Fire Song (City of Dragons) Read Online Free

face?”
    “I’m just sick of these fugly men getting all hot under the collar because I happen to be polite to people. I would never have hit on him, not in a zillion years. And I could tell he was straight.”
    I waited. Maybe there was a point to this story?
    Connor folded his arms over his chest. “Anyway. Just saying.”
    “So, you’re okay in here? Even without the window? Is it too cold for you?”
    “Girl, please. I’m a gargoyle.”
    “Right,” I said. I started back out of the lobby. “Well, if you need anything, call me.” I paused in the doorway. “So, you don’t feel cold?”
    “I feel it,” he said. “Just doesn’t bother me.”
    “Interesting.” I thought about that for a second. “Because you’re made of stone.”
    “Yeah, I guess so,” he said, shrugging.
    I guessed this was why I had to insist on keeping Connor clothed. If it were up to him, he’d run around in a pair of cut-off jean shorts and nothing else. When he was working, though, he had to be dressed.
    “You leaving me here alone?” he said.
    “I’ve got some things to work on,” I said.
    Connor snatched the remote control up off the counter and switched on a television set that hung over the door. Miraculously, the vampires hadn’t gotten to it last night. However, it was the third TV I’d purchased. Vamps had smashed its predecessors. Felicity said I was an idiot for continuing to put it back up in the lobby. She might have been right. It was the principle of the thing, though. If I didn’t put the TV back up, the vamps won.
    “… another body washed up on the shore late this afternoon, similar to the first body that was found last night,” said the TV. “This may be the work of a serial killer.”
    I whirled to face the screen.
    A newswoman was standing out on the dark beach. She was smiling. “Police are hesitant to say if there is any connection to the previous body, but the victim was another young female, just like the body found last night. Back to you, Jim.”
    I wanted to wipe her smile off her face.
    But Jim was already back on the screen, babbling on about the weather over the weekend.
    Another girl. Was she also a dragon, like Elena? Was this a pattern? Was someone out there targeting young, dragon girls?
    *
    “Oh, you’re here to see Flint?” said the woman at the desk in the police department. “You his sister or something?”
    “No,” I said. “It’s about the dead girls. The ones that have been washing up from the ocean?”
    “Oh.” The woman nodded. She had red hair, which was actually more a shade of mahogany. An obvious dye job. “Shoulda figured. He ain’t got any family. I knew right off you weren’t his girlfriend or nothing. No way could a woman put up with that man. Easy on the eyes, sure, but once he opens his mouth, you wish he wouldn’t.”
    “Really,” I said. This was bizarre. “Can I see him, please?”
    “I’ll call him. Let him know you’re here. What did you say your name was?”
    “Penny Caspian,” I said.
    She picked up her phone, hit some buttons.
    I waited and listened as she relayed the information into the phone’s receiver. Then she hung up. “You can go on back. Just through that door.”
    “Thanks,” I said, and went through the door.
    I entered a big room that was filled with a bunch of desks. There was one long middle row, all facing forward, almost like in a classroom, except the desks were all the size of teachers’ desks and covered in computers and knick knacks and filled with men and women in uniforms and suits. The other desks flanked the walls, but they faced inward. There were aisles between the middle row and the inward facing desks.
    I saw Detective Flint right away. He was wading through the left-hand aisle toward me. Then he spotted me. He stopped. Motioned me over.
    I crossed the distance between us.
    “Ms. Caspian,” he said. “I was under the impression you were a very busy woman.”
    “Was she a dragon? The other body?”
    He