The Dragon's Secret (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 2) by Katherine Sparrow Page A

jewelry: ankh earring, a labrys ring, and a pentagram necklace. She held up her phone and took my picture. The other two pulled out their cameras and did the same.
    “No,” I said.
    “Now for a picture of us all together?” the one in black said. “Our friends back home won’t believe that we actually met Morgan le Fay, and also do you have any magic for us?”
    The Child of the Moon nodded vigorously. “Or maybe some wise advice you could give to some young witches just starting? Wow, I can’t believe we are actually meeting you.”
    “Yeah,” said the third. “You’re way more wicked looking in person. We had so much fun figuring out where you were—good job with all the confusing clues and misdirection. Such a fun witch hunt.”
    A witch hunt, she said, as though she had no knowledge of the terrible history those words contained, and yet she claimed herself a witch.
    They flanked Lila and me, holding up their phones.
    “Smile!”
    I did not. I grabbed each of their phones, plucked a spelled penny from my pocket, and uttered, “Dileu.”
    The three phones shattered.
    “What the hell?” one of them said.
    “You asked me for magic, and so I gave you a breaking spell. And wise advice? If you tell any of your friends back home that you found me and that I exist, if you so much as utter my name anywhere that you go, I will send my hellhounds after you and they will destroy everything that you love before attacking you and dragging you down to the lowest level of Hades.”
    I leveled my most intense glare at them as they ran away.
    “Dude, remind me not to ever get on your bad side,” Lila said. “And you don’t really have hellhounds, do you?”
    I sighed as I took out my key. “They keep coming. If only I could erase all traces of myself from the internet,” I said. Ever since I had saved hundreds of women from a ritual intent on destroying them, and inadvertently outed myself in the process, so-called witches who thought I was a tourist attraction kept finding me. One of the tricks to staying alive while immortal was keeping hidden. If these women could find me, who and what else might come looking for me? One of the many problems with a forgetting spell was that I had no idea who my enemies might be.
    I opened the door and the spell that guarded it at the same time. I strode across the small store, filled with all kinds of useful goods for true witches. Lila flipped on the lights as I went behind the register. My hands automatically reached for my tarot deck and shuffled the cards a couple of times before choosing the day’s card that called out to me.
    I pulled the ace of cups: an ethereal hand holding an overflowing cup of water. It was a minor arcana card, which might signify getting a gift. A gift from Merlin, perhaps? I sighed. I was too old to fool myself into reading my own desires into the cards. The card meant what it meant, and soon enough the day’s secrets and truths would unfold.
    I put the cards away and pulled out my ledger from beneath the cash register, determined to get lost in the numb languages of numbers and forget about Merlin and my ridiculous witch-fans. The door opened.
    “If you are looking for spells to rot your genitals off, they are over there,” I said without looking up. I pointed toward my rack of dried herbs. “Otherwise, go away.”
    “I’m not here for spells,” a girl said. A second later her smell hit me: a hundred forest fires, raging.
    I looked up and closed my ledger. “Hello.”
    The girl was small and rail-thin. She looked hungry or addicted to the sort of drug that made one waste away. She wore ripped jeans, a ragged haircut, and a burn mark on one cheek.
    “And what are you here for?” I asked carefully.
    “I need your … help.” She spoke like it cost her something to admit that.
    “I can go buy you a sandwich, or some hum bow, or donuts,” Lila said. “Or we have coffee. And we keep a list of all the homeless shelters around here.”
    The