The Lucky Ones(48)

“Yep,” Thora said. “I do all the bookkeeping, the accounting, pay the bills, set up museum showings, arrange payment for the pieces he sells. Honestly, dealing with shipping his monsters is the hardest part of the job.”

“Does he sell a lot?” Allison asked as Thora pulled a metal chair next to her.

“A lot,” she said, nodding. “Last week we sold a pair of dragons like the one in the window to a hotel in Seattle. Sixty K.”

Allison blinked. She had to sleep with McQueen for six years to get fifty out of him.

“Holy... Guess that pays the electric bill,” Allison said.

“He pretends to be arrogant,” Thora whispered, “but it’s a cover-up for his modesty. He’s becoming very well-known as one of the foremost glass artists in the world.”

“That’s fantastic,” Allison said. “Our brother is a famous artist.”

“No autographs, please,” Deacon said, and winked at her.

Deacon finally pulled the pipe out of the warmer. “Come here, Al. I’ll show you how to sculpt glass.”

“Me?” Allison said, pointing at herself and looking around.

“You,” Deacon said. “Come on. I taught Dad, I taught Thor, I taught Ro. I can teach you.”

“Are you sure this is safe?” Allison asked as she crept from her chair over to the giant round furnace near the wall.

“Safe enough,” he said. “Long as you don’t do something actively stupid, we’ll be fine.”

“Okay, I’ll stick to passively stupid. What now?”

“Gathering glass,” he said, opening the small round hole to the crucible. As soon as that door opened, Allison felt her mascara melt and congeal. She stepped back, watching from a safe distance as Deacon inserted the pipe into the crucible and started to rotate it again. Standing up on her tiptoes she peeked in and saw a round blob of orange goo taking shape at the end of Deacon’s pipe.

“What are we making?” Allison asked him.

“You wanted a dragon, didn’t you?”

“It’ll have to be a baby dragon,” she said. “My rental car’s a compact.”

“I can make a baby dragon,” Deacon said. “Go to the jars over there and pick out a color.”

Allison eyed the jars and picked a blue halfway between sea and sky.

“Now what?” she asked.

Thora came over and took the jar from Allison’s hand, opened it and spread color chips the size of Legos on a metal table.

“Step back a little,” Deacon said as he brought the spinning orange blob of glass to the table. He dipped the ball into the color chips and they instantly melted into the blazing-hot glass.

“I’m going to do the hard part now,” Deacon said. “But you’re going to twist the tail. Ready?”

“For what?” Allison asked.

“To be impressed,” Deacon said, grinning again.

“Ready,” she said.

Deacon carried the blue blob on his pipe to a wooden stand. He grabbed giant metal tongs, dipped them into a bucket of water and before Allison could wrap her mind around his movements, he’d begun to spin the pipe and pinch the molten glass with his tongs. In seconds it seemed, the little ball turned into a vague lizard shape and then into a dragon with ears like a puppy and a scaly spine.

“That’s so bizarre,” Allison breathed. “You’re pulling glass like taffy.”

“Fun fact,” Deacon said. “Glass isn’t quite a solid or a liquid. It’s its own weird thing.”

“It doesn’t seem right that you can do that. It looks so solid,” Allison said.

“It’s already solidifying,” Deacon said. “Better make this quick.”

He dipped his tongs back into the water bucket and then passed them to her.

“What do I do?” she asked.

“Pull and twist, twist and pull,” Deacon said. “I’m talking about the glass, by the way.”

Allison grabbed the dragon’s tail with the tip of the tongs and did as Deacon asked, wincing as the glass stretched and turned and twisted.

“It’s like a piggy tail,” Thora said, kneeling at the stand to eye the creature. “He’s very cute.”

“He’s supposed to be scary,” Deacon said as he put on a large oven mitt. Using a wooden block he knocked the dragon off the end of the pipe and onto his gloved hand. “Maybe I can put some big teeth in his mouth.”

“No, I like him cute,” Allison said. And it was cute, this blue-green little beast with scales and claws and small enough to fit into the palms of her two hands. It was so cute she instinctively reached out to touch it. Thora immediately shoved Deacon so hard the dragon dropped out of his glove. When it landed on the floor, it didn’t break, but merely splatted like blue pancake batter.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” Allison said.

“You okay?” Deacon asked, eyes wide.

“Fine, fine. Just...forgot it was still warm.”

“Warm?” Deacon said. “It’s nine-hundred degrees. You would have burned your hand off.”

“So much for not doing anything actively stupid,” Allison said, on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to break it.”