Burn(40)

“It’s always been that way,” Miss Archer said. “Just what humans do.”

“Yeah, well,” Sarah said, “if the world ends in a couple weeks, at least that part will be over.”

“Tomorrow,” Jason said.

“Tomorrow what?” Sarah asked.

“Not a couple weeks.” Jason tapped an article with his forefinger. “The Russians moved the launch up to tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Sarah yelled at Kazimir. “Does that mean the assassin or whoever is coming tomorrow, too?”

“These pigs are poisoned,” Kazimir said, sniffing the three carcasses—such a harsh word for them, but carcasses they were, if she had to harden herself enough to let the dragon eat them.

“Yes, I know,” Sarah said. “That’s what I’ve been saying—”

“Not rat poison. Different.”

She looked up at him, confused. “Different how?”

The dragon sniffed again, then put a claw forward, tapping the body of Mamie. “This one.”

“What about her? He can’t come tomorrow. I’m not prepared. You haven’t told me how to be prepared—”

“There is nothing you can prepare for. You must simply act as you think best.” He pressed his claw into Mamie’s side, on the bloat of her stomach. The claw cut the flesh, letting out a terrible hissing sound. Sarah covered her nose at the smell— Then she stopped. “That doesn’t smell like rat poison.”

“As I said.”

Sarah inhaled a few times, not too much as the stench was quite strong. “That’s fertilizer. Ammonia and—”

“A disguised poison for much more than rats,” Kazimir finished.

Sarah gasped. “Someone was trying to kill you. They knew we’d feed you the pigs.”

“Yes,” Kazimir said. “Someone.”

She followed his gaze as he turned it back to the house. “No,” she said, suddenly. “No, I know what you’re thinking—”

Kazimir laughed, deep and low, a vibration she felt in her spine. “Trust me when I say, you do not know what I am thinking.”

With a swoop of his wings, he left her there, tumbling back into the air as if she were the least of his concerns.

“Did you poison my pigs?”

Her father looked up from where he was oiling the leather of his boots, boots that should have been replaced at least two winters ago. “Of course I didn’t, and I’ll thank you not to speak to me in that tone of voice, missy.”

There was a pause before he said it, though, a pause when her eyes caught his, where anything could have been going on behind that stone face.

“You’re trying to poison the dragon,” she said.

“And have seventy tons of dragon meat rotting on my farm? No, thank you.”

“Mamie isn’t full of rat poison. It’s something else.”

He affected surprise at that. She knew he was affecting it. She could see the falseness right there. “Well, whoever gave it to them—”

“You.”

“Not me, and that’s the end of it.”

“Why are you letting me talk to him now?”

“What?”

“This whole time, it’s been, ‘Stay away from him, don’t even tell him your name’ and all of a sudden it’s ‘Feed him the pigs, Sarah.’ You wanted me to do it.”

“Well,” he said, turning back to his boots, “with the way you’ve been sneaking out and talking to him at night, I figured you’d taken over the job.”

He knew. Of course, he knew. It was foolish of her to think otherwise. How often could she sneak out without the one other person on the farm noticing?

“He saved me and Jason from Deputy Kelby that day,” she said. “I wanted to thank him.”

He looked at her now. “Just that one day?”

She swallowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Kelby is missing. The sheriff was around here talking to the dragon. And your jaw is still sore from your ‘fall.’”

“That was against the counter.”

“So we’re still lying to each other, are we?” He put one boot down and started on the other. “Good. Makes things easier.”

“What are you lying about?”

He glanced back up at her. “What are you?”

Here was the chance. She wanted to tell him. The burden was heavy, the confusion even heavier. And if Kazimir was telling the truth? If someone was coming to kill her? Tomorrow?

“This is crazy,” she whispered to herself.

“I can agree to that,” her father said. He set down his second boot, looked at the floor for a moment, and sighed in that way of his. “I’ve been getting letters. Letters telling me exactly what kind of bad news that claw out there is, Sarah.”

“From who? Small-minded people, I bet. People who’ve never liked us, Daddy.”

He looked at her again, calmly, almost sadly. “The letters said he would win you over.”

“If by winning me over, you mean saving my life, then I’ll take that kind of being won over.”

“Big words for getting you out of a conversation with a deputy.”