Up In Smoke (31 page)

I stared at him for a moment, my fingers moving against my legs to make sure that the claws weren't evident.

The teasing light in his eyes faded when I didn't respond.

“There you are!” Aisling said, emerging from what I remembered as being the downstairs bathroom. “Drake's in the lounge. Come in and have a drink. I bet you could use one after having to sit through all that bull from Fiat. I know I could, but the best I'll get is juice. No reason you all should suffer, though.”

“I'd like a stiff belt, too,” Jim said, following her into the sitting room. “All that restraint you made me show has left a really nasty taste in my mouth. Scotch on the rocks, István. No, make that a double.”

“You let your demon drink?” I said as Gabriel, his bodyguards, and I entered the room. Gabriel passed me a glass of dragon's blood, the spicy drink that only dragons could drink without lethal repercussions.

“Not after the last time when it got drunk and called up Whoopi Goldberg to demand airtime on
The View,
” Aisling said with a dark look at her demon dog. “You'll have ginger ale and like it, buster.”

“Bully,” the demon muttered, glaring at the bowl that Drake's bodyguard set in front of it.

“I don't want to seem rude, but is this a social visit, or are you going to talk dragon business?” Aisling asked, sighing as Drake stuffed a pillow behind her back. “If it's the former, no sweat, but if you're going to talk about Fiat or Kostya, I'd appreciate it if you can do it in the next twenty minutes.”

“Why twenty minutes?” I asked, puzzled by such an odd request.

“Baby's right on my bladder,” she said, patting her bulging belly. “You've got my undivided attention until she makes it impossible for me to sit still any longer.”

“Oh, I didn't know you decided to find out the gender. A girl! How exciting,” I said.

“Aisling is having a boy,” Drake said, seating himself next to his wife. “Everyone knows that girls are nothing but trouble. We will have a son.”

“Ha!” Aisling elbowed him in the ribs. “You are so delusional. It's girls who are easy, and boys who are trouble. We will have a daughter, a lovely girl who won't put up with any of the medieval bossiness you're sure to try to pull on her.”

Drake sent Gabriel a long-suffering look that had me smiling. “I would caution you to wait before having children, but I suspect that May will do exactly as she wishes, including deliberately having a female despite the well-established fact that male dragons are much easier to raise.”

“The father determines gender, which you well know,” Aisling said complacently, beaming at us as we sat across from her. “So are we chitchatting or dragon talking?”

“Dragon talk,” Gabriel answered, his gaze flickering to Drake. “There is a situation with regards to the red dragons.”

“I suspected as much,” Drake said easily. “Fiat's reappearance and claim are a bit too pat for my liking.”

With admirable brevity, Gabriel recounted the experiences of Cyrene, Maata, and myself in Fiat's underground environs. By the time he was finished, Drake was pacing the length of the room.

“I've never seen people pace as much as dragons do,” I was moved to say in an aside to Aisling.

She nodded. “It's all that pent-up energy—they have to move, or it manifests itself in fire, and frankly, I'd rather put up with a stiff neck from watching them march back and forth. Our fire-retardant bill is high enough as is.”

“Why didn't you mention any of this at the
sárkány
?” Drake demanded to know.

Gabriel glanced to me. Drake stopped in midpace.

“Ah. The shard. Yes. I see you had little choice but to allow Fiat to continue unimpeded.”

“I don't get it,” Aisling said, looking confused. “But wait, potty break. Explain it when I get back.”

Drake hauled her out of the couch and sent her on her way.

Jim watched me with an avidity that made me uncomfortable.

“Stop doing that,” I told it.

It grinned. “You know the rules as well as I do—I don't have to do what you say.”

I gave it a thin-lipped look. “All I have to do is tell Aisling—”

“Sheesh! No one can take a joke anymore,” Jim interrupted, rolling its eyes. “Fine, I won't look at you. I won't touch you, and I won't sit on your side of the car, either. Happy now?”

I ignored the demon to watch Gabriel and Drake as the two men talked about what Bao, Fiat, and the mysterious dragon had possibly been up to. When I glanced back, the demon was staring at me again.

“Will you stop that?” I hissed through my teeth.

“Sorry. Can't help myself. I've never seen anyone but Ash who lipped off to Bael and lived to tell about it.”

“I didn't lip off to him,” I said, moving uncomfortably in my chair.

“Back,” Aisling said as she returned, patting Jim on the head. “What have I missed?”

“Not much. Drake and Gabe are arguing about what it means that Baltic has returned from the dead, István has gas, and May was being mean to me,” Jim said, plopping down on her feet.

István and I both glared at the demon.

“I'm sure if May was mean to you, you deserved it,” Aisling said with perfect composure.

“I didn't—”

She waved away my protest. “Feel free to ignore Jim when it's being an idiot.”

“Hey! Sitting right here!”

“So that guy you saw really was Baltic?” Aisling asked me.

Gabriel returned to his chair. “We do not know. There seems to be some ambiguity about his identity. However, that has no bearing on the reason I have sought your help.”

“Fiat,” Drake said, nodding.

“I don't think so, sweetie,” Aisling told him, watching me. “It's your demon lord, isn't it? You kind of glossed over how things went with him, but I assume it wasn't a roaring success.”

“Far from it,” Gabriel said with a wry twist to his lips. “We had thought to tackle Magoth again, but unless we have something to use as barter, he won't help us.”

“And even if we had something, there's no guarantee he wouldn't just take it and leave us poorer for the experience, as we've learned,” I added.

“What do you guys expect?” Jim asked, rolling its eyes. “He's a demon lord. Tricking people is part of his job.”

“Jim has a point,” Aisling said, looking thoughtful. “I suppose I could ask the Guardians' Guild if they could help with the situation, but they're not really happy with me ever since . . . Well, they're not happy with me.”

“Was it me?” I asked, worried that I'd gotten her in trouble with her professional organization. “Was it summoning me so often that got you into hot water with them?”

Jim snickered. Aisling looked embarrassed. “Er . . . no. It was nothing, really, just a minor little thing that doesn't matter, or it wouldn't except the head of the guild might not consider a request by me for help to be awfully high on his to-do list.”

“She turned him into a simulacrum,” Jim told me in a confidential tone.

“A simulacrum?” I asked, astounded. “A living statue?”

“It was just an unfortunate accident,” Aisling said, waving it away. “There was a kobold outbreak in London when we were there, and I convinced Drake to let me help take care of it, and somehow, rather than binding the kobolds so they could be sent back to Abaddon, I zapped Caribbean Battiste, the head of the guild, instead, and he was temporarily changed into a simulacrum. But I got it reversed by nightfall, so really, I don't see why everyone had such a hissy fit. It wasn't like it was permanent.”

I looked at her with renewed respect. Anyone who had the power to change the head of a Guardians' order into a statue was potentially someone who was the answer to my prayers. “We need your help. I hope we can count on it?”

“With your demon lord? Absolutely,” Aisling said at the same time Drake said, “No.”

The two glared at each other.

“You are not going to get involved with another demon lord,” Drake told her. “It is too dangerous.”

Aisling opened her mouth to protest but closed it again without saying anything for a moment. “All right,” she said finally, causing Drake to shoot her a look of surprise. “Maybe Nora was right and the baby is making my grip on my Guardian abilities a bit iffy. Magoth may not be much in this world, but he is still a demon lord, so I'm going to retract my agreement and instead offer Nora's services. I'm sure she'll be delighted to help you. What, exactly, do you need Magoth to do?”

“Nothing.” Gabriel pulled me up beside him.

“I don't understand,” she said, looking from him to me. “What am I missing?”

Jim snorted.

“Before Magoth left with Sally in tow, she pulled me aside and pointed out that Chuan Ren was a dragon,” I told her.

“Chuan Ren? Well, yeah. But what does she have to do with Magoth?” Aisling asked, still puzzled.

“She doesn't have anything to do with Magoth— it was Bael who found her after you banished her,” I said, exchanging a glance with Gabriel.

“Heh. They deserve each other,” Aisling said with satisfaction.

Gabriel gave my waist a little squeeze of confidence. I took a deep breath and continued. “We knew that Chuan Ren was a dragon, of course, but my experience with dragons has been limited until the last two months, and it just didn't strike me that although everyone is treating Chuan Ren like Bael's minion, she's not. She can't be; dragons can't be servants of demon lords. It's just impossible.”

Aisling nodded. “That's why we can't summon her, as we could a demon, not that I could think of a conceivable reason to even want to do that.”

“Exactly. But it also means that we don't have to go through Bael to get her.”

“Why do you want to get to her? I'm sorry,” Aisling said, smiling. “The pregnancy is draining all my brain cells obviously, but I still don't see your point.”

“If I say the obvious, will you banish me to the Akasha?” Jim asked, its eyes hopeful.

“Yes.”

“Damn.”

I leaned back against Gabriel, seeking strength. “The point is—and don't beat yourself up for not seeing it; I certainly didn't and I know Abaddon better than you—the point is that Bael is holding Chuan Ren against her will. She's his prisoner, not a minion. Which means the only way she can leave him is either for him to give her up or for her banishment to be reversed.”

“A recall,” Aisling said, enlightenment finally striking her. “Well, yes, that would work. I did banish her, so I have the power to recall her. But for one thing, of course.”

My heart, which had begun to soar at the possibility of a solution to the problem of Chuan Ren, fell at her words. “What one thing?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I'd have to be insane to do it. I'm sorry, but I can't recall Chuan Ren. I sent her to Abaddon for a reason. She's just too dangerous to the green dragons. I really wish I could help you, May, but I can't.”

Chapter Twenty-three

It took longer than I expected to recall Chuan Ren from Abaddon. The problem ended up being Drake rather than Aisling, the latter of whom, like any intelligent woman, immediately grasped the finer points of the argument Gabriel and I put forward.

“You know, that's not a bad idea at all,” she said after Gabriel explained how we saw things. “It might work. If Chuan Ren wants out of Abaddon bad enough, she'll have to agree to ending the war with us; otherwise,
pfft.
Right back she goes. And you said she's not having fun there. Heh-heh-heh.”

I watched Aisling chuckling to herself, not doubting for an instant that Chuan Ren deserved her time with Bael, but amused nonetheless. “We wouldn't ask you to reinstate Chuan Ren to this world without due cause, I assure you. But we felt this would solve all of our problems—allow me access to the red dragons' shard, end the war between your two septs, and take care of Fiat.”

“I knew I liked you,” Aisling said, giving me a nod of encouragement. “So all that remains is for me to recall Chuan Ren, and we'll see what she has to say. If she refuses to go along with it, we'll just dump her back on Bael's lap and figure out something else.”

I didn't want to consider failure. There were no other options that I could see . . . other than allowing the shard to take me over completely.

“Right. Let's get started,” Aisling said, trying unsuccessfully to hoist herself to her feet. “Drake, let me up.”

“You are not going to recall Chuan Ren,” her husband said, holding her back so she couldn't rise.

She shot him an annoyed look. “You're not going to pull any of that crap about it being too dangerous for me, are you? Because I can assure you that a simple thing like a recall is not going to go awry.”

“Kobolds,” Jim said, raising its brows. “Caribbean as a statue. 'Nuff said.”

“Shush, you. Drake, stop giving me that obstinate look. This won't go wrong, I promise.”

“You are not summoning Chuan Ren into our house, where she can attack and possibly harm you,” he said calmly.

“But you'll be here. And István and Pál, and Gabriel. Even May has a dagger! Chuan Ren isn't going to have the chance to get near me.”

“It's out of the question.” If I'd thought Drake had been stubborn before, I was to learn a new respect for the word. It took a solid hour of arguing before we finally came to a compromise.

“I don't see that this is any less dangerous than me just simply summoning Chuan Ren,” Aisling said grumpily as she prepared to send Jim and me to Abaddon. “What if they're caught?”