“Insufferable woman,” said Dominic, tiredly. “I won’t hurt your damned demon mice.” He put his hand over mine. For a brief instant, the contact made me forget how furious I was with him as sense memories of his body moving against mine threatened to overwhelm me. Then he clamped his fingers down, turning my hand and the knob at the same time, yanked the door open, and was gone, storming down the hallway while I stared after him.

After a moment, I realized I was standing in the apartment doorway wearing nothing but a sheet. Not exactly the sort of display I wanted to present to the neighbors I wasn’t supposed to have. I slammed the door, locking the deadbolt before spinning to press my back against the wood, like that was somehow going to be the final barricade to keep him out if he wanted to come storming back. He knew where I lived. A member of the Covenant knew where I lived. Worse, I’d just had sex with him, and now I was probably going to have to defend the last dragon in the world from him. I sank slowly into a sitting position, my knees pressing up against my chest.

“Look on the bright side, Verity,” I said sternly. “There is no possible way this night can get any worse.”

“LET THE CELEBRATION OF THE HOLY FEAST OF KISSING THE NEXT MAN WHO WALKS THROUGH THAT DOOR COMMENCE!” shouted the mice, with the utter glee that normally signaled the beginning of a multi-hour religious ritual.

I groaned, dropping my head forward so that my forehead rested against my knees. “My mistake,” I muttered. “It can always get worse.”

All around me, the mice exulted.

Seventeen

“We all make mistakes. Luckily for us, there are very few mistakes that can’t be solved with a suitable application of either lipstick or hand grenades.”

–Frances Brown

The penthouse of the Plaza Athenee, sometime around midnight

“THANKS AGAIN FOR LETTING ME STAY.” I sank a little deeper into the overstuffed couch, pulling my knees toward my chest. A chenille bedspread was wrapped around my shoulders, and Sarah had even managed to produce a pair of pajamas in my size. They were cute, if you liked blue silk with sushi prints. Given that Sarah is six inches taller than I am and rarely wears anything with a pattern, I wasn’t sure where they’d come from, and I didn’t want to ask. There was too good a chance that her reply would involve the room’s previous occupants, who might not have had the opportunity to pack their things before they were evicted.

Sometimes having a cuckoo for a cousin can be morally troubling. (To say nothing of having a cuckoo for a grandmother. Although Grandma Baker’s ability to get into anyplace she wanted just by walking through the front gates was pretty awesome when I was a kid and she took us all to Disney World. Mom says we don’t need to feel guilty about that, since the park still owes the family for handling that whole bug-a-boo problem they had back in the eighties.) At the moment, I was just glad to have someplace to go that didn’t involve a full-scale rodent bacchanal going on in the living room.

“It’s no problem,” said Sarah, walking back out of the penthouse kitchen with a pair of steaming mugs. “Here. Hot chocolate laced with brandy, just the way you like it.”

“And getting me drunk guarantees I won’t go running out and do something stupid, huh?” I wrapped my hands around the mug she handed me, breathing in the steam before taking a careful sip. She’d added the brandy with a generous hand. That, more than the temperature of the liquid, made it burn all the way down. “Oh, perfect.”

“I figured you needed it, after the day you’ve had.” Sarah settled into an armchair, curling her legs up under her body like a cat as she sipped from her own mug. I could smell its contents from where I sat, and hastened to take a larger gulp of my cocoa in order to cover up the scent. I like ketchup. I just don’t think of it as a beverage, especially not heated and mixed with orange juice. Cuckoo biology is not for the faint of heart. “Did he really show up at your apartment? How did he find out where you live?”

“I don’t know,” I said glumly, staring into the muddy depths of my hot chocolate. If it contained the secrets of the future, it wasn’t sharing them with me. “He’s Covenant. Maybe they have some sort of magical tracking device.”

“Or maybe he swiped your registration papers while he was invading the tango competition.” Sarah took another sip of her ketchup, wiping her mouth delicately with the back of her hand. “Either way, it’s not safe for you to go back there.”

“So where am I supposed to go? I can’t go back to Oregon until this whole dragon mess is sorted out.”

Sarah shrugged. “So come stay with me. It’s not like I don’t have the room.”

“That’s a sweet offer, but what about the mice? I couldn’t bring them here. I mean, even if you could convince the staff to ignore me, all it would take is one novice getting too enthusiastic and going on pilgrimage to the kitchen for cake, and then blammo. The hotel would call the Health Department so fast even you wouldn’t be able to stop them.”

“I know, but—”

“Plus, if I vanish, he could just come looking for me.”

“See, that could be amusing.” Sarah grinned a little. “He’ll never find you here. We could watch him and take bets on his progress.”

“You mean we could watch as he tracked down every cryptid he’s encountered since he got here, looking for someone who could tell him where I was. Plus, if he hasn’t told the Covenant about me yet, disappearing completely would be a surefire way to make him do it. He’d be sure I was going for reinforcements.”

“What makes you think he hasn’t told the Covenant about you?” asked Sarah, eyebrows rising. I glanced guiltily down into the recesses of my mug, and she gasped. “You didn’t. Oh, no, you did. You so totally did!”

I looked back up to find her staring fixedly in my direction, eyes bleached a shade or two lighter than their normal arctic blue. I glared. “Hey! What happened to telepathic ethics?”

“Please, like those apply when you did that with a boy from the Covenant? Verity, that’s disgusting!”

“Mmm … no, it wasn’t.” I couldn’t quite prevent myself from smiling at the memory. “God, with a body like that? There was no possible way for it to be disgusting. A terrible idea, sure, but disgusting, no way. You should have seen him, Sarah. I mean, the guy is gorgeous.”