“What?”
“Are you talking about Gautierre?” Jennifer, in her surprise, loosened her grip and got an arterial spray in her eyes for her trouble. “He’s—ack, your blood is the worst! Who has black blood? Honestly!”
“Is he alive?” Susan pressed. “Gautierre Longtail, my boyfriend—he’s alive?”
I said so. Sister, stop trying to save me.
“Move!” someone said, and it seemed to Susan that about a hundred people had rushed to the roof with Dr. Georges-Scales. “Get me some light! Hand me that—no, the other one. Be still, Evangelina.”
Easier and easier not to move almost dead they are almost all dead
A nurse pulled Susan back, and she stumbled. Then the medical personnel closed ranks, and Susan couldn’t see Evangelina anymore. But she could sure hear her—and talk to her.
Where is he? she asked.
Where the water stinks.
How many left?
Three. Maybe four. Only the stump-tail is healthy enough to fight.
Is he okay?
He so wants to die.
That was enough for Susan, she backed away from the flurry of activity, slipped into the stairwell, and took the stairs down three at a time.
CHAPTER 40
Susan
Alive.
Gautierre was alive.
She—Susan Elmsmith, would-be TV journalist and dateless wonder, Prisoner of Big Blue and much-put-upon best friend of the Ancient Furnace—had been mourning a live boyfriend.
What a colossal waste of time! Also: he had a lot of nerve letting his sorry self get captured by the likes of that horrible, psychotic, pseudomaternal thing, Ember Longtail.
Once she realized exactly what Jenn’s crazy-spooky half-sister had been saying, Susan had immediately gotten down from the roof, made her way through the lobby (mentally marveling that shock had stiffened her limbs, so she marched like a run-down robot), and headed home. Not her latest apartment, but her actual house.
She hadn’t been there in over a year, and it certainly had seen better days: a white, two-story “3 BR, 2 BA” Cape-Cod-style house with yellow shutters. The lawn was an ugly yellow, almost sidewalk-to-sidewalk dandelion remains. It was a good thing her dad must be spending most of his time at the air base; otherwise, he’d weep bitter tears to see the state his lawn had come to.
Yes, Dad, you’re better off outside Big Blue. We’d all be battling bad guys and trying not to croak under a freakin’ poison moon, while you’d be raiding hardware stores for cases of Weed Git Out.
Back when the last winter had approached, she’d been here to raid the pantry and haul away anything that could be used for food or medicine or split ends—the baby aspirin she’d outgrown a decade ago, the can of Nacho Cheese Soup that dated back to her dead mother’s precancer days.
Nothing from the basement, though.
Nothing from the reloading bench.
At the time, it had made sense. Reloads weren’t as safe as regular ammo. With the odds stacked as they were after Big Blue arrived and plenty of new ammo available at the time, she hadn’t wanted to add to their troubles by supplying scared green kids with ammo that might or might not work. But things were different now.
Everyone else had their own fish to fry, what with stopping Skip and fixing the moon, so no one would be available to stop her or talk her out of this. Talk her out of it? Chances were nobody’d even notice she was gone. Which would be intensely irritating 99.9 percent of the time, but not so much right now.
She was an innocent, a normie. Not the heroine. Good for a humorous quip, or a pithy observation.
“Now, good for Sucky Sundays.” She hurried into the backyard toward the gazebo, where a spare key had been hidden longer than she’d been alive. Even now, she thought of the key before a more expedient solution, like a brick through the dining-room picture window. “I cannot believe those Sucky Sundays are gonna save my boyfriend’s life.”
The basement, always gloomy and gross, was even more so after so long unattended. As she came down the steps she could hear mice scurrying. Mice. Prob’ly be reduced to trapping and eating them if they couldn’t get out of Big Blue anytime soon. Mice Surprise. Filet de Mice. Mice on a shingle. Yergh.
She tried the light switch at the door—nothing. Blown fuse, probably. She rummaged through her backpack, hauled out the flashlight, flicked it on, and left the bag open as she approached the reloading bench.
Even here there was dust and dirt everywhere. Dad would have a nervous breakdown if he could see it. She flicked the beam over the reloading press, the trays, a stack of empty ammo boxes, then trained it on what she had come for—well, on some of the things she had come for.
She checked a couple of the boxes to be sure. Dear Old Dad was as methodical as he was distant, and everything was as expected.
She began raking the boxes into her open backpack.
CHAPTER 41
Susan
Susan pulled her scooter up to the entrance of the sewage-treatment plant. She hadn’t exactly been shocked to hear from Evangelina that Ember’s gang were holed up in the sewers beneath Winoka.
If movies and books have taught us anything, she told herself as she pulled the keys out of the ignition, it’s that villains are drawn to dank underground caverns and, let’s not forget, the smell of shit.
She popped the kickstand so the scooter could stand. Strangely, she felt optimistic about her chances here tonight. In fact, she began to wish she’d trimmed her bangs before setting out. And possibly shaved her armpits.
Readjusting her backpack, she walked into the main building of the treatment plant. It wasn’t locked—why would it be? Nobody knew they were holed up in there except supercreepy Evangelina (and she sure hadn’t been talking . . . they’d had to drag all this crap out of her!).
As she had expected, there wasn’t anyone in the office area . . . too small and confined a space for three or four dragons to whomp around in. Also, their tails would probably knock over the copier and the file cabinet.
She’d tried to imagine where Gautierre would be held in such a place. Not primary or secondary treatment; too much crashy-bangy equipment. Not tertiary and certainly not odor removal (thank you, eighth-grade science report).
No, pretreatment was the place to start. It was fairly close, it wasn’t especially complicated or noisy, and, for funsies, Gautierre could suffer in a smelly prison.
Her time in Big Blue had given Susan new insight into weredragons: they were regular people who could occasionally fly and belch fire. That was it. That was all there was to them. Even Jennifer Scales.
Big Blue had wiped away a lot of her awe. It wasn’t hard to be enchanted and thrilled by something so magical and fairy-tale-esque as dragons when they were rare and flashed by every hundred years; but when you saw them be crabby and careless, or make dumb decisions based on fatigue or too much caffeine, or get pissy when things didn’t go their way (which had all the charm of watching someone blow their nose), it got harder to stay impressed.
So she was cautious, sure, and careful, yep, but mostly she was annoyed at Ember’s intransigence and the cost everyone around her had to pay for it. Susan had learned better in kindergarten.
What did it say for the rest of Domeland if the grown-ups were acting like selfish teenagers, and the teenagers had to be the adults?
CHAPTER 42
Jennifer
Patrol choppers darted back and forth like large, metallic, noisy, armed dragonflies. Jennifer watched them work.
She assumed they were working; it was hard to imagine that sort of activity would be recreation for anyone. They were showing in greater numbers, especially since Skip’s superspider had jumped for the moon.
Nothing gets military attention like space invasions. Who’d have thought the invasion would be in the other direction?
She knew nothing of military helicopters other than the fact that there were lots of them on the air base where Susan’s father worked. Wait.
Is it an Air Force base, or an Army base? Can you call an Army base an air base, or do they get offended? What does Susan’s dad do, anyway? Small-arms instructor? Fire-support specialist? Flight officer? Signals coordinator? Intelligence officer? Which of those involved helicopters, if any? Would he come talk to us if he could? If so, why haven’t we seen him? She knew none of this. Not knowing made her nervous, and tired.
Speaking of tired, Jennifer’s mom was still inside the hospital, performing miracles on Evangelina while Dianna kept a watch on the moon. And what will watching the moon get us, she had wanted to ask—but for once, she wasn’t feeling the snark. Instead, she had gone for a long walk.
She was thinking of discussing the helicopters with her mother. Naturally she didn’t want to bug her overworked, exhausted, emotionally numb, widowed mother unless it was critically important. This might qualify. Would her mother know any more about helicopters than Jennifer?
It looked like patrolling. There were always at least three darting back and forth along the fringes of Big Blue. They did not hover, did not flash lights, certainly didn’t fire anything.
No, they were probably watching, no more, no less. They were careful to make sure there were always at least three, and sometimes (near dusk, and again near dawn, she had noticed), there were as many as six.
The random recollection that her father was dead hit her again. No reason. She sighed and supposed this was her brain’s way of trying to process that he was dead, in the midst of a crisis that would not give her any real amount of time to grieve. The lack of true grieving was an awful disservice to her father’s memory. It was draining the life and will and strength from his widow and filling his daughter with resentment.
She couldn’t recognize anyone in the helicopters, but she granted she was too far away to get a better look. All she could see were helmets and sunglasses.
Was Susan’s father flying one of them? Had he sent them? Was this his way of helping? Or did he have nothing to do with them? In which case: was that good, or bad?
Susan’s dad was a distant schmuck, a man who seemed to think the loss of his wife was far greater than a daughter’s loss of her mother. He had turned mourning into self-absorption; Jennifer had never liked him.
But still: maybe he was helping.
And maybe not.
Susan would know; she’d have a good guess, anyway, and might even know who some of the other chopper pilots were. If nothing else, she’d have some hilariously sarcastic comment. This would cheer Jennifer up, if only for a few minutes.
But Susan wasn’t here—not since Evangelina got back. She wasn’t anywhere around the hospital and hadn’t done any blogs or newscasts. For all Jennifer knew, she was holing up in her odd-smelling apartment. Probably upset that there was nothing she could do for her boyfriend, or really anyone she cared about.
Poor Susan. You have no idea. You’re better off staying put in bed. You don’t want the responsibilities Mom and I have. At least you’re safe, wherever you are.
CHAPTER 43
Susan
Susan moved through the building quietly, thinking about reloads and their hazards. Homemade ammunition had a long and noble history . . . and her father was tight-assed enough that everything he made at his reloading bench would probably work all right. It had always seemed to her a lot more work, for not much in the way of savings, but such things appealed to her father’s nature.
So she’d checked them over an hour ago before leaving the house. Now she thought about stealth: she was wearing comfortable, quiet tennis shoes with her jeans and black sweatshirt.
She thought about her surroundings: everything was operational. This was weird, since Ember and her gang seemed the sort to kill anyone who might be coming in here for maintenance. Maybe they had just moved to this place; or maybe they let folks come in and out to help preserve their secret. Who goes looking for the villain in a well-maintained public facility?
You mean, public facilities like city hall and the police department, under Hank Blacktooth?
Focus, Susan.
Her plan was simple, based on the fact that she knew Ember Longtail to be a crummy hag with no imagination and a shrinking circle of friends. She would conduct her search, using her knowledge of Ember’s attack patterns (dusk and dawn) to visit the place when she would be most certain guards would be at their fewest.
She thought briefly of the moon phase—new moon, she reminded herself. It’s okay. You’ve thought this through. She wondered if Gautierre would still have his moon elm leaf, or if Ember would have taken it from him. It didn’t matter to Susan’s plan, so she stopped thinking about it.
She passed through another corridor, and found herself in the pretreatment section of the building. She was zeroing in on the part of the plant she was reasonably certain Gautierre was being held against his will.
If he was being held against his will.
Oh, don’t start.
Except. Ember was his mother. A nasty shrill icky hag-like mother, but still. Susan, motherless too long, wondered if Gautierre could really stand against her. What wouldn’t Susan do to have her mother back? Hide in a sewage-treatment plant? Do a few bad things? Tell the Scales family to screw off?
Fool someone into thinking she loved them?
Maybe he wasn’t a prisoner at all. Maybe he was a guest. Maybe he had been a plant the entire time and faked his own death to escape back to his mother. Maybe he wouldn’t be happy to see her. Maybe he’d hurt her.
Not even if someone stuck a gun in his ear, she decided. It was a momentary weakness, brought on by stress and aggravation. Also by the sight of two of Ember’s people, curled up inside the door right next to each other like kittens. Except for the leathery scales, and the enormous teeth, and the wings. Maybe not kittens.
Their heads rose at the same time; she felt the force of their gazes. She was better at reading dragon expressions than she’d been, say, eighteen months ago. She was pretty sure they were surprised. Which was an improvement over homicidally pissed.
“Hello. My name’s Susan; I’m here for Gautierre.”
They looked at each other, then back at her. The one on the left had dull, copper-colored scales shading to a muddy brown on the wings—spoke in a hushed baritone. “Uh—you’re not a beaststalker. Right?”
She straightened her back. “I’m a reporter.”
The coloring of the two dragons seemed unusual . . . muddy, almost vague browns and mustard yellows and faded coppers.
Sick. They looked sick!
“Are you guys okay?”
They harrumphed, which momentarily made Susan feel stupid. Then resentful: what, she was supposed to be a dragon doctor? They were heaps of scaled lethargy.
“You’re not out attacking anyone. I thought you guys were going to burn down the forest.”
One of them shrugged. Susan had a brainstorm.
“But you’re living on the run,” she guessed. She stepped toward them, suddenly far less afraid of them. “Not much to eat, at a sewage plant. Easy game is disappearing. You’re burning the wildlife to a crisp. Ember has you starving yourselves.”
“You might want to keep your distance, dear,” said the one on the left with a raspy female voice. But her gums were bleeding, and Susan knew she was hitting the mark.
“If Ember has you starving yourselves, then you have to be wondering if you’ve made the right choice.”
“Actually,” said the other dragon in a croaking male tone, “I was wondering how you’d taste.”
“That’s disgusting,” said the female. “Look at yourself, Gary. You’re on the verge of cannibalism.”
“Ain’t a cannibal if she ain’t a dragon.”
“That sounds too much like the bitch that got us into this.”
“Yes, she is a bitch,” Susan interjected, seizing the momentum and taking another step forward. “A big, stumpy bitch whose own fabulous son hates her. I’m here for him. Why do you care? You could go to Winoka Hospital.”
br /> “They’d kill us,” said Gary.
“Not if you walked in calmly.”
“They’ll recognize us, even looking this sick. We’ve attacked that hospital ten times.”
Susan shrugged. “So take off the moon leaves.” They were visible, hanging off their throats on necklaces of woven fabric.
The female dragon snorted. “You think we’re stupid? They’ll kill us the moment they figure out who we are. Even easier, if we’re not in dragon form.”
“Look—do it, don’t do it, I don’t care. I just want to know if you’re going to let me by so I can help my boyfriend. Does Ember have you guarding him, or are you simply resting someplace inconvenient?”
Gary snorted; more smoke curled from his nostrils. He got up and started to walk away. “I can sleep anywhere around here. Makes no fuckin’ difference to me.”
“Me, neither,” said the female, following him. “But, honey, if you mean to leave with Ember’s boy . . .” She tactfully trailed off.
“I’ll have to kill her,” Susan finished flatly. “No worries. I’ve got it covered.”
“Have fun getting roasted.”
“That’s the spirit.” Their carelessness made a bit more sense if they expected her to die anyway. Who wants to keep murdering while you’re dying? she asked herself. The answer came quickly: Ember Longtail, that’s who.
She put her hand on the door and braced herself.
CHAPTER 44
Susan
Gautierre was in the next room, a tall, dank space that would have seemed chilly in July heat because of the sweating concrete walls, the cement floor, the lack of windows . . . it really was the next best thing to a cell, and here Gautierre was on a cot in the middle of it, rather undramatically. Except for an atrocious smell, he was alone.
“Susan!”
“In the nick of time, I see. Geez, you’re hardly even cute anymore, Gautierre. There’s a nifty new invention; it’s called a hairbrush.”