Jesse looked, but the panes were fogging up from Daisy's breath. "What are we looking at?" he asked.

"Don't you see"?" see"?" Daisy whispered. "There and Daisy whispered. "There and there?" there?"

Jesse boosted himself up onto the edge of the sink, leaned over, and rubbed a clear spot in the bottom pane. He stared hard through the porthole into the side yard. Trunks and leaves and branches 166.

were all churned up into one great green swarming, sopping mess.

"Boy, oh, boy," he said, mustering some appreciation for the view. "The wind sure is blowing hard."

Daisy tugged impatiently at the hood of his sweatshirt. "The two trees, Jess. See them?"

"Which two trees?" he said. two trees?" he said.

She groaned. "Get down and let me look."

They switched places. Daisy pointed and said, "They're standing right there, exactly ten feet from the house. I swear, Jess, those trees were not there before."

Jesse shivered. "How can you tell?" he asked.

"Simple. There isn't either a Douglas fir or a quaking aspen growing in our side yard," Daisy said, getting down from the sink. "Plus they both have a bright strip of cloth or ribbon or something wrapped around their trunks. You can't miss them."

Even though he had been living in Daisy's house for nearly six months, Jesse didn't know every tree in the yard. That was Daisy's thing. Her favorite saying was "Not knowing the names of the flowers and the trees is like not knowing the names of your own sisters and brothers."

Jesse craned his neck and gave the side yard another scan. He couldn't see anything out of place 167.

or any bright strips of cloth. He didn't want to make Daisy feel bad, but he didn't want to lie just to make her feel good. "Sorry, Daze. I just don't see what you're seeing."

Daisy's face turned bright pink to match her ears. Before Jesse could say another word, she ran out of the kitchen. He heard her stocking feet pounding up the stairs. Seconds later, she slammed her bedroom door so hard, he flinched and drew the hood of his sweatshirt up. He took one last glance out the window just as a gust of wind came up and bent the trees toward the house, wagging their branches at him like long scolding fingers.

Jesse sighed. "I didn't say I didn't believe believe her," he explained to the trees, as if they were the members of a jury. "I just said I didn't see it myself." her," he explained to the trees, as if they were the members of a jury. "I just said I didn't see it myself."

Suddenly the wind let up for a moment and the trees straightened. They looked stern but satisfied.

This storm is making us all wacky, Jesse thought. Cabin fever: that was what Aunt Maggie had called it that morning before she left for work at the ad company. It did feel as if they were trapped in the cabin of a ship that was riding out an endless storm. It had been raining for five days. How much longer could it go on? Jesse thought. Cabin fever: that was what Aunt Maggie had called it that morning before she left for work at the ad company. It did feel as if they were trapped in the cabin of a ship that was riding out an endless storm. It had been raining for five days. How much longer could it go on?

Jesse grabbed a container of coleslaw from the refrigerator and headed for the mudroom. Dragon 168.

Keepers didn't get time off, even in bad weather, and Emmy would be hungry for her midmorning snack of something rich in calcium. He pulled on his yellow rain poncho, still damp from the morning, when he had delivered Emmy her breakfast of leftover Brussels sprouts au gratin with a side of dandelion greens.

Jesse pulled up the poncho hood and opened the back door. The rain hit him full in the face. He stepped back into the shelter of the doorway and peered around. Leaves and broken branches lay everywhere. In the backyard, the light shone in the Rock Shop, the garden shed his uncle Joe had converted into a lab for his geology studies. Uncle Joe was hard at work on a project.

Jesse took a deep breath and plunged off the back landing, down the steps, and into the swirling wetness. The rain blinded him, so he followed his feet over the leaf-strewn ground to the garage. He groped around in his pocket for the key and fit it into the lock. Then he flung open the side door and kicked it shut, leaning against it to catch his breath.

"Jesse!" said the dragon, beside herself with joy at the sight of him. She bounded over, her long green tail smacking the concrete floor.

"Jesse--Jesse--Jesse!" Emmy had been able to speak since the minute she hatched. The sound of 169.

her voice still gave Jesse a thrill. It was one of a kind--rich and rippling, like molten gold.

Jesse raised his voice over the rain drumming loudly on the garage's steel roof. "I brought you a snack!" He showed her the coleslaw.

Emmy shook her head and pulled back. "No cabbage swill for me now, please, thank you. Aunt Maggie says I have robin fever," she told him.

Jesse laughed. "That's cabin cabin fever, Em. And I'm afraid I don't have a cure for it," he said. fever, Em. And I'm afraid I don't have a cure for it," he said.

"Going outside will make me alllllll better," Emmy said coyly. "Now? Please? Thank you. You're welcome." She swirled gracefully in a blue-green spiral and then drifted to a standstill before him.

Although she had been no bigger than a kitten when she had first hatched four weeks before, now she was as big as a pony. There were two b.u.mps on her shoulder blades, which Jesse thought might someday turn into wings. Two dark ridges ran down Emmy's back and along her tail. A single horn sprouted from her head, which was shaped like a sea horse's, only broader. She still smelled faintly of chili peppers, although the scent was fading as fast as her baby talk. Emmy's eyes were large and sparkly and as green as emeralds. It had been her eyes that had inspired Jesse to name her Emerald. Those eyes looked a little sad now as she settled 170.

down with her tail curled around her, like a great green cat, and said, "Why is our Daisy Flower unhappy today?"

Jesse shot Emmy a curious look. "How do you know Daisy's unhappy?" he asked. "And since when is she Daisy Flowery Flowery "Since I say so. She is Daisy Flower, just like you are Jesse Tiger," Emmy said.

"Don't remind me," he groaned. Tiger was his middle name, but sometimes he would just as soon forget.

"Why is she sad?" Emmy asked.

Jesse shrugged. "She saw something and I didn't see it and she got upset."

Emmy c.o.c.ked her head. "Daisy has a cabin fever, too," she said. "Daisy will go outside, just like Emmy. Then our cabins will cool down!"

Jesse chuckled. "I'm not sure how much better you're going to feel playing in the storm," he told her.

"Not playing," said Emmy. She added with a sly hiss, "S-s-spying."

"Spying?" Jesse asked.

"Spying on the Dragon Slayer," Emmy said with a knowing nod.

That would be a switch. It was usually St. George who spied on them, them, wanting to find Emmy. wanting to find Emmy.

171.

Every day for two weeks he had parked his big black Cadillac outside their house, from nine to five, like it was his job. If Jesse and Daisy went out, he followed. Jesse nearly laughed, thinking about it. St. George had hardly been stealthy about his spying! Then he had disappeared with the rain, as abruptly as the sunshine and the blue sky.

"The bad man has a bad plan!" Emmy said. "We will spy on him in his den. Then we will steal his big book!"

St. George's "den" was a lab in the zoology department of the Goldmine City College of Mining and Science, where he was posing as a herpetologist, or reptile scientist. In the first week of Emmy's life, St. George had stolen Emmy from the cousins. The cousins had gone to his den and stolen her back. That was when they had seen the big book. It was as big as a door and as thick as five phone books. The cover was too heavy to lift and the gold writing cut into the dark red leather was in a language neither of the cousins had ever seen.

"Spying! Brilliant," said Jesse. "That ought to cheer up Daisy I'll go tell her. You eat the cabbage swill."

Emmy took the container in her agile forepaws. "I will eat it allllll up ...for Jesse Tiger! Thank you, please."

172.

"You're welcome, please, Emmy Dragon," said Jesse. Then he ran back to the house, careful as always to lock the door behind him. When he pa.s.sed through the mudroom into the kitchen, he was surprised to find Daisy back up on the edge of the sink, her nose pressed to the windowpane again.

"They're gone, Jess," she said in a small, forlorn voice. "Those two trees with the strips of cloth wrapped around their trunks I said I saw? They're gone."

"Really?" Jesse said. From where he was standing, it all looked the same. Still, he was sorry that the trees had gone before he had gotten a chance to try to look for them again.

"Maybe they were never there in the first place," Daisy said sadly. She jumped down from the sink and hugged herself hard. "Maybe this was one of those times when I wanted to believe the magic so badly, I saw what I wanted to see, rather than what was really there."

"Or maybe," Jesse said gently, "the trees had to go someplace else and they'll come back later ...when they're ready to show themselves to both of us."

The corners of Daisy's lips turned up a fraction. "Then you believe me?"

"Hey," he said, "two months ago, if somebody 173.

had told me that we'd have a dragon living in our garage, I would have said they were wacky. Now ...who knows what can happen, right?"

Daisy nodded, but she still seemed a little down, so Jesse told her about Emmy's plan.

Daisy perked up right away. "I'll tell my pops we're going over to the college to see the doc.u.mentary they're showing on global climate change. Boy, is that ever appropriate," she said, c.o.c.king a thumb at the window. "You turn off the invisible fence. We wouldn't want to give Mrs. Nosy-Britches another flash of dragon."

Jesse went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt circuit breaker and flipped the switch that controlled the invisible fence, and then, still in his poncho, he returned to the garage. Emmy was just licking the coleslaw container with her long pink forked tongue when Daisy burst through the door and slammed it behind her. She had a big scowl on her face. "Pops says we can't go out gallivanting--not until the rain stops," she said.

Jesse groaned, but Emmy asked eagerly, "When the rain stops piddling down, then then we can go out?" we can go out?"

"That's what the rock doc said," Daisy replied gloomily, plopping down onto an old picnic bench.

"Yeah, but who knows when that'll that'll be?" Jesse added, plopping down next to her. be?" Jesse added, plopping down next to her.

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"I do!" said Emmy, her irises beginning to spin like a set of brilliant green pinwheels. Her nostrils gave off three puffs of peppery pinkish smoke, which rose up and radiated outward, filling the entire garage with a bright, hot, pulsing light.

The next instant, the rain stopped drumming on the roof.