The Story Unfolds

Chapter 5.4--Faye

2009-01-26T01:42:00.000-08:00

She rose and swept out. Faye sat stunned for a moment. Professor Deneuve's mention of dragons dying reminded her of her premonition about Aristide. Professor Deneuve was right on some fronts--that professor who got shot would not be the last dragon casualty. She stopped at the doorway and sighed, peering down the hall towards the front door. After a long pause, she turned and walked towards the sound of the television. The TV was showing some hysterical drivel about Lucien. Liv was perched on the arm of the couch, while Gérard paced behind it. “Why are you watching that?” Faye snapped, turning the TV off. “You're just going to make yourself upset.” “It is important to know what is happening, I think,” Gérard said. “It's like picking at a wound. Knock it off.” She stretched out on the couch, putting her feet up where Liv was sitting. “So, do you think Professor Deneuve knows what she's doing?” Liv bit her lip. Gérard began, “I do not feel comfortable--” when a thin voice cut him off. “Gérard... I need tiny pizzas, Gérard.” Faye sat up. It was a child with a round baby face, big round eyes and frowzy brown hair that made him look like an owl. Tall as a teenager—a dragon. Raoul, she assumed. He and Gérard headed out towards the kitchen, Gérard attempting to gently explain that there were no tiny pizzas in the house over Raoul's quiet insistence that he needed them. “I don't think those two could look any less like each other,” Faye remarked. Nor did either of them look at all like Lucien. “They're probably all half-brothers,” Liv chirped. Faye rolled her eyes. “Dragons in France live in all-female clans and the males drop by only to make baby dragons, so siblings having the same father is actually pretty unusual.” “Why do you do that?” Faye said. “What?” “You sound like the computer in some sci-fi show. The captain says 'We're landing on Eritania in ten minutes,' and the computer says 'Eritania is the largest planet in the solar system that is made entirely out of waffles' or something.” “I... I think this stuff is interesting,” Liv said softly. Faye shook her head. “No, it really isn't. And I even already knew—are you crying? Come on, don't cry.” She glanced around nervously. “They're going to think I'm picking on you. I'm not being mean—I'm trying to help you! I'm just being a good friend.” Liv smiled weakly. “Thank you. It's nice to have a friend here.” If Faye had been a better person, she would have felt guilty. But she had battled through too many years of psychological warfare to apologize for the only way of survival she knew. She turned away and walked towards the kitchen, Liv trailing on her heels. In the kitchen, Gérard was stirring a pot of soup. Raoul was in a chair and slumped on the table, coughing pathetically and unconvincingly. Faye raised an eyebrow. Gérard set a bowl of soup in front of Raoul, who popped upright and took a sip. “Super soup!” he exclaimed. “I am good as new!” Turning to Faye, he put on a hard glower and pointed at her with his spoon. “You have a right to remain silent,” he said. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.” Faye stared at him, speechless, then looked at Gérard. This kid seemed a bit old to be that wacko, although something about his delivery made her think of her own half-siblings with a small smile. Gérard was smiling too, down at Raoul, and a sense of familiarity trickled warm and bittersweet into the void left by Lucien. She'd thought before that Lucien and each of his brothers must have looked exactly like their respective fathers, they had so little in common. Raoul was round-faced, downy-haired, still awkward and not fully formed, but clearly destined to grow up into a round-faced, owlish man. Lucien was a perfect miniature of some sort of sun-god, golden-haired and golden-skinned, barely taller than Faye but with a warrior's body. Gérard was tall and dark-haired, with a fishbelly complexion and a permanently downcast face, as if he were being berated without pause by some invisible authority figure. But as he smiled down at Raoul, Faye saw a flash of Lucien. Not just of Lucien, but of the part of Lucien that she had loved so much. The part that ran gleefully through neighborhoods he had refurbished both through political power and with his own two hands, children clinging to his back and shrieking with laughter as he leapt and wove. He was more than a hero to those children. He was an idol, a god, and they were his favorite worshippers. She wondered what those children were doing now. Did they feel betrayed by Lucien? Were they following him blindly? She moved forward and laid a hand gently on Gérard's. He jerked his hand away and looked at her fearfully. His look of fear deepened as tears welled up in her eyes. “We've gotta protect him,” she whispered.

Chapter 5.3--Faye

2009-01-23T03:15:00.001-08:00

“Can we just talk about the issue here?” Faye snapped. “So you think the three of us can get Lucien to back down?” The infuriating small smile Professor Deneuve had been wearing faded. She spoke softly, evincing none of her usual disdain for Faye. and leaned forward to look Faye in the eye. “Lucien does not back down.” She looked away, giving Faye time to process this statement. Faye knew she was right. Lucien had been unshakable since the day they first met, when she had happened across him sitting outside her father's office. Thirteen years old, dressed in a suit tailored to his tiny body, with a face of stone determination, he had been waiting to plead with her father for money to rebuild the dragon community. The child-hero of his people. “So let him do it, then,” she said. “Count me out.” Professor Deneuve recoiled. “You know what he has done. Do you not care?” Faye shrugged. “Humans kind of deserve what they get, I think. As far as I can tell they're a bunch of monsters. Even the people who were nice to me were just trying to shape me in their image, and now I'm a monster too.” She gave a queasy smile. Her initial smugness was undercut by sudden revulsion at the humans around her and the human within her. “Tell me you're not a monster. You're making a guy try to kill his own brother. Not just his—practically his kid, right? Gérard raised Lucien? Honestly, that's sick.” Professor Deneuve paused, closing her eyes and pressing on her temples. She spoke with her eyes still closed. “Sometimes individuals suffer for the good of the world. Gérard—I--I do not know why I am explaining myself to you!” She opened her eyes, dark thunder in her expression. “Leave, Faye. Thousands will die as displays of force escalate—humans, dragons, someday Lucien—because Faye Withers thinks that hiding will keep her hands clean. So hide.”

Chapter 5.2-Faye

2009-01-15T04:31:00.001-08:00

When Faye was a child she'd had a deck for the card game Old Maid that she'd kept in a shoebox, under her bed where it haunted her for unknown reasons. Later, in her preteen years, she had stumbled across it and been startled to find it just as chilling. The Old Maid card wasn't comically illustrated like many she had seen, no old lady with a crooked nose and bug eyes who no man could ever love. Instead it was a gentle colored pencil drawing of a woman whose prime had quietly passed her by, gazing alone into a vanity, an old-fashioned brush clasped in her hand as she prepared for a beau who would never come. The beauty that she had clearly once possessed had chilled Faye in its impotence.

This room reminded her of that card, down to the vanity with old-fashioned brush and powder box. The curtains were lacy and clearly handmade, the bed with its ornate headboard too large for its single occupant. The dust ruffle sparked a memory—not hers, but Lucien's, but almost like hers thanks to its vividness.

Lucien had recounted hiding under that bed almost every day, imagining himself the lost prince of some mythical kingdom called Lockoff, watching the Imposter Prince toddle by or the Imposter Queen sit at her vanity and brush out her hair. Only when the Faithful Knight passed by the door was it safe to reveal himself, bursting out and shouting “I'm here! I'm here!” as his skittish brother dropped what he was carrying and leapt sideways into the wall. Then Lucien would scamper out to him and beg to be picked up, pleading for them to return to France.

She couldn't imagine anyone, especially someone as vibrant as Lucien, playing here. Far back in her earliest childhood, she could recall grey houses occupied by wailing women on featureless plains. This house felt colder.

The door opened, startling Faye. Professor Deneuve entered and sat on the bed, her voluminous black skirt pooling around her. “I assume you know of the news?”

Faye nodded, pushing aside the frightened questions rising up, forcing them out of mind. “Yeah. I know.”

“And I suppose you know what this is.” Professor Deneuve reached into some hidden pocket of her dress and drew something out. Faye's fingers knew what it was before her eyes did—twitching, needling her to snatch the tarot deck from Professor Deneuve's grasp. She forced herself to put her hand out calmly, but her faerie blood was boiling at the delay. The rational part of her mind, the Faye part, felt like a flimsy cage for a sinewy, primal beast.

When the deck was finally placed in her hand, she was startled by the sudden silence. She hadn't realized how hard her pulse had been pounding. This deck called to her in a way no deck ever had before, in the way that mushroom rings and hawthorn trees called to her. She shuffled, eyes unfocused, concentrating not on finding the strands—for the strands found her fingers, the cards slid amongst themselves in her hands—but simply on the sweetness of shuffling such a deck. “Celtic cross?” she asked herself out loud. “Tetractys?”

“No spreads,” Professor Deneuve said. “You know what to do.” And Faye found that she did, sliding three cards from the top of the deck. Professor Deneuve inhaled audibly as they were flipped. “Exactly as Cyrus found. You have the touch. You are trained in reading these?”

Faye looked down to see what she had turned up. “The Star is... hope,” she said. “The Emperor is stability. And the Queen of Wands is, um, strength... but not just strength. There's more.” Dredging her mind did no good. She leaned forward, examining the card. The queen was illustrated with minuscule brushstrokes, and she gazed back at Faye with defiance. “Passion,” Faye said finally. “Strength through charisma and passion.”

“And?”

Faye shook her head in confusion. “And?”

“What is the warning in the Queen of Wands?”

“Jealousy, selfishness, stubbornness... hey! You said Gérard was the emperor. Are these us?” Faye scowled at Professor Deneuve, uncomfortably aware of how she must look like the queen with the flashing eyes. “I'm guessing I'm not the Star.” Professor Deneuve twitched a smile. “Why do I only have to give the warning reading for me? I suppose Liv and Gérard are absolute paragons?”

“I don't think you suppose that at all,” Professor Deneuve said. “I think you suppose something very different. But instead, suppose their personal growth is not your concern until you have tools for building up as well as tearing down.”

Chapter 5.1--Faye

2009-01-13T16:14:00.000-08:00

Lucien was a wicked storyteller, and had told Faye tales about his childhood so intense that Professor Deneuve's house felt haunted by them. Corners of rooms she had never seen sparked deja vu. She was in Professor Deneuve's bedroom now, had been left unceremoniously there for some time, giving her ample opportunity to explore. When Faye was a child she'd had a deck for the card game Old Maid that she'd kept in a shoebox, under her bed where it haunted her for unknown reasons. Later, in her preteen years, she had stumbled across it and been startled to find it just as chilling. The Old Maid card wasn't comically illustrated like many she had seen, no old lady with a crooked nose and bug eyes who no man could ever love. Instead it was a gentle colored pencil drawing of a woman whose prime had quietly passed her by, gazing alone into a vanity, an old-fashioned brush clasped in her hand as she prepared for a beau who would never come. The beauty that she had clearly once possessed had chilled Faye in its impotence. This room reminded her of that card, down to the vanity with old-fashioned brush and powder box. The curtains were lacy and clearly handmade, the bed with its ornate headboard too large for its single occupant. The dust ruffle sparked a memory—not hers, but Lucien's, but almost like hers thanks to its vividness. Lucien had recounted hiding under that bed almost every day, imagining himself the lost prince of some mythical kingdom called Lockoff, watching the Imposter Prince toddle by or the Imposter Queen sit at her vanity and brush out her hair. Only when the Faithful Knight passed by the door was it safe to reveal himself, bursting out and shouting “I'm here! I'm here!” as his skittish brother dropped what he was carrying and leapt sideways into the wall. Then Lucien would scamper out to him and beg to be picked up, pleading for them to return to France. Gérard would pretend not to understand French, in the hopes of making Lucien practice for school--although when Lucien switched to English Gérard generally truly didn't understand, so these adventures tended to end unsatisfyingly.

Chapter 4.6--Gérard

2009-01-12T23:10:00.000-08:00

He seated himself across the table from her, turning his chair so the side of his head faced her. In his peripheral vision he could see her sit up and lean towards him on her elbows. He ignored her and instead looked towards Vivienne.

"My darlings," Vivienne said softly. "My emperor. My star."

"I'm the star?" Liv asked in hushed delight.

"My star," Vivienne repeated with a slight smile, "my emperor. Finally we are together again. I regret that this is not a happier time."

Gérard traced the wood grain of the table with his fingernail, thinking about Yves in a drifting, disconnected way. The wood grain looked like ripples in a warm amber pond. Vivienne had sparkled when Yves visited. Although she'd never married, she'd always reminded him of a widow. And Yves had lifted her veil on those evenings. He placed a fingertip at the center of a knot, where a stone would have fallen to make those rings.

"It is... so very difficult... when two tragedies visit us together," Vivienne continued. Two? Gérard started. Liv cocked her head, puppylike, her innocence needling Gérard's conscience. "But to have the two fall so close not by chance, but as a prelude to further tragedy--these are dark times to be a dragon. Or to love a dragon."

Liv and Gérard locked eyes. Her eyes were the same glowing honey color as the table. She raised her eyebrows, pleading. Ask her what she's talking about. Take charge. Gérard looked away.

The silence hovered. Gérard stole a glance at Vivienne, who was lost in some twilight of the mind. Liv finally broke the silence, her voice cracking. "There's been another incident? Where did he strike?"

"I thought they caught him!" Gérard burst out. "Someone is still shooting dragons?"

"What?" Liv and Gérard started at each other with a wild blankness.

"Ah-mm!" Vivienne barked. "Would you care to hear what I have to say, or do you like playing junior detectives?"

Gérard looked towards her and clasped his hands. Nothing you could explain or shout could influence Vivienne more than simply being still. Satisfied, she turned to Gérard. "How much do you know?"

"Yves..." he began, and his English failed him. He switched to French, and found little more. "I am sorry, Vivienne. I am so sorry."

Grief fell heavily across Vivienne's face, but also something else. Her eyes widened and her mouth stiffened in something almost like... fear?

"Yves?" Liv whispered, largely unheeded.

"Lucien has been a good boy these last years, n'est-ce pas?" she asked. Gérard nodded, smiling wistfully. The Lucien he saw on TV, accepting awards for bringing peace to the dragon communities of L.A., looking into the camera with bright eyes and a loose grin--it was like a daydream Lucien. The kind of life he had dreamed Lucien would make with this precious gift of escaping the hierarchical French dragon clans. He liked to tell himself that they had somehow done his little brother an injustice in raising him, that there was a golden boy that had waited inside him and was now free. A golden boy who was far removed from the child they had raised, who had gotten strapped, screaming to a bed--a boy a thousand miles away from the one who had done things that still woke Gérard up in cold sweat and hot tears. But he knew in that moment, from Professor Deneuve's face and the way she hesitated--"Gérard..."--that there was only one Lucien. Had only ever been one. "I am so sorry," she said.

Chapter 4.5--Gérard

2008-12-25T21:01:00.001-08:00

The ceiling above the bed was made of chalky white tiles, each covered with a grid of small holes. Some holes were little more than pinpricks, while the rest were nearly big enough to fit a pencil through, and Gérard had spent many hours in this room laying back on the bed as he did now and trying to find a pattern in their distribution. It nagged at his core that the layout could simply be random.

He had swallowed Vivienne's lecture dutifully, a bitter medicine for the fever of hate that had gripped him. Faye herself was simply so horrible that she could not be anything but retribution for some wrong he'd forgotten. But Liv--

Liv's presence even in his thoughts made Gérard squirm. What were you thinking? he snarled at himself. Who did you think you were, trying to treat her like one of your own? Letting her think you could make everything OK? Liv had family, and her family had friends. Lucien and Raoul had no one to care for them, no choice but to depend on a failure. But Liv had relied on him because he let her--encouraged it, even. He'd hoped that one she left Professor Deneuve's she'd left him behind too, but here she was again. And she looked at him with such unbearable hope. This time, at least, she would know what he was up front. She had to be too smart to get attached to him again.

The entire mood of the room suddenly grew grave, and he propped himself up on his elbows to look at Vivienne.

"Do you think," she asked in French, "that you and Liv can be in the same room without anyone needing to cry?"

Gérard gave a half-nod, not meeting her eyes, and followed her out to the dining room. Liv was already sprawled in a chair. She sat like a cat, limbs tucked in awkward configurations that somehow managed to look elegant rather than accidental.

Chapter 4.4--Liv

2008-07-31T22:01:00.000-07:00

Faye was staring at Gérard with her head cocked slightly, her expression caught between confusion, pain and disgust. Liv imagined hers was similar, as when she looked at him he immediately pretended to find cascades of lint to pick off Raoul's shoulders. The relief on his face was painfully earnest when Professor Deneuve interrupted the moment.

“Ah, yes, Gérard,” she said with a satisfied nod. “Yes, I know but one emperor. Gérard and Liv, what will you have for breakfast?”

“What is this emperor deal?” Faye demanded, ignored.

Liv said, “What happened to my eggs?”

“We're out of eggs,” said Professor Deneuve.

“But you were just--”

“Out of eggs.” A glare silenced Liv, but didn't explain what had happened to her eggs.

Gérard sighed. “Let her to eat her eggs.” Then “May I put Raoul to bed? I am large, but he is heavy.” Professor Deneuve indicated the hall.

As soon as he was out of sight, Faye hissed, “Are you retarded? Obviously they bother him.”

It wasn't so obvious to Liv, who looked to Professor Deneuve for reassurance, but she was gazing down the hall after Gérard. “My little emperor,” she murmured.

When he returned, Liv asked him, “Do eggs bother your OCD?” Profesor Deneuve jabbed her in the side, and Liv didn't know why until she saw Faye sneer.

“Hah! A dragon with OCD?” The laugh didn't sound so much the product of amusement as it did like a bark, summoning the pack to a kill and the last sound many ever heard. Professor Deneuve put a comforting hand on Gérard's shoulder.

“Actually,” Liv babbled, trying to reverse course, “it's quite common in dragons. Their love of gold--” Gérard was scowling at the ground, clearly thinking hard. At this his right hand went to the gold chain around his neck, showing a small, lettered ring on each finger, “--is a low-level obsession already and it only takes a very small genetic change to tip it into a full-blown case of OCD.”

Gérard suddenly looked up, and his eyes locked on Faye. He was not yelling, but his voice was unexpectedly loud and strong. “I was good enough for my mother to want me.”

Dead silence flooded the room. Gérard looked at Faye. Professor Deneuve looked at Gérard. Liv looked around. Faye looked at the floor. She had an affected pout, concealing whatever she was really feeling, but the fact that she was concealing it said everything.

The silence was barely broken when Professor Deneuve finally spoke. Rather, she seemed an integral part of it. “Gérard-Cécile de l'Aigu,” she said quietly, “go sit with Raoul. Liv, wait in your room. Faye, you will stay here.”

Gérard and Liv walked down the hallway in silence. Gérard had always been and would always be “Lucien's brother” to Liv, but not in the way he thought. He had always been “Lucien's big brother,” her first hint that a special feeling could be stirred in her by boys—men, rather. His height, his job, and even the peach fuzz that seemed at the time like the manliest of stubble set him miles away from Liv and Lucien and their world of play on the floor. When he'd carried her into the house after the attack, holding her nestled against his chest with blood streaming down his shirt, he'd seemed to her a hero. A legend. A demigod. To see him wounded now was not only heartbreaking, but terrifying. Gently, she reached out to touch the back of his hand.

Slowly he turned to her, brought that hand up to run a finger along her scar. He bit his lip and the hand raised, hovered for a moment as if he would touch her hair—then pulled it away. “I am sorry about that scar,” he mumbled to his feet. “That must have hurt.” He turned abruptly into the room where Raoul was sleeping, closing the door quietly behind him.

Liv stood staring at the closed door for a moment. Lucien had opened up her face that day, but Gérard had soothed a wound she hadn't known could stop hurting. Between food and shelter on her list of basic needs was a little gap where something she didn't understand belonged. She tried to pin it down. It was—well, it was—basically, all she knew was that for that one day it had felt all right.

Chapter 4.3--Liv

2008-07-31T16:11:00.000-07:00

Little had changed in the kitchen in eight years—less than should have, it seemed, except for Profesor Deneuve's formerly stone expression beginning to crumble a little. Liv supposed that she didn't look so great herself, and winced as she instinctively flexed her stiff back at this thought. The question rose again, briefly--How did I get here? but she waved it away. It was so easy to strip away the questions and the bruises left from getting mercilessly beaten by Time, here in the kitchen. Where the curtains were white lace with pinpricks of sunlight shining through, the air smelled and sounded like sizzling eggs, and drawings she did at ten years old, while faded and yellowing, were still taped to the refrigerator.

In her mind Liv rewound the awkward stretching her body had pulled on her, and she was ten years old and her friends were asleep and ready to play when they woke up. And they were still her friends... Liv touched the scar that streaked like a shooting star from the outside corner of her right eyebrow back into her hairline, and her fantasy collapsed. To be ten years old again was to have the great betrayal lurking. She opened her mouth, she was going to ask Professor Deneuve why... then she closed it again. There were no answers coming—this was Professor Deneuve, after all—and to have her question waved away would crush her. Instead she stuck her bare feet out the bottom of the nightgown and smiled at them, wiggling her toes. Then Professor Deneuve turned around, putting the eggs onto a plate, and Liv smiled at her. She never faked a smile—but some were harder to feel sincere about than others. When the doorbell rang she took the opportunity to bolt and hopped off the stool shouting “I'll get it!”

She careened through the kitchen and into the hall, Faye leaning back in her chair to peer after her. “This is the emperor, I suppose,” Faye remarked.

Liv opened the door. On the doorstep was a man holding a child--No, a dragon holding a child she corrected herself, noting his sunglasses and size. The child was really too big to be carried, but if anyone would be carrying him around it was this hulking guy on the doorstep. He was darkhaired and pale, and although on the surface he looked a bit soft, it was obvious that the extra weight was covering a powerful frame. She bitterly noted the iron earring that pinned him to his human form, the culprit behind his slack look. She supposed it was the dragon-sized appetite in a human-sized body that caused all “tagged” dragons to carry a few extra pounds, although she was uncertain of the exact mechanics. Her interests lay in psychology and sociology, not magical biology.

“Who is it?” Professor Deneuve's voice floated in from the kitchen.

“Tell her,” the dragon said, “that it is Raoul and Gérard.”

Liv's eyes narrowed and her hand flew to her scar again. “You're Lucien's brother.”

“You're Lucien's brother?” Faye shouted from the dining room, betraying how closely she was following the exchange.

“I will be always 'Lucien's brother,” Gérard sighed.

Liv shook her head. “Not your Lucien,” she corrected Faye. “Someone I knew when I was little. Lucien is a common name for dragons, you know, thanks to the lucky symbolism of light in their culture. Gérard and Raoul are rare, Gérard especially, suggesting a strong human influence on the local culture or the mother.”

“I was named after my father,” Gérard said, shifting Raoul to his other hip.

“That's also rare,” Liv began, when Faye strolled in and cut her off.

“I needed to know about, um, none of that,” she said. Liv rubbed her face and turned away just in time to catch Gérard blanching.

“Faye Withers,” he said softly. “Yes, your Lucien.”

“Wait, what?” Liv felt a strange warping of her mind as Lucien, acrobat bike-rider and rightful heir to the pretend kingdom of Lockoff, merged with Lucien, shining star of the media and child-killer. Memories bridging the two pressed on Liv's consciousness. His piercing voice keening “CHEATER! DON'T CHEAT!” and then his teeth in her face, not particularly sharp, but enough force to grind into the bone. The newspapers she had seen at each convenience store on her long march to Professor Deneuve's—stark photos of ravaged playground equipment, an uprooted swingset with its back broken and its chains trailing. Suddenly it seemed not only obvious but right that the same mad force was behind both assaults.

Chapter 4.2--Liv

2008-07-26T12:11:00.001-07:00

“The emperor?” Liv asked but Professor Deneuve's moment of clarity was up. She tilted her chin up haughtily and swept into the kitchen. Liv turned her questioning look to Faye, who gazed back at her with a look of no answers. Moments ago she had been a fairy tale in Liv's mind, but the grim ferocity with which she resumed attacking her pancakes tied her not only to the world, but to something buried deep in Liv's heart. Liv leaned forward and softly asked, “Was there never enough food when you were growing up too?” A look flickered into Faye's eyes that Liv was too eager and breathless to notice. She tumbled on: “When I started living with her I used to stash food in my room, but...”

She trailed off, finally unnerved by Faye's unfailing glower. It was not a burning I will stab you with my fork look, the sort Liv remembered and could give herself from living with people in her childhood who were wild and free, but something that made Liv feel afraid and small and cold. It said I will hurt you in ways that you will never understand, because you are gawky and unsophisticated and dumb, but you will never feel good about yourself again. Faye trained this on Liv until she pulled her knees up to her chest and curled into a ball on her chair.

Other questions withered and died inside her. What are the L.A. dragons like? Did you like being in love with one? Their empty husks clogged her mind and left her hunched dumbly. She was roused by Profesor Deneuve re-entering, with a severe white apron over her black dress and two eggs in hand .

“Would you like the toast also?” Liv nodded. Profesor Deneuve surveyed the scene laid out at her dining room table, a scowl slowly looming. “Come help me in the kitchen, mon petit chou”

Years of being away had deluded Liv into expecting some word of commentary from Profesor Deneuve as they entered the kitchen. But her memory was refreshed by a silent hand on her shoulder, guiding her to a chair, the fingers brushing her neck in butterfly kisses as they came away. The recreation of the old tableau—Liv perched on a stool, watching the wispy tail of Profesor Deneuve's bun dance at the back of her neck as she bent over the sizzling pan—told Liv everything she needed to know about love and loyalty.

Chapter 4.1--Liv

2008-07-23T17:55:00.000-07:00

Liv woke up from the strangest dream. She had grown to a rangy, distrustful adulthood in the burrows of an austere gnome sect. But here she was, in Professor Deneuve's big guest bed. The sun was making the curtains glow, the sheets smelled lemon-fresh, she was ten years old, and it was time to start camp at Naissance University. With a smile she went to roll out of bed and OH GOD WHY WAS HER BODY ON FIRE?

Liv paused, stiffening so not a muscle would move. Her face and arms burned on the surface, while beneath her nightgown the pain ran in torrents under her skin. Her situation aligned itself now—the journey from gnome burrow back to the room of her childhood had not been the product of simply waking up. She had marched across the desert. She rolled over again, suffused with the same burning, but this time it burned of triumph. She lay back and grinned briefly before sitting up, roaring in satisfaction at the pain in her back. “GYAAH!” she shouted. “RAWR! YAAH!” The room was just as she remembered it, morning sun illuminating the rose-colored bedspread, the bookcase of crinkled old books, and the glass of water Professor Deneuve had put on the nightstand in case she woke up thirsty in the night. Liv hadn't felt like this in a long time, but the feeling had long been waiting to spread its warm fingers through her again. Cozy.

Cozier still was the appearance of Professor Deneuve in the doorway. “Come say hello to Faye.”

“Faye?”

Professor Deneuve gave Liv a look that said You know, Faye. “What are you having for breakfast?”

“Um.” Liv stood up, savoring the strain in her muscles, and padded after her. She was in a nightgown, she realized suddenly, a white satiny one that smelled of powder and old books and Professor Deneuve. She didn't remember putting it on. As a matter of fact, she didn't remember making it to the house at all. Memory lapses were a serious hazard at Professor Deneuve's, as she had never seemed to believe much in context. From her behavior, Liv and this Faye person could have become best friends last night, or Faye could be somebody Liv had never even heard of. She didn't know any Fayes. But as she entered the kitchen--”Oh. That Faye.” Again she looked to Professor Deneuve, wondering if her memory lapse blotted out some rational explanation for why the girl previously known to her from lurid tabloid photos was eating pancakes at the breakfast table. “Eating” being a loose approximation for the rabid devouring that Liv had never before seen in a sentient or even domestic animal—except for the one time Mama Etta had tried to shame her by putting a mirror across the table. This image clashed against her other sparse imagery of Faye Withers: dancing, trying on clothes, falling in love with a prominent member of the dragon glitterati. She settled down in the chair opposite Faye and watched her with a naturalist's curiosity. Here is Faye Withers, enjoying her morning meal. Note the left hand gripping the edge of the table, the head bowed low, the way she glares at our intrepid observer over the relentless plate-to-mouth-to-plate journey of her fork. Liv was captivated.

Professor Deneuve was apparently observing Liv as keenly as Liv was observing Faye, as she interjected “I should hire you two a governess if we ever hope to dine in polite company.” Liv caught an impression of gentle teasing from her voice that was bolstered only by her own experience, as the accompanying expression was perfectly even. “What are you having for breakfast? We have one more guest on the way.”

“Who?” Liv asked before she could contain herself.

To her surprise, Professor Deneuve did not ignore her, and her smile was of the rare wry variety rather than haughty. “I don't know yet,” she said. “The Emperor.”

Chapter 3.3--Gérard

2008-07-23T17:52:00.000-07:00

The day before, Gérard would have described fear as an old friend. A lover, almost. Clinging by his side, casually suggesting Maybe you left the windows open when you left for work today or Was that really syrup you put on Raoul's pancakes? He thought that he'd reached an uneasy truce with fear; that there was a point where a man came to an understanding with fear or it carried him into the night. The rituals—buying BROWN syrup and BLUE dishsoap (because even tasting wasn't safe; who knew whether there was a kind of dishsoap that tasted just like syrup?) nailing the windows shut—those must count for something right? But that must have been worry that he grudgingly hosted, or anxiety. Because here was fear, a heavy hand weighing on the back of his neck, saying your rituals can't scare me away. Just like old times—it's just you, me, and a long walk in the dark. Nothing you do will light your path.

This was the feeling that turned him inside out and left him puddled within his own shell. The blind walk, hoping there was ground under each step. The steps carried him towards work, there was his clockwork heart again speeding him along down the dorm halls, but after that what? The formerly orderly world had broken loose around him and was drifting by in ominous shreds. The only absolute truth, the absolute good, was slumbering in his arms and Gérard clung to him tightly. He paused for a moment, closing his eyes, pressing Raoul close to him until Raoul squirmed sleepily with a kitten-like squeak. In his mind, gun-wielding figures swam through the unsteady reality.

“Gérard!” The fear that had simply been weighing on him suddenly grew crushing. He forced his shoulder between Raoul and the voice, ready to fight, bolt, or take a bullet with his chest. “Gérard, it's Chrys. Breathe.” He closed his eyes and complied, a gasping moan grinding in his chest. “Go home.” Gérard opened his eyes and peered down at Chrys, who he had initially overlooked. An Earthfolk lady (colloquially referred to by humans as an “elf”) was practically underfoot to a dragon. Well, barely up to his rib cage at least. Everyone was practically underfoot to Gérard, who not only brushed against the tops of human doorways but spent most of his time buried deep in his own thoughts.

Chrys had never seemed to realize that she was the tiny one, though, chirpily mothering her staff of all sizes as Head of Housekeeping. Now she gazed up at Gérard, concern overriding her normally irrepressible smile. “I gave Josette”--the other dragon on the staff--”the day off too, maybe longer while Security figures out what we can do for you guys. Can you go somewhere safe?” An excellent question. Gérard suddenly remembered his house, unchecked and unsecured, and began to hyperventilate. “Breathe, Gérard,” Chrys said, socking him lightly in the leg. “Use your watch.”

Gérard shifted Raoul to his hip and looked at his watch, dragging out his breaths to match the sweep of the second hand. He did have somewhere to go, he realized as his mind settled. His first instinct was to push the thought away. As soon as he had been able to support himself and the boys, he had never asked her for another thing. He was always a burden in due time, but damn if he didn't haul himself as far as he possibly could. He continued to steady his breathing, fighting twin battles against his body and his mind. To go back and ask for help now... (inhale two three four five) She'd been so good to him he could scream. (or exhale two three four five). That is, looking back at everything she had done for him. But then her manner at their first meeting. (inhale two three four five)

He'd been sitting by a road, a child in his arms and a backpack slung over his back much like today. The coincidence didn't even strike him, looking back. It just seemed like the natural order of things. The California sun was a newfound enemy, and his face was beginning to feel stiff and crispy. He wiggled his nose and squinted down the empty road, lumbering to his feet and putting out a thumb as a car crested the hill. Gérard was big even then at fourteen, but not to the point that there was no hope at all of being picked up. He was ungainly and a bit shaggy, and people tended to look back over their shoulders at him as they tried to figure out his story. An oversized young teenager was scary, but only if you stopped for him. An oversized young teenager holding a child on the side of the road in the middle of the desert was scary in a more fundamentally disturbing way.

Still, he hoped it somehow seemed safer, and without anything else to hold onto he grimly savored this thought. Desperate optimism turned to genuine hope as the car slowed, and as she rolled down her window the clicking of door locks made his knees almost buckle. She was about his mother's age, with a similar severity of hairstyle and expression. She said something in English, which he barely understood, but her voice implied great impatience. It also implied that she was French.

He burst out something joyful and babbling in French, at which point her expression folded a bit into something that was not exactly a smile, but certainly suggested one. “Get in.” She sounded as if not only had she been expecting him, but he was late. His pride prickled him at the thought of dragging his dusty, sweaty body across the seat of her black sedan that smelled new even from here, but she clearly considered it a grave inconvenience for him not to accept. He piled in, child and backpack with him, and fairly collapsed on the seat. He didn't know where they were going, but for once he would be able to find out. The overwhelming safety, the luxury of being out of the hot sun and with somebody he could speak to, overcame him and he began to cry. She gave him a sharp look in the rearview mirror that said Why didn't you come to me sooner?

As Gérard's breathing steadied and Chrys shook him, repeating “Do you have a safe place?” his pride's demands faded into a distant droning. Stronger was the memory of that piercing look, without pity, reminding him once again not to be a damn fool. Honestly, child. Get in.

Chapter 3.2--Gérard

2008-07-15T14:14:00.000-07:00

Gérard searched the page, but saw nothing that might explain. At last, he turned to the headline. Professor he knew from French, and from Vivienne’s mail. S… l… he sounded out. a and i together say é… n. Slain? Yves? He tucked the newspaper under his arm and strode back into the bedroom, caressing and even yanking the hallway treasure strings in his anxiety, and gently shook Raoul awake.

Raoul rolled onto his back and squinted, wrinkling his nose in puppyish disgust. “I’m tired, Gérard.”

“What does this say?” Gérard demanded in French, waving the newspaper.

Also in French, “It’s blurry. Later.” Raoul tried to pull the blanket up over his face, but Gérard snatched Raoul’s glasses off the nightstand and pressed them into his hand.

”It’s important. Read me it.” He pointed to the headline above the photo. “Professor Slain, Racial Motives Suspected.” Gérard bit into his lip until blood began to seep onto his tongue. So Yves was dead, and why? He gestured for Raoul to read the story and sat down on the bed, pulling his brother into his lap in a tumble of arms and legs.

A young man had walked onto Naissance, the very campus where Gérard worked, and interrupted a meeting between Vivienne and Yves. The man had asked to speak alone with Yves. He wished to get a dragon’s perspective, he said, regarding the recent current events. Yves had obliged and asked Vivienne to get coffee for the three of them. When she returned, Yves had a gunshot wound to the head. The young man only cited Lucien’s recent atrocity, then stood by calmly while Vivienne called the police. He was now in custody and awaiting trial. Yves, of course, was dead.

Cited Lucien’s recent atrocity. Gérard wanted Raoul to read it again, to make sure he’d heard correctly, but didn’t want to draw his attention.

“That’s not very exciting,” Raoul said. “There is no mystery at all. They caught the perpetrator. I want to go back to sleep.”

“Go back to sleep,” Gérard said, rolling Raoul gently back onto the bed. He rose, animated by fear, then went to the kitchen where he turned off the toaster oven and carefully rewrapped the pizzas to be frozen again. He put them in the freezer, then returned to the toaster oven to make sure it was off. It was. Back into the room, where he began poking under the bed. “Where is your backpack, Raoul?”

“Closet.”

He found the backpack and bundled in a pair of pants, shirt, clean underwear, socks, shoes… he held one of Raoul’s shoes for a moment and stared at it. Sometimes ten seemed almost like an adult, especially with Raoul’s “little wise man” demeanor, but it suddenly seemed impossibly young and the shoe impossibly small. He put the shoes in the bag, followed by Raoul’s glasses and the detective novel they sat on. Then he dumped the contents on the floor, checked it, and put it back. He dressed in his housekeeping uniform hurriedly, checked the backpack a third time, and slung it over his shoulder. Ten minutes until work started. He’d never been late yet.

As he wrapped Raoul in the sheet he tucked the teddy bear in against his chest. It had been his, brought over from France before Raoul was hatched. Gérard lifted his little brother and held him tightly to his chest for a long moment. His shoulders peeked out of the impromptu mummy wrap, rockets arcing across the patterned blue pajamas that were getting hard to find in the appropriate size; his head lolled against Gérard’s neck. Gérard absently reached for the treasures as he passed through the hallway, but his mind was truly on his precious burden. He even passed by the toaster oven without stopping to make sure it was off. The door, likewise, he locked only once. Toaster oven, burn the house down, it’s empty now. Door, let in burglars, there is nothing to steal. House, I always feared you couldn’t protect him. God, please tell me I can.

Chapter 3.1--Gérard

2008-07-15T14:12:00.001-07:00

Gérard always woke up surprised. Surprised, and a little disappointed, that he had not run down like clockwork in the night. He lay flat on his back in bed, imagining a coiled spring in his heart ticking down to its eventual collapse. The idea of helping it along drifted into mind, and as usual he watched it with dispassionate curiosity. Each beat served only to take his bone-tired body another step further through the motions of the day. In 45 minutes—3,150 heartbeats—he’d be scrubbing out a dorm toilet so human kids six years younger than him at most could puke drunkenly in peace. And 24 hours after that—100,800 heartbeats—he’d be doing it again. Supposing he was unlucky enough to live to eighty, he had approximately two million heartbeats left, and they seemed so very unnecessary. Being alive was inefficient.

Then, as he did every morning, he rolled onto his side and remembered why he kept going.

Although the house became a kiln in the August heat, Gérard’s little brother Raoul refused to sleep without a cover. He sprawled beneath the sheet, ragdoll-like, sleeping with an abandon that Gérard both envied and treasured. He leaned over and planted a kiss on Raoul’s bird-nest of hair before sitting up and bracing himself for the day.

He slouched down the hallway, brushing through the poor-dragon’s-hoard of pop tops and other trinkets strung from the ceiling. He missed a string of doorknobs and paused, straining back until his fingertips brushed brass, then cracked a satisfied smile. Continuing into the kitchen he saw a message scrawled in French on the Brother Board. I want tiny pizzas please! he sounded out slowly. The closing didn’t take any sounding out—Love, Raoul-Cécile de l’Aigu. Vivienne had recently taught Raoul to sign his name in cursive and every letter was excessively flourished.

Nodding to no one, Gérard went to the freezer and found some English muffin pizzas he’d frozen over the weekend. He put them in the toaster oven, prodding them with a fingertip until they were each aligned with a bar of the rack running perfectly down the center. He closed the door and pressed the toast button, then opened it quickly to adjust the pizzas one last time. He closed it, peered apprehensively through the steaming-up glass, then went to the door to continue the morning ritual.

Vivienne continued to buy Gérard subscriptions to the newspaper in the hopes he would try to learn to read English. More frequently he pulled out the comics for Raoul, then became cross when he saw them lying around and found he couldn’t even read the speech bubbles. The rest piled up in the corners until his next frenzied clean sweep.

His first thought on seeing the front page of the newspaper was to wonder whether he still looked like that. In the photo he and his two brothers posed with one of Vivienne’s friends, a heavily bearded pun aficionado who taught at an upper-end East Coast college and used to visit from time to time. The teenage Gérard in the picture had the look of someone with an abyss whispering in his ear. So haunted was he by this spectre, that it took a while for him to reach the obvious question—why was he on the front page of the newspaper?

Chapter 2.4--Faye

2008-07-11T18:27:00.002-07:00

Aristide strode ahead, showing the way with grand sweeping gestures. Faye's sodden slippers slapped against the floor as she trotted to keep up. "I know my way around," she said crossly, picking up speed and pulling ahead. She was not about to let Aristide present her like some guest. A hissing sound made her turn around and Aristide glided ahead in dragon form, tail slithering along the dusty concrete. She caught ahold of it and vaulted onto his back, eliciting a snarl that degraded into a sigh. She patted his shoulder and grinned as a grumble rolled around the cavern of his chest. The laugh that was to follow was strangled in her throat, though, as they turned the corner into the throne room.

At the height of the dragon government, it had seemed reasonable to call the top floor of an abandoned parking garage "the throne room." It had been a carnival of sins, all the best ones, dancing girls and air swollen with music and Aristide poised beside the throne in human or dragon form like an exotic guard dog. The police had taken the stereos and the throne for evidence, and opportunists had taken the rest. Shreds of metallic cloth left tiny glimmers of color in the otherwise colorless man-made cavern. Aristide had made a sad attempt at an impromptu throne, a pile of garbage with a chair atop it, and the chair's occupant was looking like a cheap mock-up himself.

Lucien. Throne room or garbage heap, Faye knew the fierce eyes and disingenuously careless cascade of blond hair. For a bittersweet instant, she imagined that she had finally achieved the faerie birthright of astral projection and was throwing herself in his lap while her body looked dumbly on. But actually all of her was gaping, body and soul. He stared back, straining forward on his unsteady perch, breath whistling through his teeth.

Again, Faye fought against whatever rooted her to the spot. Fear? Shock? A worry that actually throwing herself on him and burying her face in his neck, taking in his smell and his taste and his feel, would be a pathetic sketch of what she was imagining? She wasn't surprised that he was here; she'd known all along. Aristide was bringing her to see him. She was stunned by the Lucien-ness of him, a sensation that couldn't be remembered but only felt.

Lucien rose to his feet, eyes still riveted on her, and stepped sure-footedly down the pile of rubble that supported his throne. Faye stepped back nervously, but was pushed forward again by Aristide as Lucien barrelled towards her. She was surprised to find herself floored not by the physical impact, but by the emotional one as he collapsed softly into her arms. Although she knew that every inch of him was loaded with force--she could feel him tensing and shaking in her arms like a bottled hurricane--he was a small young man by any standards and as he buried his face in her chest she was able to kiss the nape of his neck.

The scent was intoxicating. It took her back to riding on Aristide's back to go look at colleges, Lucien steadying himself with only his knees as he held Faye's hands tightly around his waist.

It had seemed like life had resolved itself then, like the end of a movie. All the threads that had not been tied up--Faye's mother, why Lucien never took dragon form--had fallen away, no longer entangling them. But now they strangled her more tightly than ever.

She squeezed Lucien hard, seeking a word or feeling to take her back. "We could still have had this," she whispered.

Lucien ripped out of her embrace and reared back, glowering. "So then you are ditching me." He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. Aristide took in a sharp breath behind her, but whether in sympathy or excitement she couldn't tell.

"I think you ditched me first," Faye said, brave words, but her tone came out wheedling and she tried to twist out of his grasp. He clamped her elbows to her sides. "You killed children!" she squealed. "That's the end of the line! Don't you see I can't follow you?"

Lucien released her and began stalking in tight circles. "Those kids' families had never been hurt. Isn't that what you wanted? Knock the humans off their throne?"

He's not even close. Did he understand what she wanted once, and was just warping facts now to the black shape of his own obsession? Or did he never understand? "You know I'd do anything--"

"So stay with me."

"For the right cause, Lucien! Not killing children!"

Lucien turned abruptly and slouched back to his throne. "Nothing so great about children," he grumbled. "When we struck, they were all standing around harassing a fat kid."

"And the fat kid?" Faye arched an eyebrow and held it there, fighting off waves of shivers.

"If there was a fatter kid than him, he'd be doing the taunting."

"Oh, come on," Faye sighed. "Now you're just--"

"If you're not staying, get out of here," Lucien interrupted. He stretched himself back in his rickety chair.

Faye looked at Aristide. "Walk home," he snapped. "Or have daddy send a car."

"Take her home, Aristide!"

As soon as they were out of sight of Lucien, Faye began to shake violently. She kept waiting for Aristide to say something so she could say "I'm just cold," but he never did. As they climbed to the window, Faye said softly, "Do you wish he didn't do it?"

"What are we wishing on?" Aristide asked as he pulled her up behind him. "A star? A well? I hear lamps are most reliable, but the genie will get you every time."

"Knock it off." Years of dealing with the media had left Faye with a high tolerance for bullshit when necessary but very little appreciation for it.

"Fine. Do you know what I wish for?" A tone of wistful sincerity froze Faye. "I wish I had a very large chocolate cookie, the size of your head. With Aristide written in frosting." He sighed. And then, quieter: "Maybe even Aristide-Josette de l'Aveugle, but I try not to be greedy." He gripped Faye in his arms, and she felt something like affection beginning to kindle. This very quickly soured in her chest. Aristide will die by Lucien. Was it a faerie premonition, or just glaringly obvious? By his hand, his word, or simply caught in the crossfire--but Lucien will have Aristide's blood on his hands. And maybe that of all the dragons under his reign. "Can we go to Naissance College?" she pleaded.

"No." Aristide leapt, turning into a dragon and taking to the air without further ceremony.

"I'll buy you a coffee at that place near the school," Faye insisted, thinking of Professor Deneuve's steady words and warm kitchen. "It's been a long night."

Aristide moaned. "It's getting longer." But he banked eastward, and they flew towards the sickly dawn.

Chapter 2.3--Faye

2008-07-11T18:27:00.001-07:00

“Did you really hate me this much, Aristide?” Faye asked as the nausea trickled up her chest. “Honestly?”

“I did.” Aristide evened out suddenly, spreading his wings to catch a draft and sending Faye's head spinning in the opposite direction. He dipped his snout slightly, indicating blue and red lights blinking far below. “Quiet now.”

Faye recognized the part of town by sight, having come in this way hundreds of times, an also by the smell. Dragons had a metallic, sulfurous smell that was nearly imperceptible on an individual but hung in the air wherever they gathered. “Here?”

Aristide shook her sharply, snapping her limbs up to crack against his chest and stomach. “Quiet!” Faye's limbs flopped down gain, her palms stinging where they'd hit his nail-like belly plates. Never mind, Aristide never knows what's going on anyway.

Faye studied the police cars surrounding the abandoned parking garage. The ground bristled and seethe with uncountable police officers incomprehensibly far below her. What would happen if she screamed? They must have iron-tipped bullets in those guns; you didn't go into dragon country without them. She was prudent enough to follow that line of thinking through and had a sudden image of Aristide, switched back to human form by the iron in his side, plummeting. The thought made a secret smile pull at her mouth, until--What is that in imaginary-falling-Aristide's arms? Oh yes, it is imaginary-falling-Faye.. Not that she feared death, but there were better places to die than in Aristide's repulsive embrace. Then, of course, there was Lucien. Oh Lucien. Faye sighed and made a zip my lip motion.

They banked, circling the garage, and Faye wondered if Aristide had a plan for getting in. As long as they stayed high up, they were safe. It was a rare human who could recognize America's Second Most Wanted Dragon by silhouette alone, and dragons flew by almost constantly in this corner of Los Angeles. The dawn was sending creamy warnings up in the east but had not yet begun to illuminate anything. When they passed by the garage and began to bank again Faye craned to look at Aristide's face, which was suddenly thrust forward into the sticky night air as he beat his wings until the air reverberated around them. They were flying faster than Faye had ever seen him fly, and were poised to shoot right into a blank wall.

Abruptly Faye found herself not gliding through the air gripped in Aristide's claws, but wrapped in his arms. Her face was pressed into a thick wool sweater the texture and smell of a used kitchen sponge, blocking her view, but her inner ear told her there was far more downward motion than she would like. Revulsion fought with terror as she half-struggled, half-clung—but that thought process was cut off by the inevitable. Aristide released her a moment before impact and she could hear him skidding away at an angle as she skimmed across the ground and was eventually brought to a rolling stop by the friction between concrete and body. She could hear him wheezing a few yards away.

I think my lungs are inside out, she thought, eyes still closed. The pajamas and skin she'd left in a bleeding trail behind her had not yet been reported missing to her brain, nor had she noticed that they had fallen somewhat less than the five stories she'd expected. As her breathing required less attention and the rest of her body demanded more, she slowly opened her eyes. The first thing she noticed was that the blank wall was apparently not as blank as she had thought. A window smaller around then a person crouching sent a beam of moonlight directly over her head. She rolled onto her stomach, her skinned shoulder peeling off the ground with an angry missive to her nervous system. She closed her eyes and rested on one elbow, waiting for the pain to recede, then opened them and looked around for Aristide.

He was standing where the moonbeam splashed over the ground, manipulating each limb gingerly with a grimace. Aristide's human form was the very picture of “grizzled,” a cowboy, a pirate and a battered old soldier all in one. He touched his magnificent handlebar mustache with just as much care as his neck and cocked an eyebrow at her. “You're lucky you only have to do that once,” he said, and Faye felt an unwanted flush of tenderness.

“He's awfully hard on you,” she said softly, “Isn't he?”

Aristide shrugged, wincing slightly. Just as softly he replied, “He's the boss-dragon. I do what I'm told.” He averted his eyes, brushing off thick canvas pants and sweater that Faye now realized were chosen to survive impact, and when he looked up again she could see nothing but his usual bravado and venom. “You're awfully hard on me. You ate one more dessert, we'd be splattered against that wall right now.” He jerked his head in the direction of the darkness. “Let's go.”

Chapter 2.2--Faye

2008-07-11T18:26:00.001-07:00

Faye looked around again, but she knew there was nothing to use as a weapon. Her room looked like the world's sweetest dream had exploded in there. The pink-shag-covered television had seemed like a good idea when the camera crew was covering her sweet sixteen, but now it looked as ineffective as she felt.

Aristide lunged again, forcing his other leg and half his torso through the window frame. Faye began to throw books at his head but he just snarled in annoyance and swiped for her. “The boss wants to see you,” he snarled. “Let's go!”

“I showed him how to use email,” Faye snapped, but there was no way out of this. Honestly, there was no way out. “Fine, if I come with you willingly, can we cut a deal?”

Aristide dug his claws into the floor and pulled himself further into the room. His wings split the sides of the window frame ad unfurled, puncturing her water bed with a bony tip. Water began to pour onto the floor, making swirling floes of glass. “No.”

“Will you give me time to get dressed?” Faye gestured to the thin pajama pants and spaghetti-strap top she was wearing.

“No.”

Faye crouched and picked up a long sliver of glass, holding the edge carefully. “You're already going to get scars from him for taking so long, do you really want scars from me too?” She stepped in place uneasily as water began to seep into her slippers. “Come on, just--”

He lunged again, grabbing her leg. She stabbed at his forefoot with the glass, but it hit his skin and dispersed as easily as a stream of water. “We're leaving,” he snarled. Faye had the horrible realization that if he pulled she would fall onto her back and be dragged across the deadly floor.

“I'm coming, I'm coming!” she squealed. “Go to the window and I'll climb on.”

He folded his wings and backed out, turning his head to fix one eye on her like a bird of prey. She held up her hands and approached him ready to climb onto his back.

His forefoot shot out and closed around her waist, and they were airborne.

Faye slapped helplessly at his foot. “Come on, what are you doing?” she shrieked, painfully aware of what a damsel-in-distress she sounded like.

Aristide chuckled. “I don't think the boss will be too broken up if you claim I mistreated you.”

The ground whipped by Faye dizzyingly far below and unnervingly fast, but she knew Aristide wouldn't drop her unless he wanted to. Boy, I'd better stay important. “Can I at least turn so if I vomit it goes straight down?”

“Mmm...” Aristide was thinking, rumbling only inches from where he held her face. Don't think, just say yes. Faye was thinking herself, about her first ride on Aristide's back. She had puked on his neck. She suspected that same incident was on the top of his mind. “No.” He tucked in his wings and went into a barrel roll.

Chapter 2.1--Faye

2008-07-11T18:25:00.001-07:00

Faye shuffled the tarot deck, feeling gingerly for the strands of energy humming from card to card. It was one of the best decks that could be bought with money, and if she were full faerie the deck would practically have been shuffling itself. But she took after his father and his heavy human mind. Her mother's genetic influence, like her memory, tended to flit coyly in and out of view. Faye closed her eyes and strained to feel where her fingers should fall next. Fanning, riffling, ordering... What does college have in store for me? she asked, and her fingers found a new place to cut. A shadow passed over the moon briefly, distracting her, making her mind hitch and letting thoughts of Lucien come flooding in. The cards went dead in her hands.

“Goddammit, Lucien!” She wanted to snarl, throwing the deck, but no depth of feeling could compare with the muscle memory from years of mugging for the camera. Instead she whined, dropping the deck. Zing went her anger, the true boiling feeling, and the Devil card shout out and landed face-up on the desk. The tattooed figure simpered at her, green eyes mocking. She flipped it face down and threw herself onto the waterbed with a practiced, soulless sigh. The impact kicked up waves that tossed her around and sent stuffed animals cascading onto her. She closed her eyes as the wild waves calmed and began to rock her gently. Goddamn you, Lucien, she thought. Goddamn I miss you.

Suddenly she opened her eyes, fixing them on the window. No trees blocked it, and it was a cloudless night. She was on the third floor ad the grounds were secured with alarms and guards anyway. What blocked the moon?

She leapt to her feet and bolted to the window, slamming it shut. An instant later, a dragon slammed against the side of the house.

His claws ground against the walls with a stomach-lurching rasp, finding footholds in trellises and window boxes, and his wings beat furiously for extra leverage. His eyes rolled in a head the size of a trash can and then fixed on Faye. She backed away, glancing around for something made of iron. I probably should have planned for this earlier.

The dragon reared back and Faye ducked behind her bed, narrowly dodging the spray of glass as the dragon slammed his head and a foreleg through the window. She glanced at the door, then had a sudden image of the dragon pursuing her down the hall to where her dad and stepmom's twins were sleeping. One way or another, this needed to end here.

She stepped out from behind the bed, thankful suddenly for her mink-lined slippers as the floor glittered with shards of light. “Aristide, you jackass, look what you've done to my room.”

Chapter 1--Liv

2008-07-11T18:20:00.000-07:00

Liv picked up a T-shirt off the rack. It was a white one, with a lizard and cactus in fluorescent green and orange for tourists who missed having their retinas abused once they were away from the desert sun. “Happy birthday to you,” she crooned softly in her deepest voice. “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Livvy, happy birthday to you.” Still in the mock baritone she said, “Make a wish or I'll have baked this cake for nothing.” Then, in her own voice, “You baked a cake for me? I haven't had a birthday cake in eight years!”

“Are you talking to yourself again, Coyote Face?” Mama Etta demanded, bustling up and shaking a gossip magazine at her. “People gonna start dropping their crazies off at the burrow. Think we're running a home.” Etta, small even for a gnomess, reached up to prod Liv in the stomach with her magazine. “And put that shirt down before you break it. Your mama only sent enough money to buy clothes, not to pay damages for everything you drop.”

“I don't do that anymore,” Liv insisted, but she put the shirt back even as she complained. The clerk, human, peeled his eyes of the dusty TV with the coat hanger antenna long enough to give her half a wary look. Liv supposed it was tough to get too upset about a tourist trap shack of magnets and novelty shot glasses. Maybe whoever owned the store had lovingly built it up. Maybe he even visited from time to time. But for the people who lived and worked in the desert, miles of nothing but heat and dirt had bleached out any real force of will they may have been born with. Liv tried to send the clerk a commiserating look, but he had turned back to the television. “My dad has that shirt,” she pointed out. “Did he buy it when he visited you?”

“Forgive me for not tracking your father's wardrobe.” Mama Etta leaned against a display of bumper stickers and opened her magazine. “And forgive our poor race for not being able to provide you with the luxurious pastries you humans consider your birthright.”

Liv flushed. “Sorry,” she whispered. She began browsing the clothing rack, looking for something that would not puff out around her like a parachute whenever the wind blew. Sometimes it felt like she had more than the allotted number of knees and elbows, and although years of training had taught them to work in tandem rather than jump into the middle of whatever she was doing, that didn't make clothing fit her sticklike frame any better. She had taken to wearing children's shirts to cut down on the fabric billowing around her, and she could have fit a gnomeling in the seat of her jeans with her. She was choosing between a “To gnome me is to love me” shirt and a “gnome sweet gnome” shirt when a voice coming from the TV resonated with something buried in her memory. She dropped he silly shirts and circled around to peer over the clerk's shoulder.

Professor Deneuve was older than Liv remembered, of course, but she looked older even than she should have. Her face was slack and dispassionate but her voice quavered like a village ancient's. “Now is the time to reach out to the dragons more than ever,” she said, and Liv felt a tightness moving through her body. Her teeth ground together.

“Mama Etta, what's happening?” she said softly. The clerk shushed her.

“Faye Withers dumped Lucien de l'Aigu and nobody knows why,” Etta responded. In a move that startled herself, Liv stamped herself. “What's happening in the world where people do things other than sleep, spend and screw?”

Mama Etta's mouth fell open and her eyes glowed with scorn. “You do not talk to me like that, Coyote Face. You are here under my charity.”

“Shut up!” hissed the clerk.

“This is not the work of a race,” Professor Deneuve said. “This is the work of a madman.” She bit her lip and a light glinted off something in the corner of her eye. A battery of camera flashes lit up the screen. Vivienne Deneuve showing emotion was journalism gold. And it sucked the breath right out of Liv's chest.

She leaned her against the counter, gasping a bit to compose herself, then she straightened up. “I need to use the bathroom,” she said with as much resolve as if she had said I may not come back alive. “Can I have the money so I can buy my clothes when I get back?”

Mama Etta fished in her pocket and held out a crumpled fifty. “Faye has barely been partying at all. And here's a photo of her leaving her father's house and crying.” She didn't bother to show Liv the photo.

“Thank you, Mama Etta.” Liv did not, in fact, consider cake her right. Before she lived with the gnomes she had learned that even food was a privilege. Mama Etta had always given her enough to eat, if nothing else. Impulsively, Liv leaned in and kissed her between the coiled braids. Mama Etta nodded, taking it as her due. “Bathroom's around the back,” the clerk said. He tossed Liv a key.

As soon as Liv was out of view, she dropped the key where they'd be sure to find it. She stretched briefly, cracking her back, and began to walk.

As the little store receded down the road behind her, Liv felt the bonds of obligation stretching tight. She had never wanted, physically. Maybe she should have left the fifty.

A coyote loped by, unusual during the day. “What?” Liv remarked. “Did Mama Etta tell you we're sisters? Sorry, this Coyote Face is traveling alone.” There was a twinge at that last word, as the possibility of going back snapped. “You've done this a lot,” she commented to the coyote. “Is this what it feels like to be free? I imagined this a lot over the years, but I didn't expect it to feel so... um... empty?”