The Dragon Keeper by Mindy Mejía Read Free Book Online Page A

she splattered Desmond with some flying turkey juice. Sometimes Jata didn’t believe the bucket was empty and would walk over to investigate. And sometimes, after finding no more meat, she would start chewing the bucket itself. Unable to stop her, Meg would just retrieve the bucket—or pieces of it—when Jata was done amusing herself. Today, though, Jata seemed happy to be done with her meal. She blinked at Meg with sleepy, satisfied eyes.
    “Yeah, we’re done now. You can hang up your top hat.” Meg cocked her head to the same angle as Jata and smiled.
    Instead of retreating back to her pool or sunning rock, Jata backed down the feeding rock and walked around it toward Meg. The crowd stopped talking, and Meg could feel the hush creeping up the back of her neck.
    “Meg?” Desmond sounded nervous and distant.
    She waved behind her, shooing him off. Jata lumbered easily, no hints of stress or aggression in her posture, and walked around Meg’s legs. As Jata circled around to the front, Meg reached out and scratched the back of Jata’s head behind her ear sockets. The scales were bumpy and hard even through the thick leather gloves. Jata flicked her tongue and paused for a minute, letting Meg scratch from one side of her skull to the other, before she walked back to her pool and submerged her head for a long drink. Absorbed in watching Jata, Meg jumped, startled, when the crowd burst into applause.
    Her face burned. As she tossed a quick hand toward the crowd, she spotted a white lab coat disappearing from the front rail of the viewing area. The dark goop on top of it looked like Antonio’s hair, and as she frowned at the back of that head, it disappeared behind a tall, stocky man who stood as still as a pier in the center of a tide of shifting people. She blinked and focused in on the man’s gruff face and smiling features. It was her father.
    ~
    He hadn’t really changed. The dark brown hair she’d inherited was shot with silver at the temples, but it still waved thickly over his broad forehead. His barrel chest was still broad and trim underneath an unfortunate baby-blue polo shirt. Hadn’t he moved to Ireland, land of beer guts and liver cirrhosis?
    He shifted uncomfortably in the seat as Meg sped out of the zoo parking lot toward home, and it came back, in one of those greedy flashes, how he’d hated to let her mother drive the few times they went anywhere as a family. He couldn’t stand to be the passenger.
    Meg took a corner at forty, pushing the poor Buick to its screeching limits, and bit down on a small smile as he grabbed the dashboard for balance.
    He didn’t say anything. Uncomfortable as he was, at least he knew damn well that she was in the driver’s seat for this little family reunion. They rode in silence until she got on the entrance ramp to the freeway.
    “You look good, Meg. Look like you’re doing well.” His voice was the same strong baritone that had reminded her of blues singers when she was little. She checked her blind spot and merged onto the highway, swerving across three lanes of traffic.
    “Of course, I can only surmise that by looking at you,” he continued, in a conversational voice. “You haven’t returned any of my phone calls since Christmas.”
    “I’ve been busy.”
    “I can see that.” He kicked aside some of the takeout bags on the car floor. “Feeding dragons and discovering miracle virgin births.”
    The surprise snapped her head around, even as she forced her way onto an exit ramp. His face was mild—always the friendly salesman—but all the blood had run out of his fingers as he gripped the door handle. She cranked the wheel around the exit loop, hugging the exact edge where the asphalt broke into rocky spinoff, then eased up on the gas as they entered residential St. Paul.
    “How did you know about that?”
    “I keep up.” He paused. “Your mother would have been proud.”
    “I don’t think so. She wasn’t capable of that.” It had been two years