“I am fine. My family, they are fine as well, although
my wife, she has the allergies of flowers and her nose does
not march along happily because of it. And I am here because she stayed home so she could not come on our
honeymoon.”
“Your
honeymoon!”
Jim didn’t look surprised, but I
sure did.
Rene shrugged his familiar expressive Gallic shrug.
“When we were married twenty years ago, we did not
have the honeymoon. We put it off until we had the time
and money, but by then the little ones were coming along.
So it waited until now. We were to have a whole month
touring England seeing the grand homes and gardens, but
my wife, she does not want to see any more pollen, and
the tickets are not exchangeable, so . .. here I am.”
I wasn’t buying it. It was too pat, too slick, too ...
co
incidental.
And he had used up all his coincidence tickets
when he showed up to help me in Budapest. “OK. But
why are you in a taxi?”
“My cousin Pavel.” He reached behind him out
through the window and pulled the door open. “He is tak
ing his wife to stay in the Shakespeare town, using my
reservation while I stay at his flat. He didn’t ask me to
take over his job, too, but
hein.
It is what I do best. Me, I
am the taxi driver
extraordinaire
.”
“You’re something, all right. And I’m going to find out
just what it is.” I rubbed the back of my neck, glancing at
Jim. My demon did not normally stay silent for more than
a second or two unless specifically ordered, but here it
was letting an entire conversation pass by without any
sort of comment. I couldn’t help but wonder whether Jim
knew who Rene really was.
“So suspicious,” Rene answered, shaking his head as I
got out of the car. Jim followed. “What makes you dis
believe me?”
“One,” I said, ticking the items off on my fingers, “you
show up when I need help in Paris. Two, you do the same thing in Budapest. Three, you weren’t affected at all by the
Venus amulet I had there, which hit every other mortal man
over the head like a lusty sledgehammer. Why is that, Rene?”
He just smiled at me.
“Uh-huh. I knew it. You’re not just a taxi driver who happened to stumble into the Otherworld like I did, are you? You’re ... you’re something else, right? Something
not mortal?”
Rene smiled again.
“Ash.”
“Sec, Jim. Come on, Rene. Out with it. It’s no coinci
dence that you’ve shown up whenever I’ve needed you, is
it?” My eyes narrowed as I thought about that. “Only I
don’t need you right now. Everything is hunky-dory in
my life. I washed that dragon right out of my hair, I man
aged to smuggle Jim into the country by means of de
monic limbo, and Nora is going to train me to be a proper
Guardian, not one who falls into stuff without knowing
what to do. So . . . why are you here?”
“Ash, there’s someone at the door.” Jim nudged my
hand with its cold nose.
I turned to look at the man facing the outer door to the
hall that led to the three apartments that graced the top
floor of the building.
“I am not done with you,” I warned Rene as I hurried over to the man, hoping it was the delivery of all my be
longings cleared at last through customs.
“I will be around,” he called after me. “You have my
mobile number, yes?”
“Yes,” I called back as he put the car into gear and
merged into the busy London traffic. “Sorry. Are you the
man with my boxes?”
“Boxes? No.” He turned to face us.
“Oh. Rats. Well, I’m afraid there’s no one in the apart
ments now. One of the tenants is off on his summer vaca
tion, and the other one is in Liverpool for the day.”
The man held a business card in one hand and a pen in
the other, evidently having been in the process of writing a
note. A sharp, gray-eyed gaze swept over me. “A Guardian.”
He moved on to Jim, a slight frown pulling his dark brows together in a darker frown. “And a sixth-class demon.”
“Yes, I’m a Guardian,” I said, my hackles rising for
some intangible reason. In the few months since I had
found out there was a whole other paranormal side to the
world I knew, including my own role as what amounted
to a demon wrangler, I’d learned that appearances were
more than a little deceiving. The man in front of me
might look like a perfectly normal Englishman—high
forehead, long face, prominent nose, gray eyes and brown
hair—but power crackled off him, leaving the air static-
filled around us. I’d also learned, however, that sugar
would get me a lot farther than vinegar, so I slapped a
pleasant smile on my face and prepared to make myself friendly. “Well, to be truthful, I’m a Guardian in training,
but hopefully it won’t be too long before I’m a full-
fledged active member of the Guardians’ Guild.”
The man cast a glance at Jim again, his gaze sharpen
ing. “You are Aisling Grey.”
“Yes. Er... how did you know who I am?”
“All the Otherworld has heard of the infamous Aisling
Grey, the woman who has the dubious honor of being a
demon lord, Guardian, and wyvern’s mate all at the same
time,” he answered, handing me his card. I gave it a quick
look. On the front was his name—Mark Sullivan. Below
it, in small, discreet print, was one word:
investigations.
“Yeah, dubious honor just about sums it up. You’re a
private eye? A detective?”
“No. I am the chief investigator for the L’au-dela committee. I have been asked to look into possible inconsis
tencies with Nora Charles, Guardian.”
“Inconsistencies? What inconsistencies?”
Mark Sullivan gave me a long look that spoke volumes—
of nothing.
“Nora is my mentor,” I explained, my hands automat
ically drawing a ward of understanding on him. Maybe
that would help. “She’s training me to be a Guardian.”
“Not anymore she isn’t,” Mark said, pulling a piece of paper out of his breast pocket. “This is an order prohibiting Nora Charles from acting as a mentor. Please see that she receives it as soon as she returns. From this moment
on, she is forbidden to teach anyone anything—including
her current apprentice. Good luck to you, Aisling Grey. I
fear you are going to need it.”
2
“I hate it when people do things like that,” I grumbled as
I slammed shut the door to Nora’s apartment.
“What, act polite?”
“No, do that horrible foreshadowing thing that every
one around me seems to do.” I tossed down Jim’s leash
and went to check Nora’s answering machine to see
whether there were any messages from the shipping
company. “Just once I’d like someone to walk up to me and, instead of predicting disaster or bad luck or any of
the myriad other unpleasant happenings that have been
predicted for me, say, ‘Aisling, you’re going to win the
lottery today. Or lose ten pounds overnight. Or fall
madly in love with the next man you see.’ Anything but
foreshadowing.”
Jim sighed. “It’s all about you, isn’t it? Never think
ing about anyone else; only concerned about your own
happiness.”
I glared open-mouthed at the demon as a knock
sounded on the door. I hurried toward it, glad I’d left the
outer door unlocked for the delivery guys. “That is so to
tally off base, and you know it!”
“Fine, you want to be that way .. .” Jim scratched a spot behind its left ear, then considered its crotch as it
said, “Aisling, you’re going to win the lottery today, lose
ten pounds overnight, and fall madly in love with the next
man you see.”
I opened the door on the last of its words.
The man standing in the doorway raised an eyebrow.
“Hindsight, so they say, is twenty-twenty.”
My jaw dropped. My heart speeded up. My lungs
seemed suddenly airless. And my stomach wadded up
into a small leaden ball.
A small fire burst into being on the nearby area rug.
Jim ran over to stomp it out.
“Drake,” I said on a gasp, air rushing once again into
my lungs. “What are you—”
“You are hereby summoned to attend a synod of the
green dragons tomorrow. Attendance is mandatory.” Drake
slapped a stiff black portfolio into my hands and turned to
leave.
“Hey! A synod? Wait a minute—Jim, there’s another
one near the curtains.”
Drake spun around again, his green eyes blazing with
emotion—eyes that I knew so well, that had once seemed
to hold everything I wanted. But that was before he be
trayed me...
“Do you refute your oath of fealty to the sept? Do you
refuse to honor your commitments, mate?”
“No,” I answered, lifting my chin. I’d known all along
that I was bound to the dragon sept that Drake ruled as
wyvern. Even though we were no longer together, techni
cally I was still his mate, and until I could find a way to undo that, I owed them my help when needed. I’d been
braced and ready for this ever since I’d left Budapest.
“No, I am not refuting my oath to the sept. I will attend the meeting as your mate. I simply wanted to know ...”
The words died on my lips.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “What did you
want to know?”
Whether he missed me? Whether his heart hurt as much
as mine? Whether he regretted betraying me like he did?
Those were the first three things that came to mind, but
there were others. All of which were questions that I
would ask over my cold, lifeless corpse. So to speak. Luckily, before I had to try to think of an impersonal
question, Jim stepped in to the rescue.
“You really are going to have to get a grip on controlling
dragon fire, Ash. Hiya, Drake. Come crawling back, did
you? Man, you are so whipped.” Jim shambled over to give
Drake a quick sniff. “I never met anyone so completely—
fires of Abaddon! You don’t have to barbeque me!”
“Don’t set Nora’s bathroom on fire,” I warned as Jim raced off to put out the flames that burst into a corona
around his head. I turned back to Drake, worried less
about Jim’s doggie form taking harm than about Nora’s
bath towels. “You get points for marksmanship but lose
on effect. Roasting Jim alive won’t do anything but
leave the scent of burnt dog hair hanging around the
apartment.”
Drake looked thoughtful as he rubbed his chin. “Actu
ally, I was off. I was aiming for you.”
My eyes opened wide as his words filtered through
the sudden love-anger-sadness cocktail that had recently
become my usual emotional state. “You wanted to burn me?”
Drake moved so fast, it didn’t even register in my
brain. One minute he was standing several paces away;
the next he was pushing me up against the open door, his
body hard and aggressive, mine automatically answering by going all soft on him. “You cannot be under any delu
sion that you can simply walk away from me.”
“I know I pricked your pride by leaving you,” I said
carefully, telling my body to stop mugging him and to
behave itself so I could concentrate on reasoning with
the most unreasonable dragon in human form that ever
walked the planet. “But there is nothing more between
us, Drake. It’s over.”
“It is not... over...” he growled, his lips so close to
mine I could feel the heat of his mouth. The scent of him,
spicy and masculine and uniquely Drake, went immediately to my head and made me giddy with want. But be
neath that want there was heartache, a pain so profound,
it all but crippled me for the week following our breakup.
It had taken seven long days of nonstop sobbing to come
to a point where I could get on with my life . .. without
Drake at my side.