His eyes were glazed, and he didn’t appear to be paying attention.
“You’re thinking of those ribs right now, aren’t you?” I asked.
He smiled at me, his fantasizing-about-meat eyes not that much different from his bedroom eyes. “Perhaps if you make a few extra kilos, I could take them back to my world so that the queen, my sister, and my cousins could taste them. Such a sampling could entice them to come to the wedding.”
“Are they not planning to come currently?” I tried to sound disappointed rather than relieved and turned my back to change into my much more comfortable underwear. The strapless bra had a band that dug into my torso like wyvern claws.
“They are not. The queen has removed her objection to me choosing you as a mate, but she sees no point in human ceremonies. We are already mated in the dragon way. I told her there would be races, a great hunt, and aerial acrobatics competitions, but even these magnificent events were not enough to entice her.”
“Uh, right. We may need to talk about the festivities you’re planning. They’re not traditional in human weddings.”
“This will be a cross-cultural wedding,” Zav said, the emphasis he put on the term making me think he’d heard it somewhere else and appropriated it. “I will permit human festivities, and you will permit dragon festivities. Is this not fair?”
“I don’t know. Are dragon festivities legal?”
“They are legal to dragons. You will inform your wedding planner about this fair approach to the occasion.”
“Willard? She’ll be thrilled.” I had to admit that I didn’t disagree with Zav. I would prefer it if his odious family did not come, but it would be fair to include festivities that both our peoples enjoyed.
“One need not be thrilled to serve a dragon; one merely needs to be respectful and obedient.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s Willard. Obedient.”
“I will inform her that you agree to the changes. We must find an appropriate place for the hunt. I will arrange for more suitable prey to be brought to your world. The great herbivores of your past have gone extinct. That is most unfortunate.”
“You’re going to import animals?” I imagined something like woolly mammoths and mastodons thundering through the streets of Seattle, stampeding past Nin’s food truck. Was that my chest tightening with an incipient asthma attack or pure panic?
“Large and fast animals capable of defending themselves and putting up a fight to a dragon while also being most succulent and satisfying to the stomach.”
That sounded worse than mastodons.
“Where would be an appropriate place to drop off the prey?” Zav asked.
“Canada,” Amber said.
I nodded agreement. “Make it the Yukon.”
Far fewer people to be trampled there than in Seattle.
“The wedding will be located there?”
“No, but it’s heavily forested. It’ll be a great place for mastodons or whatever you’re bringing. And you can fly down to the wedding after the hunt. That’s the appropriate order of events, isn’t it?” I looked at Amber. “Hunt, wedding, wedding reception, right?”
“Don’t forget the races,” she said.
“Oh, I won’t.”
“The races will be after the hunt,” Zav said. “After all that exertion, the dragons will be famished and ready for the feast. When is the feast?”
“I guess that would be at the reception.”
“That is after the wedding?” Zav asked. “That may not do. There should be a feast before and after. Or concurrently throughout.”
I imagined dragons lined up noshing at the buffet table and watching with vague interest as Zav and I walked down the aisle.
“Why don’t you see if you can talk your family into coming before we get too far into planning for them?” I tried not to sound hopeful that he would fail at that.
“They will come. I am a master at politics among my people.”
“Don’t you just challenge anyone who pisses you off to a duel?” I asked.
“Dueling is a foundational part of dragon politics.”
“Of course.” My phone buzzed as I finished dressing. “Hey, Willard. Is there a law against importing animals to Canada? I know they’re not big on agricultural products at the border crossing, but what are their feelings on giant succulent prey animals?”
“Livestock has to be inspected, cleared of pests and diseases, and possibly quarantined,” she said without missing a beat. “I take it your dragon has returned to Earth.”
“He has. We’re discussing the wedding. He has some updates for you.”
“I can’t wait. I have an update for you on the thief.”
That nervous flutter of unease returned to my stomach, and this time, it had nothing to do with mastodons. I was obligated to hunt her down, since I’d told Willard I would, but what if I found her and learned she was the legitimate descendant of Chopper’s true owner? Chances were it was all a ruse, but… what if it wasn’t?
I wasn’t a thief. If I found the true owner, I would feel obligated to return the sword.
“Oh?” I asked warily.
“We traced that camera’s signal to a van a half mile from our building, but it was already leaving the area when we got a team together to try to surround it. She probably stuck around only long enough to see if you defeated the whatever-they-weres or were sucked into that box. We managed to get a partial plate number, ran a search, and found a van matching the description with the full plate number. It belongs to a car-rental agency in Seattle. The keys and the van disappeared two nights ago and were reported stolen to the police.”
“A thief didn’t legitimately rent the van? Shocking.”
“Indeed. We think she’s in the country illegally. We’ve run facial recognition software on the photos my agent managed to get, but if she’s in a database in the US anywhere, we haven’t found her yet.”
“So we don’t know her name or anything about her except that she steals stuff and has a portal generator. And a box of evil that can possibly suck a person into another dimension.”
“Only you saw the box, so I can’t verify the last.”
“I can verify it.”
Willard grunted. “Since the police are also looking for the van, we’ve got some help. Oh, we figured out what she stole.”
“Some heinous artifact with instructions on how to ensnare innocent half-elves?”
“A book.”
“That might get me if it’s a scintillating fast-paced fantasy novel with a suitable amount of romance and snarky banter.”
“It was written in dwarven by one of their famous explorers from centuries past. Freysha translated it a couple of months ago. It has chapters on the haunted world of Nagnortha.”
“Uh.” That unappealing place was coming up way too often.
“It was deposited in the artifacts room before I was stationed here,” Willard said. “Our agents originally found it in an abandoned mine up near Granite Falls. A dwarven colony lived there once and left some of their belongings behind when they cleared out.”
“What kind of thief steals a book?” Amber asked, standing close enough to eavesdrop. Apparently, my day’s drama was more interesting than her text messages.