Page 39 of Cash

“He’s most certainly the type.” She glanced up at me. “You do that a lot.”

“Do what?”

“You talk about things, and you say you haven’t had much real-life experience. I know you weren’t born yesterday. In fact, judging from the way your blood never seems to age, I would bet you were born a very long time ago. What gives?”

“Och, lass, I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a secret.”

She smiled for a second—but when she saw that I wasn’t joking, the smile dissolved. “I see.”

“No, you don’t. Not really. There are secrets like the one you were keeping, and there are secrets like the one I’m forced to keep. I want to tell you, like you wanted to tell me. And if this antidote works, you’ll know what one of them is. But there are many more.”

She looked unhappy, and neither I nor the dragon wanted that.

So, I made a compromise with myself. “I’m very old. I’ve lived away from most of the world for my entire life. My experience comes from media, television, movies. Things such as that.”

“I see.”

Only she didn’t, and she knew it. I let it go for the sake of letting her get back to work. I had other things to concern myself with, besides. Such as what we were going to do once the antidote proved successful.

There was a plan forming in my mind, one which we’d already taken steps toward putting in motion.

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