Burn(69)

She had been unhappy. She had met the electrician. She had left with him, and this had given Agent Dernovich mixed feelings. He hated her for breaking Grace’s heart, but he could never, ever regret being left with this girl who made his heart pop every time she asked one of her million questions. That he might never have had her but for the weirdest, slightest vagaries of fate, that she might never have existed at all, made her all the more precious.

So there were indeed huge security risks on the table, and that Scenario 8 had come true—his own scenario, postulated after his team had discovered a potential multiverse—was very bad and needed immediate addressing (though he knew there were other scenarios that were much, much worse) and he needed to get to the other side of the mountain.

Despite that, he held his daughter in the car until she cried herself to sleep.

Then he drove through the night, over the Chinook Pass, to Fort Lewis Army Base, which abutted McChord Air Force Base, and into the furious, questioning eyes of a General who wanted to know, please, just what the hell they were going to do.

Grace awoke on a chair wrapped in what she recognized immediately as an army blanket. It was green and scratchy, just like the ones her father had stashed in the bunker. She sat up a little. Her book sat on a side table near her, along with something that smelled like—

“Hot cocoa,” a woman’s voice said.

The woman sat behind a desk, watching over Grace as she typed, a sound that hadn’t woken her, but the smell of hot cocoa had.

“Where am I?” Grace asked.

“Fort Lewis,” the woman said. She was a friendly-seeming older lady, her hair pulled back tight in a bun, plus glasses that made Grace like her. “The cocoa’s for you. I thought you might want some when you woke up.”

“Where’s my father?” she asked. The secretary didn’t answer until Grace picked up the hot cocoa and took a sip. It wasn’t as sweet as Grace normally preferred, but it was warm and good in a shivery room.

“Army’s finest,” the secretary said, with a wry smile that Grace liked even more than the glasses. “Your father’s in with General Kraft. He asked if I would keep an eye on you. He said your name was Grace. Mine’s Mrs. Kelly, so together we make up the movie star.”

Grace took another sip of the cocoa. “I was named after my . . .” She stopped. She’d been named after her grandmother, the one she was supposed to be staying with right now. “Why did he bring me here?” she said, quietly, to herself.

“Well, he couldn’t very well leave you in the car,” Mrs. Kelly said. “If he had, I wouldn’t have been able to get you cocoa or take you down to the canteen for waffles, which is what I’m going to do right now.”

Mrs. Kelly rose from her typewriter just as a door opened behind her. Her father was coming out, another man—Grace guessed it must be General Kraft, a name that was suspiciously close to a really boring hour at school every Tuesday—with him.

“If there’s one of those things, Dernovich,” the general said, frowning.

“There could be more, general, I know,” her father replied. “I’ll get to the town that reported the first sightings.”

The general nodded. “Update me every hour.”

He went back into his office, and Grace’s father caught her eye. “You’re awake.”

“I was just going to take her down to the canteen for breakfast, Mr. Dernovich,” said Mrs. Kelly.

“Well, I think that’s swell,” her father said, looking at Grace. “We can all go.”

“Why aren’t I at Grandma’s?” Grace said, standing up now, yawning.

“I decided I wanted you with me,” he said, taking her hand. Then he lowered his voice so Mrs. Kelly couldn’t hear. “Plus, I know how boring it is at Grandma’s.”

He winked. She was scandalized, but her father was already leading her and Mrs. Kelly toward morning waffles.

The sun broke over the crater of Mount Rainier, finding a sleeping dragon. With a roar in her throat, the dragon woke.

She had never felt more alive. Ever. Not once.

She grinned to herself in the way only dragons can. Today would be a day where this world would learn it had to reckon with a new force. Today was the beginning of a new era here. One with her at the top.

But the second she took flight, the pain began.





Twenty-One


“I HAVE PENCILS, you know,” Darlene said.

“I find if you want to write dragon runes,” Kazimir replied, dipping the tip of the Spur of the Goddess into a small saucer of ink he’d found somewhere, “it’s best to use the tools of dragons themselves.”

“Dragon runes?” she asked. “You speak dragon?”

Kazimir looked at Sarah’s mother with a comically blank face. “I do,” he finally said.

“What an interesting world you all live in.” Darlene was at the stove making Kazimir and Sarah breakfast. She hadn’t allowed Sarah to help with that, but she’d let Sarah feed the hogs this morning.

Little steps, Sarah thought. She leaned over at the kitchen table now and whispered to Kazimir. “What are you doing? And where’d you get that ink?”

He looked to make sure Darlene’s back was turned, then showed Sarah a fresh wound on his palm. The black scab there matched the one that was already nearly healed on Kazimir’s chin. Everyone knew dragon wounds closed quickly, but it was amazing to see it in human form.