Page 30 of Red Dragon’s Flame

He scooped up a couple of pieces of cheese toast, gave her a heartbreaker of a smile, and left the room.

Chapter 15

After Mikah left, Devon crawled out of bed and checked out the room they’d stashed her in. There wasn’t much to it—a nice comfortable bedroom and a really nice bathroom.

No computers. That was too bad. A computer or three would have made her feel at home.

She cautiously opened the bedroom door and peered out. All she could see was a short hallway with a hardwood floor, and a murmur of voices in the distance.

The others. She didn’t want to meet any others. People made her uncomfortable.

She shut the door and went the other way, to the wall of glass and its balcony beyond, with a half-wall made of some kind of transparent material that wouldn’t block the view. The shape of the land and water, and some of the landmarks, told her she was still in Seattle.

There was a door to the balcony, and she slipped outside. She looked anxiously out at the night, wondering if the Allohim were still out there beyond the wards, winged harbingers of death.

She didn’t sense anything. Keeping low, she crept along the balcony, past what looked like the master bedroom. There was an outdoor stairway leading down and nothing above but the roof—this was the freakin’ penthouse, and it apparently encompassed two stories. There was even a lap pool built into the terrace below, for fuck’s sake.

Maybe it was true that dragons had hoards of gold. You’d need it, for a place like this.

She wondered what that other place was like, where Mikah wanted to take her. If it was fancy like this, maybe it wouldn’t be too bad.

Rectangles of light on the lower terrace with moving shadows showed that the living room was probably down there—with all the people.

So there was no exit that way either. Not that she wanted to go, necessarily—she just liked to know she could.

If there was anything she hated, it was feeling trapped.

Devon felt a prickling on her tattoo between her shoulder blades. It made her uneasy, so she stole back to the room where she’d been left and crawled back into bed, re-warming her dinner with heat from her hands. One perk of being a freak—her coffee never got cold.

She’d only taken a few bites when there was a soft sound at the door. Devon thrust the tray aside and stood up, ready to defend herself.

The door opened to reveal a teenage girl with long wavy blond hair, bright blue eyes, and an aura of trouble. She grinned at Devon and stepped inside.

“Hi! You’re awake! Awesome. Mikah told everyone to stay away from you because you’re not used to being around people, so I figured no one would see me if I came to see how you were.”

Devon’s lips twitched. They’d told her not to do something, and she’d immediately gone and done it, figuring that she wouldn’t get caught because everyone else would be not doing it. She liked this girl already.

“And anyway,” she went on, “we already know each other. You’re Shadowfire.”

“Devon, really,” she said, wondering how this kid knew her game handle.

“Right! I’m Michelangela, the teenage mutant NinjaWolf.”

“Oh!” Devon realized who she was talking to. “That’s you! I loved how you took on those orcs in the Blue Citadel last week. Total devastation.”

The girl grinned. “Right?” She bounced into the room and sat down on the bed. “Get a bunch of griffon troops to drop steaming dung on them, and they forget to watch for people tunneling in from below.” She held out her fist, and after a second Devon gingerly bumped it with her own.

No flames. Yay.

Devon sat down again, pulling a pillow onto her lap. The girl added, “I didn’t know you’d heard about that.”

Devon grinned back at her. “I have eyes and ears everywhere.” She hesitated, then said in her probably not-cool way, “But your name can’t really be Michelangela.”

The girl rolled her eyes. “Sad but true,” she said. “My dad is obsessed with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. You know, that super-old movie franchise or whatever? They’re all named after Renaissance artists. His name is Rafe, like Rafael. So I’m Michelangela—but you can call me Mikey. My little brothers are Leonardo and Donatello.”

“Get out.” Devon was fascinated. “Your mother went along with that?”

“My dad gets lots of crazy ideas,” Michelangela said. “She has to pick her battles.” She grabbed one of Devon’s cheese toast wedges and munched it down. “Sean always makes enough food for an army,” she added, as a sort-of apology. It seemed these people always ate off each other’s plates.