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“You need a hoard,” my mother growled at me.
I narrowed my eyes and put some serious thought into growling back. “Maybe I’ll teach Garnet to steal from your hoard to add to mine.”
“And if she gets away with it, I was not guarding my hoard sufficiently. That would be an excellent prize. Maybe you’ll even try to steal from our hoard yourself.”
As my parents wouldn’t kill me for stealing from them, I could see how they’d love the game while I got rewarded if I pulled it off. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good girl. Now, get your kitten, put on a comfortable pair of shoes, and we’ll head up to the restaurant for dinner. As we are terrible people, we will surely be assholes the entire night, and we’ll come back tomorrow to pay our way back into your good graces while spoiling Garnet. We may be terrible people and dragons, but your love of animals is genetic. We just understood if we let you have a pet, we would be swiftly overrun—and you would have hesitated to follow your heart. You can have your job and keep Garnet, I promise you.”
While I understood that now, I hadn’t then, and I appreciated my parents’ foresight. “What about my hummingbird?”
“Let him sleep. True creations wake into their lives exhausted, and he had a busy day at Shrine Hill. He should sleep through the night. And if he truly wishes to join us, he will. He will find a way.”
FOURTEEN
Even the streets of the ward oozed opulence.
Saturday, April 25, 2167
The Diamond Ward
Dragon Heights, Wyoming
At eight in the morning, my parents showed up, dragged me out of bed, and took me to the heart of Dragon Heights with Garnet and my hummingbird in tow. Following the gemstone theme, I named him Tourmaline. The pair handled the morning adventure better than I did, especially as my mother insisted that I bring my new camera, which shared its bag with my new laptop. While I longed for my bed and grumbled over hauling a heavy pack, my parents bounced around as though they hadn’t left for their hotel at two in the morning after dinner.
Cecilia had reassured me it wasn’t a problem that my parents had eaten the equivalent of ten pricey dinners.
Dragons ate a lot, and my parents enjoyed displaying their financial prowess.
The thought of the dinner exhausted me, and I had a full day of exploring the city’s most prestigious ward ahead of me. If given a choice in the matter, I would have gone back to bed and called it a day.
Even the streets of the ward oozed opulence.
High end boutiques, the sort of places I wouldn’t have gone to even in Miami, took over the entire block. Dragons and dragon-kin alike stared at my parents, and more than a few of them shot me sympathetic looks. One woman, dressed in the kind of clothes that screamed she possessed great wealth, demonstrated admirable courage and headed my way.
Garnet, who’d learned strange people would pet her if she ventured far from me, crowded against my neck and whined. Soothing her with soft words and gentle caresses, I promised that she didn’t have to let anyone hold her unless she wanted to be held.
“You are Miss Kinsley, yes?” the woman asked, her tone friendly and soft.
I gave her credit; her approach was that of someone aware tone mattered to a kitten. “I am, ma’am. A pleasure to meet you.”
She smiled. “I am Lolly. I have been hoping I would get to greet you and your kitten.”
“Her name is Garnet. Garnet, baby, Lolly wants to meet you. She might even scratch under your chin.”
The carbunclo lived to have her chin scratched, and that convinced the kitten to relax a little, and she stretched out to the woman with an inquisitive mew.
Lolly did as the kitten wanted, scratching under her chin. “Aren’t you such a good little girl! If you do not mind me asking, do you know what her favorite stone is?”
I recognized a trap when I saw one, and thanks to my parents’ bickering over dinner, I had a decent idea how to handle the trap. I smiled, praised my kitten, and replied, “She is still learning what stones she loves the best, but her favorite uncut stone is a smoky quartz crystal cluster, and her favorite cut stone is a blue garnet I purchased for her at Shrine Hill. We’re going to be going on an outing to find her some new stones soon.”
“Oh, how lovely.” Lolly unzipped her purse, plunged her hand into its cavernous depths, and pulled out a smoky quartz spear, one with a point on each end and pitch black. “Then this is perfect. Welcome to Dragon Heights, Garnet. I hope this stone makes you feel a little more at home here.”
Garnet’s eyes widened, and she mewed again, staring at me.
“You can accept Lolly’s generous gift if you would like, Garnet. It’s very kind of her.” I would ask my mother why the woman wanted to earn her way into the carbunclo’s good graces. “I can put your treasure in my bag until we get home if you’d like. You can cuddle with your new stone after we finish our errands.”
After a moment, the carbunclo jumped off my shoulder, transformed into a wisp, flitted to Lolly’s shoulder, and transformed again, settling in to nuzzle the woman and shower her with chirps, mews, and squeaks.