them away from their friends." He paused for an instant. "Not their friends. That sounds stupid. But they should be together."

He wasn't wrong. I pulled off the road into the hotel car park, and he sat up straight, looking around as if surprised our journey back had taken exactly the same amount of time as our journey there.

"That was so awesome," he said. "Thank you for taking me."

He promptly blushed bright red, and I had the feeling his mind had gone precisely where mine had. Which was Ollie Shaw stretched out naked and wanton on my bed, begging me to take him.

"Bye," he squeaked, and all but fell out of my car before running for the hotel. I was left locking the car and wondering how the hell he'd got me thinking of him naked when, these days, monks got more action than me.

It didn't matter. Once the moot was finished, I'd never have to see him again.

* * *

The morning session was a waste of time. Everyone had an opinion about the suggestion of closer integration, and everyone intended to be heard about it. Once I realised this was going to be nothing more than a prolonged shouting match, I slouched in my chair and let my mind wander back to Avebury. To the mysterious power of those stones and the way Ollie Shaw's face had looked in the rising sun…

I jerked fully awake, rubbing my hands over my face. Margaret gave me a sideways glance and offered me a mint.

"Believe it or not, they're still going," she murmured.

"Which way are the majority leaning?" I asked. It was more polite than enquiring why my mint tasted of fish.

"I think most are in favour of at least trying, but the loudest ones are against, so Abimelech's letting them shout themselves out. That way, no one can say they didn't get their fair say."

The clock on the wall showed at least another hour to go, and I picked up my pen to doodle on the notepaper. After a few dragons and birds had taken shape, my pen began to sketch something else out, something with curves and a pattern that felt predetermined.

Ten minutes later, I was looking at a sketch of a spherical intersection of rings, clustered around a globe in the centre. It looked abstract, but I'd felt it as I drew—it was the stones of Avebury, leading to and protecting a dragon's eye.

I itched to go home so I could create this and feel it taking shape in three dimensions, but this damnable meeting was still dragging on.

"You haven't had much to say," Margaret observed, leaning over to look at what I'd been working on.

"Not yet." Not while the Mancunian and Liverpudlian families were going at each other hammer and tongs.

When my turn came to speak, I still didn't have much to say. There were reasons I didn't want strange dragons in my territory, observing my family, spotting the fault lines and the weaknesses. Yet at the same time, the idea of mixing more readily made sense.

"I vote aye to better integration, but I do not agree to having a strange dragon foisted on me when I leave here."

Margaret's loud crunching of her mint sounded as if she disapproved of my sensible decision not to take a stranger home with me so they could discover the fundamental weakness in my family. I tipped my head to her in apology. I liked her, but I hated that part of her idea.

Mortimer eventually drew the meeting to a close and told us we would reassemble for a final vote on both matters after lunch.

When I found Mia, she was yet again chatting to Ollie. His face was alight with enthusiasm, his well-shaped, welcoming lips curved in a laugh and his eyes dancing as he said something to her. Everyone else here was deadly serious, reflecting how high the stakes were when meeting other families, but Ollie seemed to be having the time of his life. Something about that fact drew me to him, like a plant seeking water after going too long without.

What a stupid, ridiculous fancy. I blamed my dragon's longing for copper and determinedly cleared my mind of such thoughts.

Ollie saw me before Mia did, and the smile that lit his face reminded me of the sun coming up over Avebury—warm and inexplicably captivating.

"I wanted to apologise for almost bumping into you last night." His words were fast and self-conscious. He'd evidently realised, however belatedly, that an apology was in order.

"Better than taking out Silbury Hill, I suppose."

Mia was staring at me, mouth open. She knew I didn't do small talk, and I didn't do humour. I had no idea how Ollie had drawn that comment from me.

"Is that what that mound I nearly flew into is called? What is it?"

"It's at least as old as the stones. No one knows who built it or why, but when it was new, it would have been pure chalk—bright white and visible for miles."

"Now that would have been helpful last night," Ollie said.

"Lunch?" Mia suggested.

By the time we were settled once more in armchairs at the bar with plates of sandwiches, Ollie was somehow still with us. That displeased me. I'd hoped Mia might have picked up some useful information when mingling, but I didn't want her passing anything on in front of someone from a different family.

"The vote's this afternoon," I told her. "Then we can go home."

"It was a long way for some people to come for two days," she observed.

"Two days is probably as long as any of us can go without starting a fight," I said, and she grinned. She was undoubtedly thinking of the way I'd butted heads with members of my family over the years. Dragons were stubborn and rarely backed down. Which was fine when there was only one, but it was a different story once a few of them got together.

There was a stir amongst the dragons in the bar as Margaret and Evelyn Berstow entered. It seemed that everywhere one of the Berstows went, people were queuing up to speak to them. I intended to follow up with them later, when our conversation wasn't being listened to by half the dragons in the place. I'd spoken briefly to Evelyn, and she'd given me her phone number for that purpose.

"Glad to see you're taking my advice, Ollie," Margaret said as she passed us.

Ollie Shaw was on friendly terms with the head of the Teague family? It couldn't have been her handbag after all. He came across as someone who, as he'd said, had tagged along to make up numbers. Perhaps there was more to him than I'd realised.

"Is that what this was all about, voting on those two things?" Mia asked me.

"Or perhaps it was actually about the meetings Abimelech Mortimer's been having around the edges of the main meetings, and the vote was nothing more than an excuse to hold the moot," Ollie said through a mouthful of sandwich. Horror crossed his face as he realised he'd interrupted me. "Shit. Sorry."

"No, go on." That sounded interesting. Ollie definitely wasn't what I'd thought him. He'd evidently been watching closely and thinking.

"It's just, haven't you noticed how Abimelech's been targeting the Welsh families?"

No, I hadn't noticed that. And it was my job to notice.

"Mortimers gonna Mortimer," Mia said, and she and Ollie grinned at one another.

"What did you think of the old stones?" she asked Ollie before attacking a ham sandwich.

"Incredible," Ollie said, and that look was back on his face again.

She stared at him, then chewed furiously and swallowed. "Like nowhere else you've ever known?"

He glanced up from where he was picking egg mayo off his trousers. "Yeah."

Mia looked at me, her eyes brimming with laughter and something that looked disconcertingly like mischief.

"Would you mind if I joined you?" A naggingly familiar man in his forties stood there. "I'm Pete Smythe."

As soon as he said it, I could see his likeness to June. It was an unpleasant reminder of what waited for me at home.

"Why not?" I asked. I wasn't going to make him particularly welcome after he'd made Mia uncomfortable, but I'd like to find out if Mia's instinct had been right. I introduced myself and Ollie. "You've already met Mia, I understand."

He nodded as he sat heavily in a chair he'd dragged over to our table. "I had that pleasure yesterday. We're almost family, after all."

"Not exactly." I didn't like him. He was oily. Like a politician.

"Well, that's something we can remedy. I'd love to visit and get to know my niece- and nephews-in-law."

Was that a dig at my age? It would be very far from the first. On days when I was feeling kind to myself, I thought that was why everything had gone so wrong in the ten years since I'd taken over as head of the family at eighteen. Some older dragons hadn't known how to deal with someone so young making decisions and telling them what to do.

"We'll see," I said, and was glad to observe him shift uncomfortably in his chair. I rose to my feet. "I'll find you after the vote," I told Mia. "Pete, come with me. As you said, we should get to know one another better."

He was mutinous but unable to refuse a head of family's request, so he came with me. I let him ask all the questions he wanted as I steered him away from Mia, and I answered none of them.