Talon. Julie Kagawa

ready. I’d come here from Chicago. My dad was a disabled veteran, and my uncle had invited me here for the summer. The lies flowed smoothly and easily, though the boy in the story—the one who attended Kennedy High and lived on Mulligan Avenue and had a beagle named Otis—was a complete stranger to me. An imposter, living a made-up life.

      I wondered if any of these three were doing the same.

      We finally pulled into the parking lot along the main stretch of beach, and the girls piled out, Lexi and Kristin stumbling a bit as they exited the vehicle. Ember smoothly grabbed Lexi’s arm and steered her aside, preventing her from walking into another beachgoer, then turned to me.

      “Um.” Her green eyes appraised me, boldly direct. “Thank you,” she said, “for today. For getting rid of those trolls. You and Tristan both. Lexi and Kristin are a little too tipsy to know what could’ve happened down there, but...thanks.”

      “You’re welcome,” I replied, meeting her gaze. “We were happy to help.”

      She smiled, and I felt a weird twist in the pit of my stomach. Odd. At that moment, though, Kristin’s face appeared in the window, smiling as she leaned in.

      “So, it’s my birthday this week,” she told us in a breathy, slightly slurred voice. Ember rolled her eyes and walked to the back of the Jeep to get her surfboard, but Kristin continued to lean against my door. “And I’m having a party Saturday, no parents on the premises. They’ll be gone for the whole weekend, so...yeah. Pool table, hot tub on the patio, open unlocked bar?” She peered at me from beneath her lashes, blinking rapidly. I wondered if she had something in her eye. “You guys wanna come? I’ll give you the address.”

      “Ooh, yes, you totally should!” Lexi added, peeking in over her shoulder, crowding the window. I leaned back to give myself some space. “Come party with us. It’ll be great!”

      Saturday. Today was Monday; that was five days from now, plenty of time to do more legwork on these three, find out more about them. I shared a glance with Tristan. He raised both eyebrows, and I turned back to the girls with a shrug. “Sure, sounds good to us.”

      They beamed. Kristin gave us the address, then all three strode across the parking lot toward the emptying beach and the sun setting over the waves. I waited until they were out of earshot, then muttered, “What now? What’s the plan?”

      Tristan smiled grimly and put the Jeep in Reverse. “Now, the real mission begins.”

      Ember

      From the edge of the parking lot, I watched the black Jeep pull onto the road, pick up speed and cruise out of sight. Garret’s pale hair glimmered once in the dying afternoon sun, and then he was gone.

      I sighed.

      “Man.” Lexi echoed my sigh, leaning against my shoulder. Not long ago, the unexpected contact would’ve made me shrink back. Now, I planted my feet to balance both her and my surfboard on the other side. “There go two smoking-hot human beings. Think they’ll come to the party like they said they would?”

      “I don’t know,” I muttered. In the weeks I’d been here, I’d seen pretty humans come and go. From lean fellow surfers, to suntanned volleyball players, to charismatic boys and sultry girls on the prowl for summer romance or a good time. The three trolls we’d run into today were very much in the “icky” category of the good time, but they weren’t unusual. They were here for a finite number of days, and then they’d be gone like everyone else.

      Garret was probably no different. A pretty face that I would see only once, before he vanished into the unknown, never to be glimpsed again. I knew that. All the locals in Crescent Beach followed an unofficial rule: don’t get attached to tourists. Summer flings were fine. Kissing and long walks on the beach, making out under the stars, going to parties and doing it in the hot tub, all fine. But never promise, or let them promise, “forever.” Because no matter how much you liked them, no matter how perfect everything was, at the end of the summer they would always return home. And you’d be left with beautiful memories and the longing for what had been and what could never be again. Of course, I didn’t understand that attraction, how someone could get so attached to someone else. I figured it was a human thing and didn’t worry much about it.

      Though there was something about Garret that was...strange. Something I couldn’t quite pin down. The way he held himself, perhaps, so careful and controlled. Or that split-second look in his eyes right before Colin attacked him: flat, hard and dangerous. He exuded confidence, but at the same time, there was an uncertainty to him, like he wasn’t quite sure what to do, how to act. I sensed that the calm, stoic front he put up was a wall, and if I dug a little deeper, I would find a completely different person on the other side.

      I wondered if I would ever see him again. And if I did, I wondered if I could somehow break through that dignified shell to the person beneath.

      I gave myself a mental shake. What was I thinking? Garret was a stranger and, more important, he was a human. I would not ruin the rest of the summer pining over the—admittedly gorgeous—ghost of a human boy. Especially if I had to deal with Scary Talon Lady for the next two months. My summer was already short enough.

      “Probably not,” I told Lexi, who gave another heartfelt sigh and straightened, tossing her hair back. I picked up my surfboard and turned toward the beach, just as Kristin wandered back from grabbing her purse from her car. “Come on,” I said to both of them. “Walk me to the Smoothie Hut. I need a Mango Swirl to get this taste out of my mouth.”

      Later, with the evening sun setting over the water, we sipped our drinks and chatted about the day’s adventures, a basket of cheese sticks between us on the table. We talked of Garret and Tristan’s valiant rescue, and joked about Kristin’s bad taste in guys. Of course, Lexi agreed with me that the three frat boys were absolute creepers, and vehemently denied that she’d thought any of them were cute. But when she expressed her desire to castrate Colin with a pair of rusty pruning shears for hitting me, my stomach went cold at what had almost happened.

      What would Talon do to me, I wondered, if I’d killed that human? If I’d Shifted right there and bitten his head off? Blasted him to cinders, right in front of Lexi, Kristin and everyone else? I remembered the smoldering heat in my lungs, the way my back had itched, ready to burst open with wings and scales. The way my human body had suddenly felt very tight and confined as I’d clamped down with everything I had, trying not to change. The blaze of fury as my dragon had surged up with a roar, wanting to shred that human into bloody confetti.

      I shivered, appalled at my own violent thoughts. And, even more frightening, annoyed that I hadn’t gotten to Shift into my natural form and pop the human like a balloon. Wonder if I should tell Dante about this, I thought, as Kristin said goodbye and left for a “lame-ass family event” and Lexi excused herself to go to the restroom. I guess I should; he’ll probably hear about it from Lex or Kristin, anyway. I just hope he doesn’t do the whole overprotective twin-brother freakout.

      And then, I got that weird tickle on the back of my neck, a second before the rogue dragon slid into the seat across from me.

      “Hey, Firebrand.”

      The cool, sarcastic voice rippled through me, stoking a flame to life. It was as if my dragon had never died down, never settled into sleepy compliance. At the rogue dragon’s presence, it perked up again, instantly awake and aware. My eyes widened, and I sat back in my seat, staring at him.

      The boy across from me smiled and casually helped himself to a cheese stick, oblivious to the heat singing through my veins. “Mind if I sit here?”

      I could see the dragon in him, in his near-golden eyes, in the slightly dangerous grin he flashed me over the table, the smile of a predator. I could feel the flames burning within, my own dragon rising up to either challenge or accept, I wasn’t sure which. I did know one thing: talking to the rogue could get me in a lot of trouble, both from my trainer and Talon itself. And I didn’t care one iota.

      My dragon snapped and flared, wanting out. I took a deep breath to cool myself off,