Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

nodding her head. “The very words I said when I first saw it. But Ysolde, there’s more. There’s a maze. And gardens.”
    “Gardens?” I craned my neck to look around Gabriel, who was sitting in the seat opposite May and me. “Where?”
    “Over there. You can just see a little splash of color.”
    “Ooh,” I breathed in a heady sigh.
    “Sullivan likes plants,” Brom told May with a tolerant look at me.
    “She was born a silver dragon. All silver dragons like plants,” Gabriel said, opening the door as the car stopped. He held out his hand first for May, then for me. I stepped out and my heart was suddenly lightened.
    “I feel like I should be singing,” I said, turning slowly in a circle to take in the lovely soft velvety lawns that spread out endlessly before us.
    “I know just how you feel. I was the same way,” May said.
    A yew maze was at the right, casting coolly intriguing shadows in its pathway. To the left of the house was a formal garden, and I took three steps toward it before I remembered I wasn’t here to see it.
    “Sorry,” I said, turning back to the others.
    May laughed and said, “Don’t worry. We understand.”
    A second car pulled up behind ours, a sleek antique Rolls-Royce that disgorged Aisling, Drake, and Jim, along with Drake’s two redheaded guards.
    “Wow!” Aisling said, leaning back to look to the top of the tower. “This is a heck of a house! No wonder you like it so much, May. It’s absolutely gorgeous! Is that a maze? Jim! Don’t do that right there!”
    “When you gotta go, you gotta go,” the demon complained, but lowered its leg and wandered off to a less central shrub, saying as it went, “Don’t let Ysolde turn into a dragon and go all psycho, or blow up the house, or whatever it is she’s going to do, until I’m back.”
    “You’re going to blow up this house?” Brom asked, looking around him with curiosity, but nothing else. “With what?”
    “Nothing. Ignore Jim—it’s deranged. Your mom isn’t going to blow up anything, least of all this house,” Aisling said as she started up the low front stairs. The double doors opened and Kostya and Cyrene came out, very much the lord and lady of the manor.
    I wanted to shove them both in the pond I’d seen a hint of as we stopped in front of the house.
    “You made it, I see,” Kostya said somewhat sourly, his gaze flickering between Drake—who I had learned that morning was his brother—and me.
    “Shall we go inside?” Gabriel asked, taking May’s hand and leading her up the stairs.
    I sent one last poignant glance toward the flower garden, my heart crying at the thought of it in the hands of Cyrene. “It wants someone who understands it, someone who will love it and nurture it,” I murmured as I slowly climbed the five stairs to the door.
    “You OK, Sullivan?” Brom asked, waiting for me at the top. “You look kind of funny.”
    I smiled and gave his shoulder a squeeze as we entered the door. “I just really like this pl—”
    The world went black the second my foot crossed the threshold. I heard voices exclaiming, and someone calling my name, but it seemed to come from a long distance away. I turned away from the blackness, moving back out into the sunshine.
    Another vision , I thought to myself as I went to the garden without consciously making the decision to do so. I hope this one doesn’t last too long. I’d like to see the garden for real before we have to leave.
    As I reached the area where the garden had been, I realized that something was different this time. For one, the flowers and shrubs seemed to shimmer in and out of focus, and nothing like that had happened in the previous visions or dreams. For another, two people stood in the center of a tangle of greenery. As I moved past a young willow tree, I caught sight of a third person standing to my left, a dark shadow unmoving against a tree. A gardener or workman of some sort, I thought, and dismissed him as I turned back to the couple.
    It was me . . . or rather, it looked like me, and I realized with a shock that it was the me of the visions, the person whose experiences I had felt and lived. She was smiling up at a man whose back was to me, but I could tell by the love shining in her eyes that it was Baltic.
    I moved around to the other side of the willow, wanting to hear what they said, but not wishing to disturb the vision.
    “That’s too many,” Baltic said, frowning at the me-Ysolde. She poked him in the arm,