Chapter 8

Chapter

Eight

" N o, mother, I'm fine."

"No, I won't be returning."

"Yes, mother, only my things."

"I have Grant here, and we'll share time, father."

"Father, all will be well. Grant is best served to be here."

Samuel felt as if he was saying the same things over and over and over again.

No one was listening.

He sat in his very small apartment that was honestly just one large room, the loft of another building. It had a tiny fridge and a little kitchenette, a bathroom, and a place for a bed.

Some art and all his clothes, which sat in big boxes around the apartment, waiting for him to be able to do laundry and get a clothing press.

They hadn't mailed him so much as a single book.

They'd also sent the big comfy chair that he had at his rooms in his old wing.

It was a good little apartment—clean and comfy, and it got lots of light.

He spent a lot of time watching out the windows when he wasn't walking around.

He'd had to return the car to Albuquerque, of course, and his parents were never going to send him a vehicle.

So he walked.

If it was very far, he flew. Luckily, no one noticed him. He was a cloud. He was a bolt of lightning. He was a gust of wind.

Samuel knew that the City Council was deciding whether or not they needed a library building or simply a place for books in the school.

He would be satisfied with a place in the school building, somewhere the children could get books easily and learn things.

He didn't push though. That wasn't his way. He just spent as much time as possible with Grant and wrote letters outlining the importance of a library.

That allowed Jake to do whatever it was he did as a guardian, which seemed to make the alpha pleased.

So he could hide away in his little apartment when he didn't have the baby.

Most of the dragons were kind of curious.

Samuel understood. He would be curious if he wasn't the one who was new, but he was.

He was new, and this was incredibly unnerving.

Unlike his wing, though, this was a town. This felt to him like the towns he read about in books with many little buildings instead of a few big spaces. People had yards with flowers, and there were schools, little schoolhouses. Bakers and butchers, a candy store, and a place that sold vegetables from a cart.

It was all the things that seemed so odd when one lived in a space where there were cooks and housekeepers.

He loved the idea of these little nuclear families. It reminded him of television and stories. And it felt good.

Not all the time. Sometimes he could see things—places where older dragons were sad. Or where children in the schoolyard excluded one or the other. But, for the most part, it felt right.

Then there was this snow part of the Oro Escondido equation. That was very odd. The snow was huge. Just this vast, endless white that drifted up.

Every so often, he would go out in the middle of the night and fly, swooping through the new drifts, making signs and signals. Letting the snow sink into him and chill him, but make him laugh too.

A soft tapping came to his apartment door, startling him.

Who could it be?

He wasn't expecting to keep Grant today, but maybe it was Lars.

Samuel went to the door, feeling very small and nervous, telling himself it was probably just a wrong address.

Regardless, he opened the door and found a matched pair of elderly dragon ladies standing there. "I—Can I help you?"

"Most likely," one of them creaked.

"But I imagine," the other one said.

"That. We can?—"

"—help you more."

The dragon on the left held up a wicker basket with a huge bow on the handle in her clawed hand. "We realized no one brought you?—"

"A welcome basket."

"How rude."

"Dragons today, they don't know?—"

"—how to say hello."

They offered him a pair of matching toothy smiles.

Right. "Won't you please come in? Would you like a cup of tea?"

They floated in, settling on the sofa together. They were light purple, and they both reeked of age and ancient magic.

"That would be?—"

"A blessing."

"Thank you."

How dizzying. "I'm Samuel. It's very nice to meet you both."

"Anna." Okay Anna was on the left, and on the right?

"Hannah."

"We are twins."

"We live downstairs."

"You're very quiet."

"We like quiet neighbors."

They spoke so fast—machine gun fire, one sentence coming out of one and ending in the other's mouth. It was actually rather pleasant in the weirdest sort of way.

"I have pea flower tea, Earl Grey, and hibiscus." He pulled out three mismatched mugs, glanced at the ladies, then put the mugs back and grabbed tea cups. They matched at least.

"Oh, pea flower please."

"For both of us."

"Two sugars."

"Lemon."

"No milk."

He set the cups up, smiling at them nervously as they checked out the room. If they lived downstairs, they understood what the apartment looked like. Yet they seemed so curious. "I'm sorry for the sparseness of the room. I just moved in."

"Do you have a baby?" Anna asked.

"Sometimes, yes. Susan—the dragon who was in the accident and who died?—she was my sister, so I came to help with the baby, Grant."

Hannah tilted her head. "Jake's son."

"Yes, Jake's son." He wasn't going to deny that little boy his father, whether it was biologically true or not.

"Why aren't you staying with Jake then, if you're going to be raising the child?"

Anna's eyes flashed bright gold. "Hannah, you can't ask that."

"Of course I can. I just did."

"It's all right." It wasn't all right. "Jake and I are strangers to one another. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to live there." Also, he's an asshole, a giant bleeding asshole. It was probably not fair to think, but it hurt Samuel's feelings that Jake found him small and unattractive.

Even though he could hear Jake's thoughts, he didn't really want to. Every time they were turned toward him, they were filled with…disgust? At least frustration. None of them were very nice.

"Well," Anna said. "I'm sure that now that you're here full time, it will all work out quickly. It's a lovely house from what I understand."

Hannah rolled her silver eyes and snapped a bite of the air. "It's ridiculous. It's not how it's done. The child should live with both parents."

"You are an old fuddy-duddy." Anna rolled her eyes too. "Some of us are more progressive than others."

"Kind of," Hannah rumbled softly. "Spinster."

"Gecko," Anna shot back, and Hannah gasped.

"Did you hear what she called me?"

Oh goddess, please let this water boil faster. "Hmm? What did you bring in the basket?"

Please don't let it be a coiled serpent or poison gas or Turkish delight…

He would rather have poison gas.

"There's bread."

"And jam. Prickly pear and plum."

"And some carne seco."

"Oh, and pretzels. Anna makes them. Terrible shapes…"

He laughed. "I like pretzels."

"Yes, dear. We know."

That should send chills through him, but instead, a warm glow suffused him. He felt seen. "Well, thank you. That's lovely."

"Oh, and I made mustard to go on them. Homemade." Anna laughed. "We won't be neighbors long, but we wanted to say hello and thank you for filling the space for a bit."

He blinked, but the kettle clicked off, which allowed him to avoid the strange turn in the conversation.

Pouring tea. Lalala.

He wasn't sure what the ladies wanted, but he welcomed the company.

He was going to be here for a while after all. People were going to have to just get used to him, learn to like him. After all, librarians were very good at making themselves useful.

The ladies chattered, and they never did come to a point of any sort. They drank their tea. Gossiped about the wing. And when it came time for them to leave, he felt as though they had been there to size him up.

Samuel wondered what they had concluded.

"Have a good day, ladies," he called from the doorway. "Be careful of the snow." Although, someone had come after every little dump of the white stuff and cleared the stairs and the walkways.

Samuel wasn't certain who. He was never awake early enough to see them.

He sighed, trying to choose between cleaning and reading a book.

Of course, the book won. What was there to clean once he washed the dishes?

Even though they'd been odd as ducks, he kind of missed the ladies already.

At least they'd been company.