Sara wasn’t a straight A student, but she was willing to bet she had the best rate of return on points of GPA per hour of effort expended. She prided herself on efficiency of effort.

  That was another way of saying Sara was smart enough to understand that bad grades would close doors but not interested enough in the crap she was required to regurgitate to give it her all. College was probably a great way to force some people to learn, but it only slowed Sara down.

  Having finished the bare minimum amount of studying needed to spit out the thoughts her literature professor wanted her to have about a boring book on the next day’s exam, Sara was back in the library wandering the stacks, waiting for something to capture her interest.

  A book in the language section caught her eye. At first glance, the cover seemed to be made from a coppery metal, but when she touched it, it felt more like snakeskin.

  Weird, she thought, as she picked it up. There was no title. The spine gave the satisfying crackle of a book being opened for the first time. Sara only spoke one language well – her native English – but she was able to order food, ask for bathrooms, count, tell time, give directions, and for some reason, refer to various kinds of relatives, in more languages than she’d bothered to count. Yeah, she had spent way too much time on Duolingo, but she tended to get bored and move to a new language before she ever got very deep. Because of her passing familiarity with so many languages, it was strange to her that she’d never seen anything like the characters this book was written in. She closed it and brought it to the counter.

  “Hey Sara,” the librarian said.

  “Hi,” Sara said. She put what she hoped was the right amount of smile into a chipper expression. She had no idea who this person was, but that was par for the course. Maybe it was because Sara was unusually tall, but everyone always remembered her no matter what lengths she went to in her efforts to appear unremarkable. And although Sara had a great memory for just about everything else, she could barely remember people she met unless they had some kind of remarkable interaction, and even then, it was hard for her to tell people apart unless she spent a lot of time with them.

  “Only one book this time?” the nameless librarian said.

  Sara nodded. When she didn’t volunteer any more information, the librarian frowned. Sara tried to think of what else to say, but by the time she had started to gather her thoughts on it, the book was checked out. She considered trying to say something anyway, but it was already awkward. Better to say nothing than to say the wrong thing, she thought. She just kept the metered smile on her face and said, “Thanks,” and left.

  Why are these things so freaking hard for me, she thought. It’s not rocket science. Hell, rocket science is easy compared to this. She avoided making eye contact with anyone until she made it to her apartment.

  Her cat greeted her at the door, spinning in excitement and rubbing her ankles. Hammy Davis Jr. was a handsome tuxedo cat, and Sara’s very best friend in the world. She’d found him wandering on the front stoop at the grocery store seven years before, barely old enough to stumble around, screaming pitifully from under a pallet of plants while everyone walked in and out and ignored him. It took her an hour to catch the scared little guy, but once she had him home, it was over for them both. They were so close they could practically read each other’s minds. They were two creatures of habit, and all their habits included each other’s habits.

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  Sara fed Hammy, fell back on her beanbag, and started flipping through the strange book. It was nothing but symbols made of triangles. She looked for commonalities in groups of triangles and in the way they were arranged and realized there was some kind of trigonometric aspect to it. About three quarters of the way through the book there was a page where the symbols were all piled together in various metallic ink colors. By the time she got to it, Hammy had curled up next to her in his customary space where she made a soft blanket into a little nest for him. The rhythm of his bathing motions lulled her into a half sleep state.

  When Sara was right on the cusp of closing her eyes, the symbols blurred and lifted from the page. She couldn’t help but sense mathematical progressions in them. A part of her mind reached out like some sort of atrophied appendage and started rearranging the symbols, trying to make the math more beautiful. The longer she worked, the more exhausting it became, but she couldn’t stop. She didn’t notice Hammy had stopped his bath and was standing next to her every bit as entranced as she was.

  Something clicked. The symbols fluttered back to the page, but the page wasn’t paper anymore, it was a dark space filled with stars. When the symbols came to rest, they were in the shape of a beautiful copper and green scaled dragon, so real it seemed like it was going to fly out of the book.

  A rich deep voice boomed in her mind. “The contract is signed. The bond is accepted.”

  Hammy’s hair stood on end as his back arched. He focused, unblinking on the dragon. “Like hell," Hammy said. "She’s mine. I already claimed her.”

  The dragon turned to regard Hammy. The cat pressed his side against Sara for support, but he didn’t back down. He let out a low growl.

  “You misunderstand, fierce one. You also signed the contract. It is unusual for a bond to include three, but it is not unheard of.”

  Without any more preamble, Sara and her cat were sucked through the book. A transparent bubble formed around them as they moved through inky blackness toward the dragon. Hammy hissed and crawled into Sara’s hoodie so just his head was poking out.

  “I don’t like this,” Hammy said. “It’s supposed to be nap time. You are supposed to leave a warm spot on the bean bag and go cook dinner for yourself. This isn’t safe. This isn’t home. This isn’t fun. This isn’t right.”

  It sounded like he was meowing pitifully, the same sound he made when she brought him to the vet, only she understood it as if it was words.

  “Holy crap, I understand you.”

  Hammy froze and turned around to look at Sara. His eyes were dilated like saucers. “You can talk?” he said.

  By now, their bubble of air had moved to the back of the dragon, which was bigger than it had looked from a distance -- at least as big as one of those planes that did international commercial flights -- and Sara was hyperventilating. Hammy talking to her seemed low on the list of things to freak out about. Something about looking out in every direction and seeing absolutely no frame of reference was deeply disturbing.

  “Hello, bondmates,” the Dragon said.

  Though her voice was deep, it was also feminine. It had a soothing impact, and Hammy’s claws released from Sara’s shoulder.

  “I am Etta. Welcome to the war, soldiers. The Empire greets you.” The dragon turned its truck-sized head toward them and chuffed. A cloud of some sort of particle twinkled around them and Sara’s consciousness faded.