Free Veiled Magic by Deborah Blake Page B

come through on the printed page.
    A dozen overturned shot glasses sat in a neat stack in front of him, and he was methodically working on the next one while flipping through a beat-up paperback copy of
The Prince
.
    Oh, that’s just fabulous
, Donata thought to herself as she crossed the room.
A drunken forger who reads Machiavelli. My mother was right: I really have to start hanging out with a better class of people.
    She slid into the seat across from him and put her beer down on the table next to her helmet. Its twin rested on the chair next to Casaventi. He must have arrived on one of the Harleys out in the lot. When he looked up from his book, she flashed him a bright smile.
    He smiled back involuntarily at the sight of an attractive woman and stuck a bar napkin in his book before laying it down. Dark brown eyes glinted from underneath slightly bushy eyebrows, looking almost black in the dim light. The sound of clicking balls echoed from the pool tables across the room, a sharp counterpoint to the muted voices of the players. A few serious drinkers occupied other tables, but the room was mostly empty otherwise.
    Casaventi gave her a surprisingly charming grin and gestured toward the chair her butt already rested on. “Care to sit down?” He looked ruefully at the empty glasses on the table and added, “I’d offer you a drink, but I seem to have finished them all off. Sorry.”
    Donata raised her beer bottle in salute. “Already got one, thanks.” She glanced curiously at the dead soldiers. “You seem pretty sober for a guy with twelve empty shot glasses in front of him. You been here all day?” Not that it was any of her business.
    Peter gave an ironic laugh. “Nope. About two hours, actually.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t really seem to matter how much I drink; apparently I have a cast-iron constitution.” He slugged down the rest of his remaining shot. “Doesn’t keep me from trying, though.”
    Must be the Dragon half of his heredity
, she thought to herself. Dragons had notoriously fast metabolisms; they were immune to most poisons and illnesses, and healed from all but the most serious injuries incredibly fast. Thought to be a genetic offshoot of dinosaurs that survived the Ice Age, Dragons lived very long lives, but tended to be solitary, moody, and unpredictable. There weren’t many of them around these days—they were less fertile than most of the other Paranormal races, and many of them had gone into hibernation during the long dark years of the Inquisition and never reappeared.
    Donata wondered about Peter’s father, clearly the Dragon parent, since the photo from the newspaper had revealeda distinct resemblance between Peter and his mother, the famous Lily Casaventi. The man identified in the caption as his father, however, looked nothing like him at all. The Casaventis were too well known for there to have been a Dragon in the bloodline without anyone knowing, so that left out Lily. No doubt there was an interesting story behind it all—Dragons were notoriously possessive of their few offspring and usually stole any half-Human babies from their mothers to raise them in the Paranormal world. That clearly hadn’t happened in this case, and she wondered why. But she had bigger mysteries to deal with at the moment.
    â€œWell, I’m just as glad you can still see straight,” Donata said. “Because there’s something I’d like to have you take a look at.”
    Peter smirked across the table at her. “I’m impressed so far, but feel free to show me anything else you like.”
    She resisted the urge to pull out her gun, safely holstered under the bulk of her leather jacket, and shoot him with it. Heck, in a bar like this, a little thing like a gunshot probably wouldn’t even put a halt to the pool game.
    Instead, she pulled her ID out of her pocket, flipped it open on the table for a minute, then