My history stealing, the forging, and my attempts to make amends. Obviously, I omitted any details so she couldn’t call the authorities on me. I’m reckless, not stupid.
Instead of this sending her running, she’d brightened and asked more questions. It’s an odd way to start a friendship, but we found common ground.
We’re both rejects of a sort. I’d been raised in foster care with no knowledge of my parents or that I wasn’t human until my teens.
Stella had a different problem. Her father is a shifter of some sort, but she didn’t come out a shifter. Witch genes are supposed to be recessive, so her mother was sent back to her family, and the business arrangement that was the marriage dissolved. The shifter family then took out their revenge on her mother’s family, sabotaging their businesses through backroom dealings.
“Have they never heard of a DNA test?” I ask in disbelief.
Stella only shakes her head, lips thin. “It didn’t matter. I’m not a shifter. So they won’t claim me. It happens sometimes, but it’s super rare. Lucky me.”
“What happened?” Stella asks, though she squints her eyes in a way that communicates that she’s already guessed.
“It was just one last thing,” I concede.
She throws her hands up. “It was one last thing the last time he roped you into something. I don’t have to tell you how dangerous it is to do what you do.”
“He was crying, Stel.”
Stella blows out a breath in frustration, and her face softens. “I’m glad you’re in one piece. What was it?”
My shoulders come up.
“Isn’t it enough that I’m done and safe?” I ask. I avoid looking at her while I take the food containers out. I open the first one—
“Not that one. It’s spicy,” she says.
I peek at Stella, and she’s back to glowering at me.
“That you’re avoiding talking about it makes it seem like this time was bad. Spill,” she orders.
I hesitate for a moment, putting my noodles on a plate and in the microwave. Noodles and coffee, yum.
I shouldn’t tell her… but I like that she cares enough to want to know about this. “It was stealing a figurine from some guy.”
She frowns. “That doesn’t sound too bad. What guy?”
“I don’t really think that’s important.” My voice gets higher. The microwave beeps, and I put her food in next.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Stella says.
I wince. “It was really stupid.”
“How stupid?”
I sip my coffee. “Do you know that Kalos guy?”
“The dragon, Kalos?” Stella screeches.
“Yeah, that one, but I’m alive!” I rush to say.
Stella’s eyes are so wide that I go back to avoiding looking at her as I put both of our plates on the sad table that I found on the side of the street. I’d tried to sand out the gouged word Free, but I’d rather have a carved-up table than an uneven one.
Stella falls into the chair across from me. “Kat, you can’t do something like this again. He could have killed you. He could still do a lot of things to you. Dragons don’t part with their hoard. If rumors are true. He’ll be able to track the piece you took no matter where it goes.”
Well that’s an interesting tidbit.
“I don’t have it anymore,” I say. “And anyway, we kind of traded.”
“What do you mean, you traded?”
“He caught me—”
“He caught you?!”
“As you can see, I am alive. Where was I?”
Stella looks like she’s going to slap me, so I continue.
“Uh, well, he was going through like a heat or something, and I offered my… services.”
I shovel a huge bite of noodles into my mouth.
“Wow.” Her shock is absolute, but as it is every time I tell Stella about my exploits, there’s no judgment. She only cares about my wellbeing and knows I don’t want to do work like this anymore. “So you slept with him?”
I choke at the understatement of that but swallow before answering, “He fucked me in more positions than I know. I thought I was going to lose my voice from screaming.”
If anything, her eyes get wider. “Wow.”
“You already said that.”
She looks down at her food and starts to eat. After a few minutes of pondering in silence, she shrugs.
“Maybe I should break into a dragon’s house,” she says.
Jealousy stabs me at that, but I shake off the ridiculous feeling and force a laugh. “I don’t know of any other dragons. And I got the impression that this isn’t a normal occurrence for him.”
Stella shakes her head. “I’m not going to break into anyone’s house. I don’t have as much luck as you. I’d get eaten—in the bad way.”
“I’m not usually that lucky,” I say, serious. “Anytime I’ve gotten out of a bad situation before has been purely on skill. This was—I don’t even know what to think about it. It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m not going to see him again.”
“… Do you want to?” she asks.
Do I want to? Does it matter?
I shrug. It doesn’t matter. “He made sure I knew just how much he didn’t like me after all the fantastic sex.”
There must be something in my expression that Stella picks up because she softens. “After you were kind enough to help him out? What a dick.”
I cough a laugh. “What a dick indeed.”
Or dicks, rather. God, I’m going to miss that.
Stella throws a napkin at me, and I laugh. See, I don’t have to be the sniveling woman in the bathtub. I can laugh about how ridiculous this all is.
Our conversation continues, and I ask Stella about her work. She crafts charms for people. She’s very talented, and I try my hardest not to be jealous of her magical gifts. I just get weird dreams and have a skill for breaking and entering.
“I’ve got this super complicated glamour coming up for a minotaur. He’s really sweet, quiet though, real quiet.” Stella chews her lip. “I was thinking of asking him out.”
I try and imagine her with someone described as quiet and fail, but what the hell do I know about romance? “If you like him, you should.”
“Well, I won’t know if I like him until after talking with him more.” Stella shrugs. “But I feel like I have to start somewhere. It’s been forever since I’ve dated, and I’d love to get railed so hard that I lose my voice from screaming. It would really clear away the cobwebs.”
I snort. Something about the juxtaposition of Stella’s poise to her mouth always lightens my mood.
“Don’t act so shocked. You’re the one that shacked up with the dragon. I’m so curious, but I actually see him on a semi-regular basis for business and would rather not know all the details. He’s terrifying.”
“Oh?” I say, thrown off.
“Kalos has his fingers in most businesses in this city.”
“Huh, I guess he’s never needed an art restored.” How would I respond if I saw him again? I blow out a breath. It doesn’t matter. He wants nothing to do with me, and by all rights, I don’t want anything to do with him either.