Light Dragons 03 - Sparks Fly

they’re ready,” Pavel said with a nod. He got to his feet and staggered out the door.
    “There wasn’t a screwup, no,” I told Savian before turning a worried glance on Holland. “Baltic, we need a healer.”
    “One will be at the house when we arrive.”
    “Then what are we doing here?” Savian asked.
    “Wait a minute-this isn’t England,” Maura said, somewhat belatedly, it was true, but she, being a dragon, was extremely discomposed by the portal. Nico was only now shaking his head and rubbing his face, clearly trying to recover from the effects of portalling.
    “No, it’s Latvia.” I waited for the explosion and wasn’t disappointed.
    “Latvia?” Maura exploded in a flurry of oaths that were luckily in Zilant, the archaic language once used by the dragons in the weyr. “Why are you doing this to me? Why do you want me to suffer like this?”
    “We don’t want you to suffer. Admittedly I may have wanted that a while ago, but not since you’ve been so helpful in Spain. And considering that you went against Thala in order to aid us, I feel it’s only right we aid you in return. Baltic, can I use your phone for a second? My battery is dead.”
    By the time I made a fast phone call, visited the ladies’ room to tidy myself up (I may have a dragon buried deep in my psyche, but luckily, portal travel didn’t discommode me much) and returned to the others, Pavel was feeling much more like himself and announced that the cars were waiting.
    Baltic picked up Holland. “Brom, you may open the car door for me. Holland will travel with Pavel, while you will stay with your mother and me.”
    The rest of us shuffled out of the portalling office after them, Maura still protesting that she couldn’t be in Latvia; it just wasn’t possible, and why couldn’t we understand that?
    She complained the entire way through town, and into the outskirts.
    “Seriously, there has to be a way to get these handcuffs off,” she said, still going at it when Baltic pointed to a dirt driveway. I turned up it, trying to think of some way to calm down Maura when Savian took care of the matter for me.
    “You’re making my head hurt with your endless bitching,” Savian said, rubbing his face.
    “I’m not bitching; I’m complaining about this unnecessary abduction. And tough toenails!” was her reply.
    He cast her a glance that had her opening her eyes wide. “It hurts so bad, I may vomit. On you. Savvy?”
    Silence reigned in the car for a whole thirty seconds before Brom, his nose pressed to the window, asked, “Is that my lab? It looks kind of crumbly.”
    The drive was long and straight, the rich chocolate earth covered in golden leaves from the aspens that lined the drive, their branches arching over us in a lovely way that had me thinking warm thoughts about Pavel’s house-finding abilities.
    To the right, a shimmer of water could be seen through the trees, as well as a ruined red stone wall with still-intact Gothic windows.
    “Oh, I’m sure that’s not it. That’s not much more than a shell of a building. Surely Pavel would have found us something with a basement, or a completed outbuilding.” I glanced at Baltic, beside me. “Wouldn’t he?”
    He shrugged. “He showed me the information about the house. It is an eighteenth-century mansion with five standing outbuildings, on twenty-seven acres. It has power and water. That is all I know about it. It was up to you to approve it or not, but he did not have time to show you the pictures.”
    “An eighteenth-century mansion,” I said, a little thrill of excitement making me shiver. “It sounds wonderful.”
    “It sounds full of mice,” Maura said in a subdued voice.
    “Pessimist,” Savian told her.
    “Realist, thank you. Emile has an eighteenth-century house in the north of France that is mouse central. I grew up there.” She shuddered.
    “Another ruin,” Brom said, pointing to the other side of the drive.
    “That looks like it could have been a barn or something,” I commented as the trees grew denser around us, the track making a sweeping curve to the northeast. “Oh, I think I see the house through the trees! It looks big. Yes, that must be it. How excit-” The words dried up on my lips as we rounded a dense clump of trees that lurked at the far end of a large pond, revealing the three-story mansion in all its glory.
    If you could use that word. Which I wasn’t about to.
    “Sins of the saints,” I swore, letting the car roll to a