Chapter 7

Murtagh

I’d been in the world a long time. I’d seen many things: great exhibitions, great wars, pandemics, circuses, the rise and fall of empires.

I’d never seen a witch eating ice cream with her talking pet cat. That was a new one. I mean, I’d met a witch before, but the talking cat was a bit strange.

In fact, until the last three years, I was uncertain how many species there were on the planet. I had seen demons before. I had seen ghosts. I had seen monsters. I had seen pandas. But one thing I had been unsure about was witches—I mean, beyond a woman living alone, who happened to grow some herbs that could kill a headache.

And supposedly, they’d been around the whole time. I was now aware that there had been other dragons here, too, and somehow Caspian and I had missed them. We had come into this world completely devoid of information and had no idea where to go to achieve it. Therefore, we had just hung around humans and built a life and did that over and over again. The only thing we had to fear were demons—demons would definitely like to kill us. They thought our blood was delicious.

“Time to ask for a blood donation,” the cat remarked dryly to the witch after he was through complaining about the gummy bears that she’d put on top of her ice-cream. “Our supply is running abysmally low.”

She gave me an embarrassed look but then narrowed her eyes at the cat. “I’m not gonna forget, Silas. He just sat down.” She gave him another chiding glance before looking straight at me and saying, “?a va, cher? Comment ?a se plume?” How’s it pluckin’?, she asked me just like she was a sweet, grandmotherly Cajun matron and not a twenty-year-old Cajun witch.

I knew very little Cajun, so I didn’t quite know how to answer that. “Is your cat a cat?” I asked her instead. She never seemed to deny answering a direct question. The cat would, but not her.

“Nah. C’est un lutin,” she replied with a shrug of her dainty shoulders.

“He’s a pixie?” I said, trying to translate.

“Non, cher,” she giggled. “Goblin. Dat’s why he’s rude as all get out. Du mondetout would happily give him a big ol’ pass because he’s fluffy. They don’t know what he really look like.”

“I’m rude?” the cat chided airily. “Pot calling the kettle black, aren’t we?” He looked up at the ceiling theatrically. His accent was not Louisianan, but more like how aristocrats used to speak in the beginning of the last century back in England.

“Cher, I love you, but you could break a mirror,” she snorted in retort. “Aniway, he act like a cat most times, so he don’t get to be his wonderful self to just anyone. That being said, my memory ain’t so great on my own. His mind is a sieve.”

“You’ve got it backward; it’s a steel trap up here,” the cat corrected her with a smug tone. “If anyone’s mind is like a sieve, it’s your own.”

She smirked sheepishly and shrugged. “Il ment pas,”He ain’t lying, she said.

“And how do you already need more of my blood? Didn’t I give you a pint a few months ago?” I asked, almost with exasperation, scooping up ice cream on a salty potato chip and crunching it down.

“You did,” she assured. “And I thank you for it. I used it up all real good. Good n’ fast.”

“And well under market value, I might add,” the cat interjected with a hint of stubbornness. “She has a penchant for philanthropy that I find intolerable.”

“What do you even use it for?” I had to ask. Demons liked to extract power from eating it, but I had a feeling that wasn’t what she was after.

The cat laughed. Loudly. Too loudly for a public place really, and completely at the expense of my own naivety.

She pet down his back, settling him down. “I use it in everything but beignets, yeah. Dragon blood’s been and always will be a precious thing in a witch’s bag of tricks, cher. Especially since y’all dragons ain’t exactly thick on the ground no more. Scarcer than hen’s teeth. Next to y’all, pandas be breedin’ like bunnies in spring.”

Especially when I let the ones that I’m certain I can breed with just disappear. “Can’t argue with you, there. You know of any lady dragons?”

She rolled her eyes. “Lord, if they had somethin’ like a ‘Dragon Poontang’ app, wouldn’t do you no good, no sir. You even got one of dem cordless phones yet, huh? Technophobe?”

“I don’t need to subscribe to every fad technology that comes around,” I assured her, raising my nose slightly. I’d been on this planet too long to buy every bicycle, hula hoop, and cellular device that came into existence.

“Mm,” she hummed at me, then put up her finger and rummaged around in her bag, looking like she might ask for what she came to New Orleans for. “Alright, for dat blood o’ yours, I got me some o’ dat tea, you know, the kind dat makes dem scales o’ yers tingle in all dem right places,” she said, winking.

“Thank you,” I nodded appreciatively. That tea had been a game-changer. I’d almost sent some to Caspian, but then I didn’t, because I remembered that would make Caspian think that I wanted to see him anytime soon. His mansion was too close as it was; two hours was too short of a distance.

She plopped a shoe-sized box in front of me decorated with wallpaper with little roses on it. When she opened the box, it had all of the tea she’d promised packed neatly inside, with a piece of paper with poor handwriting scrawled on the top. She took that paper and handed it to me. “I also got this. This might be worth a pint by itself.”

I opened my eyes wider with interest as I eyed the note. “What would that be?”

“Dem instructions on how to get you back to ya world—” she began explaining, but I immediately snagged the paper from her hand and looked it over. “Although I can’t imagine ya world has dat many potato chips in it. Somethin’ to keep in mind,” she was saying as I scanned the list hungrily.

I’d been waiting a millennium for a list—or anything! Anything with any information on how to get the fuck back home.

My excitement quickly began to dive as I perused the contents.

“This is impossible!” I cried, showing her the list. “There’re gemstones that nobody’s seen in millennia!”

“Yeah, dat grocery list dere gonna keep ya busy for a good bit, cher,” she admitted, eyeballing the list in my hand. “Took a sweet while to get Big Daddy to spill what y’all need for dat. He knows I got me a dragon connection, mais he ain’t too thrilled ‘bout it, not one bit.”

“That, my dear, is an understatement of considerable proportions,” the cat interjected with a refined air. “There exists a rather compelling reason for the scarcity of Dragons,” he informed me, his yellow eyeballs reflecting the lights in the room. “Demons, you see, find themselves quite intimidated by your very existence. The benevolent ones are most concerned about you falling prey to undesirable elements, while the malevolent lot are rather keen on having you fall squarely into their own clutches.”

I looked up, scowling. “There’re benevolent demons?”

“Ouais. Depends on where ya standin’. Don’t forget now, there’s a whole mess o’ different kinds o’ demons out dere,” Wendy told me, her voice tinged with that type of verbal rhythm I had found was unique to Cajuns. “Some, yeah, they real bad, no lie ‘bout dat. But mine… Ooh, cher, mine can chill your blood right through, fo’ sure. Mais he got his soft spots, too.”

“Incredibly soft, indeed. Most of that softness applies to Wendy here, but he has also developed an embarrassing fondness for Hallmark movies,” the cat contributed with a sly tone. “And the other one really likes to cook. And clean. And he’s gotten very good at paper maché in the last ten years.” His eyes gestured towards the box. Apparently the tea box was of the making of some sort of nightmarish being.

It was hard to imagine. All of the demons I’d ever seen were far too terrifying for any soft character traits to be believable.

“Ain’t we all like a good gumbo, spicy an’ complex, huh?” She gestured at the list with her spoon and added, “But don’t ya fret none, cher. I know fo’ sure as sugar that all dem talismans still around in dis big ol’ world. Just gotta go root ‘em out, is all.”

“Buried in some godforsaken desert hole, most likely,” the cat mumbled under his breath, echoing my thoughts.

Still, this was much more information than I’ve had for a millennium. I’d find those gems even if it meant I had to dig a billion holes.

“Anyway, if you can give me my blood by the end of the month, I’d be much obliged,” she told me.

“You can come back to my place and I’d give it to you now,” I offered, carefully folding up the paper and putting it into the decorated box.

“Can’t do that, no sir. My tarot this mornin’ done told me that soon as I set foot in your shop, you’ll be gettin’ a call that’ll have ya shooing everybody out. That’s precisely why I told ya to meet up right here ‘stead of over yonder.” She motioned around to the ice-cream parlor we were sitting in. I’d figured it was because she knew I loved ice cream. Mine was done in a fraction of the time hers was.

I rolled my eyes, knowing for certain that tarot wasn’t magical. And if it was, it couldn’t have given that sort of precise measurement. Even the tarot die-hards had described it as poetry. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m right across the way. It’ll take me less than an hour, probably, and I won’t have to drive all the way up to your place.”

She and the cat exchanged glances, but then Wendy shrugged and stood up. She was wearing flipflops and a tank top on her patched-up calf-length skirt sewed from patches of different cloth patterns. Even standing up at full height, she was a small woman. There was no way she was even five feet tall.

She threw away her empty ice-cream cup, then picked up her cat under her arm and followed me across the street, around cars and pedestrians, and then I unlocked and opened the door to let them through.

The phone was already ringing off the hook before I walked in. The shop had been closed when I was out, and it was still empty, so the ringing seemed to cut uncomfortably through the room.

Still, I ignored it like it wasn’t ringing, and when it stopped, I opened my mouth to speak to the witch, whose eyebrows were raised on her youthful face, seeming to expect something else.

And that was when the ringing started up again.

The witch smirked. “Go on now,” she allowed, nodding her chin towards the telephone sitting on the counter.

I snorted and plopped down the box full of magic tea onto the counter before I picked up the phone and said, “Rare Gems and?—”

“Murtagh, YOU PRIMITIVE CRETIN!” Caspian’s voice boomed from the other end, and I instinctively pulled the phone away from my ear. “After hundreds of years, a mate literally plops into your lap and you have the gall to hide it from me? How selfish can you possibly be? Really, inform me how you justified to yourself that you can just take your time with a breedable girl without even calling me on your prehistoric phone?”

My stance stiffened and my heart leapt into my throat. I had to clear it, in fact, to make a reply. There was no way that he could be referring to Zazie, was there? How could that be possible? “I beg your pardon?” I retorted like I had done nothing wrong.

I had, of course, done something wrong. I was lucky that I was getting railed out over the phone, in fact. If the roles were in reverse, I would have been motivated to simply drive over to my shop to try to pummel the shit out of me in person.

I glanced at Wendy and her cat, their amused gazes suddenly feeling too intrusive. “Excuse me, sweetheart. I need to take this,” I muttered, covering the receiver for a moment.

“I know, cher. Goes without say. I’ll see you when you stop on by Lil’ Mamas,” she assured me, twiddling her fingers around, referring to her shop which was three hours away in a bum-fuck-nowhere college town called ‘Newsome’.

I inwardly sighed and followed her out to lock the door behind her, and Caspian was back in my ear. “Girl,” he explained crisply, as if asking him to jog my memory was insulting to the both of us. “Chestnut hair. Grey eyes. Smells like Daconia. Calls herself Zarah. Am I ringing any bells?”

Yep, it was definitely Zazie. Had to be. Images of her flooded my mind and my pulse raced. “Zarah? Can’t say I recall,” I lied. I was curious about what he knew, and it was impossible not to delight in irking him. He made it so easy.

“If you wanted me to dance with you, Murtagh,” he growled, annoyance clear in his voice, “I’d prefer the waltz. Not this infuriating game.”

I grinned slightly at this and leaned my hip against the counter. “Her name isn’t Zarah. I have no doubt she told you that, because she’s a crafty one. But I know for a fact her name is Zazie Henderson. I’ve met her brother, and that’s what he called her. Otherwise, I would say it was anything. She tried to nick a ten-million-dollar necklace right out of my office a few years back. The necklace belonged to Marie Antoinette, and she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off it. Caught her stuffing it into her purse when she was supposed to be closing up on her own.”

“And what did you do?” he prompted with interest.

A flush of heat coursed through me at the memory. “She was barely eighteen. Let’s just say that I made it uncomfortable for her to sit down for a while. But things heated up so much, I took her right there on my desk. I meant to be her first and last, but…” My cock had swelled so many times just from the memory of it. I had felt so alive that night. I thought we were going to get a million nights just like it.

After a moment of silence, probably because he was simmering like bacon on the stove, he asked, “And? How’d she end up with me today?”

“She vanished that night. We parted well enough on both our sides that evening, and I thought I’d see her the next morning. But she didn’t come in the whole weekend. So, I went to check in with her on Monday, and her apartment was vacant. She disappeared without a trace. I thought she might come back, but…”

“She stole one of my Byzantian rings,” he shared, his voice a mix of bitterness and astonishment. “They’re 9th century, Murtagh! I couldn’t believe it. Right from under my nose!” he huffed. I could almost see him throwing his arms up in the air with exasperation like he used to. “Well, if she’s not Zarah, I have no idea why she was here. It wasn’t to steal from me—I’m pretty sure that was a spur-of-the-moment decision.”

“You should’ve secured those better,” I chided, shaking my head in disbelief.

“They were, but she…” Caspian’s frustration was palpable. “I’m going to find her, Murtagh. She can’t just walk away with my ring.”

“How will you find her?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Social media,” he replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

I frowned, feeling out of my depth. “The tweet-bird thing?”

His exasperation was clear. “You truly are an impossible troglodyte.”

“And you’re an insufferable narcissist,” I shot back, unable to resist the jab.

Caspian’s voice was cold. “Murtagh, let’s be adults. I want her found. I want my ring, I want retribution, and I want… offspring.”

I wanted that, too… more than anything. But to have offspring, he’d need me too, and he knew that. “So, am I invited to this hunt?”

“Miles will find her. But I could use your help eventually,” he conceded grudgingly.

I narrowed my eyes, sensing his smugness even through the phone. “I’m coming.”

“Then get here soon, or I’m hunting her down without your help,” he growled, hanging up abruptly.

Staring at the receiver, I felt a mix of anger and determination.

“Asshole,” I muttered, slamming the phone down.

I rushed to my apartment, mind racing with plans. I wanted to find a way home, but while I was looking, which could take another millennia for all I knew, I had to find Zazie.

I had a plan, and I wasn’t going to waste a single moment.