The Dragon From Paris: A Sexy Dragon Romance Page 9

  underwear and her bra back on before she stepped out of the bathroom.

  Abel was asleep already when she emerged, face down on the bed with his face buried in his

  pillow and one arm hanging over the side of the bed. The blanket was only pulled up to his waist, pooling over the small of his back, at least until Clarissa climbed into the bed and pulled the blanket up.

  It had been a good day. A bit nerve-wracking in places, but productive at least, and she had made herself useful. And best of all, no one had died. She was always going to consider that the most important part, but she still let herself feel a little thrum of pride that she was making herself

  useful and that she wasn’t getting in the way or underfoot. The feeling stayed with her as she drifted to sleep.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  As it turned out, when one had to be a professional tourist, it paid off well to know someone from the area. Clarissa had mentioned out of hand that she needed to take some notes on a few specific locations—noteworthy buildings mostly, the sort of sites tourists flocked to for gorgeous photos—and he leaped at the opportunity to make it a date, offering to show her around. Somewhere in that entire conversation, he managed to include dinner in the deal, and Clarissa wasn’t quite sure how it happened, but she wasn’t going to object to it.

  (Had she been with anyone else, she might have felt a bit cheap letting him pay for everything without questioning it or protesting, but given the circumstances and the rather severe disparity between their respective levels of wealth, it only seemed like common sense to let him go ahead with it. An amount of money that might very well clear out Clarissa’s wallet would barely even be pocket change for Abel.)

  She had sort of expected his offer to be a pretense and that he would romance her all throughout the day. And to be fair, he did indeed try out some romancing, and it was in fact rather effective, as they wound up making out under a cafe awning until the host bustled out to chase them off, flapping a menu at them all the while until they took off down the street at a jog.

  But that was all beside the point. The point was, she had expected him to use the day as an

  excuse to romance her the entire time, and that wasn’t what happened. He took his self-imposed role as her guide surprisingly seriously, and as he led her along main roads and side streets, eventually she found it easier to just intermittently record him than to try and take notes on everything he was saying.

  Even with all the unexpected distractions, perhaps her article would be easier to write than she expected. Granted, she didn’t say she was looking forward to just getting it out of the way, considering it was the entire reason she had even come to Paris in the first place, but she would be lying if she said that everything else that had begun happening since she arrived didn’t seem a little more pressing than her tourism article.

  Regardless, she kept all of that to herself and focused on letting Abel lead her by the hand as they walked and as he explained anything that seemed relevant to the topic. And if they paused every so often so he could press her up against a wall and kiss her, well, she certainly wasn’t going to complain about it.

  Dinner afterwards just seemed like the cherry on top, as the food was just as exquisite as she had expected it to be, even though it came from a vendor in a park. They walked as they ate, taking in nature and listening to the sounds of gradually dwindling crowds as it got later in the day and people slowly decided to head home.

  They weren’t the last people in the park by any stretch of the imagination, but they were at least in a reasonably secluded part of it by the time they were done eating, and it was tempting to just find a hidden spot and enjoy themselves as much as they wanted to. After all, it wasn’t like it would be a new experience. They had already set that precedent.

  The park was busier that evening than last time, though, and it wasn’t quite as late as it had been before, so ultimately, they decided that would be improper and that it was, perhaps, not the best idea. Despite that, Clarissa had no complaints about how the day had gone when they finally began the return trip to Abel’s house. It had been a good day.

  *

  When they got back to Abel’s house that evening, Marjorie was sitting on his front steps, reading a book and looking as content as could be, as if she wasn’t blocking the door for no discernible reason. Abel and Clarissa slowed to a halt at the base of the steps, watching her expectantly. She held up a finger, silently telling them to wait for a moment as she got to the bottom of the page. After a minute, she dog-eared the page and closed the book, finally lowering it to her lap.

  “You have a key,” Abel pointed out. “You could have waited inside.”

  For a moment, Clarissa couldn’t help but to think of Lacy, who would invite herself over on a whim because she knew she was allowed, make herself at home even if Clarissa wasn’t home yet, and probably start cleaning the kitchen once she got bored of waiting. It was nice to see that some things were universal, and that ‘overly comfortable friends’ was one of those constants.

  Marjorie arched one eyebrow. “It’s a nice night,” she replied, leaning back on her elbows on the step behind her. “Anyway, I have another lead to discuss, unless you two would rather wait for a chance to finish the night first.”

  Abel rolled his eyes. “Get inside and explain it,” he sighed, flapping a hand at her until she got to her feet and made her way inside, Abel and Clarissa following behind her.

  They made themselves comfortable in the living room, and Marjorie wasted no time before launching into her speech.

  (Was it supposed to feel a bit weird that Clarissa was already getting comfortable with the

  routine? Because it did seem like that was a bit weird. But maybe that was a normal feeling.)

  “So, there’s an up-and-coming real estate agency in the city, headed by a woman named Amelia Callahan. I don’t know what she is—whatever she is, she isn’t something I’ve encountered enough to know offhand from a distance—but she isn’t human, and I’m pretty sure she’s in

  Corvin’s pocket.”

  “What would he need a real estate agency for?” Clarissa wondered, her brows furrowing together in confusion.

  “It’s very easy to hide things if you have someone who can acquire the property to hide it on,” Abel pointed out, and Clarissa wrinkled her nose in distaste as she thought it over.

  She shook her head and cleared her throat, pushing the thought aside. “I’m assuming she’s got an office or something with a publicly available phone number.”

  “She does,” Marjorie returned pleasantly, before she whipped a slip of paper out of her pocket and brandished it in much the same way as one might brandish a brand-new diamond ring. “It’s in a larger complex. That’s got all of the information you should need, and if I figure out anything else about what she is between now and whenever you meet her, I’ll let you know.”

  “Right,” Clarissa sighed, fingers closing around the slip of paper. She glanced over the information scrawled across it before tucking it into her purse. “I’ll set all that up tomorrow, then.”

  With a satisfied hum, Marjorie got to her feet and bid them both a goodnight, before she

  moseyed out the door and on her way.

  The night probably could have proceeded in more exciting ways after that, but neither of them were really in the mood just then. It had been a relaxing day, and both of them were content to just head to bed for the night.

  *

  Scheduling an interview with Mrs. Callahan was simple. Most people of any sort of influence leapt at the chance to be featured in a magazine that had more than a modicum of name recognition, and Clarissa knew that well and was perfectly willing to exploit it. Granted, she had to fudge a few details to explain why Mrs. Callahan was a relevant interview subject.

  Real estate was only tangentially relevant to tourism, after all, but it didn’t take long for Clarissa to come up with the idea of explaining it as an article about people who had made
themselves influential in the city. A bit of flattery was always helpful, after all, and Clarissa didn’t need to let slip that she had never even heard of Mrs. Callahan until the night before. What Mrs. Callahan didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

  The plan was largely the same as it had been for Mr. Bergeron. It had served her well then, and it seemed silly to restructure everything. Don’t fix what isn’t broken, as they say.

  She dressed professionally, took her recorder and an informal questionnaire with her, and went to the office building Marjorie had given her the address for with plenty of time to spare. Somewhat unexpectedly, Mrs. Callahan greeted her despite how early she was, but told her to just sit tight and she would be with Clarissa in a few minutes. She disappeared into an office after that,

  leaving Clarissa alone in a waiting room.

  She waited just long enough to make sure the door wasn’t going to open again immediately

  before she began to poke around, peering through everything on the shelves, checking behind the pictures on the walls, and peering at and around everything on the tables. She pressed her ear to the door to the office to see if she could listen in the same way she had with Mr. Bergeron, but she heard nothing but the sound of rustling papers from within, and that wasn’t exactly going to be helpful.

  When she ran out of places to look, she reluctantly sat back down and began pondering ways she could work the relevant information into the interview questions without it being too awkward or too obvious that she was fishing for information.

  When Mrs. Callahan poked her head out of her office, she had a beaming smile on her face and she ushered Clarissa in exuberantly.

  It didn’t take long before they were both settled in the office and they launched into the

  interview.

  Mrs. Callahan liked to talk. A lot. So much so, in fact, that Clarissa was gradually resigning

  herself to the fact that she wouldn’t be able to get a word in edgewise except to ask the next question, and it was seeming more and more impossible to pry any of the information she

  actually needed out of her.

  She knew that Abel and Marjorie would understand if she explained that an opportunity to get any information just hadn’t presented itself, but she wasn’t happy about it regardless, and it

  rankled at her pride a bit.

  It seemed like a miracle when a slightly weedy young man poked his head into the room, cleared his throat too loudly, and said, “Mrs. Callahan, they need you downstairs. There’s some sort of dispute with the mail.”

  Mrs. Callahan sighed, but she pasted a winning smile back into place as she assured Clarissa, “I’ll be right back.” She got to her feet and jogged out of the office, and once she was out of sight, Clarissa could hear her stride change to something more like stomping. Evidently, she didn’t appreciate being interrupted.

  Clarissa, however, was going to use the situation to her advantage as much as she could. She got to her feet and began poking through the drawers of the desk, pulling files out and flipping through them quickly.

  All the while, she kept part of her attention tuned to the door, listening in for the sound of

  approaching footsteps.

  She was careful to slide everything back into place where she found it as soon as she was

  finished with it, not wanting to leave any evidence of her poking around. Unfortunately, she wasn’t aware just how quietly someone could walk, until the door opened some minutes later while she was elbow deep in the bottom desk drawer, and Mrs. Callahan demanded sharply, “What in the world are you doing?”

  Mrs. Callahan had been very pleasant up until that moment, when she very abruptly was not

  anymore.

  Clarissa stammered senselessly for a moment, trying to come up with an excuse on the spot that sounded less horrible than it had to have looked, but she didn’t have the time to do that before Mrs. Callahan’s expression twisted with outrage and she transformed from her human disguise into her true form.

  It occurred to Clarissa in that moment that she hadn’t actually asked if Marjorie had managed to scrounge up any more information on what sort of creature she would be helping them to deal with that time. She supposed it might have been good information to have, but once the woman transformed, Clarissa wasn’t sure how it would have helped her if she had actually known what she was going up against.

  She was pretty sure the woman was something called a naga. From the hips up, she looked reasonably the same as she had just a few moments before, though her skin had taken on a slightly more green-grey pallor, her pupils had turned into narrow slits, and her upper canine teeth were so long that Clarissa could see them poking out of her mouth even with her lips pressed together.

  From the hips down, she had no legs, but rather the tail of an enormous snake with jewel green scales, coiling across the floor in looping heaps, all ending in an enormous rattle. It rattled

  ominously as the naga stared down at Clarissa with malicious intent, gradually rising higher on her tail until she was towering over Clarissa and her head was brushing the ceiling. She didn’t even bother to pretend to give Clarissa a chance to explain what she had been doing, instead simply leaping to the most unfortunate assumption.

  (And to be fair, from a certain point of view, she wasn’t exactly wrong, but if she just listened then Clarissa could have set things right. But it wasn’t to be.)

  She lunged across the desk and Clarissa ducked underneath it, crawling out the other side and scrambling to her feet before she broke into a sprint out of the office, through the waiting room, and into the hallway.

  She supposed knowing in advance wouldn’t have done much for her. She likely still would have found herself in the exact same situation she was in at that moment. She turned down another hallway and kept running, putting on another burst of speed she didn’t even know she had in her when she heard rattling behind her.

  She didn’t dare to look over her shoulder, knowing she would have to slow down to do so, even if only by a slight fraction. She needed all the speed she could dredge up, and she could tell even without looking that Mrs. Callahan was far too close for comfort.

  She darted around another turn and ducked into an empty office, where she pressed herself up against the wall. She waited until she heard Mrs. Callahan pass the room before she stepped out and instead darted into the closet, figuring a less open room would have more to hide behind.

  She could hear Mrs. Callahan coming back down the hall, already aware that Clarissa had tried to fake her out, and she cringed as she made her way to the back wall of the closet as quietly as she could.

  She ducked down in the back of the closet, behind a collection of cleaning supplies, and she waited until she heard Mrs. Callahan pass by the door before she pulled her phone out, moving as slow as she could to make sure she made no noise. Once it was in her hand, she tucked it close to her chest and curled around it to keep any of its light from shining beneath the door, and she rapidly turned the volume the entire way down, before at last she opened up a new text message to Abel.

  Her text was simple. It was just two words, but they would do the job nicely.

  Need help.

  She hit send and waited, curling up into an even smaller ball at the back of the closet. As she heard Mrs. Callahan passing by again, she curled her hands over her mouth and held her breath.

  She heard the doorknob turning slowly and she huddled into a smaller ball, as if Mrs. Callahan would somehow miss her if she just made herself small enough. But before the door could fully open, she heard the sudden sound of glass shattering, and Mrs. Callahan hissed in outrage as her tail rattled.

  She could hear Mrs. Callahan getting farther away, and cautiously Clarissa crawled back towards the front of the closet and poked her head out the door. She looked down the hallway to where she remembered seeing a wall of windows on her way in, and there was Abel in his dragon form, framed in the shattered windows as he stared Mrs. Callahan down and growl
ed.

  Mrs. Callahan seemed unperturbed, though, and she crouched towards the ground as she coiled, before she lunged right at Abel.

  She was severely overestimating her own abilities, as it turned out. Abel didn’t even bother to dodge. He simply opened his mouth, turned his head, and caught her around the middle, his teeth sinking in through skin and scales. Mrs. Callahan thrashed fitfully in his hold, but to no avail, as he showed no signs of letting her go, and blood began dripping to the floor faster and faster as she thrashed.

  Abel’s jaw began to tighten, and Clarissa ducked back into the closet just in time to avoid watching him snap her in fact like a twig, though she heard the two meaty thumps as he dropped her.

  A moment later, she could hear the sound of something burning, and it took her a moment to

  realize that he was getting rid of the evidence. She supposed the fire extinguishing system would put it out before it could cause too much damage, and that floor of the building didn’t seem

  particularly full anyway. It would become a mystery to the police as they tried to figure out who had set the fire and how, but it wouldn’t lead back to Abel.