Excerpt

She wasn’t a hero, and dragons weren’t real.

Yet here they were.

For weeks, Adrienne had been dreaming about a dragon, a huge one bigger than anything she’d pictured in fiction, even those of fantasy series and movies. In her dreams, the dragon was winging its way across the landscape, each successive night was different, the dragon flying, never tiring, soaring through the air in the dead of night, when no shadows or sunlight could give it away. She wasn’t sure what a dragon had to be scared of—if it existed—but this one took stealth to new heights. Pun intended.

That gave a lot of human-style credit to a beast that, if it existed, would have a brain the size of a shark’s brain. A dragon would be primal, with nothing like frontal lobes, or whatever they were called, and little higher cognitive thinking.

Adrienne hadn’t shared her dreams anyone. She had a handful of acquaintances at school, but nobody close. Transferring in as a junior meant she was on the outside, competing with friendships forged in grade school and sustained into high school. Adrienne had learned too well the lessons of the past, when her older, smarter, prettier and all-around just better big sister had mocked her nightmares and called her a wuss.

Imagine what Fern would think now if she knew Adrienne’s nightmares. She’d laugh and laugh, and humiliate Adrienne somewhere in public, like the mall, or worse, online. Better to keep this dragon nonsense to herself. What her sister wasn’t told wouldn’t hurt Adrienne.

The dragon was getting closer. At first, she had no idea where the beast was, but the night before last, she’d glimpsed the telltale sign of the Space Needle as it flew over a city, which meant Seattle.

Which meant that San Diego wasn’t too far off. She wasn’t sure how far or how fast a dragon could fly, even limited to night hours, but was pretty sure it wouldn’t take long for the beast to get there.

If dragons existed.

Which they didn’t.

She hadn’t recognized the landscape last night, but it could have been the space between San Francisco and Los Angeles, that long stretch of rural Central California that wouldn’t be identifiable. She chewed on her lower lip before setting off outside. Her father, that overworked, barely home person who provided shelter, but no warmth, wouldn’t notice she was gone. Her sister was away at college, and she was pretty sure he was counting the days until she did so as well, so he could finish his slow collapse into alcoholism. Right now he was functional, but he’d been sliding over time.

That wasn’t today’s problem.

She trotted back to the treehouse behind their home. Adrienne loved it there, the two-storey thing designed by the prior owners, and perfect for teenagers. Her parents didn’t mind, in fact they encouraged it. Adrienne sometimes wished they could love her the way they loved her sister, but that was useless. Her perfect sister was her, and Adrienne was just who she was, second-born, too young and too needy and…different. Her sister would have a solution for this problem. Adrienne would not have trusted Fern with this. If her sister mocked her, then Adrienne would be lost. Better not to say than to risk ridicule.

At least they hadn’t crossed paths in high school, though the legacy of Perfect Fern stayed behind whenever Adrienne mentioned her last name. Fern had been in the court at prom, though not homecoming queen, thank god, and on the flip side, Adrienne wasn’t even sure she was going. Nobody had asked, and with as few friends as she had, she wasn’t comfortable solo.

She didn’t care.