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Max squeezed Kagami’s hand as his mother’s car crunched up the farm’s gravel driveway. “Almost to the spell barrier,” he said to Markov.
“Entering sleep mode,” Markov bleeped.
Kagami’s nails dug into Max’s palm. “Why does he need to do that?”
“The barrier is perfectly safe for us to pass through,” Max assured her. “It is designed to confuse humans and temporarily disrupt their sense of direction if they try to enter the grounds. As such, it has been known to interfere with some electronics. He will be fine once we are inside.”
As the barrier passed through them, Max closed his eyes and let the magic fizz against his skin. When he opened his eyes, Kagami was staring dreamily out the window at the sun-soaked fields stretching away from the driveway. “You are really allowed to transform openly here?”
“Not in my car,” said Max’s mother firmly. “Unless Max wants to buff claw marks off the seat cushions?”
“I’ll wait until we get out,” Max assured her.
Markov played his startup noise. “I am eager to see Ms. Helga and Ms. Margaux again,” he said. “I can show them my improved claw dexterity!”
Max rolled his eyes. Ms. Helga and Ms. Margaux, the four-hundred-year-old witches who owned the farm, absolutely doted on Markov.
Max’s mother parked the car and got out, shading her eyes in the brilliant sunlight. “Let’s head up to the farmhouse, then,” she told Markov. To Max, she added, “Have Kagami hold your phone, and text Markov if you have any problems.” With that, she shifted smoothly into her true form and burst into the sky.
Max’s heart swelled as he watched his mother fly away. Claudie Kanté loved flying as much as life itself. When she was too far away to see, he realized that Kagami was looking at him.
“I’ve never seen a dragon in person,” she said, sounding almost shy. “And don’t say ‘You’ve known me for months.’”
“You have,” said Max, and, before she could roll her eyes, he set his backpack in the grass, stretched his back, and shivered into his true form.
Kagami gasped, annoyance forgotten. “You’re—wow.”
Max flicked his tail, feeling unaccountably embarrassed. It didn’t help that this was technically the first time his girlfriend had seen him naked. To defuse the awkwardness, he rummaged through his backpack, hunting for his prescription flight goggles. A werewolf optometrist in the 8th arrondissement sold them. Without them on, everything past Kagami was a fuzzy green blur.
“Could I… touch you?” Kagami asked at last.
Max tightened the straps of his flight goggles with his upper set of arms and nodded.
Warm fingers caressed his middle left shoulder near the base of his wing, and Max closed his eyes. Every sensation was more intense in this shape, and six limbs were much more stable than four. On the warm breeze, he could smell the heat signatures of every person and animal in a square mile.
If his mother were there, she would have turned the moment into a lesson and asked Max to identify the various species he could smell. Instead, he let himself get lost in the small heaven of Kagami’s touch.
“You’re larger than I expected,” Kagami noted. She pulled her hand away at last to shrug off her jacket, freeing her wings.
Max shrugged his uppermost shoulders. “I’m actually considered small for my species.” Resisting the urge to take off then and there in a bid to impress her further, he said, “Follow me. I know of an open field nearby that is suitable for flight practice.”
“Coming down!” Max cried. Kagami braced herself just in case, but Max was better at falling safely than he was at flying safely. He landed with a bump several meters away from her and promptly shifted human.
Kagami ran to his side. “You’re laughing. Why are you laughing?”
Max crossed his arms behind his head. The dragon-sized flight goggles looked ridiculous, and she was sure they didn’t help his human eyes see, but he made no move to take them off. “I’m having fun,” he said at last. “You’re here with me, Swords, and that’s just…”
“…Magical,” Kagami finished, because she knew what he meant. She laid down next to him in the dragon-sized dent in the long grass. After a moment, Max pulled off his goggles and rested his head on her shoulder.
“I’m not on your wing, am I?”
“You are, but it isn’t uncomfortable. I would tell you if it were.”
Kagami did not have the courage to say so out loud, but there was something nice about holding her dragon boyfriend with her small, vestigial wing. Some deeply buried ancestral instinct insisted that this was correct. It was equally nice that Max, though he was several feet longer than she was tall as a dragon, made a rather short human. All at once, Kagami hugged him.
Both careful of her wings and his goggles, they rolled over and over in the grass, laughing. Somehow, Max ended up on top. Brushing Kagami’s hair off her face, he kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, and her chin.
This wouldn’t do, Kagami decided. Pushing off against the ground with an elbow and a wing, she made them roll again until she was the one on top. Then, with a victorious smile, she kissed Max on the lips.
“Mmm.” Max closed his eyes. “You’re the most beautiful blur I’ve ever seen.” He shifted into a dragon beneath her, then smiled with all his teeth.
Moving slowly, Kagami stroked the soft fins of her boyfriend’s ears. “Can I touch your whiskers?” she asked. “Or are they too—”
Max considered this. “They’re very sensitive,” he said. “It’s okay, I think. If you’re gentle.”
Kagami did her best. She was rewarded by a deep rumbling noise deep in Max’s throat that was something like a purr. Both of them laughed.
“This place doesn’t feel real,” said Kagami softly, looking around at the richly colored fields and the verdant treeline. Golden sunlight warmed her wings. “None of it does. It feels as though I am too happy.”
Max stretched his lower set of arms. “You deserve all of this joy and more,” he said.
Kagami was about to comment on how lovely the sunlight was where it hit Max’s scales when she saw movement at the edge of the treeline. “Fuck. Shift back.” She rolled off him, grabbing her jacket and shoes and stuffing the wings on her back and ankles into concealment.
Max shivered back into a puzzled looking human boy. “What is it?” he asked, squinting.
Kagami was grateful that she had stowed his glasses in her jacket pocket. “Here,” she said, handing them over. “Look, and be quiet.”
Max hurriedly wiped off his lenses and looked just as Destroika and Brightwing, Paris’s so-called superheroes, fully emerged from the trees and started towards them. Max uttered a thousand-year-old dragon curse and positioned himself in front of Kagami. They were in an open field. There was absolutely nowhere to hide.
Kagami knew they were thinking the same thing. If Destroika and Brightwing didn’t know where they were, their best chance was to play human and get them to leave. And if they did know? Kagami swallowed hard and decided not to guess what her chances would be against a pair of seasoned monster hunters. “I’m texting Markov,” she whispered.
Max nodded, trembling in a way that told her that he ached to bring out the claws and teeth.
Kagami laced up her boots, praying that Destroika and Brightwing wouldn’t notice the way the back of her jacket bulged. There was no time to properly fasten her compression shirt. Max smoothed wrinkles out of their picnic blanket and took her hand. Both of them watched the superheroes advance with frozen, painfully fake smiles.
Several meters away, Brightwing stopped in his tracks, shielding his eyes. “Max?” he asked aloud, seeming incredibly startled. From Destroika’s expression, she recognized Max too.
A cold fizz of dread stirred in Kagami’s stomach. What was going to happen to them? For the first time, she wished her mother was there.
Max got to his feet, still shaking with what Kagami recognized as mingled anger and fear. How dare these people invade this place? What would become of them now that they had?
“Hello,” Max said in a voice that was very nearly pleasant. “What can I do for you?”
Still clinging to his hand, Kagami wished she had thought to bring a sword. Her ancestors had been famed defenders of the defenseless and meek, but here she was facing this threat unarmed.
“We need your help,” Brightwing rumbled. His brow wrinkled. “Assuming you know where we are.”
Max’s grip on Kagami’s hand tightened. “I might. What do you need?”
Brightwing and Destroika exchanged looks.
“I trust him,” said Brightwing.
He fumbled around his neck for a moment, finally pulling something invisible over his head. In his hand, it materialized as a very familiar looking amulet. Witches made them for members of the magical community with no natural disguise abilities to allow them to pass as human. And that meant—
“Spots off,” Brightwing whispered. Red sparkles engulfed him, and he began to grow, doubling and then tripling in size.
Max dropped Kagami’s hand and rippled into his true form faster than she had ever seen him change. He moved to shield her with his body, growling at Brightwing.
“This is the real me,” said Brightwing, who had become a twelve-foot-tall rock giant. “We came here looking for Helga and Margaux. We need their help.”
“Please,” Destroika put in. Next to Brightwing, she looked smaller than ever. “Max, please. We need to get to the farmhouse.”
“We should just tell them who we are,” rumbled Brightwing. “After all—”
“Back away from us first,” Max hissed, baring his teeth. Brightwing and Destroika complied.
“Claws in,” said Destroika. When the green sparkles faded, she had become a human-looking girl whose appearance so startled Max that he lowered his hackles.
“Mylene?”
Mylene looked much more frightened of Max and Kagami than they were of her. “Um, I guess this is your girlfriend? Nice to finally meet you, Kagami.”
Kagami blinked. “Sure.”
“Three of us in one class,” said Brightwing. “What are the odds?” To Mylene, he added, “I can see the farmhouse from here, actually. We were very close.”
Mylene grimaced. “We got lost in the forest,” she explained.
Max inhaled deeply. “I’m breaching standard etiquette, given the circumstances,” he said. “What are you? And,” he added, looking at Brightwing, “who are you?”
“I’m a swamp troll,” said Mylene. “Which I can’t prove, because you both stopped being afraid of me when I detransformed.”
Brightwing put his amulet back on. It disappeared immediately, and he shrunk into a tall, broad-shouldered white boy Kagami didn’t recognize. “Ivan,” he said. “Sorry.”
Max flickered back into his human form. He looked from Ivan to Mylene, eyes wide. “Let’s go to the farmhouse, then,” he said at last. “The walk will give you plenty of time to tell us everything.”