Everyone stared at the big Marshal. “Relationship?” Matthew asked, repeating the word like it was unfamiliar to him.

Fengmi grunted. “You are aware that she hosted him for several months, here in this very house.”

“What? Of course not!” Maine said, but to her surprise, everyone else in the room was nodding along as if nothing was odd about it. She stared, eyes wide in astonishment.

“Hoo!” Kelphin said, dabbing at his brow with a lacy handkerchief. “Who can forget? I was terrified the entire time, practically lost control if he so much as glanced at me.”

“Everyone was,” Miss Imi replied, tapping her cane on the floor. “Half the staff nearly quit on us before he finally left.”

Even Seward was nodding. “It was a difficult time for us all,” he agreed.

Maine continued to stare. “You’re kidding right?” she asked, looking from face to face. “Strabos? The Dragon Strabos? He stayed here, in this house?”

The staff looked at her with surprise. “You don’t remember?” Miss Imi asked, but then she seemed to reconsider. “But then you were very young. Barely three, if I recall.”

“The two of you were practically inseparable,” Kelphin noted. “He’d carry you everywhere, throw you high into the air. Oh, that’s how we lost that chandelier,” he sighed, his voice catching.

“I don’t-” Maine started to say, but then something stopped her. A very queer feeling came over her all at once as she remembered, or thought she remembered, a huge pair of hands reaching down towards her. A great booming laugh seemed to echo in her ears and she had the impression, just for a moment, of flying through the air, the world flashing and whirling in front of her eyes. She braced herself against a table, suddenly disoriented, as the laughter slowly faded, disappearing down to a whisper.

What was that, she asked herself. Was it a memory? Before this moment, she would’ve sworn that she’d never heard that laughter before, but why did it sound so familiar now?

Mrowr??

Ifri stood on his back paws, leaning up against her legs. His electric blue eyes seemed concerned as he stared up at her, meowing plaintively. She reached down and picked him up, cradling the kitten to her chest, her mind still all in a whirl.

Dakota, meanwhile, was looking with interest at the rest of the staff. “What was he like?” he asked suddenly. “Strabos, I mean? The Strabos?”

“Terrifying,” Kelphin said at once. “Absolutely terrifying.”

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Miss Imi nodded. “He was polite,” she noted. “Impeccable manners, but sometimes he’d just look at you…”

“And you’d know that he was thinking of just…” Kelphin trailed off, shivering. “He used to leave the house at night and prowl the city, did you know that?” he asked Dakota, leaning forwards. “Who knows what he got up to then, but… Oh, but you must have heard about what happened in the Astoria dining room?”

Dakota nodded eagerly. “Three waiters and a maitre d, right?”

“I heard it was the whole cooking staff,” Kelphin corrected him. “A puff of fire and gone like that…”

“I never liked him,” Matthew said suddenly. He was frowning, arms folded, looking like he was still thinking of something. “He was too… big, too loud.” He glanced at Maine, smiling out the corner of his mouth. “No matter what he did or said, you just loved him more though.”

Maine shook her head. “I don’t remember at all…”

“Regardless,” Fengmi grunted, “the visit wasn’t strictly a social call,” he informed them. He glanced round the room. “Did Madelyn give you any indication why she invited him? Any reason at all?” Matthew, Kelphin, Miss Imi, and even Seward all shook their heads. “I suppose I’m not surprised,” he noted. “She was ordered to the utmost secrecy.”

“Ordered?” Matthew asked.

Fengmi leaned back in his chair. “Well, where to begin? I suppose you’ve got to start with Strabos.”

“To begin with, Strabos is a catastrophe waiting to happen,” he said bluntly. “A living, breathing Act of God, the Unnatural Disaster. He’s a dragon, the oldest dragon in the world, which means that he’s also the biggest and most powerful, ‘cause the damn things keep growing and they don’t die of old age. Luckily, most of them kill each other about as often as they kill us, so they’re not too bad to deal with, but Strabos is different. He’s got no rival, no equal. He might just be the most powerful single creature on the face of the Earth. And for the last hundred years or so, he’s chosen to live within the United States, just a few hours flight from so many breakable cities…”

“Boston, Chicago, Philly, New York, Washington…” Dakota went on.

Kelphin nodded. “Of course, it’s not like anyone could do anything about it,” he remarked. “Armies, navies, countries have thrown themselves against Strabos over the years, and he’s still here without so much as a scratch on him. Hell, there’s some stories that say that he can’t be killed…” He laughed suddenly, an ugly bitter sound. “But that wasn’t going to stop the government from trying.”

Dakota nodded sagely. “Someone had the bright idea,” he told them, “if force of arms couldn’t do it, maybe magic could possibly find a way.”

Seward, however, was frowning. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought magic has never been all that effective against dragons in the past.”

Maine nodded at once. Here, she was back on familiar territory. “They’re too fast and too powerful,” she agreed, digging into her bag. “You’ve got to use special thunderclap rifles! Here, you see!” She pulled out a few issues of The Dragon Hunters and slapped them on the table. On them, cowboys in rustic gear crouched behind boulders, shooting rifles with extra long barrels at a pair of fighting dragons. “You have to shoot them in the eye, the rest of their scales are just too thick” she said, aiming an imaginary rifle and lining up the barrel towards Kelphin’s head. The Elf blanched and ducked away, as Maine continued to track him. “It’s the only way to do it. A real dragon would burn you to cinders before you could even get a rune circle drawn.”

Fengmi raised an eyebrow as he lifted up one of the books, paging through it. “Not quite how I’ve heard people tell it,” he admitted, “but that’s the general idea.”