Daughter of Pluto | Wattys2017

XVI

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

I WISHED THE DRAGON HADN'T LANDED on the toilets.

Of all the places to crash, a line of Porta-Potties would not have been my first choice. A dozen of the blue plastic boxes had been set up in the factory yard, and Festus had flattened them all. Fortunately, they hadn't been used in a long time, and the fireball from the crash incinerated most of the contents; but still, there were some pretty gross chemicals leaking out of the wreckage. I had to pick my way through and try not to breathe through my nose. Heavy snow was coming down, but the dragon's hide was still steaming hot. Of course, that didn't bother me.

"Leo?"

I looked up and saw Aimee looking at me.I smiled lightly then went back to what I was doing.Then I heard Aimee yelp in pain,I quickly looked up to see her holding her hand between her legs leaning down like she was trying to keep herself from screaming.I climbed down from Festus and made my way over to her pulling out a bottle of water and some gauze wrap.

I took her hand from her and poured the water on it.She yelped in pain again shutting her eyes tightly.

"Just endure the pain,you shouldn't have touched him,"I said as I wrapped her burned hand.

"You were touching him and you are perfectly fine,"Aimee said through gritted teeth.I didn't meet her eyes.I couldn't tell her about my powers.I gave her back her hand and went back to climbing over Festus.

I was starting to get irritated. The dragon looked perfectly fine. Yes, it had fallen out of the sky and landed with a big ka-boom, but its body wasn't even dented. The fireball had apparently come from built up gasses inside the toilet units, not from the dragon itself. Festus's wings were intact. Nothing seemed broken. There was no reason it should have stopped.

"Not my fault," I muttered. "Festus, you're making me look bad."

Then I opened the control panel on the dragon's head, and my heart sank. "Oh, Festus, what the heck?"

The wiring had frozen over. I knew it had been okay yesterday. I'd worked so hard to repair the corroded lines, but something had caused a flash freeze inside the dragon's skull, where it should've been too hot for ice to form. The ice had caused the wiring to overload and char the control disk. I couldn't see any reason that would've happened. Sure, the dragon was old, but still, it didn't make sense.

He could replace the wires. That wasn't the problem. But the charred control disk was not good. The Greek letters and pictures carved around the edges, which probably held all kinds of magic, were blurred and blackened.

The one piece of hardware I couldn't replace—and it was damaged. Again.

I imagined my mom's voice: Most problems look worse than they are, mijo. Nothing is unfixable.

My mom could repair just about anything, but I was pretty sure she'd never worked on a fifty-year-old magic metal dragon.

I clenched my teeth and decided I had to try. I wasn't walking from Detroit to Chicago in a snowstorm, and I wasn't going to be responsible for stranding his friends,especially Aimee.

"Right," I muttered, brushing the snow off my shoulders.Aimee sat under a piece of metal as she watched me. I saw her shivering and took of my coat.

"Here take this,you need it more than me,"I said throwing it to her.

"I am fine,I really am not cold.My hands just hurt a lot." But she still took the coat.

I brushed my hands together."Gimme a nylon bristle detail brush, some nitrile gloves, and maybe a can of that aerosol cleaning solvent."