Prepare for anything. Great, just what I wanted to hear as my feet were deep insoil.
“Isaac, wait.” I wanted to get my staff and start my training, but I also needed to see if my mom’s address book was in fact just an addressbook.
I took a deep breath and told the group about the book. I told them what I thought it was, and how important it was for me to check out theaddresses.
Logan knew about it, but Dominic, Danny, Nadine, theygasped.
Isaac looked thoughtfully outside at the passing world. “We’ll get the staff and then we check out the closest address. If it’s nothing, we go home, start yourtraining.”
“And if it’s something?” I stroked Mittens’ backnervously.
He sighed. “Then we start rounding up skyborn. You need to stick together. Now more thanever.”
I could feel Logan thrum with excitement. How long had he pined over being the last dragon? How long had he yearned to be with others of hiskind?
Today was going to be a big day. It would prove once and for all that my mother had been doing something good. Noble even. That all those years she’d lied to me was for a higherpurpose.
Please don’t just be an addressbook.
* * *
The next hour passed quickly,I was informed that Nadine and Gear had painted the bus to look like an assisted living facility bus. I’m not sure how this would pass if all of us in our early twenties got off the bus together, but they seemed to only be concerned with driving around and attracting attention as the big yellow school bus with no kids on it. The windows had all been tinted to nearly black as well. If the druids were looking for a big yellow bus, they wouldn’t findit.
“What about the plates?” I asked Nadine while my feet remained in their pottedplants.
She shrugged. “Gear took care ofit.”
Was Gear secretly in the CIA?Geeze.
Gear just looked at me with his large green mohawk andwinked.
Now Dominic was driving the bus through some fancy neighborhood, while Isaac pointed the way to this majestic tree. I reached up and Logan helped me unpot my feet. I was reluctant to admit my head started throbbing once they were out. I hoped I hadn’t done permanent damage to anything. I was rather fond of my brain, and the way it was throbbing suggested I’d done a littledamage.
“You okay?” Logan asked, and I nodded. I didn’t want to worry him over something I couldn’t fix and didn’tunderstand.
He didn’t seem to buy it, but thought better of challenging me, helping me stand as I peered out the dark-tinted windows. I’d never been to Louisiana, and it was beautiful. The road we were driving down had large plantation-style homes with red-brick fronts. The sun was just setting, casting an orange glow across thetrees.
“Stop up here!” Isaac called out and I moved towards the front of the bus to see where he waspointing.
“Holy mother!” Iexclaimed.
Isaac beamed; tears lined his eyes. “Isn’t shebeautiful?”
One of the largest trees I’d ever seen was plopped right in the front yard of a red-brick home with white shutters. The base wasn’t one trunk, it was …seven. They spilled out sideways onto the lawn like creeping vines, covering a width of about seventyfeet.
“It’s glorious.” I wanted to touch it, to lie in her branches while drawing all day. It looked so healthy andinviting.
“Eva, we’re going to need a cover if the homeowners come out,” Isaacinstructed.
The sorceress nodded and rubbed her hands together. “Let’s doit.”
I stepped forward, and so did Logan, but Isaac put his hand out gently. “Logan … son … I need you to trust that I can protect her. The fewer people the better, for what needs to bedone.”
His eyes lingered on me for a moment and then henodded.
I reached out and squeezed his hand.‘I’ll be rightback.’
He didn’t say a word, staring at me with impossibly greeneyes.
