“I’ll get Severin to help me search the palace library,” Hannah says.
“I’ll see if there are any books I can order through library loan,” I say. When my friend opens her mouth to protest about my promise not to enter the town library, I raise my hand. “It’s online. I can do it from home.”
“I’ll ask around in Faerie,” Naomi says. “But I don’t think I’ll find much, since orcs tend to have nature magic.”
“You know the person you really need to ask,” Autumn says. “Luke.”
I nod. Even if I no longer have a job with him, Luke has the biggest magical library in all the realms. If the information exists, I can find it. I just have to convince him to let me back into his library.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lukendevener
The door of Slice of Life opens, puffing out warm air that smells of garlic and tomatoes. A high cry of “Pizza!” echoes through the restaurant, and I almost turn away, but the growling of my stomach urges me forward.
Winter on Earth is colder and longer than any such season in Faerie, especially outside the bubble of warmth Severin created around Ferndale Falls. It’s curtailed my normal ability to hunt for food. Plus, humans areeverywhere, disturbing the game animals. Ferndale Falls might be surrounded by forest, but it isn’t the deep forest of Faerie. There are deer, though not in the numbers a dragon requires.
I hunted the night before—I needed to let out my frustration at being trapped by the little witch’s spellsomehow—but I can’t hunt every night, so I’ve been reduced to eating cooked food like a bipedal fae. I’ll never admitI actually quite like it. Whereas my dragon form craves nothing but meat, it turns out my weredragon form enjoys a wide variety of tastes and textures.
A flock of pixies flies from the kitchen, carrying a pizza tray between them. They deposit it on one of the tables with another joyful cry of “Pizza!”
Once done, one of the pixies breaks away from the others to hover in front of my face. Smaller than my hand, her skin, hair, and moth wings glow a distinctive light blue. Even her clothing matches the color, made from the leaves of a Faerie blue birch.
“Lukendevener,” Blue shrieks, pleased I’ve succumbed to her restaurant’s charms once again. “What will you have tonight?”
“What do you think?” I growl.
“Meat lovers, it is!” She does a delighted spin, then streaks toward the kitchen to place my order.
“To go!” I yell after her, then stand, arms crossed, leaning one shoulder against the wall, that wing shifting toward the center of my back.
Golden walls wrap the wide room, the bottoms painted with a mural of plant life, creating a magical forest caught at sunset, when the sky blazes with the warmest colored sunlight. Shadow fae fill most of the square wooden tables dotted throughout the open space. Tall and lean and beautiful, they resemble their elfin ancestors except for one thing: the shadow magic swirling across their skin in black tattoos, ready to unfurl into wings or reaching tendrils.
A few tables of humans are mixed in, and my magic reaches out instinctively yet feels nothing. They aren’twitches. They eat and talk, completely oblivious to the magical beings all around them due to the disguising glamour that protects the entire town from the non-magical.
That same spell keeps them from seeing my horns, wings, and tail. A small snarl curls my lips. I shouldn’t need such a spell. If only the timing had been different three-hundred years ago—if only the goddess hadn’t hurled me across realms right when I was mid-shift. Now, I’m damaged and can only access two of my three forms: dragon and weredragon. If I could shift all the way to my fae form, I could travel the human world, researching at will. How can I study this new realm and write scholarly articles about humans if I can’t walk freely among them?
Being forced to be human inside the book, however... I shake my head. How odd to finally achieve the form I’ve agonized about only to hate it. It didn’t feel like me. Perhaps it was the loss of my magic.
Blue emerges from the kitchen, leading a group of pixies who carry a flat, square cardboard box between them. They deposit it onto my outstretched hands with a shrieking cry of “Pizza.”
I don’t bother to hide my wince at the assault to my keen fae hearing, and Blue smirks. “I’ll charge it to your tab.”
I grunt and spin for the door. Along with the protection glamour, Severin also placed one of his shadow fae within Ferndale Falls’s human bank. She handles all the paperwork for the fae living in town, allowing us to function within human society. As superior beings, dragons prize knowledge instead of piles of gold like the ludicrous stories humans tell, but that doesn’t mean we have no gold. Money is useful, afterall, when needed to buy books.
The cold evening air glides over my exposed skin, which is so much more sensitive than my dragon scales. My inner fire immediately flares higher, keeping me warm as I stride down the sidewalk and into The Thirsty Tusk.
The bar is like a slice of home, decorated in imitation of a Faerie orc pub, the entire interior made from rich, honey-colored wood. Thorvinn looms behind the bar, tall and green skinned with long black hair. The orc gives me a small nod, and by the time I take a seat at one of the stools, he’s got a tankard of ale waiting.
I grunt my thanks and take a swig, the hoppy beer pleasantly tangy. “No Rune tonight?”
“Not yet.” He scowls, showing off his tusks. “Don’t see him much these days.”
“Too true.” I snort. Ever since he and Severin found their fated mates, they’ve been insufferably happy and busy, leaving those of us still single to drink alone most nights. I’ll never admit it, but I’ve missed the werewolf. Of all the fae who gather in the pub of an evening, Rune’s the least objectionable. Perhaps I can entice a few more dragons to move to Earth. At least then I’d have someone else scholarly minded to converse with, and they’d hopefully be willing to stand my company for short bursts of time.
I open the lid of my pizza box, and magic shivers through the air beside me as a hand appears. Moving in a blur, I grab the wrist, halting it before it can steal any of my food.
“Show yourself, cat.”
