Page 70 of Dragon’s Rebel

Chapter 31

There was coffee in the Batcave, much to Rebel’s relief. There was also breakfast, courtesy of the zefirs. Rebel was beginning to think she might be starting to get used to this whole ‘being surrounded by magic’ thing.

As long as nobody expected her to start doing spells.

Tyr was at the computer screen, speaking indistinctly around a huge bite of sticky bun. Thorne winced when he saw the sugar icing on his keyboard. Rebel smiled to herself.

She looked around for Tempest, and spotted her sitting in a corner, looking pale and a little sick, her notebook and pen in her lap. She wasn’t writing, though.

“Hey, you okay?” Rebel asked, carrying her plate over and sitting down next to her.

“I think so,” Tempest said. She tried to smile, but it really didn’t work out too well. “I think I had too many of those pink umbrella drinks last night.”

“You and me both,” Rebel said. In fact, she’d been expecting to feel worse than she did this morning. Must be dragon healing sex mojo or something.

“Okay,” Tyr said, “Listen up.” Everyone went quiet. “The story we found was one that was reported on several newswires. It was about a biker gang attacking a meth lab in a trailer in the middle of nowhere. The whole thing exploded, killing the couple that was running the meth lab, along with their two children.”

Rebel ran her hand through her hair, her stomach feeling unsettled. Maybe the dragon healing mojo wasn’t as good as she thought.

“Um, fail,” she said. “A) That was no biker gang that attacked us. No motorcycles—robes and spells. And B) my parents sure as hell weren’t running a meth lab. And C) as you can see—Tempest. Me. Still alive.”

Not by much, though. She and Tempest could so easily have been caught in the explosion—it was only sheer dumb luck that they hadn’t been.

Luck and Tempest. Losing her doll in the woods, and going out to look for it in the dark, forcing Rebel to go after her.

A damn lost doll had saved their lives.

“That’s what most of the news stories said, yes,” Tyr said, swallowing the last of his sticky bun. “But it happened near a little town named Milldale, and this is what their local paper said.”

He tapped the screen, leaving more sugar icing in his wake. Thorne winced.

“It says a trailer exploded somewhere outside of town. But it doesn’t say anything about a meth lab. It says that squatters lived there.”

“Squatters,” Thorne said. “Damn. It could be them. That would explain why we never found any property in their name—the false name, I mean—and no rental agreements. They found a place where they could set up and there would be no paper trail.”

“Exactly,” Zane chimed in. “But not just that. This first story, before the others in the larger papers, said that only two people were killed—a couple that lived in the trailer. The cause of the explosion was unknown. Then, the following week the paper published an amendment, saying that everyone in the family was killed.”

Rebel put her plate down, her appetite suddenly gone. “It was changed to match the newswire stories.”

Tyr nodded. “But—” He raised one finger, then tapped a button to flip the screen to another page. “Here’s the kicker. In the same paper was another story, just a paragraph. It said that two children had been found at the side of the road, seemingly abandoned. They wouldn’t say where they’d come from, and they were being held until the state could come and take them, or their parents could be found.”

He looked at Rebel. “Two little girls, ages eleven and five.”

Holy hell, he’d found it. Rebel felt like she couldn’t breathe.

Memories rushed back to her, like a key unlocking a door or someone throwing a window wide open.

Running through the woods with Tempest, looking behind them the whole way, wondering if the bad people were going to find them.

Somehow believing that if she could just get Tempest to a safe place, their parents would come for them.

They were out all night and it was cold, even though it was summer, but she made Tempest keep walking until she couldn’t go any further, and then she’d carried her on her back while she slept.

And then a police car stopped at the side of the road, and she was too tired to run. Too tired to do anything but get in the car, and the hard vinyl seats smelled of cigarette smoke and vomit but they felt like a velvet cushion in a palace because she was so tired.

They were taken to the sheriff’s office. He was an older man with kind eyes, and he’d asked them questions but Rebel just kept shaking her head. All she would tell him was that her name was Rebel and she was eleven years old, and Sissy was five.

And that part was a lie. A lie that was printed in the papers. “That’s what I told them,” she said numbly. “My parents had always told me not to tell anybody anything, that it was important because it would put me and Tempe in danger.”