“Oh, yeah, that.” I closed my eyes, bracing for the shouting I knew was about to start. “See, it turns out there’s a dragon sleeping somewhere under Manhattan…”

My parents didn’t disappoint. They both began talking at once, and quickly escalated to both shouting at once, less out of anger than out of sheer and utter bewilderment. I relaxed and waited, letting them get it out of their systems. As expected, they started winding down after a few minutes. Finally, cautiously, Mom said, “Verity? Are you still there?”

“I’m here. Just waiting for you two to calm down enough to listen. Are you calm?”

“That depends,” said Dad.

“On what?”

“On whether you’re getting ready to buy a plane ticket home.”

I rolled onto my stomach, propping myself up on my elbows as I replied, “Nope. I’m getting ready to go find myself a dragon.”

“Verity—”

“Don’t ‘Verity’ me. This is a dragon. A real, honest-to-God dragon. I’m not going to walk away from that. Could you?” Silence greeted my question. “I thought not. Anyway, I can’t leave. The Covenant’s in town, and their local representative is actually willing to work with me, at least until the dragon gets found.”

“What happens then?” Mom asked quietly. “When you’re alone with the dragon and a member of the Covenant, what happens then?”

“Well, then I guess we see whose point of view is faster on the trigger.” I rolled onto my back again, staring at the ceiling. “I hate to admit it, but I need his help. I can’t do this alone, and I’m not willing to have any of the rest of you fly out here—not when there’s a chance that Covenant surveillance could ID you. I’m compromised, you’re on the other side of the country, and that seems like the right place for you to be. Besides, I have Sarah here.”

“Does she know about all this?” asked Dad.

“Know? How do you think I know there’s actually a dragon? Dominic found the rumor, but it was Sarah who found the giant sleeping lizard.” I hesitated, unsure as to whether I should tell them the rest. Common sense won out; if I was going to go off and get myself eaten, they’d need to know everything before they came charging in to recover my remains. “Oh, and there’s one more thing. We think someone’s trying to wake the dragon up.”

It took a lot longer for the shouting to stop this time, at least in part because Antimony finally realized we were having a conference call and hopped onto the downstairs extension. Adding a third voice to the chaos—especially a third voice that had to be brought up to speed on the situation—did nothing to make it quieter. I wound up holding the phone a foot away from me, listening to them yell at one another, and waiting for things to settle down.

Eventually, Dad realized I’d dropped out of the conversation. After vigorously hushing my mother and sister, he asked, “Verity? Are you still there?”

“Just waiting for the panicking part of our program to be over,” I said, and brought the phone back to my ear. “Are you ready to listen calmly and without commentary to the rest of what I have to tell you, or should I send an email and turn off my phone?”

“We’ll listen,” said Mom firmly, before Dad or Antimony could say anything. “Go ahead, honey.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said. “Okay, first, Dominic isn’t responsible for the disappearances—not among the sentient cryptids, anyway. He killed a few of the nastier dumb ones. I was planning to kill a few of them myself, so it’s hard to be too pissed. Anyway, he thought I was helping the local cryptids get the heck out of Dodge after I knew that he was in town. According to a local Madhura, most of the folks who’ve vanished have been young, female, and either unmarried or unmated, depending on the standards of their species.”

“Someone’s hunting virgins?” asked Antimony. “Gross much?”

“Pretty standard for the snake cults,” said Mom. “I’ve never known a snake god who cared about virginity, but somehow, the idea that they do has managed to really take root with those people.”

“So maybe somebody’s applying snake cult standards to the dragon. Whatever the reason, Sarah says someone’s trying to wake it up, and I believe her. When Dominic and I went down into the sewers—”

“Wait,” Mom interrupted. “Are you saying you took this Covenant boy to meet your cousin?”

I bit back a groan. “Mom, she’s a cuckoo. Like he’s going to find her again if she doesn’t want to be found? Give me a little credit, here.”

“If he’d attacked at the time—”

“First, he didn’t, and second, if he had, I would have been right there. Sarah and I together are more than a match for anything the Covenant can throw at us, and I know for a fact that I’m more heavily armed than he is. Can I get back to the sewers?”

“Please,” said Dad.

I outlined the Sleestak encounter in the sewers as quickly as I could, paring the information down to the bare minimum. We went down; we found signs of cryptid habitation; we got jumped by rejects from another remake of Land of the Lost. We kicked ass, we ran away. End of story.

When I was done, I paused, waiting for someone to say something. No one did. Finally, I asked, “Well?”

“I have no idea what those are,” said Mom.

“I’ll check my books,” said Dad.

“You got to have a subterranean grudge match with lizard-people, and I had to spend the day cleaning the library,” said Antimony. “Some people get all the luck.”

“Yeah, well,” I said. “So that’s the status. Are we agreed that I don’t currently need backup?”

“No,” said Dad. “You absolutely need backup. But…” He hesitated before saying, reluctantly, “We’re agreed that we can’t send any. Not right now. I want you to check in every day. The same goes for Sarah. If either of you fails to do so—”

“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,” I finished grimly. “I get the picture. I just know that if that dragon wakes up, we’re going to have a serious problem on our hands, and it’s best if we keep the number of us available for damage control as high as possible.”