“Perfect,” I said as I opened the bag. “Is she okay?”
“There was good news in the night. She got her baby back, and she apprehended the leader of the Leyak.”
Blinking my eyes, I gave him a blank stare. “Eh?”
“The Leyak. They’re shapeshifters, skinwalkers. So far, they’re an enemy to the entire Unseen world.”
“You’ve got enemies? I thought you were a united government.” I ate my lunch thoughtfully. What had I tripped and fallen into? It was one thing to find out I was a dragon, but I didn’t know how I felt about being dropped in the middle of some sort of supernatural war.
“We are. The Leyak have apparently been living underneath our noses for…well, forever. It’s quite embarrassing, actually.” He chewed thoughtfully. “We’re all pretty united against them, however divided we sometimes are with one another.”
“Common enemy,” I murmured. “So, what do you do? Alexander is a politician, what about you?”
“I’m a lawyer of sorts. I protect Unseen interests in the human world.” He puffed up slightly, proud of his work.
“How do you mean?”
“If one of the Unseen somehow gets in trouble with the law, I go through official channels to get them out of that trouble whenever possible.”
“Why wouldn’t you magic the problem away?”
“Magic isn’t free. Witches must be paid, and they must pay for the magic they do. There’s always a cost somewhere, to someone. So we don’t use magic if it can be avoided.”
I snorted. They were hilarious. “The magic fire? Totally avoidable.”
He burst out laughing, a true belly laugh. “I guess I wasn’t clear before. The fire in the passageway and the fire here in the stove, it’s hundreds and hundreds of years old. It’s been burning for a very long time.”
My jaw dropped. “Oh,” I said, at a loss. “Well, then.”
“Yep. Nowadays, though, we do at least try to fix our problems without calling a witch every single time. Besides, we have a significant amount of magic of our own, but it’s more related to nature.”
He looked at me thoughtfully. “You might be pretty connected to nature now yourself. I hear Riley is. Sunlight and dirt.”
“Ugh. I hate outside.” I’d never been an outdoorsy type. My mom and dad were, and they’d constantly tried to get me out on hikes, or to swim in the rivers. As a child I hadn’t minded the swimming, but every time I set foot outside, mosquitoes swarmed me. As I recalled, Riley and I had that in common and had always voted for indoor activities as children forced to spend time together.
We’d been the best of friends, once upon a time. But we lived across the county from each other and went to different schools. Family dinners eventually weren’t enough to keep our friendship strong. Then I moved away from my overbearing parents and Riley met Michael… it was one thing after another putting us on different paths.
Our paths seemed to be colliding again. “I’m looking forward to seeing her again. It’s been a long time.”
Roan filled me in on her love life, what he knew of it, while we sipped tea. When our teacups were empty, we washed our few dishes and I asked if we could explore the small town.
“Sure! I haven’t been out and about in town in a while.” He grinned, clearly excited. “Let’s go.”
Without anyone to worry where I was, I felt totally free for the first time in my life. I’d been lonely before, but suddenly the world was teeming with possibilities. I was a dragon! I wondered if there were any rules or a secret handshake I should learn.
We meandered down winding, cobbled lanes toward the town.
“Queenstown has a sister city. It took quite a bit of magic to do, but we managed to separate the two. They’ve renamed the human Queenstown, but this one stayed the same. When the original Queenstown was settled, the Queen was widely believed to be an ostracized Dannan. Legends have passed down to us that she was, but we might never know for sure.”
“It’s beautiful. Where is the sister city?”
He gestured broadly. “In the same spot. We created a second dimension over top of the original site. This was all centuries ago, of course, but it’s still impressive, all the same.”
I was floored. “So I’m not on Earth?”
“You are. If you’d been human, you couldn’t have come here. The magic looks for creatures with no magic and sort of…sorts them.”
“How is that possible?”
