“No, but we’ll be walking over to the restaurant for lunch, and it might rain.”
I blew air through my lips. “Rain.”
“Don’t wear your wedding dress, is what I’m saying.”
“What if I do? Afraid of a little bad luck?”
“No, but I might not be able to keep my eyes off you and then I won’t pay attention to what we’re supposed to be doing for the ceremony. Then I’ll mess everything up on our big day and make our officiant angry.”
“Who’s our officiant?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Fine. Be that way. I’m gonna talk to the dragon.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“As I was saying,” I said to the dragon-pig, who had found the toy it wanted, a screw with a shocked expression on its face. “I need you to help me out with the demon situation.”
It grumbled and stomped around on top of Toy Mountain.
“Please.”
It sat, and steam came out of its nostrils in a heavy sigh. It grunted.
“The people who attacked me were sent by demons, so I understand how they got through our protections. But the possessed bodies that attacked Ryder were actual demons. Demons in human clothing, but demons. Our wards didn’t recognize them as demons.”
It made a growly sound.
“I know you would have seen they were demons. Until we have better wards around Ordinary, which, yes, we’re working on, would you patrol for demons? We were thinking since you fly, you could keep an eye on our borders.”
The dragon-pig opened its little mouth and the ridges over one eye quirked up.
“Not in dragon form unless you go invisible.”
It made an offended grunt.
“Or maybe you could be a bird, seagulls are…”
The growl was low.
“Okay, you could be a drone, if you like the idea of metal…yeah from that sound I’m guessing that’s a hard no. Maybe a kite?”
The growl became an almost subaudible rumble with an overlay of clicking. Every hair on my body stood up, and goosebumps riffled down my spine. That was the sound of a very big, very old, very dangerous thing, about to eat my face off.
“We could brainstorm. Toss around ideas.”
“You could just be a pig,” Ryder said, and the dragon-pig grunted in approval. “But if you fly, you’d have to make sure no one saw you.”
The dragon-pig got a very cunning look on its little pink face.
“No,” I said, “no, I don’t think that’s a good idea. People are bound to look up. And then they’ll see a flying pig, and just my luck, Patrick will film it, and we will become the ninth wonder of the world, which is exactly what we don’t need.”
“Nobody looks up,” Ryder said. “Well, kids do, but anyone past eighteen is too busy to wander around staring at the sky.”
“I wander around staring at the sky.”
“Sure. Because you know what kind of wonder is up there.”
