The Emerald Dragon (The Lost Ancients Book 3) by Marie Andreas

no idea—then leaned her entire body into the rock to push it my way. The tea must have previously helped with her strength, since she’d had no trouble stealing the rock from the brownie. Or stealing the brownie.
    The brownie in question leaned around a lot, but couldn’t seem to move from where Garbage put him. The faeries had some limited spell tricks they could use, and I had a feeling Garbage had trapped him where he stood. Probably a good thing given the words he muttered just loud enough for us to hear. Whoever said wee folks were happy, helpful folks never met one.
    I grabbed the rock before Harlan could. Covey guarded her scroll and glared at the brownie. It might be best for his safety as well if he couldn’t break free of whatever Garbage Blossom had put him under.
    The rock I snatched out of Harlan’s paw took both hands to hold. It was also very old, and while the edges around it were still rougher than say a stone worn down by water or ice for a few thousand years, they were still timeworn.
    I flipped it over and started swearing almost as loudly as our little friend in the front room.
    Another emerald dragon.
    However, this one looked different from the other two. Like them, the image had been magically pushed into the stone about half an inch. But the image was larger and far more detailed. As if the others we saw were imitations of this one, but no one was around to make one this fancy any more.
    I looked back at the brownie.
    He was quite a bit smaller than what I’d thought the cult members would be. And while rumored to be vicious in a pack, brownies didn’t have jagged pointed teeth or anything else attributed to the rakasa.
    The digger in me wanted to keep things academic, but the rest of my mind screamed that this was a relic from long before the Breaking. It couldn’t be a coincidence that it showed up at the same time we thought a long-dead cult had resurrected itself.
    The brownie pulled at his feet when I turned to him, but his shoes must have been spelled. No matter how hard he pulled, he couldn’t get his feet out of them.
    “Do you want to explain this?” I waved the stone at him, and then I hooked a thumb over at Harlan and Covey. “Or do I let these two big, bad predators remind themselves brownies were prey?” I was pushing it. Covey was fierce when the mood hit her, but Harlan was more a fluffy lap cat than predator. I doubted the chatalings ever hunted anything larger than a mouse. And brownies were too ornery to be prey for most species, not to mention the whole living in the frozen north bit. But hopefully the two of them were behind me looking fierce.
    “You can’t make me talk! I demand to be let free! I demand…keep it away from me!” The brownie almost broke both legs trying to pull backwards to get away from something behind me coming out of the kitchen.
    I’d expected Covey to be stalking along behind me, but was surprised when a wobbly Garbage came out walking on the ground. Chocolate was not just smeared on her face, but it appeared she’d rolled in it.
    I turned back to the brownie. I had no idea the little things were that bendable. Trained contortionists wouldn’t be able to bend like that. “Keep it away!” he yelled.
    “You’re afraid of a tiny faery?”
    “It’s the collector of souls! It has the souls of the dead on its face!”
    I looked back and shared a look with Harlan who simply shrugged. Not only was this new chocolate stuff tasty, and calming to the faeries, it also collected souls. Good to know.
    Garbage stumbled a few more steps forward, then collapsed and sat cross-legged on the carpet about a foot away from the brownie. “You tell nice lady what she wanna know.”
    I was now nice lady? Clearly, whatever effect the tea had on her personality it was still messing with it.
    She gave a huge yawn and stretched. “You tell her now….” And she tumbled over asleep.
    There was a lot of weirdness going on right now and I was reaching the edge