The gray weather we’d been having for the last few days was doing an encore, but I made it home before it started to rain.  I parked my latest rusted hulk, a Camaro that had once been blue and was now a sort of mottled gray, on the overgrown driveway to one side of the house.  My key hit the lock as the first few droplets spattered down.
            The leaden skies made the battered old Victorian look even more dilapidated than usual.  It had been built by a retiring sea captain back in the 1880s, when Flatbush was Brooklyn’s happening new suburb.  It still sat on a decent-sized lot with old growth trees, but its glory days were over.  The paint was peeling, the porch was sagging and the gingerbread trim was missing a number of pieces.  It made the house look a bit like an old person with broken teeth.  But it was home, and it was glad to see me.  
            After a moment, a frisson of welcome spread up my arm and the door opened.  I hopped over a hole in the floor, sat a couple of takeout bags on the counter and lit an old fashioned hurricane lamp.  On full power, the wards caused the electricity to go bonkers.  And while it still worked okay for larger appliances, constantly blinking lights made me dizzy.
           I snared a beer out of the fridge and stood at the counter drinking it, flipping through the day’s mail.  Someone had thoughtfully left it on the table, maybe because it was mostly composed of bills.  My one-time roommate Claire had inherited the house from her uncle, and when she went off to bigger and better things, she’d left it in my care.  And it needed a lot of it.  
            Most importantly, it needed a new roof.  There was a worrying stain on the ceiling of my bedroom that had started out roughly the shape of Rhode Island, but now looked more like North Carolina.  Another few more days of rain and it was going to be Texas.  And then it wouldn’t be anything at all because the battered old shingles were going to cave in on my head. 
           I filed the bills in the usual spot—the breadbox--and started to unpack the take out when a clap of thunder struck directly overhead.  It sounded like a grenade going off, and was near enough to shake the house.  I froze, my heart in my throat. 
            Oh, please, oh, please, I begged, listening with all my might.  
            For a long moment I didn’t hear anything, except the rumbling aftermath of the weather and my thudding pulse.  And then a thin, tremulous wail filtered down from upstairs.  My blood ran cold. 
            Within seconds, the cry had intensified to orchestra-like crescendos.  A glass in the kitchen sink trembled and then shattered, along with what remained of my eardrums. I put my head down on the counter and thought about sobbing.    
            In my somewhat extended lifetime, I’d been through war, famine and disease.  I was a strong woman.  I was a warrior.  But I’d never faced anything like this.
            I really, really wanted to kill something, but there wasn’t anything handy.
           There was nothing to do but pick up the shards of the tumbler and dump them in the trash.  The horrible noise that was threatening every window in the house stopped for a second, then two, and I took a cautious breath—before it began again with renewed vigor.  I put the beer back and went to the liquor cabinet for whiskey. 
            I was cursing my roommates, who had cleaned out all the liquor in my absence, when I heard the soft scrape of a footstep in the hall.  It should have been impossible, even with my hearing, to detect anything over that din, but some desperate instinct brought it to my attention anyway.  Maybe because it was so unusual. 
            There were a lot of creatures around the house these days, lumbering and stomping across the old wooden boards at all times of the day and night.  But there was no one who just stepped.  No one who was here by invitation, anyway. 
            I could feel the muscles bunching under my skin, ready to explode outward into motion.  My breath started coming faster and a bead of sweat slid into my eye.  It could just be the house settling, I told myself sternly as I reached for the cleaver.  Don’t get excited. 
            Then the tiny sound came again, along with a squeaky protest from one of the boards in the hall.  My mood lifted.  Maybe I’d get to kill something, after all. 
            I crossed to the hall door and grasped the green glass knob, but didn’t turn it.  Normally, the kitchen door was left open because the hinges screamed with protest whenever they were used.  But someone had closed it and now I couldn’t open it again without letting whatever was out there know I was coming.  I was going to have to wait for it to come closer. 
            I expected to be able to tell a lot about the intruder even without sight.  The weight could be guessed from the heaviness of the tread, the height by the soft susurration of breath, possibly even the sex if he or she was wearing cologne.  But when I extended my senses, all I received was the shock of contact as my humanness brushed up against something Other.   
            My hand jerked back from the knob, but I still felt it: a fluttering sensation cascading along my skin, a sort of electric prickle.  It wasn’t painful, sharp or hot.  It was like being caressed by fingers of water, a gentle, melting touch that soothed and reassured and calmed.  
            And made my skin crawl. 
            I didn’t want to be reassured when there was a danger in the house.  I couldn’t afford to lose my edge.  But I could feel it slipping away anyway, my heartbeat slowing, my breath coming easier, the sweat that had popped out on my arms a moment before cooling in the night air.
            Even more worrying, the house itself wasn’t reacting. The wards usually relished doing nasty things to trespassers.  But the kitchen remained dim and silent, the only movement the flickering flame inside the lantern.
            Its light danced off a row of chef’s knives on the wall, some battered copper cookware hanging from a pot rack, and a broom with a solid wood handle in the corner.  Any or all of them would have been useful against a large range of creatures, but probably not one who could so completely fool the house wards.  And that went for anything I had on me, too. 
            I was contemplating sneaking out the back way and doing a Spiderman impression up to my room, where I had a cache of much nastier weapons. But then the shrieking stopped.  It didn’t taper off, it just cut out between one breath and the next, like a hand had been clenched around a small neck.  And suddenly I forgot about subtlety, tactics and strategy.  I threw open the door and dove into the dark hallway, knife raised, a battle cry building in my throat. 
            And got slammed against a wall hard enough to rattle my ribs. 
            Rolling back to my feet, I threw a small table at my enemy, trying to buy myself a second to figure out what the hell I was fighting.  But no such luck.  I got a glimpse of huge, luminous eyes, with horizontal pupils like a goat’s, and then a ball of fire came out of nowhere, reducing the table to cinders and sending rippling shadows up the walls.  I leapt forward, looking for a vulnerable spot, but a massive clawed foot covered in gleaming scales slammed down on me with the force of a jackhammer.
            My back hit the floor with my neck wedged between two curved talons the length of daggers.  My own knife had lodged in the ball of the paw pinning me to the boards, between a couple of overlapping scales, but I doubted it was more than a thorn prick to the enormous creature. I thrashed and fought to free my weapon, but only succeeded in driving it a little further into the thick hide. 
            And somewhere above my head, someone cursed.  “Cut it out already!”
            I paused at the very human-sounding voice, but I still couldn’t see.  And then a thin ribbon of flame shot out of the darkness and lit a row of candles on the wall, all at once.   It was a good trick, but I was in no position to admire it.  I was too busy staring at the sight of a large dragon wedged into my narrow hallway. 
            It didn’t look very comfortable.  Its small black wings were squashed against the ceiling, its huge legs were up around its neck and its elongated snout was sticking haphazardly out between them.  The only part it appeared to be able to move was its foot, which was leaking a stream of black blood. 
            “That hurts like a bitch!”  It bent its massive head a little closer to take a look at the damage. 
            I just stared. 
            An acre of pewter scales was broken by a ridge of gleaming amethyst down its back.  Two horns the color of molten glass sat on its head, framing a tuft of absurd lavender hair.  It matched the creature’s eyes, which were creepy as hell, but had irises the color of pansy petals. 
            A nictating membrane slid first across one great eye and then the other as it regarded its wounded foot.  After a moment, it transferred that alien gaze to me, and the whorl of scales across its cheeks took on a vaguely purple tint.  “You stabbed me!”
            “You broke in,” I said slowly, in complete disbelief.  Because I’d seen a lot of strange things in Brooklyn, but a dragon wasn’t one of them. 
            “I did no such thing!”  The huge snout grimaced, showing an awful lot of teeth.  But the voice was melodious, almost hypnotic, sliding like a drug into my veins.  It soothed my racing pulse back to normal in spite of everything I could do to stop it.  I needed the energy of anger to fight, but all of a sudden my body was contemplating having a snooze, and my muscles were going limp and noodle-y. 
            “I don’t usually argue with anyone capable of crushing the life out of me,” I said, fighting back a yawn.  “But yeah, you did.”  
            “It’s my house!” A fold of skin that had been held flat against the creature’s back suddenly opened, spreading upward like translucent fan to frame its long snout.  “What are you waiting for?” it demanded. “Get it out!”
            I assumed it meant the knife, so I resumed tugging on it.  “It would help it you’d let me up,” I said after a minute.
            “Are you going to throw anything else at me?”
            “Are you going to eat me?”
            The eyes did the creepy sideways blink again.  I was starting to wonder if that was the dragon equivalent of an eye roll.  “Don’t be ridiculous, Dory!  You know damn well I’m vegan.”
            The foot raised and I slid out from between the gigantic toenails.  They were black at the roots, shading to gray and then clear at the ends like the horns.  Except for a few spots where flakes of bright red appeared.  They looked suspiciously like nail polish, which was when I decided to stop thinking at all. 
            The knife finally slipped free, and the second it cleared the tough hide, a cold blue-white light swelled out from between the scales as if the huge body was cracking down fault lines.  And then an explosion of light hit me like a fist, throwing me back a yard.  I landed hard against the faded wallpaper, jarring a hanging mirror loose.  It crashed against the floor, and the screeching from upstairs started up again. 
            “God, do I need a drink,” a voice said fervently.
            My thoughts exactly. 
            I sat up as someone pushed through the kitchen door and headed for the liquor cabinet.  I got to my hands and knees and peered around the jamb, only to see a tall, naked redhead standing in the lantern light.  She was glaring at the empty liquor cabinet.  “Don’t tell me you’ve gone teetotaler!”
            “No,” I said cautiously, sizing this new shape up. 
            It looked like Claire, my old roommate.  The illusion was perfect, down to the little details that spells usually overlook.  The creature’s hair was a red fuzz ball, the way Claire’s always got in rainy weather, there was a familiar pattern of freckles over the nose, and the arms were crossed under the breast in an often-used expression of annoyance.
            But there were discordant notes, too.  This Claire had bruise dark circles under her eyes, which kept darting nervously around the kitchen, and a sickly pallor beneath her freckles.  Her lips were white and pressed tightly together and she looked like she hadn’t slept in a while, like she was running on nerves. 
            But the real clincher was that Claire wouldn’t show up in the middle of the night, unescorted, barefoot and wild-eyed.  When I met her, she’d been working a bad paying job at a magical auction house and had needed a roommate for the extra cash.  But that was before a real life fey prince turned up at one of the sales and swept her off her feet—and all the way to Faerie.  She’d been there ever since, presumably living the happily ever after that the rest of us just dream about.   
            “It’s a damn good glamourie,” I said, wondering exactly how one evicted a dragon, even in human form, from one’s kitchen.  “But for future reference, Claire didn’t make a habit of running around naked.  Not even in her own house.”
            “I was wearing clothes!” the creature said, snatching an apron from a drawer.  It was the old fashioned type that was more like a dress, leaving her decent as long as she didn’t turn around.  “I burst out of them whenever I change anymore.  My dragon self has hit adolescence and it’s growing like a weed.”
            I stared from the drawer with the aprons—I hadn’t known we had any—to the woman shrugging one on.  “Dragon self?”
            She pushed limp red strands off her forehead with the back of her hand.  “I’m half dark fey, Dory.  You know that!”
            “Yeah, but…you never mentioned what kind!” 
            “I didn’t know until recently, and anyway, it’s not the kind of thing you just drop into conversation.” She located a box of aspirin in a drawer and peered at the label myopically.  Those pretty green eyes had always been nearsighted, and I guess going scaly would make it a bitch to keep up with glasses.   
            I got slowly to my feet, my head spinning.  “Claire?”
            “Who were you expecting?” she demanded.  “Attila the Hun?”
            Her eyes focused on the cleaver I still held in one hand, which was leaking blood—non-human black—all over the kitchen tiles.  Dragon’s blood was corrosive, which probably explained why half the blade was gone and the tiles looked like mice had been gnawing at them.  I took what remained of the knife to the sink and rinsed it off, then put it back in the rack. 
            That seemed to reassure her, because she pulled something out from behind her legs and plopped it into a kitchen chair.  It must have been behind her in the hall, because I hadn’t seen it before.  I slowly approached the table, regarding this new problem cautiously. 
            The small tow-headed creature appeared to be human.  He—at least, I assumed it was a he judging by the natty blue tunic he had on—looked to be around a year old.  But he nonetheless gazed calmly back, remarkably composed considering what he had just witnessed. 
            “What is that?” I asked, as he drooled a little onto his tunic. 
            Claire dry swallowed the aspirin.  “The heir to the throne of Faerie.”
            “The heir to the throne of Faerie just spit up.” 
            “He does that a lot.  He’s teething.”
            I blinked.  “Teething?  Teething?   He’s teething and you get spit?”
            “Why?  What did you expect?”
            I waved my arms.  “That!”
            “That noise?”
            “Yes!  That horrible, screeching noise that goes on and on and—”
            “That’s a baby?”
            “A baby Duergar.  Well, half anyway,” I amended.  “The other half is Brownie, or so they said.  I’m beginning to think it’s more like banshee.”
            “You mean that little thing you picked up at the auction?” She located a box of Band Aids and slapped one on her toe.   
            And okay, the apron thing could have been a fluke, but there weren’t too many people who knew where I’d acquired my current affliction.  The magical auction had been highly illegal and very hush hush.  That wasn’t surprising considering that they were selling illegal hybrids of supernatural creatures, some quite dangerous.  I hadn’t even known it was taking place until I accidently raided it. 
            As weird as it seemed, that actually was Claire. 
            “Yes,” I told her, my head swimming with questions.  I hadn’t seen her in over a month.  It seemed like she’d picked up a few new abilities while she’d been gone. 
            “But he already had teeth,” she objected, frowning into the empty fridge. 
            “Those were his baby teeth.  I’ve been finding them all over the house.  Now the big boy teeth are coming in and…Claire.  I think I’m going crazy.”
            “You’re not going crazy.”
            “I just saw you morph into a dragon!” 
            “Well you shouldn’t have startled me!” She opened the breadbox and stared at the mass of paper inside.  “Don’t you keep any food in the house?”
            “I got take out.”
            Her eyes latched onto the big white bags, which were spreading the smell of sesame chicken, veggie chow mein and fried rice around the kitchen.  “It looks like you brought enough for three people,” she said hopefully.
            “Yeah.  I don’t know when we’ll get to eat it, though.  What with all the commotion.”
            Her eyes narrowed, and for a moment, she looked an awful lot like her alter ego.  “Where’s this baby of yours?”
            I grinned.