The Dragon's Hunt Page 2

  Rhea jumped at the warm, rough-edged voice and glanced up, surprised by the intrusion and trying not to show her irritation at having been dragged out of the mental world of the drawing. She hadn’t even heard the bell on the door. She opened her mouth to say she wasn’t open yet, but the scruffy, muscle-bound dudebro didn’t give her a chance.

  “Is this your side project?” A pair of bespectacled blue eyes twinkled at her beneath a somewhat careless mop of blond hair with a hint of strawberry in a face framed by stubble with a more decidedly red hue. Something about those eyes gave her a little shock. A warning premonition? Déjà vu? His smile was amused, one well-developed arm in a snug, black Henley resting on the counter as he leaned against it. She realized she was staring.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  The smile faded. “Ouch.” He straightened and scrubbed his fingers absently over his scalp in the hair at his crown, making it clear how his hair had gotten that way. “I guess I kind of ghosted on you. Not cool. Sorry.” He had a slight accent she couldn’t place.

  Rhea blinked at him, trying not to physically squirm at the little frisson of unease tickling her spine. “Ghosted?” Did he have something to do with last night’s visitation? The possibility that he’d been a part of that intrusion into her mental peace made her testy. “Who are you supposed to be, Christmas Past?”

  “I...” Rando-guy looked startled—and a little hurt, as though no one had ever spoken to him in such an unfriendly manner before. Maybe he expected women to be dazzled at the sight of his muscular Nordic perfection and quirky little smile. And those sky blue eyes. And his ginger beard and tousled bedhead. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you. I just saw the sign...” He messed up his hair again, distractedly, like he was trying to be that freaking adorable. “Never mind.” He turned and headed for the door, and Rhea had an attack of conscience (because it certainly wasn’t the firm ass in those jeans affecting her); he was here about the Help-Wanted sign.

  “Sorry, wait.” She closed her drawing pad and set down the pen. “I didn’t mean to bite your head off. I’m a little cranky this afternoon and you kinda caught me off guard. We’re not officially open yet, and I wasn’t expecting anyone to wander in. You’re here about the job?”

  He turned, tucking his hands into his jean pockets, looking like a damn little lost lamb. A two-hundred-and-twenty-pound lost lamb. In cowboy boots.

  “Uh, yeah. Is the position still open?”

  “Do you have any retail experience?”

  “Not...as such.”

  “Been around tattooing much?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Are you inked?”

  One hand slid out of its pocket, going for the forelock once more. “This was a bad idea.”

  “Why don’t you let me be the judge?” Rhea handed him her tablet and switched over to the job application. “It doesn’t have to be super detailed. I’m just looking for someone with a demonstrated ability to hold down a job. And someone who’s personable.” She gave him a pointed look to let him know that so far he hadn’t passed the test for the latter.

  His sky blues lit up with an engaging smile. “I can be personable.”

  “We’ll see.” Rhea turned her stool toward the credenza behind her, making a point of going back to her drawing and paying him no attention. The rider on the most prominent horse took shape under her pen, the wild hair and eyes she remembered from her vision—eyes that bore a striking resemblance to her applicant’s—the rugged furs, the upraised sword—

  “All done.”

  She started at the second interruption. She hadn’t expected to get drawn so deeply into the image so quickly.

  Her determined would-be employee slid the tablet across the counter toward her when she looked up. “There wasn’t that much to fill in, to be honest. I just moved here, so none of it’s local—I don’t have a permanent address yet. But I’m dependable.” He gave Rhea that amiable smile once more. A little too amiable for her taste. It gave the impression he wasn’t too bright.

  She took the tablet and looked it over. Leo Ström had waited tables at a family restaurant chain in Flagstaff for a few months, bagged groceries in Tucson over the summer, worked as a lab assistant at the University of Arizona for a semester. He also had a degree in biology from Stockholm University.

  Rhea glanced up. “You studied in Sweden?”

  Leo shrugged. “I’ve lived all over the place.”

  “And what made you come here?”

  “Ley lines.”

  He said it with a grin, but Rhea couldn’t help rolling her eyes. It was bad enough when tourists treated the town like a wacky sideshow, but people who moved here strictly for the metaphysical ambiance could be even worse.

  “Kidding.” Leo smiled. “When I dropped out of the grad program at NAU, I decided I wanted to regroup in a place that spoke to me. And Sedona...” He shrugged. “Spoke to me.”

  It was still kinda ley lines. “What were you studying in grad school?”

  Leo gave her a peculiar look. Had she already asked that question?

  “Molecular biology.”

  “No kidding? My sister’s in the molecular biology grad program at NAU.”

  Leo laughed awkwardly. Maybe he thought she was making fun of him somehow.

  “Seriously. She’s studying autosomal recessive neurodegenerative disorders in rats or something.”

  “Are you...?” Leo’s hand was in his hair again. He looked completely flustered. “I thought...” He shook his head, the flustered expression turning to a look of understanding as his pale skin went pink. “You’re not Theia, are you?”

  Chapter 2

  Now it all made sense. She wasn’t usually this slow on the uptake, but over the last four years of living more than a hundred and fifty miles apart, she’d become less accustomed to being mistaken for her twin.

  “You know Theia.”

  Leo nodded, combing his fingers through his hair. “This is embarrassing.”

  “When you said ‘ghosted’...”

  “We met on Tinder. We went out a couple of times, but I kind of stopped answering her texts because things got weird. I mean, not weird. We just weren’t hitting it off.” He exhaled deeply. “Oh, boy.”

  All the times some guy had mistaken her for Theia in high school came crashing back. Theia was the “sweet” one, the normal one who didn’t dress weird or act like a clown, and guys were always falling for her. And more often than Rhea cared to recall, they had run into her somewhere and taken her for Theia, treating her the way guys usually didn’t treat Rhea. Then they’d realize they were talking to the “other one” and the disappointment would be palpable and awkward.

  “I made this weird, didn’t I?” Leo tucked his hands back into his pockets. “Sorry. I hope you find someone to fill the position. Take care.” He was walking away again.

  Anger flared inside her, irrational and childish but impossible to suppress. “So Theia was good enough to bang for a while, but I’m chopped liver.” Damn. Why did she have to say that out loud?

  Leo’s shoulders stiffened as he reached the door, and he turned back with a miserable look of discomfort. “Look, I didn’t mean to—”

  “No, it’s me. Sorry. I’m totally overreacting.” Rhea sighed, setting the tablet on the counter. “You just triggered some stupid childhood drama.” She tried to laugh it off. “Should we try this again? Rhea Carlisle.” She held out her hand.

  Leo squared his shoulders and came back to the counter. “Nice to meet you, Rhea Carlisle.” He smiled as he shook her hand. “I’m Leo Ström.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Rhea indicated the tablet with a nod of her head when Leo looked suspicious. “It’s on the application.”

  “Right.” He laughed, still a bit awkward but more at ease.

  �
�So what’s your availability?”

  “My availability?”

  “For the job. What hours would you be available to work? I’m open seven days.”

  Leo’s eyes widened within the wire frames. “You’d actually hire me after this disaster?”

  “It’s hardly your fault someone Xeroxed your ex-girlfriend.” Without telling you, apparently. Which was a new low for Theia.

  “Whoa. Wait. She’s not my ex-girlfriend.”

  “Oh, so you’re still seeing her.” Rhea laughed at the look of mortification on his face as he stuttered, trying to answer. “I’m just giving you crap. I need someone to work about twenty hours a week to help get the place in shape and book appointments, mostly mornings, occasionally closing if you prove trustworthy.” She winked at his expression. “Sound okay to you?”

  “Uh, yeah.” Slightly bemused, he took her outstretched hand once more and shook on it. “Yeah, sounds great. Thanks.”

  “You didn’t ask what it pays.”

  “At this point, I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t press my luck.” Leo grinned as he pushed up his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Tomorrow morning, then?”

  She was probably going to regret this. Honestly, she was already regretting it. Why hadn’t she just let him walk away? An entanglement of Theia’s was the last thing she needed.

  Rhea put on a professional smile. “Morning is a relative term. Eleven o’clock sharp. We open at noon.”

  * * *

  The temperature, mild when she’d set out this morning, had dropped precipitously by the time she headed home, and the first snow of the season was falling. Not heavy enough to cover the ground yet, but if it kept up, it might have some staying power by morning. She wasn’t looking forward to snow driving after spending the last five years in Tempe. Especially now that she’d chosen to live in Cottonwood, half an hour from her shop. Not that choosing was precisely the word for it. The tiny apartment was all she could afford, especially without a roommate. And she’d only been able to swing the one-bedroom because the manager had offered to give her the studio price for the first three months.

  For a while, she’d thought she might move up to Flagstaff with Theia, but that was out of the question now. Unbelievable that Theia wouldn’t even have mentioned having a twin to someone she was dating. Was she ashamed of everyone in the family now? It was bad enough that she’d officially changed her name, taking her middle name, “Dawn,” as her last name because she didn’t want to acknowledge the father who’d lied to them all their lives. Rhea wondered if Theia recognized the irony of her secret keeping.

  The wipers swished across the windshield, set to intermittent, and as they slid back into place against the hood, something else whooshed past in their path. Something large and white and moving fast. Rhea slammed on the brakes—and, of course, began to hydroplane on the freshly wet road. The back end of the car whipped about and Rhea was in free-spin. Luckily, no one else was on the road. She managed to get the car under control and pull onto the opposite shoulder, although she was now facing the wrong way.

  Shaken, she watched the wipers snap up and fall back a few times, trying to put together what could have whizzed past her window. A bird? Its wingspan, if it was one, must have been wider than her windshield. While she contemplated it, a loud horn split the air, making her heart pound.

  That wasn’t a car horn. It was some kind of literal horn, with someone blowing into it, the notes of a herald or a mounted charge. Rhea braced herself, gripping the wheel as the ground rumbled with the impact of something heavy—or many somethings. It was like the vision in her living room, only this was right out in the open and there was no tattoo to read. But the riders were here.

  This time, they’d taken on a more spectral appearance, the horses looking almost skeletal and the riders gaunt and wraithlike, dressed in contemporary clothing. The wet road was visible through their translucent forms as they thundered across the highway toward her. Rhea shrieked and ducked against the seat with her arms over her head as the riders began to leap across her MINI. She was sure they were going to trample the roof and crush her inside, but they somehow all managed to clear the top of the car—though some just barely, as hooves rattled and scraped across it.

  As the last horse thundered onto the ground on the passenger side, the gaunt-faced horseman paused and turned, spectral gaze fixed on her as she sat up. Oddly, he was wearing a cowboy hat. He tipped it at her, sunken orbs in the hollowed spectral flesh flashing a vivid aquamarine, before turning and galloping away.

  She’d finally started to exhale when something jumped onto the hood of the car and scrambled over it, making her heart leap into her throat. A wolflike hound trailed the hunt. Like the rider, the hound turned and fixed its wolfy eyes on her—pale blue and disturbingly sentient—before tearing off into the brush. They were all swallowed up—the vision and the thunder, the horns and baying alike—into the billowing, unearthly fog that traveled with them.

  In their wake, the snow became a sudden, violent hail, with large marble-sized pellets hammering her roof and windows. She waited it out, making sure the worst of it was over before putting the car in Drive and turning around on the slick road to head home.

  Delayed shock hit her once she was inside her apartment. Rhea collapsed onto the couch in the dark, shuddering and trying to catch her breath. She hadn’t had an asthma attack since she was a kid, but her chest was tight and her airway felt like it was closing.

  She sat up and deliberately slowed her breathing, listening to her lungs make a peculiar wheezing rattle as she breathed in deeply, and finally got herself under control. Maybe it was time to get some expert advice, because this was getting too weird. Not from Theia, of course. And Ione would freak out and go into “mom” mode. It was hard for her oldest sister not to slip back into the role their parents’ deaths had forced her into—a teenager herself at the time—whenever anything threatened one of her siblings. But Phoebe, the middle child of the family, was used to dealing with weird.

  Phoebe answered on the first ring. “Hey, kiddo. What’s up?”

  “When you have shades stepping into you...do you ever see anything ghostly or is it just their presence you feel?”

  “Well, hello to you, too. And, no, I don’t perceive the shades visually. Rafe sees them, of course. Dating someone who commands the dead has its perks.” Phoebe’s boyfriend happened to be the last scion of Quetzalcoatl. Because of course he was. “Why, did you need me to contact someone for you?”

  “No.” Realizing she was scratching at her jeans over the healing tattoo, Rhea snatched her hand away. “No, it’s...never mind. I think I’m overtired.”

  “Rhe. Come on, this is me. What’s going on?”

  Her hand slid under the jeans, but Rhea curled her fingers and managed to stop herself. Damn this stupid tattoo.

  “I thought I saw something a little...weird.”

  “How weird?”

  Rhea hesitated.

  “Rhe? How weird?”

  “Johnny Cash ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’ weird. Only on Highway 89A and not in the sky.”

  “Okay. That’s decidedly in the weird column.”

  “And it’s not the first time I saw them. I had a vision while working on one of my tattoos. And then there was a fox in my living room, and she said I’d summoned her from the Wild Hunt.”

  Phoebe was quiet for a moment. “Honey...are you still taking those antidepressants?”

  Rhea let out an exasperated sigh. “I wasn’t hallucinating.”

  “Sorry, but it’s a little hard to process. A talking fox?”

  “And who has a boyfriend that turns into a feathered snake god, can shift into crow form and talks to coyotes? Jesus, Phoebes. Talking to a fox in my living room is hardly the weirdest thing anyone in this family does. Ione has sex with a goddamn dragon.”<
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  “She doesn’t actually have sex with the dragon. Dev and his dragon demon are two separate entities who happen to share the same corporeal form.”

  “Right. Okay. You’re absolutely right. I am being completely ridiculous with this fox-spirit thing. That’s way more normal. Good night.” Her thumb was poised to end the call.

  “Rhea, wait.” Phoebe made a noise suggesting she was blowing her bangs out of her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a jerk. After everything that’s happened lately, I guess I owe you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Yeah, I guess you do.”

  “What does Theia think?”

  It was Rhea’s turn to blow at imaginary hair—or not so imaginary, as her spikes were getting way too long these days, and one in particular kept flopping over and hanging in her eyes. “I don’t know what Theia thinks.”

  “You didn’t call her first?”

  “I’m not really talking to Theia.”

  “You’re what? Rhe, what’s going on with you?”

  “Besides talking fox hallucinations? Just trying to deal with the fact that Theia kept Dad’s second family a secret for months.”

  “I thought you two found the genealogical information together.”

  “That part was all Theia. She knew we had three other sisters, and she knew one of them was living a few miles away from her. And she never said a word to me. Maybe if she had, Laurel wouldn’t have apprenticed herself to a psycho necromancer and tried to kill you.”

  “Nobody’s to blame for that but Laurel herself—and that bag of dicks who took advantage of her vulnerability, Carter Hanson Hamilton.” Phoebe delivered the name of Ione’s ex with all due mocking disgust. Though “bag of dicks” was being kind, as far as Rhea was concerned. “You can’t let that come between you and Theia. Does she even know how you feel about it?”

  Rhea sighed. “She knows. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to know if there’s any kind of precedent for seeing a ghostly hunting party. Can you check with Rafe to see if he knows anything about the Wild Hunt or if he’s seen anything out of the ordinary in the spirit world lately?”