“Hey, Garret!” Lexi bounced up and slid into the booth across from me. “So, you’re actually going to put your life in Ember’s hands today, huh? Did she tell you what she did on her very first day of surf lessons?”

“Lexi,” Ember sighed, as I leaned back to give myself a little more space away from the other girl. “We want him to come with us, you know. Not run away screaming.”

I tilted my head at the girl across from me. “What happened?”

“She almost drowned,” Lexi went on, cheerfully oblivious. “Got the basics down really quick, than decided to brave an eighteen-footer all by herself. It was a pretty spectacular wipeout.”

I glanced at Ember and raised an eyebrow, and she actually colored a little. “Don’t worry,” she said, with an exasperated glare at her friend. “I’m not going to throw you at eighteen-footers on your first day. We’ll start with baby waves and work our way up. I’ll go easy on you, I promise.”

Calvin sauntered up, a trio of smoothies in hand. “Dude,” he greeted, setting the drinks on the table, where they were pounced upon by the girls. “Garret, right? So you’ll be joining us today, huh?

Ever gone surfing before?”

“No.”

He smirked, but it was without malice, lazy and knowing at the same time. “Well, it’s gonna be interesting, I can tell you that.”

We didn’t drive far. I sat in the back seat with Ember, gazing out the window, while Lexi craned her neck around to talk to us both, chattering nonstop. I didn’t say much, but I didn’t need to, as the two girls more than made up for my silence. I began to have serious doubts that the friendly, cheerful girl sitting beside me could be anything but a normal teen. She certainly didn’t fit the normal dragon model: vicious, ruthless, power-hungry. Then again, all the dragons I’d encountered had been trying to kill me, and vice-versa. I’d never really seen a dragon in human form for an extended amount of time, never encountered one that was trying to fit in. Still, I wondered if I wasn’t wasting my time pursuing this.

Oddly enough, I found that I didn’t care. The back seat of the Volkswagen was very small, and Ember’s slim leg was brushing against mine, a fact I was acutely aware of as the car trundled down a narrow back road. At one point, the tires hit either a rock or a log and bounced so hard, the top of my head struck the roof and Ember nearly ended up in my lap.

“Sorry.” She shifted away, but her hand came to rest on my thigh, and all my nerve endings snapped to attention. I noticed her cheeks were slightly pink as she drew back, and felt the heat radiating from my own skin. Embarrassment or…something else? I hadn’t been around many civilians, certainly not many females my own age. There were women in the Order, but they occupied the jobs outside of combat—gathering intelligence, handling paperwork, saving a soldier’s life when he got himself incinerated by a dragon. They were crucial to the Order, but there were no female soldiers in St. George. Tristan had no problems talking to girls, especially when he’d had a few, but when faced with a member of the opposite sex I usually found myself with nothing to say, so I avoided them when I could.

The mission, I reminded myself. Focus on the mission. I could not be distracted by this girl. I couldn’t let myself think of her as anything but an objective. And I certainly couldn’t let myself think of touching her again, of feeling her skin against mine, her warm fingers on my leg.

I stared out the window, deliberately forcing my thoughts elsewhere. Anything to keep myself distracted and my mind off the girl beside me.

The Volkswagen finally came to a bouncing, shuddering halt in the shadow of a grove of palm trees. Through the space between two giant thorn bushes, an empty strip of sand and the ocean beckoned, white-capped waves breaking in the distance. I exited the car and felt the heat of the sun beating on my bare shoulders. Ember climbed out behind me and yawned, covering her mouth with one hand.

“Pull another all nighter, Em?” Lexi teased as she helped Calvin unstrap the boards from the roof. “You know, if you went to bed before dawn, we could actually go surfing before noon sometimes. Just a thought.”

“Oh, like you’re ever up before noon,” Ember scoffed. She didn’t give any outward signs of alarm, but I caught the discrepancy with what she’d told me this morning. Ember didn’t get up early; even her friends knew this, though they probably thought she was sleeping.

No one ever saw her, or her brother, until afternoon.

So why was she out this morning, alone? Where was she coming from?

“Here,” she went on, tugging a blue board from the roof and handing it to me. I took it with a puzzled look, and she smiled. “That’s yours for today. Be nice to it. It’s been through a lot.”

I nodded and tucked the surfboard under my arm as I’d seen Ember do. It was surprisingly light and had more than a few dents and scratches on the surface. Calvin swung a pristine white board under his arm and headed down toward the water, moving with lazy confidence. The rest of us trailed behind, Ember and Lexi walking to either side of me, explaining the basics of surfing.

I tried to listen, but both were talking at the same time and one tended to finish the sentence the other girl began, so it was difficult to follow along. Nothing really stuck until we reached the edge of the beach, and Ember turned to me.

“Okay!” she announced, and dropped her board into the sand with a soft thump. “This is where we start.”

“Here?” I glanced at the ocean, where Calvin was striding into the surf, not looking back. “I was under the impression that surfing was done in the water.”

Lexi giggled, and Ember frowned at her. “It is, of course. But there’s a whole lot of things to learn before you can ride a wave. Paddling, balance, timing, things like that. It’s easier to start on solid ground first.”

“Or you can be like Ember and keep falling off the board into the water,” Lexi added. “Because you’re too impatient to start on the beach.”

The other girl huffed at her.”You shush. I only agreed to let you

come because you promised you’d let me do this.” She glowered fiercely, and Lexi giggled again. I found myself wishing she was gone, that it was just me and Ember in this empty little cove. I’d be able to better concentrate and learn more if I had just one teacher and Lexi wasn’t peering over our shoulders.

That’s what I told myself, anyway.