A Shade of Dragon
in one of these houses?” he asked me.
    “The one at the very end of the strip,” I answered. “Hey. Theon?”
    We paused and he turned to face me. “Yes?”
    I swallowed. “Thank you,” I whispered. “You saved my life.”
    “Don’t say your goodbyes.” Theon chucked his index finger lightly beneath my chin. “It’s not over yet.”
    I sucked in a breath and smiled uncertainly up at him. We began walking again. “Oh? Can’t get my number… My phone is somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean right now.”
    “I’ll come to you when you’re ready,” he assured me.
    At this, my lip quirked. I had to admit, as strange as Theon was, he had an offbeat charm I couldn’t deny. He was no Andrew Hardy, who never said anything surprising… or moving. “Where did you say you were from?”
    Theon smiled. “You wouldn’t believe me.” There was a hint of melancholy to his tone. “Will you be visiting Maine long?” He said the word ‘Maine’ like it was some unknown object for him to shift back and forth in his hands, examining it before a purchase.
    “I’ll be here for about ten days,” I said. “I’m staying through Christmas and New Year’s.” We were getting closer to the beach house. I felt a tug in my chest. I didn’t want to say goodnight quite yet. There was something so otherworldly about him… and I knew he’d disappear as soon as the front door shut behind me. “It makes me sad to think that you would spend Christmas all by yourself,” I volunteered.
    At this, Theon hesitated. The night breeze fretted his dark curls, but I didn’t feel the cold. I felt warmed from the inside somehow. “Will you wear my pendant?” He lifted his hand into the air and a chain dangled from his fingers. A sliver of crystal, no larger than his thumb, twisted and spun in mid-air. The moonlight sparked off its surface.
    “I…” I was at a complete loss for words. No boy—or man—had ever insisted that I wear anything of his. “I guess it would be all right.”
    He looped his arms around my neck and laid the pendant down across my sternum; he swept my hair out from beneath its chain and clasped it at the nape of my neck. My cheeks flamed again. “This is a special stone,” he explained. He took a step back, but plucked the shard of crystal off my chest and held it gently between us. “It’s a shard from a very old, and very magical, mirror. The mirror belonged to my father before it belonged to me. And—when I have an heir—it will belong to him.”
    An heir? That’s such a weird way to think of children. “How is it ‘magic’?” I asked him doubtfully.
    “When you find yourself in need of me, you may use your body to ignite its surface and see me reflected there. I will warn you that it doesn’t always function properly. I will also warn you that I, too, will be able to see through the shard.”
    “You’ll be able to see me?” This was a little ridiculous. But it was cute. “All right, Theon; sure.” I grinned and rolled my eyes, turning from him to begin our trek toward the beach house again. It wasn’t far now; we passed the home of the pregnant couple. Their lights were out now. “It’s a very pretty necklace. I’d be honored to wear it.”
    “You don’t believe me. Why?”
    “It just seems a bit fantastical, that’s all.” I hesitated, realizing that such fantastical devices already existed. “I suppose I’d have found it more palatable if you had described the pendant as possessing two-way video technology, instead of ‘very magical.’” I plucked the crystal shard from my chest and examined it more closely. It appeared to be nothing but a flat, opaque shard of crystal. I couldn’t see anything in it. Frowning, I swiped my finger across the surface of the pendant—just in case. The device didn’t chirp or flicker, and I grimaced. Feeling stupid, I dropped the necklace into my sweater and shrugged. “You kind of remind me of those guys. The ones with the ‘canned

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