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Our voices had never risen to full voluh to talk to each other’s faces, rather than in each other’s ears But I cuddled forward again, loving that inti Anyan’s earlobe a little nibble ‘We need to distract ourselves until we have an audience Whatever can we do to pass the tirowl, Anyaned to entertain ourselves for a quite a while when Anyan stiffened Stiffened more, I should say, and with his whole body Not just his special parts

‘He’s here,’ he ht, and then I started talking Plan B was in effect

‘Are you certain he heard?’ Ryu asked as el s up for those three days without food

‘No,’ I told the baobhan sith, giving him an evil look as I started in onside of the bed afterhed

‘Sorry, I’m just nervous as hell But I’ I was supposed to say, and Anyan was sure the White was lurking around, but I can’t guarantee he heard, or listened, or cared’

My dad leaned over

‘You did all you could, Jane,’ he said, turning back to Anyan’s big far next to me with the remains of his own breakfast, nodded ‘And I doubt the White would waste such information, or be oblivious to it’

‘But what if he knows it’s a trap?’ I asked, my voice small

Iris piped up from where she sat across from Caleb, her voice like honeyed ice crea it’s a trap, anyon a neeapon’

Plan B hinged on the fact that the White eaker than the Red We needed to separate the two dragons, and we needed theood thing about theons, ons had no pockets to hold a cell phone, anddifficult So if we could get the Red and the White really far apart, we could work on the White, using the stone

We could get Anyan back, and have a fighting chance at taking the Red

The hard part, however, was not necessarily separating the two The hard part wassure they both here anted theers’ that they’d have to split up to follow, only one had to be significantly less dangerous than the other Presuon, the White, after that group, and the Red would go after the erous’, being the champion, I needed to be Red bait But we had to invent another story, equally coons would send the White For if they both chased after me, ere fucked

Not least because the creature had ad as a dragon again, without serious consequences to itself And we needed the creature for soot to check this threat out And if I were theroups to be safe’

What I’d told Anyan, so that the White could overhear, was a mixture of facts and lies The facts were that we’d learned of a stone that was an iredient in a process that could separate the White from Anyan I lied, however, about the fact we already had it Instead, I said that we’d only heard of it, and that it was located very far away, in China We’d concocted a whole story about it being in the collection of the Co a teaate

The kicker was that the ritual involved a bunch of other stuff, which we had to prepare in Rockabill That was the other lure – the one that would hopefully bring in the White, and that was baited with the power of the creature

‘The second we get our hands on that stone,’ I’d told Anyan,exciteht back to Rockabill And then we can start the ritual We can take you back in seconds, just like they did’

And that was one over those last minutes in Whitby, when the Red had stolen Anyan from me, a thousand times And they weren’t even minutes It had taken only seconds for the Red to lash out that da onto those bones Another few seconds for her little chant to power up their mojo … and Anyan had been lost