Fire Song (City of Dragons) Read Online Free Page B

murderer.”
    “If you aren’t a murderer, why are you here now?”
    I felt exasperated. “Because I’m afraid this might be a pattern. That more girls are going to die, and if there is something that I can do, and I don’t do it, I’ll feel guilty about that my whole life.” I glared at him. “Guilt wants out,” I said, mimicking him.
    He chuckled again. “All right. That’s fine, then, Ms. Caspian. Truth is, we don’t know if the other body is a dragon or not. We can’t identify her. You want to look at a picture?”
    I gulped. A picture of another dead body, when Elena’s blank eyes were already making it difficult for me to sleep? “Does she look as bad as Elena?”
    He reached into a folder on his desk and slapped an eight by ten glossy down in front of me.
    The first thing I saw were the gaping wounds on her chest and I turned away, feeling sick.
    “Do you know who she is?”
    I turned back slowly. “You could have warned me you were going to do that,” I said in a tight voice.
    “Wanted your honest reaction.”
    “I’m not a killer.”
    “Sure, sure. You know who she is or not?”
    I blinked, trying to look past the wounds to see the girl’s face. At first, she didn’t look like anyone recognizable. She was in worse shape than Elena had been, and her features had been ravaged by water. “What happened to her?” I murmured.
    “She’s been in the water longer,” he said in a husky voice. “This one was probably dumped before the first one. She’s our first victim. Elena was the second.”
    I bit down on my lip. “I can’t… I can’t be sure. But maybe if you pull up a picture on your computer. Look at her Facebook account?”
    “Whose?”
    “Uh… Sophia Ward. She was older than Elena, but unmated as far as I know, and so she might have been wandering downtown, going to bars on the boardwalk.”
    “What’s the mating thing got to do with it?” said Flint. “Dragons mate for life, I know that much. And they never cheat on their partners.”
    “That’s not true,” I said.
    “Which one?”
    “Either,” I said. “I mean, in theory, it shouldn’t happen, but it does. And yes, dragons mate differently than humans. We… have one mate, a destined mate, a person we’re meant to be with for the rest of our lives, and when we see that mate, then…” I was starting to sweat. I shook myself. “That’s not important. What’s important is that once dragons are mated, we settle down. Before mating, it’s open season—wild parties, drinking, staying up all night, that kind of thing.”
    “Doesn’t sound that much different than humans, honestly,” he said, turning to his computer. “Sophia Ward, you said?”
    “It’s different,” I said. “When you’re mated as a dragon, it’s…” The sweat was back.
    He turned the computer screen toward me, and there was a picture of Sophia. She looked about the way I remembered. She had big, bright eyes and freckles. She was wearing a set of dangling ruby earrings in the shape of flames. They were one of a kind. I recognized the work of the artist. I remembered that Alastair had once given me a bracelet crafted with stones like that.
    “The hair color is right,” said Flint. “And it could be her.” He picked up the photograph and held it up against the computer screen. “I don’t want to give ultimate confirmation just from this, but maybe I’ll bring in her family.”
    I shuddered.
    He turned to look at me. “I was planning on going to talk to Elena’s family today anyway. Would you like to tag along? Since you said you wanted to help?”
    “Go there?” I got out of the chair. “I can’t go there. I can’t be around the dragons. They can’t know I’m here.”
    He raised his eyebrows.
    I shook my head. And then I turned and fled from the room. What the hell had I been thinking ?

CHAPTER FOUR
    I put my hands on my hips, surveying the new window. “It looks good, but I feel like that caulking there is a