Sparks Fly: A Novel of the Light Dragons by MacAlister Katie Page B

turned over as I read the words.
    Sullivan:
I have Brom. If you want to see him again, you’ll do exactly what I say. If you contact the Watch, or mundane police, he’ll suffer. His mobile phone is under his pillow—I’ll call his phone tomorrow at noon with instructions, but in the meantime, have that dragon start gathering up gold, because you’re going to need lots of it if you ever want to see the kid again.
    It was signed with one word:
Gareth
.
    For a moment, the world swam around me in a sickening fashion. I clutched Baltic’s shirt, trying to keep from vomiting or passing out, both of which were likely at that moment. Baltic’s arms were warm around me, holding me tight and keeping me safe as he murmured words of reassurance in my ear.
    “Do not swoon,
chérie
. I cannot find my son if you need my attention, too.”
    “Brom,” I said, choking on the word. Tears streamed down my face as I grabbed his arms. “He’s taken my baby!”
    “Our son is not a baby,” Baltic said firmly, giving me a little shake before turning me toward the pub. “He is smart, and clever, and he will not be frightened by insignificant beings like the one who spawned him. He will know that we will not tolerate this abduction and will reclaim him immediately. Come, mate.”
    Oddly enough, what Baltic said made me feel a tiny bit better. In part, the knowledge that Brom was everything Baltic said reassured me, but mostly it was the fire I felt raging inside him. Baltic was beyond furious, hisdragon fire threatening to slip his control, and I knew to the depths of my soul that he would move heaven and earth to get Brom back.
    That didn’t stop me from pacing the floor in Baltic’s workroom an hour later, however, as he made several phone calls, attempting to locate Gareth. Pavel, with his friend Holland in tow, arrived to say that they’d thoroughly searched the pub and immediate area, and no one remembered seeing Brom or anyone resembling Gareth.
    “If he so much as touches one hair on Brom’s adorable head,” I swore, “if he harms him in any way, I will take his scrotum and pull it over the top of his head.”
    “If you’re talking about me, I’m leaving,” a male voice said from the doorway. I spun around to see Baltic who, moving so fast he was a blur, was smashing a tall, angular man against the wall.
    “Savian! Baltic, no, that’s Savian Bartholomew, the thief-taker I told you about.”
    Baltic snarled something rude in Zilant, an archaic language once used by the dragons in the weyr, but he released Savian, who gasped and clutched a nearby chair as he tried to get air back into his lungs.
    “I have no use for a thief-taker until we find that bastard who forced himself on you to spawn my son,” Baltic snarled.
    “Are you all right, Savian? Here, sit down. Let me get you a glass of water. And no, Baltic, I didn’t mean we needed a thief-taker; Savian is also a renowned tracker. I was going to hire him to find something, but now that’s…” A little wave of dragon fire danced down my body as the words that just left my lips sparked something in my brain.
    “Not another one who can’t control the fire,” Savian said, accepting the glass of water I held out and moving his feet so my fire, now dancing around my feet, didn’t reach him. “What is with you mates?”
    My gaze met Baltic’s again. “Savian is a
tracker
,” I told him again, emphasizing the word “tracker.”
    “Not just a tracker—I’m the best there is.”
    Baltic was on him in a flash, pulling him to his feet, although this time without choking him. “You will find my son.”
    “Who?” Savian squawked.
    “Our son, Brom. Do you remember him?” I said hurriedly, my hands clutching each other as I stood before him. “Gareth—he’s my ex-husband, the one who hired you to rescue me from Gabriel—he’s kidnapped Brom and taken him somewhere, and we can’t find any trace of him. We don’t even know where he is, or if he’s all