“Where are my clothes?!”
The lizard wrinkled his nose. “You humans and your infatuation with clothes.” He puffed out his chest. “We agama don’t need clothes. Our scales are as hard as the best iron fleet.”
The corners of my lips twitched up. “Is that why you’re complaining about me dropping you on the ground?”
It was at that moment that a voice shouted inside my head. Why are you talking to a lizard? How is this lizard able to talk? WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?!
I shot to my feet with the cloth wrapped tightly around me. “Where am I? How in the hell can you talk?”
The agama wrinkled his nose. “What do you mean, how can I talk? All agama can talk.”
My pulse quickened as I whipped my head to and fro. “How did I even get here? Where is here?”
The lizard rolled his eyes. “How can you not know the dark Sea of Erebus?”
I blinked at him. “The what where?”
The agama tilted his head to one side and frowned at me. “Is there any sense in that head of yours?”
“Listen,” I replied as I sidestepped the creature and backed toward the door. “I don’t want any trouble. I just want to go home.”
The lizard plopped his butt on the floor, and his tail thwapped against the floor. “Then stop slinking away and start telling me where you’re from.”
I stopped in front of the door and wrapped the sheet tighter about myself. “The Eastside?”
He tapped a claw on the boards. “The east side of what?”
My heart skipped a beat. “New York City?”
The agama’s tongue flicked out and swatted his cheek. “Never heard of it.”
Panic crept into the recesses of my mind as scenes from the Wizard of Oz movie played over and over again in my head. A few hushed, strangled words poured from my lips. “I’m not in Kansas anymore. . .”
The lizard cocked his head to one side. “What’s that?”
A mantra popped into my head, one crafted by fear and panic: I had to get out of here. I had to get home.
I spun around to face the door and grabbed the handle. It was at that exact same moment that I felt someone on the other side take hold of the control. The door swung into the room, and I was sent tumbling backward to avoid a blow, where I crashed onto my ass. The sheet tangled me in its webbing, so all I could do was gape up at the figure standing in the doorway.
It was a man slightly above six feet in height with sun-bleached blond hair tied back in a long tail that trailed down his back. The man appeared to be about thirty with one piercing blue eye. His left eye was covered by a thick, strapless black eyepatch, and along with the thick suntan, was all that marred his handsome features. He wore some sort of leather overcoat that smelled like saltwater, and the coat covered a white blouse and tan pants. Tall black boots adorned his feet, and a large flask hung at his hip.
A crooked smile slipped onto his lips as his brilliant eye fell on me. “Leaving so soon?”
“She was about to have a panic attack,” the agama piped up as he skittered across the floor and stopped beside the man’s left black boot. There was a glint in his beady eyes that I didn’t like. “If you hadn’t come, I probably would have knocked her out.”
The man was all amusement as he inclined his head to the lizard. “My apologies for ruining your fun, Ramaro.”
Ramaro wrinkled his snout. “I expect more than an apology. There had better be flies on tonight’s menu.”
“Only if you can scavenge them yourself,” the man warned him as he returned his full attention to me. He stooped and held his hand out to me. “Are you alright?”
I blushed under the intense gaze of that single eye and that dashing smile. “I-I think so.”
He examined me. “Did you wish to stand, or do you prefer to resemble a temptress of the sea, lying as you are in my nightshirt among my bed sheets?”
My jaw hit the deck, and I dropped my gaze to my scantily clad self. “T-this is yours?”
“I found you soaking wet on the floor, and couldn’t rightly leave you there until you awakened, could I?”
