Not bothering to flip on the lights, I padded downstairs into the darkened interior of the bookstore. We only had the one computer, and I hadn’t brought it upstairs yet since closing the shop.

Rummaging around on the usual shelf, I had just closed my fingers over the hard shell of the laptop when a new sound caught my attention. I paused to listen. It sounded like the scraping or scritching of something sharp being dragged over a hard surface, and it sent an involuntary shiver down my spine.

For a moment, I thought it must be Chicken sharpening his claws. But he hated hard surfaces, and would always use either his scratching post or the arm of the couch. Besides, the sound was coming from the back of the shop, and Chicken hadn’t followed me downstairs.

I had choices, I knew. I could race upstairs, lock the door at the top, and pretend I hadn’t imagined some kind of drooling, clawed monster bursting in through the back door and stalking me through the store while slavering for my blood.

Yeah, yeah, I might technically be a dragon, but being alone in the dark sometimes freaked me out just like anyone else.

Or, I could go investigate and realize it was nothing more than the wind blowing branches across a window. Wouldn’t be the first time.

The first few steps would be hard, but they could mean all the difference between a quiet evening of internet searches and being up the rest of the night jumping at shadows because of my overactive imagination. With that in mind, I set the computer back down, rolled my eyes at my stupidity, and marched out from behind the desk.

It wasn’t like there was much out there that could hurt me anyway. At least not in the human world. I was disproportionately strong for my size and healed quickly. If there was a human intruder, I could easily throw him or her out a window.

But it had sounded like claws…