“I’ve been examining the Covenant’s records on this area going back several hundred years—”

A needle of jealousy stabbed me in the chest. We’re lucky when the family records extend back to my great-great-grandparents arriving in America. “There’s a luxury some of us don’t have,” I muttered.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.” I started wrapping my right ankle, trying not to let irritation make the job turn sloppy. “What did you find in the records?”

Dominic paused portentously, and said, “I believe there is a dragon sleeping under this city.”

I fell on my ass.

Ten

“A lady is never truly embarrassed. And if she is, a lady is never gauche enough to leave survivors.”

—Evelyn Price

The upstairs storage room of an unnamed and highly questionable diner

FIVE MINUTES, A HASTILY-COMPLETED WRAPPING JOB, and a pair of jeans later, I was sitting atop an antique stove and running my weapon checks, watching Dominic out of the corner of my eye. He was pacing back and forth along the length of the room, his steps thudding in an almost martial rhythm. It was a stable enough beat to be soothing, and there was a decent chance that he’d hit a rotten patch and fall through the floor into the diner below us. That kept it interesting.

“There’s one major problem with your ‘solution,’” I said. “Dragons are extinct. The Covenant wiped them out centuries ago.”

Dominic favored me with a look of withering disdain. “Did we?”

“Hello, not the one who writes the propaganda, remember? But, yeah, according to everything I’ve ever read and everyone I’ve ever talked to, human or cryptid.” If the dragons were still alive, the dragon princesses would know about it—they’d have to know, since all the old bestiaries claimed that the two species lived in a sort of symbiosis. If there were still dragons, the dragon princesses probably wouldn’t be working in strip clubs and living in neighborhoods just this side of demilitarized zones.

“Nonetheless, it seems that a few may have escaped extermination.”

I looked up from securing my ankle holster, fixing him with a disgusted stare. “Here’s a tip: wiping out a sentient species isn’t ‘extermination.’ It’s genocide. Get your terminology straight.”

“Dragons fed on humans.”

“When humans went into their caves to steal their stuff, you’re damn right they did! If the dragons had been from Texas, they would’ve gotten awards from the homeowners’ association, not a gang of medieval vigilantes looking to skin their asses.”

Dominic looked at me blankly. “What does Texas have to do with anything?”

“Wow, they didn’t give you any cultural acclimatization before they dropped you here, did they? Did the Covenant want you to get eaten?” I slid off the stove. “Okay, so fine, let’s assume you’re right, and everything we thought we knew is wrong, and there’s a dragon sleeping somewhere under the city of New York.” I paused. “Not the entire city, or even a borough, right? Just a few blocks or something? Because I don’t think I’m equipped to deal with a dragon that’s actually the size of New York.” A dragon the size of Manhattan was too much to think about, especially if there was a chance it was hostile. The old family story about Grandma taking on an entire hive of Apraxis wasps with nothing but some concussion grenades aside, we’re taught never to go up against impossible odds if there’s any other choice.

“Not the entire city,” said Dominic. He paused, a discomfited look crossing his face. It was an oddly attractive expression on him, softening his features from their usual perpetual arrogance and turning them into something a girl wouldn’t mind seeing, say, on the other side of the table at breakfast. “At least, I don’t believe so. The largest recorded dragon was no larger than a blue whale.”

“I probably shouldn’t find that as reassuring as I do.” I picked up my bag. “So we’re assuming there’s a dragon. I don’t want you calling reinforcements, since they’d just wipe out the cryptids I’m trying to protect, and I’ll bet you don’t want me calling reinforcements either.”

“Not particularly,” he said, his normal arrogance creeping across his face like frost across a window on a cold morning. “You already have me far too outnumbered to enjoy.”

“Me and my army of cryptids that don’t listen to a damn thing I say, we’re scary,” I agreed. “Why do you think there’s a dragon?”

“I’d rather not say just as yet,” Dominic replied, stiffly.

“Great.” I sighed. “Let’s say I believe you. So now what do we do?”

“I suppose we determine whether or not I’m correct, and decide what to do from there.”

I gave him a thoughtful look. Something in the way that he was standing… “You don’t want to be right, do you?”

“Not particularly.”

“Why not? I mean, if it’s a dragon, I can’t really stop you from killing it. Not unless it speaks English and likes blonde girls well enough to listen to one and, even then, only if it feels like turning you into a charcoal briquette.”

Dominic smiled briefly, eyebrows rising. “Good to know that your plans for me include immolation.”

“I’m flexible. I can flex.” I shrugged. “I’ll happily dispose of your corpse in a nondraconic manner, once we know what’s really going on.”

“Fair enough. As for why I’m not terribly pleased about the idea of being right, well. This is my first time in the field. I’d rather not start my career with a failed dragon slaying.” There was something else there—something he wasn’t saying to me yet. I could see its shadow in his eyes.

Better not to push. “That’s cool. I don’t want to call my folks.”

“Then we’re in agreement. I suppose that once we’ve determined the true nature of the threat at hand, we’ll…” He stopped, mouth continuing to move for a moment with no sound coming out.

It was hard not to feel bad for the guy. Sure, he was a stone killer, but he’d been raised that way, and you don’t blame a snake for biting. He wasn’t used to being lost like the rest of us. “You don’t know either, do you?”