The lead dragon, an especially magnificent-looking creature with feathery golden spines running down her long crimson back, advanced towards them and then shimmered into human form: a tall Latina woman wearing a dress so glamorous it put even Isabelle’s fashion sense to shame.
And Isabelle must have known it, because she immediately moaned, “Oh, I want that gown.”
It was, as it turned out, the right thing to say, because it broke the tension completely. The representative of Ambergris laughed and said, “You’d look good in it, but you’ll have to get your own.” She came closer to them and curtseyed, sweeping out her long aquamarine skirts. “Welcome to Ambergris. I’m Teresa Sanchez—our mayor, I suppose, in human terms.” She scrutinized them. “You, I can tell, are a dragon,” she said to Isabelle, “but I’m not sure about your friends.”
“I’m a griffin,” Cooper said.
“And I’m—” For the first time in her life, she had to hesitate. But the simplest answer still seemed to be the best one. It wouldn’t be practical to drag them into her speculation about whether or not she was some unusually late-manifesting shifter of a type even she couldn’t identify. “Human. But my family are lynx shifters.”
“You don’t sound sure,” Teresa said.
“I’ve been experiencing some things lately that only shifters are supposed to experience,” Gretchen said. “It’s made me wonder. But that’s not why we’re here.”
“And you haven’t introduced yourselves,” Teresa said pointedly.
Gretchen didn’t want a bunch of literally fire-breathing dragons to think that she was rude, but she had to think about Cooper’s safety first. They couldn’t just go around announcing that he was a wanted criminal. She offered Teresa a curtsey of her own, even though her jeans made it feel awkward and silly.
“It would be safer if we didn’t. We don’t want to get you into any trouble.”
Teresa drew herself up to her intimidating full height, which had to be something close to six feet. “We are the dragons of Ambergris. We do not get into trouble.”
“It’s your call,” Gretchen said to Cooper. He had the most to lose, and he’d been burned before by trusting people. She expected him to say no, even if that meant that they would have to turn around and leave Ambergris then and there.
But they didn’t have to.
“My name is Cooper Dawes,” Cooper said in a clear voice that was loud enough to carry. And after days of watching him having to make himself small and inoffensive around every stranger he met, it was remarkable to see him stand up straight and admit who he was without any shame. “I was framed for murder.”
If he was going to face down the potential consequences of pursuing his innocence, she was going to do it too.
“I’m Gretchen Miller. I’m a US Marshal. I was supposed to be taking Cooper to another prison, but we were attacked by two armed men. I think they were using magic—maybe some kind of basilisk shifter power—to make us see things. They could have made a dead body look like it was someone it wasn’t. The man everyone thinks Cooper killed—I think he’s still alive.”
“That’s a lot of speculation,” Teresa said.
“It is. But we’ve seen a lot of crazy things over the last few days. And Cooper is my mate. I don’t believe he could be a killer.”
Teresa turned towards Isabelle, who was silent for a moment before realizing what was expected of her.
“Oh! I’m Isabelle Benoit, from Riell. And Rocky Vale College criminal justice department. I just came along to give them directions.”
“You could have us all arrested,” Gretchen said calmly. “I’m way out of my jurisdiction here, and I’d have no official justification for why I had my prisoner uncuffed and in civilian clothes. But I’m hoping you’ll help us instead.”
Disconcertingly, Teresa looked like she could still go either way on that. “What makes you think we’d be of any help? Why come to us at all?”
“The man I didn’t kill was—or is—a dragon,” Cooper said. “Phil Locke. He was a Marshal too; he was my partner. He used to say he wouldn’t mind retiring to some place like this. If he were going to hide out anywhere, an all-dragon village would seem like a good place, especially one where people didn’t keep up too much with the outside world.”
There was the barest hint of a reaction on Teresa’s face, just the tiniest twitch of her jaw before she restrained herself. But it was enough.
She knows something.
“He’s dishonorable,” Isabelle said.
Gretchen had to think about what would make a difference to Theo. Not the Theo she knew so well by now, but the one she had first met as a vulnerable rookie who still had huge gaps in his knowledge of human society.
She said, “If Phil Locke is alive, then he not only let his partner be framed for his murder, he was also almost certainly involved in a conspiracy to sell protected federal witnesses to the people they were hiding from. People who agreed to testify against mobsters died because Phil Locke and his buddies wanted to make a little extra money. If Phil Locke is dead, he’s innocent. If he’s alive, then he’s guilty—and finding him could be the only way to prove that Cooper deserves to be free.”
“And the only way to get justice for all the other people who have been hurt,” Cooper said.
“Dragons protect other dragons,” Isabelle said. “Sometimes, we protect those who don’t need or deserve our protection. My father did that.”