"One who is going to have a quick visit to the neuterer if you don't shape up and get with the program," I said through my teeth. "And lower your voice! I told you there is to be no talking out in public."
Jim essayed an injured sniff, but allowed itself to be escorted toward the path that led to the north side of the busy Paris park.
"Wait a minute," I said, looking down on its front. "Where's your drool bib?"
My little demon in fur pursed its lips and tried to look innocent. "What bib?"
I spun around and searched the wide open green area we'd just visited. "The one I bought at the pet store. Jim, so help me, if you deliberately lost it—"
"Excuse me, I'm a demon! I'm the dread servant of a demon lord! I bring fear and loathing to all mortal hearts! Demons
don't
wear drool cloths!"
"Demons who slobber all over themselves do. I do not have the time to stop every five minutes to mop you up." I rustled around in my bag, pulling out a second bib that I had wisely purchased at the same time I bought Jim a collar and leash. I tied it around the demon's neck. "Don't lose this one! Now, let's go find Drake's lair. Which direction should we go?"
"How should I know? I'm just a walking drool bib."
I stopped walking and grabbed Jim by the fuzzy black ear nearest me.- "Listen here, you horrible little minion of Hell—"
"Abaddon," Jim said.
"What?"
It gave me an impatient look. "Abaddon. Don't you know anything? We who serve the dark masters refer to home sweet home as Abaddon, not the other word."
I glanced around quickly to make sure no one saw me talking to my dog, then made squinty eyes. "Why?"
I swear Jim shrugged. "Names have power. The one you keep tossing around has more power than most. I would have thought that as a Guardian you knew that, but I forgot that I've been bound to the Forrest Gump of Guardians. Lucky, lucky me."
"Right," I said, losing the remainder of my patience. "You have made me waste two whole hours while I ran around finding food that you would accept, not to mention undergoing a detailed tour of the Tiiileries while you peed on every available shrub—"
"I like to pee. It's fun. We don't get to do anything like this back home."
I ignored the interruption, keeping a wary eye out for eavesdroppers. "—as well as dropped demon ploppies everywhere, which I had to clean up, so now it's time for you to do the job I summoned you to do—find Drake's lair. Which direction is it?"
A mother and her two little kids strolled by, the woman pausing to say something harsh to me. I had no idea what her problem was until I looked down to find Jim writhing in apparent agony, making the most tortured face a New-fie could possibly make.
I released Jim's ear and patted it on the head as I told her, "Don't pay any attention to it—it's trying to drive me insane."
"Sounds like a short trip," Jim muttered just loud enough for me to hear as the woman snarled something in what I was willing to bet was gutter French before she stormed off.
"Oh, thank you so very much. Just make me look like the type of a person who beats up on dogs!"
"You held my ear
hard,"
Jim accused.
"You're a demon!" I all but shouted, wanting to tear out my hair in frustration. "You're used to eternal torment,
not
that I was holding your ear hard. So stop complaining, stop stalling, stop creating distractions and
do the job I brought you here to do!"
"I don't suppose you'd care to swing by another
boucherie
for a morsel more of that prime-aged beef you bought me this morning?"
I let the demon see in my eyes its fate if it didn't do what I wanted.
Jim sighed and plopped down in an unhappy slump. "I can't."
Another group of children was approaching. I tugged on the leash, heading to a quiet area next to some trees. "You can't what?" I asked when we were far enough away so we couldn't be heard.
"I can't find the wyvern's lair."
I counted to ten to keep from strangling Jim, not that I was entirely sure I could since it
(a)
wasn't technically a living being and
(b)
was approximately the size of a small pony, and thus strangling with my bare hands would be difficult.
Through still-clenched teeth I said, "But not completely out of the question. Why can't you find Drake's, lair?"
Jim rolled its eyes. "Because I don't know where it is! Do I look like I have the phone book memorized?"
"You're a demon. You have demonic powers. I may not be the savviest Guardian around"—
that
was the understatement of the year—"but I do know that demons have all sorts of abilities, and surely one of them must be to find someone who is being sought."
"In a normal situation, yes," Jim said, looking longingly at a bank of rhododendrons. I jerked on the leash to remind it that I was waiting. "But my case is a little different. I... eh... don't have any powers."
The last sentence was spoken so softly, I thought I'd misheard. "You
what?"
It glared at me. "I don't have any powers, OK? Amaymon stripped me of them when he cast me out of his legions. You want to rub a little salt into the wound? Go right ahead. I'm just a demon; I don't have any feelings."
"You don't," I agreed. Jim sniffed and turned away as if tears were imminent. I reminded myself that demons might take the form of a human (or if they were particularly deranged, a dog), but they weren't really human. They didn't have feelings that could be hurt with mere words. "You can stop pretending you're crying, because I'm not buying it. Oh, geez, will you stop? You're making me feel like the biggest bully on the face of the earth."
I pulled a tissue out of my bag, wiping up the doggy tears that Jim had somehow managed to manufacture.
"You yelled at me."
I tried to take a deep, calming breath, but it came out a semihysterical laugh. "If anyone ever told me that a demon would make me feel guilty about asking it to do the job it was summoned to do, I'd say that person was a grade-A lunatic."
Jim gave me an accusatory look.
I raised my hands in surrender and staggered over to a shady bench to collapse with defeat. "I give up—I just absolutely give up. I asked Drake nicely to give me back my dragon, and he refused. I asked him a few questions, and he gave me the runaround for answers. I summoned up a demon, and I got a demon that's been kicked out of He ... Abaddon. Why am I trying anymore? I should just go to Inspector Proust and save him the bother of hunting me down, because he's sure as heck going to lock me up and throw away the key when I can't prove my innocence."
Jim sat next to my feet. "You want me to find some balloons for this pity party you're having?"
"Go away," I mumbled, my head in my hands as I tried to work up a few tears of self-pity. They wouldn't come, damn it. "Just go back to wherever it is you came from, and leave me alone."
"I can't leave. You're my master, remember?"
"I'm freeing you."
"Doesn't work that way."
I looked up at the demon. "Oh, right, I have to conduct the release ritual. I can't do it here. You'll just have to wait until I get back to the hotel."
"Whatever. No hurry. I'm enjoying being out. As you can imagine, we demons don't get around much. Last time I was in Paris, they were beheading everyone. Ah, how I miss the good old days."
I sniffled a couple of times, sighed once or twice, and gave up on feeling sorry for myself. I never could do it well. "Well, poop. And no, I didn't mean that as a command."
Jim made a husky sound that I took for laughter. I shook my finger at it. "Don't even think of trying to be nice to me—I can't take it right now."
"Nice?
Moi?”
The expression of astonishment on Jim's furry face was so amusing, I couldn't help but giggle. "Right. Let's get down to business, then. If you can't help me find Drake, I'll just have to manage it myself, although how I'm supposed to do that is beyond me at the moment."
"You could look in the phone book," Jim suggested, lifting a big paw to examine it.
"Dragons don't list themselves in phone books," I said dismissively, an idea blossoming as I spoke. I thought about it for a while, gave it a long, hard look, and decided it was a good one. "Drake told me that the answer I sought was in the circle, so I'm going to take him at his word. Come on, Demon Jim. We're going back to the scene of the crime."
"Give me a couple of minutes. You're not going to believe what I found I can do," Jim said, its voice muffled as it engaged in a bit of groinal hygiene.
'The ew factor on that is borderline vomit territory," I said, tugging on its leash until the great furry black head emerged from the depths of its crotch. I ignored the glazed look in Jim's eyes and got to my feet, heading out of the park and toward the nearest Metro stop. "Come on, you'll like the Metro. As a dog, you've got carte blanche to smell strangers' crotches."
"Really? That's something, although not nearly as good as licking my own—
"
"When we get to Mme. Deauxville's house," I interrupted, not wanting to hear the rest of that sentence, "I want you to look around and see if anything strikes you as odd. Drake was convinced that a demon was summoned by the circle. Maybe you can tell me who it was."
A half hour later we crossed the five-arched stone Pont Marie bridge from the right bank to the He Saint-Louis, and turned onto the Rue Sang des Innocents. The street was back to normal, I was pleased to note, no longer in the grip of whatever it was that had left it so lifeless and quiet.
"Remember, you're a dog whenever people are around," I said a bit nervously as we approached Mme. Deauxville's building.
"The words
demon
and
stupid
aren't interchangeable," Jim said, in a bit of a pout because a woman on the Metro objected to having her butt snuffled.
"Just remember that," I warned, and taking a deep breath, pushed on the buzzer for the name above Mme. Deauxville's.
"Alld?"
"J'ai une grenouille dans
non
bidet,"
I mumbled incoherently, praying the person whose apartment I buzzed would assume something was wrong with the intercom and open the door for me. Luck, for a change, was with me, because without any further interrogation or questions about frogs, the door clicked open.
I hustled Jim up the carpeted stairs in case the person on the third floor came out to the landing to see who was buzzing them. I stopped just long enough to tap on Mme. Deauxville's door, making sure no one was inside before hurrying down the tiny hall to the back door.
"Bet it's locked," Jim said.
"Hush. Of course it's locked, but I am not my father's daughter for nothing," I said, breathing a sigh of relief. The lock on the back door was an older one, not a dead bolt. I pulled out my maxed-out credit card and used it.
"You've got to be kidding," Jim said, disbelief rampant in its eyes.
"Nope. Daddy was a locksmith. The best locksmith in Santa Barbara. The things he taught me would astound you."
"I doubt that," Jim started to say, then closed his fuzzy lips when I swept open the door with a grand gesture. "Hrmph. You
do
know that what you're doing is illegal?"
"I'm suspected of murdering a woman I don't even know," I hissed, waving the demon into the dark, musty room, checking the hallway before closing the door. "Breaking and entering is the least of my worries. This must be the laundry room. The living room is to the left. Don't touch anything!"
The delicate tinkle of glass hitting linoleum was the answer to my command.
"Jim!"
"Sorry. Thought it was something to eat. When's lunch?"
"So help me, if I live through this ..." I crept on tippy-toes through a tall-ceilinged bedroom with a four-poster bed swathed in white and gold gauze, a color scheme that was carried throughout the room. An antique gold fainting couch sat along one wall, a huge ebony armoire opposite. Bouquets of near-dead lilies were scattered around the room, making the musty air even mustier with their heavy decaying scent. The curtains were drawn, but the closed apartment retained the heat of the day.
"Antiques, very nice. This is what I call proper living, not at all like the pit of a hotel room you've been happy in."
"Shut. Up." I opened the door to the living room cautiously, my nose wrinkling with the stale smell of the room. "OK, no one's here. That's the circle. Drake wanted to know if it was opened or closed. What do you think?"
"You're the Guardian. You should know."
I thought momentarily about grinding my teeth, but decided the dentist bills weren't worth the satisfaction it would give me. I crossed the room and squatted down next to the circle, Jim beside me. "I'm kind of new to the Guardian business." Jim snorted. I ignored the snort and held my hand above the circle. The air around it tingled slightly. I examined the ash circle, noting that the salt had sunk deep into the fibers of the carpet while the ash remained on top. "I think it's closed. It feels ... active. Unfinished. Almost as if it's waiting for something."
Jim nosed around the couch, pausing to sniff the black mark on the carpet that Drake had pointed out.
"Was that made by a demon?"
"Not any demon I know," Jim said, moving over to look out the tall windows.
I sat back on my heels, more than a little surprised by the answer. "It wasn't a demon? Are you sure?"
The look Jim shot me spoke volumes. "I may be powerless, but I'm not totally inept. That mark wasn't made by a demon. Take a look at it yourself. It's just charcoal, not demon smoke."
I crawled over to it, swearing to myself. If a demon hadn't actually been summoned by whoever had killed Mme. Deauxville, then someone wanted it to
look
like one had been called. But that didn't make sense, because I had felt that something was wrong even before I entered the apartment, so a demon must have been here. I looked at the black mark on the carpet feeling totally at sea, completely overwhelmed by forces I couldn't even begin to understand. Why had I thought it was such a good idea to tackle this strange new world when I was almost completely clueless?