Chapter 12
Caleb blinked, lifting his hands up in front of his eyes and flexing his fingers.
We’re free. We’re free! We’re free!!
His dragon would have been turning loop-the-loops if it had been flying, joy and happiness surging through every fiber of its being. He’d thought it would be more difficult to tell when the curse had been lifted, since he hadn’t really known that he’d feel any different. But now that it was gone…
It’s like night and day, he thought wonderingly, looking up at the sky, somehow more miraculously blue than it ever had been before. The trees’ fall colors looked more brilliant. The birds sang more beautifully. Everything was just a more beautiful shade of color and light. Caleb was half-tempted to wind down the window of Kira’s car and stick his head out of it like a happy dog, just to feel the wind on his face and smell the scents in the air, to know that all of this was what it felt like to be free of the curse he’d been under since the day he was born.
I can’t believe it. I can’t believe things can actually feel this way…
“You all right there?” Kira asked, glancing across at him as she drove. “You look a little like you’re spacing out a bit.”
“What?” Caleb said, blinking and shaking his head. “Oh – no! I’m fine – better than fine. Sorry if I seem to be spacing out. I guess I am a little. I just… everything feels so much… more than it did before. I don’t know if I can even describe it. I feel like I’ve been wearing a tight-fitting hat for hours, and now someone’s finally taken it off.”
Kira laughed. “Sounds like me getting home from a long day of work and finally flinging my bra across the room,” she said, before laughing sheepishly. “Sorry. That was probably a bit too much information.”
“Not at all.” Caleb shot her a grin. “I’d like to see that.”
Kira laughed, but this time, it was unrestrained and joyful. “Well, play your cards right and you might just get to. Or if you play your cards wrong. Or even if you don’t play cards at all.”
Caleb laughed. “Well. That sounds like a promise to me.”
“We should probably keep our minds on the job for now though,” Kira said, sobering. “Dragon’s luck or not, we probably need to keep our wits about us.”
“Yeah.” Caleb nodded. “It’s especially true since… well, I’ve never been able to use my dragon’s luck before. It’s all just theoretical to me. If we had more time we could do some experiments, try a few things out. But…”
Kira nodded. “But we don’t. The protection on the land ends the day after tomorrow, and I don’t know if we’ll find what we need today, or if we’ll be able to convince Heit to meet with us. We need to do it as soon as possible.”
Caleb had found he couldn’t argue with Kira’s plans as she’d laid them out to him before they’d gotten in the car to drive to the county records office. She’d already told him that the clerks at the office were being weirdly evasive and unhelpful about finding what she needed, insisting that the only copy of the will – if it had ever existed in the first place – had burned up in the fire, and no one knew what it had said.
I think they’re hiding a copy,Kira had said. I don’t know why, but… well, it’s just a feeling I have. Or maybe they don’t know where it is, but they won’t look.Either way, it’s giving Tongle & Heit exactly what they want.
Caleb found it hard to disagree with Kira’s assessment. She’d told him how many times and how much she’d begged for either the clerk working in the records office to have a thorough look for the will, or to let her into the archives to have a look for herself.
She’d always been met with the same answer: Sorry, that section is restricted. And I have better things to do than look for a document I know was all burned up. You’ll just have to accept it, Ms. Dearborn.
Caleb wondered if Heit had paid a bribe to the clerk’s office, or made some other kind of promise to them that had made their stonewalling worthwhile to them. It made him grind his teeth in rage to think about it.
A dragon would destroy an enemy of their mate – any enemy, no matter how puny,his dragon informed him loftily. This is what we should do now.
I’m not destroying anyone or anything, Caleb told it firmly. I just want the will. Once we have that, nothing else matters, all right? No destroying! It would be counter-productive anyway, since we need the will intact and whole!
His dragon retreated into sulky silence, its eyes glowing petulantly. Caleb knew that it would want to destroy what it perceived to be Kira’s enemies no matter what he told it, but it would just have to accept his word as law on this.
Maybe, if Heit isn’t willing to deal with us properly, we’ll see what happens,Caleb told his dragon after a moment or two, hoping that that might mollify it a little. To be honest, he was a little concerned about his newfound luck evaporating – he assumed the luck came from his dragon, and the dragon might not be willing to share if it was in a huff.
Whatever the case, the possibility of maybe a little destruction perked the dragon up enough for some anticipatory smoke to begin rising from its nostrils.
“We’re here,” Kira said, as she rounded a corner, and then turned the car into the parking lot of a kind of nondescript government office. It looked pretty much like any other official building Caleb had ever seen before – like a rural DMV, or something of that nature.
Stopping the car, Kira turned to Caleb. “Are you completely sure you want to go through with this?”
“Of course I am.” Caleb reached out, taking her hand. “You tried to do this the proper way, and you’ve been stymied at every turn. You know what you’re doing is the right thing. Maybe if Tongle & Heit were willing to play fair to begin with, things might have been different. But you have to protect the parklands, the way you know they were supposed to be protected.”
Kira drew in a shaky breath, squeezing Caleb’s hands in her fingers.
“I know. I just don’t like pulling you into my problems –”