Love in the Time of Dragons Read Online Free

give my son in case of an emergency?”
    “Your son?” she asked, her eyes widening. “Yes. Here.”
    I took the card she pulled from her pocket, reading the number off it to Brom. “You stay with Penny until I can get you, all right?”
    “Geez, Sullivan, I’m not a ’tard.”
    “A what?” I asked.
    “A ’tard. You know, a retard.”
    “I’ve asked you not to use those sorts of . . . oh, never mind. We’ll discuss words that are hurtful and should not be used another time. Just stay with Penny, and if you need me, call me at the number I gave you. Oh, and Brom?”
    “What?” he asked in that put-upon voice that nine-year-old boys the world over can assume with such ease.
    I turned my back on the two women. “I love you bunches. You remember that, OK?”
    “ ’K.” I could almost hear his eyes rolling. “Hey, Sullivan, how come you had your thing now? I thought it wasn’t supposed to happen until around Halloween.”
    “It isn’t, and I don’t know why it happened now.”
    “Gareth’s going to be pissed he missed it. Did you . . . you know . . . manifest the good stuff?”
    My gaze moved slowly around the room. It seemed like a pretty normal bedroom, containing a large bureau, a bed, a couple of chairs and a small table with a ruffly cloth on it, and a white stone fireplace. “I don’t know. I’ll call you later when I have some information about when I’ll be landing in Madrid, all right?”
    “Later, French mustachioed waiter,” he said, using his favorite childhood rhyme.
    I smiled at the sound of it, missing him, wishing there was a way to magically transport myself to the small, overcrowded, noisy apartment where we lived so I could hug him and ruffle his hair, and marvel yet again that such an intelligent, wonderful child was mine.
    “Thank you,” I said, handing the cell phone back to May. “My son is only nine. I knew he would be worried about what happened to me.”
    “Nine.” May and Kaawa exchanged another glance. “Nine . . . years?”
    “Yes, of course.” I sidled away, just in case one or both of the women turned out to be crazy after all. “This is very awkward, but I’m afraid I have no memory of either of you. Have we met?”
    “Yes,” Kaawa said. She wore a pair of loose- fitting black palazzo pants and a beautiful black top embroidered in silver with all sorts of Aboriginal animal designs. Her hair was twisted into several braids, pulled back into a short ponytail. “I met you once before, in Cairo.”
    “Cairo?” I prodded the solid black mass that was my memory. Nothing moved. “I don’t believe I’ve ever been in Cairo. I live in Spain, not Egypt.”
    “This was some time ago,” the woman said carefully.
    Perhaps she was someone I had met while travelling with Dr. Kostich. “Oh? How long ago?”
    She looked at me silently for a moment, then said, “About three hundred years.”

Chapter Two
    “Y solde is awake again,” May said as the door to the study was opened.
    I looked up from where I had been staring down into the cup of coffee cradled in my hands. Two men entered the room, both tall and well- built, and curiously enough, both with grey eyes. The first one who entered paused at May’s chair, his hand smoothing over her short hair as he looked me over. I returned the look, noting skin the color of milky coffee, a close-cut goatee, and shoulder-length dreadlocks.
    “Again?” the man asked.
    “She fainted after she woke up the first time.”
    I eyed him. After the last hour, I’d given up the idea that May and Kaawa were potentially dangerous—they let me have a shower, had promised to feed me, and had given me coffee, and crazy people seldom did any of that.
    “Ah. No ill effects from it, I hope?” he asked.
    “Not unless you call fifty-two elephants tap-dancing in combat boots while bouncing anvils on my brain an ill effect,” I said, gazing longingly at the bottle of ibuprofen.
    “No more,” May said, moving it out of my reach.