“Hey, Dad,” I whispered, crouching down beside him. “How are you doing?”
He showed no sign he’d heard me. He never did, but I still spoke to him every time I came in because talking made the situation feel less scary. I was pretty sure I’d said more words to my dad in the past eight weeks than I had in all the years since I’d turned thirteen. I just wish I knew if he’d heard them. I’d even welcome a growl at this point, anything to let me know he wasn’t actually gone.
“I think I’ve finally got a lead on something that might help you,” I said, carefully avoiding looking at how sunken his cheeks had become. “I’m just going to shower first and then I’ll be back. Don’t move.”
I used that same joke every time I talked to him. It made me feel more in control, a necessity since seeing him like this always threatened to send me right back into the despairing panic I’d felt the night this happened. Neither of us had time for that, though, so I forced myself to chin up and slipped into the bathroom to wash off. It felt like stalling, but if I really did manage to summon the Spirit of Dragons, I at least wanted to greet her without dirt on my nose.
Since the DFZ had already warned me about punctuality and I only had forty minutes left in my lunch break, I cleaned up as fast as possible, resisting the urge to soak my aching body under the detached apartment’s miraculously never-ending hot water. When I’d gotten all the mud I could see off my skin, I grabbed a fresh set of clean work clothes from the small set of plastic drawers I’d moved into the bathroom since there was no way in hell I was changing in front of my dad. Unconscious or not, there were some lines that should not be crossed.
Thankfully, the DFZ handled my laundry in the same mysterious way she handled my plumbing. Stacks of fresh clothes appeared every morning, while my dirties from the hamper were whisked away. I didn’t even know if I’d worn the same clothes twice since they all looked the same, a never-ending parade of mom jeans, thick white T-shirts, and work boots. It was boring as hell and definitely not my usual style, but it was traditional for priests to dress humbly, and it wasn’t as if I had anyone to impress. Also, I’d been poor for too long to turn up my nose at free clothes and no laundry. I put on my dull outfit without complaint, pausing just long enough to twist my wet hair into a bun before I stepped back out.
“Okay,” I told my unconscious father as I hauled the crate of liquor into the bedroom. “Let’s do this.”
As the DFZ had suggested, I put out the red plastic cups first. She hadn’t specified how they were to be arranged, so I just placed them around my dad in a circle, doing my best to keep the spacing as neat and even as possible. When the whole fifty-pack was down, I grabbed a bottle at random and started pouring, filling each cup to the brim in what I hoped would be interpreted as reverent silence.
By the time I was done, I understood why the DFZ had given me mid-shelf booze. Filling all those cups had taken thirteen bottles in total. By the time I finished, the smell of booze was so strong in the room that I was having trouble breathing. I couldn’t exactly open a window thanks to the whole floating-in-a-mind-destroying-nothingness situation, though, so I just tried to move quickly, stacking the empty bottles neatly along the wall in the hopes that the Spirit of Dragons enjoyed order as much as other dragons did. My father certainly loved for things to be extravagantly neat. He probably would have loved this as well if not for the insulting cheapness of the booze. Again, I really hoped the DFZ knew what she was doing. The setup I’d just made looked more appropriate to summoning the Spirit of College Binge Drinking than dragons. I just prayed she wasn’t insulted. If I got eaten over bad booze in plastic cups, I was going to be really pissed off.
Done was done though. The libations had certainly been poured. I would have offered prayers as well if I’d thought the Spirit of Dragons cared about the opinion of humans. The chance of accidentally insulting her was too high, though, so I just settled in to wait.
After ten minutes of nothing, I decided to try the prayer thing. Dragons always loved it when you got on your knees, right? So I got down on mine, bowing over my dad with my hands pressed together. Please, I thought, trying my best to broadcast the words through my supposed megaphone soul. Please, great spirit. Please, please, please.
As prayers went, it wasn’t the most poetic, but I was counting on sincerity to make up for what I lacked in eloquence. I wasn’t even sure what language the Spirit of Dragons spoke. I was contemplating trying again in Korean and Cantonese just to be sure I was covering my bases when I realized the room had gotten uncomfortably warm.
My eyes popped open in alarm only to instantly slam shut again as sweat poured down my face into them. I wasn’t sure when it had happened, but my bedroom was suddenly hot as a furnace. It also felt unusually crowded, and when I finally got my shirt up to wipe the stinging sweat out of my eyes, I saw why.
There was a dragon made of fire sitting practically on top of my dad, a red plastic cup pinched delicately between her burning claws. All the other cups I’d put out were already empty and scattered across the floor, their shiny plastic sides blistered and warped from the heat. She drained the final cup as I watched, tossing the cheap liquor back with a gulp of greedy satisfaction. When it, too, was empty, she tossed the melting cup away and sat back on her haunches to flash me a grin full of sharp, flaming teeth.
“Hello, mortal,” the god said in a sweet, deadly voice. “You libated?”
Chapter 2
I bowed so fast my forehead smacked into the floor. “Great dragon!” I gasped, not even realizing I’d said the words in Korean until they were out. I started to sweat harder. Panicking in front of a dragon was the worst thing you could do. Best-case scenario, the fiery god would find my fear amusing and try to scare me more. Worst case, she’d see it as a prey reaction and eat me.
In my defense, I hadn’t actually expected this to work. I mean, what kind of dragon—or spirit, for that matter—came down for offerings of strip-mall liquor-mart swill served in red plastic cups? I would have considered it beneath my dignity to reply to such an invitation, and I wasn’t even immortal. Or dignified. But while none of this made sense to me, the Spirit of Dragons was most definitely here, and from the way the tip of her fiery tail was twitching, she was starting to get annoyed.
“Would you get up?” the god snapped. “Not that I don’t appreciate a good grovel, but it’s impossible to hear what you’re saying when you’re talking to the floor like that.”
“Sorry, Great Dragon,” I whispered, pushing myself up so that I was sitting on my knees.
“Quite all right,” the fiery dragon said benevolently. “You’re only mortal, so I don’t hold it against you. Now let’s have a look.”
She lowered her flaming head, which was so tall I wasn’t entirely sure how it fit inside my bedroom. There was definitely some space bending going on, because now that I was looking straight at her, there was absolutely no way she could be contained by such a small room. We were inside a magical apartment floating in a void, though, so a dragon god cramming her fiery body into somewhere it shouldn’t technically fit was hardly the weirdest thing going on.
“My, my,” the dragon spirit purred. “You’re quite the package, aren’t you?” She breathed in deep through her nostrils. “Polite, off-the-charts magical potential, good facial symmetry, and you’re a Shaman! That’s a nice change. Haven’t seen one of those in years.” She sniffed again and frowned. “Already attached to the Spirit of the DFZ, though. Such a pity. That dirty upstart of a city will never appreciate you properly. But you don’t smell like you’re fully dedicated yet.” The giant flaming head moved a little closer. “It’s not too late to trade up, you know. The DFZ is powerless outside her borders, and I’m always in the market for a new priestess.”