Dragon Witch ✔️

24 - Twister

"Hey, Lilly? Earth to Lilly?"

I started, and Piper laughed.

"What?" I asked.

She rolled her eyes. "If I'm boring you, we could always go back to the testing." She pulled out two plastic containers like the ones used for drug testing. "I'd love to get some more samples."

"Ick, no. I'm listening, I swear." I leaned forward and gave her my best attentive look. "We were talking about soul mates, right?"

"No, I was talking about how I don't believe in soul mates because statistically, if there was only one soulmate to every person, then it would take hundreds of years to find that soulmate because you might have to meet every single person on Earth."

"Oh." Maybe I hadn't been paying that much attention. "Interesting theory. How did we get on this topic again?"

She waved a hand at me. "Doesn't matter. You're obviously worrying about the Full Moon, so we should take a break, play a game or something." She put away her sample containers. "What kind of games do you guys have around here?"

A distraction from the Full Moon sounded wonderful. I shrugged as we both stood. "We have some board games downstairs."

Downstairs in the living room, I spotted Kyton sitting in the corner, reading a thick red book. The pages had rough edges, like they were cut by hand, and the dark leather cover was coming apart at the seams. The symbols on the cover weren't in any language I recognized. Not that I recognized a lot of non-Earthen languages. My parents had tried their best to keep me away from those.

"Good morning," I called. Technically, Kyton should've been body-guarding me the last couple of hours, but he'd never shown up. In hindsight, maybe I should've gone looking for him earlier. But he looked like he was caught up in something interesting and not dangerous. Eh, no harm, no foul.

"Morning," he said in a low voice without looking up.

Piper and I crossed the room to the game cabinets by the TV. She flung open the cabinets and started rifling through our games. After passing over Life, Monopoly, and Sorry, she hoisted an old Twister game over her head like it was the holy grail.

"I love this game! We used to play it all the time, but it fell apart, and someone threw it out. Either that, or my dad got sick of the noise and gave it to Goodwill." She opened the box and started setting out the game mat. "It's always more fun with more people, though." She nodded toward Kyton. "Ask Ky if he wants to play."

I went over to him. When he didn't look up, I leaned forward. He leaned back, hiding his face behind the old book.

"What's up?" I asked.

He mumbled something that was further muffled by the book in front of his face.

I pulled the book down so I could see his face. His glamour was spotty again, but it cleared up a second later.

"Hey, we're going to play Twister, if you want to-"

"I'm busy. Homework." He pulled the book out of my hands, but not before I saw a sketch of a dragon on the page he was reading.

"Right." It was still the summer, and as far as I knew, he wasn't taking summer classes. Not to mention that monsterology had nothing to do with his major--utility water enchantments. I guessed he could be getting a minor in monsterology, but something told me that wasn't true. He had to be planning something to get dragon blood.

Why couldn't he just wait for the monster hunters to take care of it? With the changeling potion I'd made, his dad should have plenty of time to wait. The hunters were trained to deal with this kind of thing. If Kyton tried to take their place, he would just end up getting himself killed.