Part 13 (2/2)

”Why is she sad?” Emmy asked.

Jesse shrugged. ”She saw something and I didn't see it and she got upset.”

Emmy c.o.c.ked her head. ”Daisy has a cabin fever, too,” she said. ”Daisy will go outside, just like Emmy. Then our cabins will cool down!”

Jesse chuckled. ”I'm not sure how much better you're going to feel playing in the storm,” he told her.

”Not playing,” said Emmy. She added with a sly hiss, ”S-s-spying.”

”Spying?” Jesse asked.

”Spying on the Dragon Slayer,” Emmy said with a knowing nod.

That would be a switch. It was usually St. George who spied on them, them, wanting to find Emmy. wanting to find Emmy.

171.

Every day for two weeks he had parked his big black Cadillac outside their house, from nine to five, like it was his job. If Jesse and Daisy went out, he followed. Jesse nearly laughed, thinking about it. St. George had hardly been stealthy about his spying! Then he had disappeared with the rain, as abruptly as the suns.h.i.+ne and the blue sky.

”The bad man has a bad plan!” Emmy said. ”We will spy on him in his den. Then we will steal his big book!”

St. George's ”den” was a lab in the zoology department of the Goldmine City College of Mining and Science, where he was posing as a herpetologist, or reptile scientist. In the first week of Emmy's life, St. George had stolen Emmy from the cousins. The cousins had gone to his den and stolen her back. That was when they had seen the big book. It was as big as a door and as thick as five phone books. The cover was too heavy to lift and the gold writing cut into the dark red leather was in a language neither of the cousins had ever seen.

”Spying! Brilliant,” said Jesse. ”That ought to cheer up Daisy I'll go tell her. You eat the cabbage swill.”

Emmy took the container in her agile forepaws. ”I will eat it allllll up ...for Jesse Tiger! Thank you, please.”

172.

”You're welcome, please, Emmy Dragon,” said Jesse. Then he ran back to the house, careful as always to lock the door behind him. When he pa.s.sed through the mudroom into the kitchen, he was surprised to find Daisy back up on the edge of the sink, her nose pressed to the windowpane again.

”They're gone, Jess,” she said in a small, forlorn voice. ”Those two trees with the strips of cloth wrapped around their trunks I said I saw? They're gone.”

”Really?” Jesse said. From where he was standing, it all looked the same. Still, he was sorry that the trees had gone before he had gotten a chance to try to look for them again.

”Maybe they were never there in the first place,” Daisy said sadly. She jumped down from the sink and hugged herself hard. ”Maybe this was one of those times when I wanted to believe the magic so badly, I saw what I wanted to see, rather than what was really there.”

”Or maybe,” Jesse said gently, ”the trees had to go someplace else and they'll come back later ...when they're ready to show themselves to both of us.”

The corners of Daisy's lips turned up a fraction. ”Then you believe me?”

”Hey,” he said, ”two months ago, if somebody 173.

had told me that we'd have a dragon living in our garage, I would have said they were wacky. Now ...who knows what can happen, right?”

Daisy nodded, but she still seemed a little down, so Jesse told her about Emmy's plan.

Daisy perked up right away. ”I'll tell my pops we're going over to the college to see the doc.u.mentary they're showing on global climate change. Boy, is that ever appropriate,” she said, c.o.c.king a thumb at the window. ”You turn off the invisible fence. We wouldn't want to give Mrs. Nosy-Britches another flash of dragon.”

Jesse went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt circuit breaker and flipped the switch that controlled the invisible fence, and then, still in his poncho, he returned to the garage. Emmy was just licking the coleslaw container with her long pink forked tongue when Daisy burst through the door and slammed it behind her. She had a big scowl on her face. ”Pops says we can't go out gallivanting--not until the rain stops,” she said.

Jesse groaned, but Emmy asked eagerly, ”When the rain stops piddling down, then then we can go out?” we can go out?”

”That's what the rock doc said,” Daisy replied gloomily, plopping down onto an old picnic bench.

”Yeah, but who knows when that'll that'll be?” Jesse added, plopping down next to her. be?” Jesse added, plopping down next to her.

174.

”I do!” said Emmy, her irises beginning to spin like a set of brilliant green pinwheels. Her nostrils gave off three puffs of peppery pinkish smoke, which rose up and radiated outward, filling the entire garage with a bright, hot, pulsing light.

The next instant, the rain stopped drumming on the roof.

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