Light My Fire, Page 2

  “I’m not buying that, you know. Why are you following me? Are you some sort of really nice, helpful French stalker? You’re not in love with me or obsessed with me or anything, are you?”

  Jim snorted and rolled its eyes.

  “You can speak if you have anything helpful to say,” I told it.

  “The sun will never rise on a day when I say something that’s not worth its weight in platinum,” my demon answered. “Hi, Rene. How they hangin’?”

  “Free and easy, my friend,” Rene answered, turning in his seat so he could reach to ruffle the top of Jim’s furry black head. “It is good to see you both. You look well.”

  “No,” I said, holding up a warning finger at Jim. “No long, maudlin tales of how your heart was broken because I didn’t take you to Paris to see Cecile the minute we landed. Rene is telling us just why he’s here. In a taxi. When he lives and works in another country altogether.”

  Rene laughed. “Mon amie, put your mind at the rest. I am not in love with you—I have a wife and seven small ones, recall you. And I am not a stalker, or obsessed with you, although I am very happy to see you both. I have missed you these last few weeks.”

  Now I felt like a great big heel. “I’m very happy to see you, too,” I answered, leaning forward to hug him. “We were planning on seeing you when we got to Paris. How are you? How is your family? And what are you doing here?”

  “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…coincidental. 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 taking 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 disbelieve 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 coincidence 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 managed to smuggle Jim into the country by means of demonic 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 belongings 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 apartments now. One of the tenants is off on his summer vacation, 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 sharpening. “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-delà committee. I have been asked to look into possible inconsistencies 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 automatically 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 everyone 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 thinking 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 totally 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 betrayed 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, technically 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. “Actually, 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 delusion 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 beneath 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.

  “Oh, man. He’s going to pork you right here in front of me, isn’t he? Jeez, and they say dogs have no shame.”

  “Demon, silence. And close your eyes,” I ordered, unable to see whether Jim followed my command because Drake chose that moment to claim my mouth. He was a naturally arrogant, dominant man, and those qualities showed in his kisses. He wooed with a passion that left my knees weak and my toenails steaming. His entire body entered into the kiss he gave me, one hand sweeping up to cup my breast, the other sliding down my back to grab my butt, pulling my hips tighter against his.

  Fire flamed to life in him, dragon fire, the familiar heat of it as welcome as manna as it roared through me, igniting my soul. My heart, my poor abused heart, wept with agony at the feel of us joining together in a manner that was so much more elemental than mere sex. It was as if our souls fit together, one completing the other, the two of us forming one brilliant, glorious being that would burn together for all eternity…

  “No!” I cried, pulling my mouth from his. “You are not going to seduce me again! Dammit, you broke my heart, Drake. You can’t piece it back together with glue made up of a few kisses and mind-numbingly fabulous sex! Over means over! I will honor my vow to the sept. I will present myself as your mate at the weyr and sept meetings. I will support your dragon decisions in any way I can. But I will not allow you to destroy me again!”

  One of his long, sensitive fingers pushed aside my shirt to trace the rounded sept emblem that he’d branded into my flesh, marking me as a wyvern’s mate. The emerald fire in his eyes slowly banked as he spoke. “You are mine, Aisling. You are mine today, tomorrow, and five hundred years from now. You will always be mine. I do not give up my treasures, kincsem. You would do well to remember that.”

  He stepped away, leaving me quivering against the door with so many emotions, I couldn’t begin to separate them. I clutched my arms around myself as he left, wanting to sob out my pain, wanting to follow him and fling myself in his arms, wanting everything to be the way it was before he had stomped all over my heart.

  That’s how Nora found me a few minutes later, glued up against the door, slow, hot tears leaking from my eyes, dragon fire licking my feet.

  “Hello, everyone. We’re back a bit early. The kobold attack turned out to be a false alarm—Aisling? Oh, dear, you’re on fire again.” Nora set down the dog carrier she used to transport Paco. She squinted, adjusted the bright red glasses that perched so jauntily on her nose, and touched a finger to my shirt as I stamped out the last of Drake’s fire. “Dragon scales.” Her eyes lifted to mine, considering me in the cautious, thoughtful way she had. “A dragon visited you? A green dragon?”

  I swallowed back a big lump of unshed tears and pushed myself away from the door, staggering over to collapse on her couch, my pounding heart slowly returning to normal.

  Nora looked from me to the door, tipping her head to the side to examine it. “Judging by the Aisling-shaped outline that appears to be scorched into the door, I’d say it was the green dragon who visited you. How is Drake?”

  “As stubborn as ever. Oh, Nora. I thought I was past this!” Both Jim and Nora watched me as I slumped into a giant wad of misery. Paco, released from his confinement, ran over to wrestle with my shoelaces, as was his wont. “I am so ready to move on. Here you are, poised to start my training—oh, that reminds me, there’s some thing I need to tell you about that—and whammo. Two minutes with Drake and I’m a mess. How am I ever supposed to get over him?”

  Nora sat down next to me, he
r dark eyes watchful as they peered at me out of her glasses. “Perhaps you are not meant to get over him,” she said simply.

  “Huh? Not get over him? Nora, do you have any idea how crazy that man…dragon…whatever he is—do you have any idea how crazy he makes me?”

  “You know, normally I just can’t get enough of you whining about Drake, or crying over Drake, or ranting about Drake, or any of the other gazillion ‘about Drake’ things you constantly do because you’re obsessed with the man but refuse to admit it, but since you insist on starving this fabulous form I’ve taken simply because I’m a few pounds over the standard Newfie weight, I just don’t have the strength for it today.” Jim turned around and marched off to the room Nora had turned over to me.

  She raised an eyebrow at the retreating demon. “What’s gotten into Jim? I know you and it have a special relationship, but I’ve never heard it be outright rude before.”

  “It’s mad that I won’t take it to Paris because Drake is there…although he’s not there; he’s here. So I guess there’s no reason not to go visit Amelie, except now I have this dragon thing to go to.” I sighed and slumped even more, feeling far from the confident, self-assured person I so desperately wanted to be. “Nora, do I talk constantly about Drake? I don’t sound obsessed, do I? I just sound…weary, right?”

  Paco pounced on the paper that had fallen from my hand. Nora got it away from him before he did any damage to it, smoothing the sheet over her knee as she sat next to me. “Well…since you asked, I’m afraid I’m going to have to agree with Jim.”

  “What?” I shrieked, sitting upright in order to glare. I didn’t, of course—for one thing, Nora was my friend, not just my mentor, and for another…well, there was a pesky little voice in the back of my head that was whispering its agreement with both Nora and Jim. The roots of denial, however, were strong and difficult to dig out. “You think I’m obsessed with him, too?”