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Zoë Sorensson yearns to come into her powers as the only female dragon shifter. But being part of two worlds is more complicated than she expected. It’s bad enough that she’s the target of the Mages’ plan to eliminate all shifters—she also has to hide her true nature from her best friend Megan, a human. For her sixteenth birthday, all Zoë wants is one normal day, including a tattoo and a chance to see hot rocker Jared.

Instead, the Pyr throw her a birthday party but ban Megan from attendance, putting Zoë in a tight spot. Things get even worse when Zoe is invited to the popular kids’ Halloween party and Megan’s left out. Zoë knows the party is a trap laid by the host, an apprentice Mage. When Megan gets a last-minute invite, Zoë must save the day—and her best friend—without revealing her fire-breathing secrets…

Like I said, it was nearly my sixteenth birthday.

There were three things I wanted for the big day:
1) A grudge match against Kohana, the Thunderbird shifter who’d lied to me, plus worked with the Mages to nearly wipe me and the rest of the Pyr off the map
2) A tattoo
3) A chance to see Jared again, if only to find out that I was never going to see him again.

Of the above, I had a remote chance of achieving only #3. Even with it being my birthday. I knew what my dad thought about me fighting anyone, and I knew what my mom thought of tattoos. But they both knew Jared, and they knew I knew him. And his band was playing a concert right in town, on Saturday (thus not a school night) at a co-op club downtown that didn’t serve alcohol.

The way I saw it, Jared had chosen the venue because he expected me to come.

Or he was daring me.

He’s like that. Irreverent. Challenging.

Hot.

Whether it was to deliver the flight on Dragon Air that I owed him, to snag another kiss—just to verify that the first one had, in fact, been amazing and of the bone-melting variety—or to barter for another peek at the book he had on my kind, didn’t really matter.

I wanted to go.

I needed to go.

Which meant that I needed to persuade my mom that going was a good idea. And do it without beguiling her. Beguiling is kind of like hypnosis and it’s a dragon trick I mastered pretty early. We conjure flames in our eyes; the humans look closer; we make suggestions. That’s beguiling. As you might expect, it works best when it’s a suggestion the person already wants to take—which meant that beguiling my mom wasn’t a good plan on a whole bunch of fronts. She’d likely catch me—she’s not stupid, either—and then I’d be toast.

Better to go with plain old begging.

Negotiating.

Shameless groveling.

Even being a dragon girl didn’t make me think that sneaking out to go to the concert without parental approval would end well.

So, I had to convince my mom.

I was running out of time—it was Thursday and the concert was Saturday. This had to be the day.

I figured I was due for something to go right.

©2011 Deborah A. Cooke

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