Tom looked up. He remembered seeing Keith's eyes, the pupil dilated and odd. But Keith looked perfectly normal now, even if a little puzzled. "What happened?" he said. And frowned, as if remembering some thing that didn't make any sense whatsoever. "What happened to us back there. What . . ."
Tom shook his head. He knew what Keith's eyes looked like. And Tom had some idea what mind-altering substances could do to your mind and your senses. Hell, for a while there he was shooting everything that came his way. Heroin by choice, but he'd have done drain opener if he had any reason to suspect that it would prevent him from shifting into a dragon. He suspected, in fact, that he had shot up baking soda in solution more than a few times. And who knew what else? It was miraculous enough he'd survived all those years. But nothing nothing, equaled the trip he'd just gone through, back there.
He put his face in his hands, and heard himself groan. He'd messed it up for good and all. Not that there had ever been any hope that Kyrie would see him as anything other than a mess. Not considering what he'd done the night before. The . . . corpse. And then his being so totally helpless. There was no way he had a chance with Kyrie. Not any way. But . . .
But now she thought him a drug addict. And the policeman had been with her.
"I'm going to get my car," Keith said. "Do you have any idea which way we came?"
"You have a car?"
"Yeah," Keith said. "I parked just a couple of blocks from . . . your girl's . . ." It seemed to hit him, belatedly, that perhaps Kyrie was no longer Tom's girl. Not after what they'd done to her sunroom. "Do you have any idea which way we came?"
There was something to the dragon. Perhaps seeing the city from above so many times, Tom had memorized it like one memorizes a map, or a favorite picture. Or perhaps being a dragon came with a sense of direction. Who knew?
But by concentrating, he could just figure out which way Kyrie's house was. He wondered if the policeman would arrest them for even coming near.
Standing up, unsteadily, he said, "Come on." He winced at the pain in his feet. "Come on. It's this way, up the road here two blocks, then up ten blocks, and then to the left another five, and you should see her house."
Keith took a step back. "Whoa, dude," he said. "You've gone all pale, just standing up. Sit down. I'll go get the car. You're sure of the way?"
Tom nodded. He wanted to say he would go with Keith, but he could tell he would only slow Keith down. He sat down on the grass, again, with some relief. "Sure," he said. "Sure. You should see it. If not . . . come back."
He put his face in his hands, again, sitting there. He didn't know how long he and Keith had been fighting the . . . dragons? He was sure they were dragons, but there was a feeling of strangeness, his memory kept giving him images of a big, horned toe. No. A tooth. No . . .
He sighed. He was never going to remember. And he had no idea what had got him so high. And Keith too. For all his attitude with the girls, the one thing Tom had never suspected Keith of doing was getting involved in drugs. In fact, he would bet his neighbor had never got high before.
So . . . How had they got high?
The sugar. It had to be the sugar. He'd drunk nothing but the coffee. No one, absolutely no one would put drugs in eggs or bacon. So, it had to be the sugar. He'd put three spoons in the coffee. Kyrie. Kyrie kept drugs in the house.
He blinked in amazement. Okay, so he'd stolen the—he'd stolen it—he forced his mind away from what it was—so he could give up drugs. There had been one too many times of waking up choking on his own vomit, struggling for every breath and not sure he was going to make it to the morning. There had also been the ever-present fear of being arrested, of shifting in a jail cell. Of eating a bunch of people.
So, he'd stolen it and tried to use it to control his shifts, so that he would stop waking up in the middle of the day dreaming he had eaten someone the night before and not being sure if it was true or not. The drugs weren't working so well for that, anyway. Or to make him stop hurting.
But, even with the . . . object in his possession he hadn't been able to give up on drugs, not entirely, until he'd started working at the diner, and he'd been . . . He'd seen Kyrie, and he'd seen the way she looked at him. And . . . he chuckled to himself. He'd tried to change. He'd really tried to change his ways to impress her. And all the time, all this time, she was doing drugs, too. Perhaps all shifters did them, to control the shift? Or perhaps she disapproved of him for other reasons. But, clearly, a straight arrow she was not.
"Are you okay?" Keith asked. He'd stopped the car—a beat-up golden Toyota of late Eighties vintage—in front of Tom and rolled down the window.