Read The Dragon's Tooth for Free Online

surprise.
    And her shelves were organized.
    Most of the shelves held books—books that had belonged to their mother, their father, their grandparents, and a few that had belonged to people with “great” and “once removed” attached to the relationship. Three shelves sagged beneath photo albums entirely full of her own Polaroids. One sagged with old family albums, two sagged with circular tins full of film reels, and one held her cameras. She only had two—the eight-millimeter silent-movie camera that had belonged to their father’s father, and an early bellows-style Polaroid that had been their mother’s.
    The only patch of wall that wasn’t carrying shelves was just above her bed. There, nine picture frames hung in three rows of three. The top six were rotated out weekly, but the bottom three never changed. On the left, a young man with hair even blonder than Dan’s had been in California was hanging upside down in a tree. On the right, a laughing woman with hair spun from midnight was reaching toward the camera, trying to block the shot. In the middle, a serious blond boy held hands with a very small dark-haired girl, and between them, seated and shirtless, a fat infant was eating dirt.
    While Antigone adjusted the legs on her movie screen, Cyrus rolled up on his side and stared at the pictures.
    “You’d’ve killed Dan if he put that guy in this room. You know you would.”
    “Yes,” Antigone said. “I would. But I wouldn’t steal the man’s keys. And you can’t blame Dan. I’m sure he’s getting paid well, and we need it. You know he has it worse than we do.”
    Cyrus sat up. “Wait. You’d kill him, but you wouldn’t blame him?”
    “Right.” Antigone stepped back to the projector and flipped it on. Empty wheels spun, and a misshapen square of light appeared on the screen.
    “And he has it worse than us?”
    “Right again,” Antigone said. “I’m proud of you, Cyrus. You’ve learned to listen.” She glanced up. “You and I don’t have to deal with us. We are us. Dan does have to deal with us—you in particular. Now, here’s the deal, Cy. You go give the man his keys, or you don’t see today’s reel.” She shrugged. “I shot a lot of Mom, and I don’t mind keeping it to myself.”
    “That’s cheap. You shouldn’t have left me behind in the first place.” Cyrus stood. “You know, I don’t even feel like today really happened.”
    “I feel that way about … everything.” Antigone sighed and looked up, almost smiling. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll find out that we’re still four and five years old, I’m still taller than you, and everything around here has just been a very complicated daydream. Mom’s fine, Dad’s alive, we never moved, and Dan still knows how to smile.”
    Cyrus breathed slowly. Half a continent away, he could almost hear the ocean. “No waffles,” he said. “No motel.” He grinned. “But I was already taller than you when I was four.”
    Antigone spun her brother around, put both hands on his back, and pushed him toward the door. “Go,” she said. “Movie when you’re clean.”
    The door closed, and she was alone with a whirring projector.
    Outside, Cyrus looked up at the night sky. The clouds had blown over, and the stars of early summer had crowded silently into place above the Golden Lady.
    The yellow truck sat where he’d parked it, immediately in front of the two adjacent doors—110 and 111. Both rooms had curtains drawn over the windows, but both rooms still glowed. Dan’s room was out of sight, by reception, opening on the courtyard. And no light trickled down through the walkway from Mrs. Eldridge’s room. She had checked out two hours ago, showering Dan with a barrage of shouted warnings before dragging a single suitcase toward the road.
    Cyrus took a long breath of the cool night and stepped over to his bedroom door. For a moment, he listened to the neon buzzing of the Lady, and then he knocked.
    On impulse, he raised his thumb