Dragons Deal (23 page)

"Thanks. I'll tell them."

"Me, too," Val said. "I'll be there with bells on."

"So they know the cow has arrived?" Mai asked, and made a face at her friend. Val made one back. "I would be delighted to attend, too. Do you wear your regalia to the ball?"

"No, formal wear."

The bartender came back from passing out Griffen's drinks. "Hey, Val, I almost forgot! You got a package."

"Here?" Val asked. "Who left it?"

"Didn't know her. A lady. From out of town." He squatted behind the bar and rummaged around for a moment. "Here."

He handed her the package. The box, ten by fifteen inches, was wrapped in red, blue, and white Christmas paper with a cartoon winter motif: kids riding on sleds, snowmen in top hats and mufflers, and big snowflakes. Val eyed it suspiciously. "There's no card. But I can guess who left it."

"Melinda," Griffen said. "Do you want me to open it?"

"No," Val said. "If it explodes, I don't want anyone else to get hurt."

Griffen almost said he wanted to protect her but held back. Val was going through enough. If it made her feel in control to open her own packages, he had to let her.

She ripped the paper off. The name on the box was that of a fancy department-store chain. Griffen felt in the air for any trace of dragon power. There was a minute amount, but that could just have been from Melinda's handling it. He was puzzled. So was Val.

She undid the tissue-paper folds inside and lifted from its nest a shimmering mass of blue silk. "A shirt?"

"It's a maternity blouse," Mai said, after studying it for a moment. "Very pretty. It looks as if it would fit you perfectly. Your stomach's just bulging a tiny bit now, but I think it's wide enough to fit until you deliver."

Val felt fury rise in her. Her cheeks felt hot. "How would she know my size?"

"Wild guess?" Fox Lisa suggested.

"No! She has been spying on me! I think that she must have been in my apartment." She thrust the blouse at Fred. "Throw it away."

"Don't be stupid," Mai said, snatching it back from his hands. "This is silk. It will breathe. You are going to want it in the summer."

"But it's from her!" Val wailed.

Mai closed her eyes and concentrated. "No sense of magic in it," she said, with a wry smile for her friend's paranoia. "It's just a blouse."

But Val was right to be concerned. There was a trace on it. She and Griffen exchanged knowing glances. Mai felt the thread of power lead from the seam under the collar, out the door, and around the corner heading south on Toulouse. The spell was meant to trace Val's whereabouts. Mai reached out with a jolt of her own power and destroyed the spell. She felt the power snap like a broken rubber band back to its source.
Hope that stings, Melinda,
she thought nastily.
Merry Christmas, you dried-up old lizard.

"I don't want anything from her," Val insisted. "She's trying to worm her way into my life."

"She's left you alone so far. Let's not ruin the holiday," Fox Lisa said. "We come together tonight to celebrate the birth of our savior."

"We don't really believe in the religious aspects of it," Griffen mumbled. "Faith just didn't enter into our upbringing."

"Then enjoy the commercial holiday," Fox Lisa said, "and don't ruin it for the rest of us."

A deliveryman in a logo jacket and a Santa cap came into the bar and caught Fox Lisa's eye. She brightened and waved him over.

"The food's here! Let's go and have our party. Merry Christmas, Fred."

"Same to you folks," the bartender called, waving.

Griffen
sat down in front of the video player in his apartment and went through his collection of disks. He had amassed hundreds over the past few months, but only in December had he concentrated on finding holiday movies that he liked.

"If you put on
It's a Wonderful Life
, I will strike you unconscious with the whisky bottle and set fire to your apartment," Mai said.

"Never," Griffen said, selecting a disk and inserting it into the waiting tray. "This is my favorite Christmas movie." He put in the original Alistair Sim version of
A Christmas Carol
. He waited until the credits rolled, then crawled back to his spot near the couch, where Fox Lisa handed around plastic forks and spoons and stacks of paper napkins.

"What did you buy me?" Mai asked, over mouthfuls of gumbo, corn bread, red beans and rice, and shrimp remoulade. They ate family style on the floor of Griffen's apartment, snagging forkfuls out of whichever container looked good. "Where is my present?"

"What makes you think I got you anything?" Griffen asked, sitting back against the couch.

"Because I deserve it," Mai retorted. "So do Val and Lisa. You need to show your appreciation for us putting up with you all these months."

"I can't argue with that," Griffen said. He reached over the carry-out boxes for the white plastic bag.

"Good things come in small packages," Fox Lisa said, cheerfully, accepting the palm-sized box wrapped in gold foil. Mai and Val received the same kind of box. Val ripped into hers at once. Mai contemplated hers with pleasure before opening it. Fox Lisa leaned over and kissed Griffen.

Val held up the earrings. Fine, gold-filled wire had been twisted into miniature dragons with tiny blue crystal eyes. "They are gorgeous, Griff," she said. "You have better taste than I thought you did."

"Thanks a lot!" Griffen said. "All the time I spent going over every glass case in the store." He shook his head in mock despair.

Each set was different, but he had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure they suited the recipients. Mai's was a pair of lotus flowers. Fox Lisa squealed with delight over two tiny foxes. Griffen knew better than to have bought identical sets for them. He had not been able to spend as much as he would have liked to, but Jacob had asked him for a deposit on his throws. That eliminated most of his holiday budget. He had to make sure he had enough for rent and utilities, and there was still New Year's Eve to consider.

"I love them," Fox Lisa said, beaming.

Mai immediately took the perfect little square-cut emeralds out of her ears and put the French wires in instead.

"Very tasteful," she said, admiring the swing of the minute blossoms in her earlobes. "I have many outfits that these will complement."

Griffen breathed a sigh of relief. Jewelry was a very personal choice. It had been risky to give it, but it seemed to have paid off.

"We have gifts for you, too," Fox Lisa said, springing up. "Val, do you want to give me your door key?"

"No, I'll help you," she said. The two of them went out and headed for the stairs. Mai stayed where she was.

"You had this all set up in advance," Griffen said.

"Of course. Planning is the key to any good party."

The girls returned with armloads of colorfully wrapped parcels. They giggled as they handed them around to one another. Before long, Griffen had a small heap of presents in front of him. He hesitated.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Fox Lisa asked. "Open them! We want to see what you think!"

Griffen felt an unfamiliar sense of nostalgia, looking around at the three happy faces. He was related only to Val, and possibly distantly to Mai, if all dragons shared some common ancestor; but this was as close to a family as he had had in years. They cared what he thought. They'd gone to as much trouble as he had, selecting, wrapping, and hiding gifts ahead of time for his pleasure.

"You know, it doesn't matter what's in them," he said. His throat tightened a little.

"I know," Val said. He detected a hint of sentiment in her eyes. "Open them anyhow."

Mai's was a pair of black trousers with the label of an Italian designer in the waistband. The fabric was crisp but not stiff, with just a hint of an elegant gleam. "I had the tailor hem them for me to your measurements," she said.

"They're great," Griffen said.

Fox Lisa waited eagerly as he lifted a tissue-wrapped bundle from a sturdy box. He sensed it was delicate, so he set it in his lap to finish the unwrapping. Swaddled in the tissue was a Carnival mask. He had seen hundreds of them in stores throughout the French Quarter. An oval, blank white face was surmounted by a folded fool's cap of bright green and gold. Around the empty right eyehole was painted a gold star. The molded lips smiled very slightly at the corners, as if the mask knew the punch line of a joke it hadn't delivered yet. It was a work of art.

"It's so light," he said. "I thought it would be made of china."

"It's leather. Masks in Europe are still made that way. A few makers do them here."

"I love it. Thank you."

Fox Lisa beamed. "You're more than welcome. You can wear it to masked balls, if you want."

Val had bought him a history of the earliest motion pictures from the turn of the twentieth century. Griffen glanced through the frames of those crudely made but groundbreaking, hand-cranked films. He had a couple of them in his collection. He felt the urge to curl up with the book and read it immediately. It took an act of will to close it and shove it under the front of the couch, where he couldn't see it.

"That is perfect," Griffen said. "Thanks, Val."

"I knew it was you as soon as I saw it. I was afraid you had bought one for yourself."

He shook his head. "You got in ahead of me. I can't wait to read it. Now, let's see what you have."

Griffen sat back with a glass of whisky as the girls tore into their presents. They thanked one another with hugs and kisses. Fox Lisa reheated the gumbo in Griffen's microwave and brought out more beers and soda for Val. Griffen felt mellow and happy.

"Do you know this is the first Christmas I have had since Val and I were kids that I have really enjoyed? Uncle Malcolm had us flown up to his mansion in upstate New York for the holidays. It was like getting sent to a museum for a week for punishment."

"Who took care of you?" Fox Lisa asked.

"We had a housekeeper. I think she used to work in a prison. I took every chance to rebel."

"So did I," Val said.

Griffen gave her as scornful look. "Yeah, you were great at rebelling. Coming in ten minutes after your curfew was rebelling."

"I was still late," she said, stung. "It made Mrs. Feuer mad."

"Everything made her mad. She was a real . . . dragon." Griffen stopped for a moment and drank whisky. "I never thought of it before, but she must have been. What if we had started manifesting as teenagers? Uncle Malcolm was pretty clever."

"I didn't appreciate his cleverness. I was glad to get away to college."

"You and me both. Uncle Malcolm wouldn't let us go to the same college," Griffen explained to the others. "We wanted to stick together, but he insisted on separating us."

"Control freak," Val agreed. "And he insisted on having us visit him, but he never seemed happy to have us there. It was out of family obligation. He's not a warm person. I think it was torture for all of us."

"I think holidays are a deliberate practice to put people together and make them miserable," Mai said. "Forced happiness only works in Disneyland."

"Hey!" Fox Lisa said, clapping her hands over her ears. "Stop it right now. Let's not get bogged down in happy memories!"

Griffen deliberately turned the conversation to enjoyable subjects.

When
A Christmas Carol
ended, he put on
Miracle on 34th Street
, then
White Christmas
. They played board games. No one could decide on which one, so they cobbled together a combination of Risk, Monopoly, and The Game of Life that Griffen had picked up for a song, still in cellophane, at a used bookstore. They made up rules that Griffen knew he would not remember an hour or two from then but seemed to make sense at the time.

He shook the dice and threw them onto the Monopoly board. He jumped the top hat six spaces, missing the armies bivouacked on Park Place and Boardwalk.

"Wait, you landed on Go," Mai exclaimed, pointing. "You have to move those five armies into Irkutsk!" Griffen winced. That meant that his forces had to face Val's shoe marker and Fox Lisa's red pawn.

"Can I pay a fine instead?" he asked. The girls conferred.

"Spin," Val commanded. "If you get over six, you can retreat." Griffen reached for the Life board.

"Oh, I love this part of Christmas," Fox Lisa said. "My family always had this kind of togetherness. This and presents. I love getting presents."

"We opened all the presents," Griffen reminded her. He leered. "Too bad there's nothing left to unwrap."

"I've got something you can unwrap," Fox Lisa said, rising to her knees a little unsteadily and putting her fingers on the top button of her blouse. "And I've got a present for you," she told Mai.

Mai tilted her head, interest dawning on her face. "Well, I have one for you, too!"

"Oh, no, I'm out of here," Val said. She was getting tired anyhow, and all the diet soda was pushing hard on her bladder. It was also tough being the only one in the room who was sober. She snatched up her presents and hurried toward the door. "Night, Griffen," she called.

"Merry Christmas, Val," he shouted, as the door opened with a creak.

Just before the door shut, she heard Fox Lisa let out a yelp, followed by a loud giggle. She retreated hastily to her own apartment.

Val had to pull her pillow over her head to shut out the voices and thumping noises as the furniture in her brother's apartment was rearranged by moving bodies.

"Not a creature was stirring, my petite little ass."

Still, it had been the best Christmas she could remember.

Melinda
beckoned gently to her daughter, who stood on the balustrade of the roof of their hotel.
Thank God it's night,
she thought. Only a few drunks down on Bourbon Street had noticed her and were shouting for her to jump. No one paid attention to them in the huge festive crowds on the street.