Cyncerely Yours

hear over the roar.

    Like a towel snapped by a playful boy, Mika's great, ruby-scaled body shot up, wings spreading, tail stretched for ballast as the dragon stretched forty feet of body into the air .He flung his head back, jaws gaping in a second roar.

    There were only a couple screams from the crowd, maybe because a number of the guests were trained law officers. Maybe because some were frozen and others were too busy running like hell to yell about it.

    “Goddammit.”Cullen stepped forward. “No guns! Put your guns away, you idiots!”

    Shit, yes. Cynna saw that several of those trained law officers were packing, which was kind of rude at a wedding, and had automatically drawn their weapons.

    Which was not too bright. Bullets would annoy Mika, and he was already pissed.

    Ruben's voice rose from the front of the crowd, calm as always. “Holster your weapons.”

    “Mika.” Cullen faced the angry dragon, head tipped back to scowl up at him. Way, way up. " What the hell are you screaming about? I'm trying to get married here.”

    Mika's head swung towards Cullen, jaws gaping, eyes slitted. He looked ready to rip, rend and tear, not chat.

    “Remove yourself,” ordered a clear, disapproving female voice. “You are in my way.” A tiny, erect figure emerged from what was left of the crowd. She wore crimson silk, lavishly embroidered and very Chinese. And she headed straight for Mika.

    “Shit!”Cynna took a step towards her. “Madame Yu—”

    Lily stopped her with a hand on her arm. “It's okay. She knows what she's doing.” But Cynna caught what she added under her breath. “I hope.”

    Lily's grandmother crossed the empty grass between the guests and the dragon, stopping well within gobbling distance. “You will behave yourself,” she said sternly, then, after a pause: “Oh, no, you will not. Not me.” She added something in Chinese before returning to English. “Settle yourself. Are you just hatched? Your dam would be shamed by your lack of control.”

    The mental voice was shockingly strong, roiled by fury, nothing like the cold crystal Cynna had “heard” from dragons before: She has my dust!

    Madame Yu's head turned as if Mika had pointed at something. Cynna looked that way, too . . . . “Holy Mother of God,” she whispered.

    A small Styrofoam container hovered in the air over the trees that separated this area from the dragon's lair.

    Madame Yu stared up at Mika a few moments more. Slowly he descended, but his tail lashed once, knocking a small tree into a serious tilt. Lily's grandmother turned to face them. “Mika is overwrought. He is not making sense. Someone has his gold dust, and I see it floating, but he does not say who takes it. He says that Cynna must make ‘ her' give it back, but does not say who.”

    Cynna groaned. “The ghost. That damned ghost is playing games with dragon gold.” She raised her voice to scream at the air. “I forgive you, all right? I forgive you, you twice-damned bitch! Now put down that gold and go away!”

    In the silence that followed Cullen murmured, “The ghost- bitch may have found that less that sincere.”

    From somewhere behind them a woman said, “Perhaps I can help.”

    Cynna turned. A plain, pleasant-face woman in a wrinkled green dress was approaching them on the path to the parking lot. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, maybe a little older. Her dishwater blond hair was cut very short. “I'm afraid I'm late,” she said apologetically. “Traffic was difficult, and my taxi driver didn’t speak English, and we went all the way to . . . but never mind all that. You say there's a ghost causing trouble?”

    Cynna nodded, puzzled. The face was familiar, but she couldn't place the woman. “Yeah, Mrs. Ryerson. She used to be my next-door neighbour, but that was over twenty years ago. I have no idea when she died, or why she suddenly turned up to make my life hell, except that she wants me to forgive her. Ah . . . I'm afraid I've forgotten your name.”

    It was Cullen who answered, so quietly she barely heard him. " You've met her, but you weren't given her name. We don't use their names.”

    Cynna looked at him, her mouth suddenly dry. She knew of only two types of women whom the lupi didn't refer to by name. One was a goddess and unlikely to show up at their wedding. The other . . . well, she would have thought that almost as unlikely.

    “She’ s a Rhej?”

    Cullen stared at the quiet, brown-haired woman as