Up In Smoke (3 page)

“Who summoned you, May?”

“I don't know,” I said, but Magoth was no fool. His gaze turned even blacker as I got to my feet and dusted off my pants. “You can stop looking daggers at me—or whatever hideous torture device you'd like to use—I don't know who summoned me.” That was strictly the truth; I had no idea who the woman was who Gabriel had hired to summon me, but whoever she was, I wanted to sing her praises.

Magoth was not amused by my attempts at prevarication. “It was your dragon!”

“Gabriel was there, yes. But he didn't summon me. Dragons can't summon either minions or servants of dark lords, and since I'm considered one of the latter grou—”

Before the word left my lips, I was jerked back through the fabric of time and being, and deposited back in a familiar room.

“Mayling!”

“Hello again. Um . . . am I here to stay this time?” I asked as Gabriel pulled me into his arms. “I sure hope I am, because that look in your eyes really makes me want to . . .”

A gentle cough alerted me to the fact that we had an audience.

“It's a pleasure to see you again, May, facial mask and all,” a woman said, and I turned in Gabriel's arms to smile at Aisling. She stood leaning against her husband, a dark-haired, green-eyed wyvern named Drake.

“Oh, man, did you have to interrupt her? I wanted to hear what it was she was gonna do to Gabriel. I bet it involved tongues. And possibly peanut butter and a cake spatula. At least I
hope
the spatula was involved.” The large shaggy black Newfoundland that sat next to Aisling might look like a normal dog, but I knew better.

“No peanut butter or spatulas of any variety, Jim. And it's nice to see you all again, too, Aisling, although I imagine you're about ready to have that baby.”

She sighed and rubbed her large belly. “Another six weeks, the midwife says. I sure hope that's all, because I'm getting a bit tired of being treated like I'm made of glass. Do you know that Drake wouldn't even let me summon you by myself? He insisted my mentor, Nora, do the actual work. Oh, you haven't met Nora, have you? Nora Charles, this is May Northcott, who you might have guessed is Gabriel's mate.”

“It's a pleasure to meet you,” the woman with the red glasses said with a warm smile, offering me her hand.

I reached out to take it but fell into a black pit instead, crashing with a complete lack of grace onto the black marble floor of Magoth's main hall.

“What is going on? Who keeps summoning you from me? I will not have this, May! I absolutely will not have this! You are my consort! Who dares to pull you from my side?” Magoth stormed.

I sighed and got to my feet again, brushing off the remaining dried bits of clay that had mostly been knocked from my face. “I was summoned by Nora Charles.”

Magoth's frown turned somewhat puzzled. “I do not know this name. Who is this person?”

“She's a Guardian, I suspect,” I answered, picking my words carefully. My standard operating policy was that the less information Magoth had, the happier I was, and although the fact that I had been bound to him at my creation meant I had to answer his questions truthfully, it didn't mean I had to blab
everything
to him.

“Oh, dear; all that talking has destroyed the mask,” Sally said, her hands fluttering around vaguely. “Now it won't do the least bit of good.”

“I'm sure my pores will survive, assuming the rest of me does as well.” I disappeared down the hall to the bathroom attached to my room, quickly scrubbing off the remains of the mask. Magoth and Sally both followed.

“I sense that you're unhappy with me, May. This distresses me. I so hoped we'd be good friends,” Sally said, fretting with the pale pink lace that clung to the wrists of her darker pink cashmere sweater. “I know that as a demon lord, I won't be expected to notice, let alone converse with, a minion of a fellow demon lord, but I've found that a little honey can make every situation easier, and I'd like us to be friends.”

There wasn't much I could say that wasn't outright rude, so I said nothing, returning to my bedroom.

“This Guardian—your dragon must have hired her to steal you from me,” Magoth said, his face clearing. “I suspected he would do something like this, but it is easily stopped. I will simply tell him that if he tries it again, I will torture you.”

I ignored the word “torture” (not to mention the light of enjoyment that suddenly dawned in Magoth's black eyes) and confined myself to the important point. “Oh? And how do you expect to tell Gabriel that? It's not possible for you to leave Abaddon—you don't have the power or ability to do so—and Gabriel is certainly not foolish enough to come here and place himself in your power.”

Magoth's jaw worked for a moment. Sally, who had plopped herself down in a chair and was browsing through my journal, looked up. “You know, one of the things that they taught us at the Carrie Fay Academy of Allurement and Attraction was to never say something was impossible. Surely there must be
some
way you can leave Abaddon, Magoth?”

“Hmm.” Magoth stopped looking like he was about to rain down death and destruction (not in the least bit unlikely) as he thought that over.

I wondered what the penalty was for throttling a demon-lord candidate.

“I could have sworn—if you'll forgive me for chiming in here when you haven't asked my advice, and Bael only knows that you have far, far more experience in this field than I have—but I could have sworn that I read something in the Doctrine of Unending Conscious about methods of leaving Abaddon.”

Magoth stared at her as if she had suddenly sprouted a halo and a pair of wings.

“Aren't you familiar with the Doctrine?” she asked, shooting a confused look my way before returning to him. “It's a set of laws governing Abad—”

“I know what the Doctrine is.” He interrupted her with an abrupt gesture. “I wrote the chapter on suitable methods of punishment for unruly minions, a fact my sweet May seems to have forgotten.”

“I'm here, aren't I?” I said with blithe disregard. “I haven't forgotten.”

“I can't imagine anyone thinking that time spent with you is a punishment,” Sally told him with a smile that really did seem to have more teeth than was humanly possible. “You're by far the nicest of all the demon lords I've met.”

Magoth all but shimmied over to her, both hands on her boobs as he undulated against her. “And you have much insight and a true understanding of what it is to be such a sublime being as myself, but alas, until my sweet May consents to being my consort, I cannot bed you as is your due.”

“Where on earth did
that
come from?” I asked, astounded by that little tidbit.

He shrugged and reluctantly stopped fondling Sally's boobs. I noted acidly to myself that she didn't protest the groping at all. “I am wooing you to be my consort. Until you agree to that, I must concentrate my full energies on you. But if you consented, then we might have a deliciously wicked threesome in which one of you—”

“I've already told you that is not happening,” I interrupted before he went into graphic detail. Magoth loved to go into graphic detail. It didn't matter whether it was punishment or sex; he would happily spend hours describing both.

“Which, the threesome or the consort?” Sally asked.

“Both.” I turned to Magoth. “I accepted the punishment of being bound to your side for going dybbuk, but I am
not
going to be your consort.”

“Did I tell you that the position comes with access to my powers?” he asked, strolling toward me. Magoth didn't have the same smooth, sinuous, coiled-power sort of movements that Gabriel had, but I couldn't deny that he came darned close. He stopped next to me, so close he was almost touching me, his body leeching all the warmth from the air. I shivered, due to either his proximity or nerves.

“Er . . . no, you didn't. What sort of power?” For a moment I toyed with the idea of accepting Magoth's offer of consort, imagining myself in a position of power whereby I could escape his clutches and return to Gabriel.

“Well . . .” He smiled and drew a finger down the line of my jaw, his touch sending icy little shivers down my back. “Let us just say that in Abaddon, a consort is viewed as an extension of the demon lord. You would be treated with respect by the other princes.”

I thought for a moment, taking a step backwards as I did so. “Would I have the ability to banish you to the Akasha?”

“The Akasha!” Sally gasped. “You would send dear Magoth to limbo? May, dear, I know you are new to this position just as I am new to it all, but to even joke about such a thing—”

“No one has that power,” Magoth cut her off as if she hadn't been speaking, his dark eyes lit with pleasure as he tipped my chin up, his thumb brushing frigid strokes across my lips.

“Aisling does.”

Magoth jerked his hand away, his eyes narrowing for a moment. “Aisling Grey, the prince?”

“Former prince,” I answered, having heard the tale of how Aisling had managed to escape her unwanted membership in the prince of Abaddon club. “She was tricked into destroying one of you demon lords, after which Bael made her fill the position.”

“She was expulsed, excommunicated,” he answered, but his nostrils flared a couple of times, and he didn't make another move to touch me. “Stripped of all her powers.”

“Just her prince of Abaddon ones. I know this because Aisling is a good friend of Gabriel,” I added. “And me.”

Magoth watched me closely for a moment, his gaze trying to strip away all my layers of protection to see deep into my thoughts, but if I had done nothing else during the six weeks since I'd gone dybbuk, I had learned how to hide my true thoughts.

Even so, he relaxed and gave me a genuine smile. “Your friend would find it difficult to send me to the Akasha. Such a feat could not be conducted without a great cost to herself, and I believe the dragon to whom she is bound would not allow such a sacrifice. No, my sweet May, I have no fear of your friends any more than I do of you.”

“Me?” I gave a soft, bitter little laugh. “I pose no danger to you.”

“Indeed you do not—if it was otherwise, you would not be standing here with your skin on,” he said simply. I shuddered at the truth evident in his voice. “However, the delicious Sally has brought to mind something that I had forgotten—written in the Doctrine are many rules that govern us, one of which is simple, but very pertinent.”

“What's that?” I asked warily.

“Oh, I know!” Sally said, raising her hand and waving it to get our attention. “I remember now what I was trying to think of a moment ago. It's in the section of the Doctrine dealing with consorts. It says that just as a consort has access to the world of the demon lord, so the lord has access to the consort's world. It's sort of a reciprocal effect.”

A deep sense of horror gripped me. For nearly the past hundred years Magoth had lacked both the power and the resources to step foot in the mortal world, something for which I was profoundly grateful. If I had even for a moment considered becoming his consort, the fact that doing so would leave the world open to him was enough to kill that thought entirely.

“Exactly,” Magoth said. Some of the horror I felt must have slipped through the normally tight rein I held on my emotions, because he slid his arm around me and attempted to pull me against him. “Don't look so distraught, sweet May! We'll have fun together in the mortal world! Mayhem, destruction, perhaps some good old-fashioned pillaging and rapine—it'll be just like the old days, back when I could come and go in the mortal world at will.”

“I can't begin to name the deities to which I offer my soul-deep gratitude for the fact that you haven't been able to do that for almost a century,” I answered, rubbing the goose bumps on my arms as I stepped out of his chilly embrace.

“Come. We shall take care of this matter right now.” Magoth grabbed my wrist and started to haul me out of the room. “We will formally announce to the other princes that you will be made my consort in . . . how long will it take you to prepare for the ceremony?”

“A millennium?” I asked, feeling a familiar tingle start at my toes and work upward. “I think I'm being summoned again, just so you know.”

He let go of my hand, surprising me with an expression of pleasure. “It must be your dragon again. Excellent. You have my permission to tell him of the impending consorthood. In fact, tell him he's invited to the ceremony. All the dragons are! You may have five minutes to explain everything, after which I will expect you to return to me. I will begin the proceedings while you are doing that.”

His image shimmered for a moment, then was gone, no doubt on his way to the room he called his library, although it resembled a porn museum more than any collection of literature.

“Gee, thanks,” I told Sally.

“Oh, I'm sorry, sugar; did I overstep my bounds?” she asked, sincerity filling her face, but I wasn't fooled one bit.

“You'll make a grade-A demon lord, you know.”

She flashed a smile at me. “Why, thank you, May! That's very sweet of you to say . . .”

Sally faded as I was yanked out of Magoth's domain and back into the real world.

“Aw, her face isn't green anymore. And I got the digital camera out and everything! I was going to send Cecile a piccy to show her what doppelgangers were looking like these days,” a voice complained as I shook away the dizziness that came with such transitions.

“Cecile?” I asked somewhat woozily as my vision returned.