Light Dragons 03 - Sparks Fly

some thought, I decided that I owed it to Violet to contact her father. Again. “He’d just better not try to turn me into anything this-hello?”
    “Yes,” a sharp voice snapped into the phone. “What do you want?”
    “Good morning, Dr. Kostich. It’s Ysolde de Bouchier, again. I haven’t been able to get a hold of Violet, but I wanted to tell her that Maura is with us, in case she’s worried about Maura running around in Spain with a bunch of nutball ouroboros dragons.”
    “I still have nothing to say to you, dragon.”
    “I’m sorry to interrupt whatever it is you’re doing, but I thought-”
    The phone clicked in my ear.
    I sighed and hung up. “Evidently you don’t want to know how your own granddaughter is. You rotter.”
    Between getting the monstrous house into a habitable state, doing copious amounts of shopping in town with Brom firmly at my side-much to his disgust, until Baltic and I took him into Riga to buy equipment for his new lab-keeping Baltic and Constantine separated (not to mention focusing the latter on locating Kostya’s lair), and generally trying to settle into a new home, two days passed during which I didn’t have time to do much beyond collapsing exhaustedly into bed each night.
    “You are working too hard,” Baltic told me the morning of the third day, watching me chop basil for the bacon and goat cheese frittata I was making for breakfast. “You have dark circles under your eyes. I do not like this. You will take more naps.”
    I glanced up at him, startled for a second. “ More naps?”
    “Yes. The ones you are taking are too short, and you are restless at night, and not sleeping well.” He frowned. “Are you still worried about the safety of our son? The electronic security system put into place yesterday is more than adequate, mate, and I will engage a firm of Guardians to place wards on the house every few days. Thala will not be able to do us any harm here.”
    “I’m not worried about that any longer. At least, I am worried, but not to the point I was. You’ll notice that last night I didn’t get up once to check on Brom.”
    “I noticed. You still did not sleep well. You are doing too much.”
    “Not since you hired a veritable platoon of cleaning ladies to scrub down this mausoleum. But as we’re on the subject of things I should do, I’ve been thinking about what you told me.” I cut a quarter of the frittata and placed it on a waiting plate, alongside some fresh berries, chicken apple sausage made locally, and two croissants. Baltic accepted the plate with a murmur of thanks. I picked up a small walkie-talkie. “Moonbase one to Brom. Breakfast is ready, and your attendance is required pronto.”
    His response, somewhat crackly, was immediate. “I’m just setting up my draining table. I’ll eat later.”
    “You’ll eat now, and thank you very much for putting the image of a draining table in my mind when I’m about to have breakfast. I expect you to be washed up and in here in five minutes.”
    “Aw, Sullivan ... ” Luckily, he stopped transmitting before continuing. I yelled up the stairs to Nico and Holland that breakfast was ready, and started on the second frittata when Baltic, his attention now happily diverted to breakfast, asked, “Where is the thief-taker?”
    “He and Maura went into town to get some clothing. They should be back soon.”
    “Ah. What is it you believe you should do?”
    I listened for a moment but didn’t hear anyone coming down the stairs. “It’s about that last vision, when your mother was being sepultured.”
    “Sepulture is not a verb,” was all he said before he slathered his croissant with grapefruit marmalade. I grimaced at the action-Baltic had an insatiable sweet tooth, but that was no reason to ruin a perfectly lovely croissant.
    “I know it’s not; I was just being quirky. You love it when I’m quirky. But that’s beside the point. The other night you said that the First Dragon blamed you for your mother’s death. That’s got to be the death of the innocent that he was referring to when he told me I had to redeem your honor.”
    Baltic sighed, just as I knew he would. “Still you insist on listening to that foolishness. I have told you many times that my honor does not need your attentions, despite what the First Dragon would have you believe. I grow tired of repeating myself, and if you continue to make me do so, I will be forced to take action.”
    “What sort of action?” I was