Read Online Fire Song (City of Dragons) by Val St. Crowe - Free Book Online Page B

stopped me. “I noticed the other day that you were getting that window replaced.” He pointed at the window to the door in the lobby. “How’d that happen?”
    “What? How’d it get broken?”
    “Yeah.”
    “It was an accident.” I got out of the car.
    “If you got trouble, let me know. I might be able to help,” he said.
    “I don’t have any trouble I can’t handle,” I said and hurried inside. I trooped upstairs to my apartment where Felicity was coming out of her bedroom in her cleaning outfit, an old pair of shorts and a t-shirt. She thought it was ridiculous to try to make the cleaning staff keep a uniform clean while scrubbing toilets, and I agreed.
    “Hey there,” she said cheerily.
    “Are you short someone today?” I asked. She didn’t usually do the actual cleaning unless she needed to step in for a member of her staff. “You need my help?”
    She laughed. “Your help? You’d clean the rooms?”
    “I wouldn’t screw up laundry at the very least,” I said.
    “No, I don’t need you.” She grinned at me. “But you’re a sweetheart for asking. Where have you been all day, anyway?”
    “Detective Flint came by, and we went to see Alastair.”
    “What?” Felicity was taken aback. “You did what?”
    I rubbed my face. “I just… I’m sick of running, you know? And now, it’s looking like he might be the person who killed those dragon girls, and if that’s the case, then I want to do whatever I can to put him away.”
    “Whoa, slow down.” She took me by the arm and led me over to the couch in the living room. We sat down together. “You think Alastair is a murderer?”
    “He was the last person to be seen with Sophia Ward,” I said. “And he lied about the reason.”
    “That doesn’t sound good.” Felicity blew out a noisy breath. “Wow, how crazy.”
    “Yeah.”
    “But you saw him? Are you okay?”
    I nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m fine. I was actually stronger than I thought I was going to be. I thought that if I ever saw him again, I’d lose it. I’d just fall all over him, you know?”
    “But you didn’t?”
    “Part of me wanted to.” I bit down on my bottom lip. “But I felt separated from it. I know the talisman helps, but it wasn’t just that. I felt as if I could tell that all of it was only physical, you know? That it wasn’t actually anything real .”
    “The physical is real.”
    “No, I know. I guess it’s got something to do with this conversation I was having with Detective Flint. I was trying to explain how the dragon mating bond works and he just started laughing, and said it was all about sex. Said that people thought the bond was so epic, and here it was just physical arousal.”
    “Well, it’s more than that,” said Felicity. “You loved Alastair.”
    “I did love him,” I said. “But that wasn’t something that was forced upon me by a magical dragon bond. Flint was right. All I experienced was a deeply intense sexual attraction. And I let myself fall in love with him because I thought that meant we were destined to be together. But the truth is, I’m not trapped by that stupid mating bond. I think I was convinced that Alastair was my one chance at love, but now I’m not so sure.”
    Felicity grinned. “Is it more than coincidental that you’ve been decided you might have another chance at love after you’ve been spending so much time with this detective guy?”
    “What?” I shook my head. “No, that’s ridiculous.”
    “Is it? You said he was attractive, right?”
    I got up off the couch. “Just because I might think that there’s a chance in the abstract that I could fall in love again doesn’t mean… I’m not even sure if I like Flint as a human being.”
    Felicity didn’t say anything. She was still grinning.
    I bent down and began straightening the knick knacks on our coffee table. “Sometimes he seems so caring and sweet, like a really decent guy. But then I feel like… I don’t know, maybe it’s all an