Too late forwhat?
It lashed its tail back and forth.I don’t know, it said finally.But time is of the essence.
You’re so dramatic. Especially lately.
Lifeis dramatic, her dragon corrected.I just perceive that more fully than you do.
She hated feeling like she was losing an argument with her own subconscious, but it had a point. Life was a high-stakes event, and the concepts that mattered to her dragon—honor, love, courage, duty—mattered to her, too. Even if she sometimes tried to be flippant about them.
Okay,she said finally, inching through the trees again.Fair enough.
She thought she saw an opening up ahead, the kind of flat, grassy meadow that was ideal for both helicopters and dragons.
(In the back of her mind, her dragon indulged in a quick fantasy of having whirring helicopter wings.)
If she were coming here to hunt, this would be where she would set down. She hadn’t done much hunting since she had left Riell—she belonged to a grocery co-op now and lived within a block of a deli, so she didn’t reallyneedto go out and kill a deer with her claws—but she hadn’t forgotten all her old lessons, and her dragon certainly hadn’t forgotten its instincts.
This place would do nicely.
It was also a huge anticlimax. Right now, there was nothing to see here but grass and wildflowers, silvery-blue in the dark.
Warrick Forest was huge. There could easily be a dozen or more clearings exactly like this one, and any of them could be Randolph Sebastian’s preferred landing spot. Besides, for all she knew, Sebastian had never been within a hundred miles of this place; she could be traipsing all over some innocent shifter’s territory.
The restless adrenaline that had kept her awake and fidgeting back in her hotel room was starting to wear off. This tip was worth a lot more follow-up, but she could buckle down on it during the day. If she did it with Vin and Evie, the three of them could cover a lot more ground than she could on her own.
It was time to let her good sense kick in. Her dragon protested that, but Iz firmly pushed its voice aside.
She had just turned to go when a warm breeze stirred her hair. The long grasses behind her rustled, rubbing against each other with a low whispering sound:chatter-chatter-shh.
The wind carried a particular scent with it. Dry and spicy, like some ancient cologne on dusty velvet.
Iz knew that smell. She’d smelled it a thousand times. She’d been around it her whole childhood.
Dragon scales.
She wheeled around, inhaling sharply and looking at the empty meadow.
Theapparentlyempty meadow.
He was here. He was right in front of her, here in the dark.
ItwasRandolph Sebastian. She knew it. In daylight, she could argue with her instincts and let her human mind take priority, but in a fight-or-flight situation, in the middle of the night, she felt one hundred percent dragon. Her tongue even flickered out, snake-like, like she could taste the air and get more clues.
Her dragon didn’t bother to brag about being right. They were one.
“I know you’re there,” Iz said into the darkness. “Show yourself.”
The clearing now felt distinctly smug in a way that made her skin crawl.
She had to think, and she had to think fast. She could turn invisible too, but that would only hide her from him if he were in human form, which he obviously wasn’t rightnow.
If she shifted, she would be able to see whatever was out there: her dragon’s eyes could see through any kind of magical veil. But she’d be vulnerable while she was shifting. Only for a second, but sometimes a second was all it took. The invisible dragon in front of her could strike at any time.
Then again, if it hadn’t already, maybe it wasn’t going to. If it wanted to kill her, she’d be dead already.
She forced herself to stand perfectly still, and she made sure her voice stayed level.
“I’m a U.S. Marshal,” she said. “And I know what you are, because I’m the same thing. Reveal yourself now, and we won’t have any problems.”