Karen Chance: Death's Mistress

The knife finally slipped free, and the second it cleared the tough hide, a cold blue-white light swelled out from between the scales as if the huge body was cracking down fault lines. And then an explosion of light hit me like a fist, throwing me back a yard. I landed hard against the faded wallpaper, jarring a hanging mirror loose. It crashed against the floor, and the screeching from upstairs started up again.

“God, do I need a drink,” a voice said fervently.

My thoughts exactly.

I sat up as someone pushed through the kitchen door and headed for the liquor cabinet. I got to my hands and knees and peered around the jamb, only to see a tall, naked redhead standing in the lantern light. She was glaring at the empty liquor cabinet. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone teetotaler!”

“No,” I said cautiously, sizing this new shape up.

It looked like Claire, my old roommate. The illusion was perfect, down to the little details that spells usually overlook. The creature’s hair was a red fuzz ball, the way Claire’s always got in rainy weather; there was a familiar pattern of freckles over the nose; and the arms were crossed under the breasts in an often-used expression of annoyance.

But there were discordant notes, too. This Claire had bruise-dark circles under her eyes, which kept darting nervously around the kitchen, and a sickly pallor beneath her freckles. Her lips were white and pressed tightly together, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in a while, like she was running on nerves.

But the real clincher was that Claire wouldn’t show up in the middle of the night, unescorted, barefoot and wild-eyed. When I met her, she’d been working a bad-paying job at a magical auction house and had needed a roommate for the extra cash. But that was before a real-life fey prince turned up at one of the sales and swept her off her feet—and all the way to Faerie. She’d been there ever since, presumably living the happily-ever-after that the rest of us just dream about.

“It’s a damn good glamourie,” I said, wondering exactly how one evicted a dragon, even in human form, from one’s kitchen. “But for future reference, Claire didn’t make a habit of running around naked. Not even in her own house.”

“I was wearing clothes!” the creature said, snatching an apron from a drawer. It was the old-fashioned type that was more like a dress, leaving her decent as long as she didn’t turn around. “I burst out of them whenever I change now. My dragon self has hit adolescence and it’s growing like a weed.”

I stared from the drawer with the aprons—I hadn’t known we had any—to the woman shrugging one on. “Dragon self?”

She pushed limp red strands off her forehead with the back of her hand. “I’m half Dark Fey, Dory. You know that!”

“Yeah, but… you never mentioned what kind!”

“I didn’t know until recently, and anyway, it’s not the kind of thing you just drop into conversation.” She located a box of aspirin in a drawer and peered at the label myopically. Those pretty green eyes had always been nearsighted, and I guess going scaly would make it a bitch to keep up with glasses.

I got slowly to my feet, my head spinning. “Claire?”

“Who were you expecting?” she demanded. “Attila the Hun?”

Her eyes focused on the cleaver I still held in one hand, which was leaking blood—nonhuman black—all over the kitchen tiles. Dragon’s blood was corrosive, which probably explained why half the blade was gone and the tiles looked like mice had been gnawing at them. I took what remained of the knife to the sink and rinsed it off, then put it back in the rack.

That seemed to reassure her, because she pulled something out from behind her legs and plopped it into a kitchen chair. It must have been behind her in the hall, because I hadn’t seen it before. I slowly approached the table, regarding this new problem cautiously.

The small towheaded creature appeared to be human. He—at least, I assumed it was a he, judging by the natty blue tunic he had on—looked to be around a year old. But he nonetheless gazed calmly back, remarkably composed considering what he had just witnessed.

“What is that?” I asked, as he drooled a little onto his tunic.

Claire dry swallowed the aspirin. “The heir to the throne of Faerie.”

“The heir to the throne of Faerie just spit up.”

“He does that a lot. He’s teething.”

I blinked. “Teething? Teething? He’s teething and you get spit?”

“Why? What did you expect?”

I waved my arms. “That!”

“That noise?”

“Yes! That horrible, screeching noise that goes on and on and—”

“That’s a baby?”

“A baby Duergar. Well, half anyway,” I amended. “The other half is Brownie, or so they said. I’m beginning to think it’s more like banshee.”

“You mean that little thing you picked up at the auction?” She located a box of Band-Aids and slapped one on her toe.

And okay, the apron thing could have been a fluke, but there weren’t too many people who knew where I’d acquired my current affliction. The magical auction had been highly illegal and very hush- hush. That wasn’t surprising, considering that they were selling illegal hybrids of supernatural creatures, some quite dangerous. I hadn’t even known it was taking place until I accidently raided it.

As weird as it seemed, this actually was Claire.

“Yes,” I told her, my head swimming with questions. I hadn’t seen her in over a month. It seemed like she’d picked up a few new abilities while she’d been gone.

“But he already had teeth,” she objected, frowning into the empty fridge.

“Those were his baby teeth. I’ve been finding them all over the house. Now the big-boy teeth are coming in and… Claire, I think I’m going crazy.”

“You’re not going crazy.”

“I just saw you morph into a dragon!”

“Well, you shouldn’t have startled me!” She opened the breadbox and stared at the mass of paper inside. “Don’t you keep any food in the house?”

“I got takeout.”

Her eyes latched onto the big white bags, which were spreading the smell of sesame chicken, veggie chow mein and fried rice around the kitchen. “It looks like you brought enough for three people,” she said hopefully.

“Yeah. I don’t know when we’ll get to eat it, though. What with all the commotion.”

Her eyes narrowed, and for a moment, she looked an awful lot like her alter ego. “Where’s this baby of yours?”

I grinned.

I led the way upstairs and Claire followed with her own quiet, well-behaved little bundle. The decibel level increased with every step, until I was sure the walls would crack with it. We opened the door to my old office and even Claire, who had seemed remarkably unmoved, winced.

Then she went in and the screeching abruptly stopped. A small, hairy head popped up from a nest of quilts under the bed and stared at her with wide gray eyes. Its owner looked like a cross between a monkey and a little old man: long, furry limbs, tiny squashed face and wild Muppet hair.

The unshed tears trembling on his lashes seemed to distill the moonlight filtering through the curtains, making his irises gleam like polished metal for a moment. Then he blinked and the tears coursed down his cheeks—and the noise started up again. Until Claire calmly walked over and picked him up.

He’d opened his mouth for another scream, but closed it again with a pop. A tiny hand with long, stick-like fingers grasped the frilly strap of her apron and he looked at her beseechingly, like I’d been beating him or something. “Why is he under the bed?” she demanded.

“He likes it under there,” I said defensively. “Duergars live underground, and I think it makes him feel vulnerable, being in the open when he sleeps. I tried putting him on the bed, but he just drags everything down there anyway.”