“No. I’m telling you, it’s an allergy.”
“What are you allergic to?”
“I’m not completely certain, but I have a theory.”
“Do tell.”
Viktor plopped down in the chair in front of her desk. “You know that big loud explosion in the town square a little while ago?”
“Yes. It was sort of hard to miss.”
“I was in the vicinity and the smoke from that fire made me sick.”
“Sick?”
“Well, sneezy.”
“Sneezy? Like one of Disney’s dwarves?”
“No. Well, maybe. I don’t know.”
“What are you talking about?”
They were all alone in her office, but Viktor looked around like a horde of bandits was about to storm in and take them away from all they’d ever known.
“I think I’m allergic to the smoke from that explosion. At first, I couldn’t stop sneezing. I beat my previous record of thirteen sneezes in a row. Once the smoke dissipated, I stopped but then when I got back to work, uhm, something weird happened.”
“Weird? Define weird.”
“It would be easier to show you.”
“Show me?”
“You really need to see for yourself to understand. Come to my workroom. You’ll see. The thing is, I didn’t mean for it to happen.” They stood up and headed up the back stairs to Viktor’s workshop.
“What did you do?” Ruby pictured something like out of a movie where all of his leather creations came to life and started dancing the macarena around his workshop. A fanciful notion.
“Nothing. I mean, something. But, well, I didn’tmeanto do it.”
That did not sound as farfetched as sneezing and having a bunch of dancing leather goods doing a be-bop around the room.
She followed her brother down a hallway to the door to Viktor’s private workshop, where he crafted all his leather goods and wares.
Viktor quickly opened it, ushered her in, then slammed it behind them, threw the dead bolt and led her into the large space of his workshop. Good news—there were no dancing leather projects. The space was much neater than she expected. Several tables around the room held various half-finished projects. Bad news—the weird thing he mentioned, or perhaps the elephant in the room, was the partial dragon form of her other brother, Warrick.
At eight feet tall with a six-foot-long tail trailing behind him, he was hard to miss. The humanoid form wasn’t as handsome as his full dragon shape, in her opinion.
“What did she say?” Warrick asked in his deep dragon voice, sounding panicked.
“Nothing yet. I figured it was best to show her the problem.”
“What is going on here?” She stared at Warrick’s rather impressive eight-foot-tall dragon form and wished she were half something else, too, rather than completely dreadful witch.
“I sneezed, felt a spurt of magic, and must have turned Warrick into his partial dragon form by accident.”
Ruby narrowed her eyes. “Why doesn’t he just change himself back?”
Warrick huffed loudly and a three-foot-long flame shot out of his toothy mouth. “Don’t you think I’ve tried? I can’t change myself back. That’s the problem.”
