“No,” Jim sniffled, turning away from me. His voice was thick. “I just have something in my eye.”
“I can’t believe you’re going drama queen on me right now. Kostya, are you seeing what he’s doing? Don’t you have something to say about it?”
Kostya’s eyes narrowed on his brother until the little silver flecks in them glittered like sunlight on diamonds. “Wyvern,” he drawled, his hands fisted, every muscle and sinew in his body as taut as a bowstring.
“You are absolutely no help, do you know that?” I told him.
I sighed and turned toward Jim, now rolling around on the ground in faux agony. But the second I took my hands off Kostya, he started moving forward. I shoved my shoulder against his chest, gave him a glare that he registered but didn’t comment on, and said with as much good grace as I could, “Man, you are really pushing my buttons, aren’t you? Well, I did not go through two years of deep psychological training to let someone mess with me that way. I do want you, Jim. If I didn’t, I would have left you on the road when I ran you over.”
He got up, still sniffling. “So you love me?”
“Yes,” I snarled, wishing for what seemed to be the umpteenth time that day that it was over. “Yes, I love you to the ends of the earth and back again. Now get over here and help me hold Kostya back.”
“Aoife. Meet me halfway,” Aisling called. She’d gone back to her husband and evidently had been having a little chat with him. “Drake won’t let me come to you, and I suspect that Kostya wouldn’t appreciate you coming over here. Drake! Stay!”
“Okay, but only because you said you were sorry for treating me like I was dirt,” Jim said, moving behind Kostya to take a big mouthful of his shirt and pulling backward as he did so.
I decided it was better if I didn’t point out that no apology had been forthcoming and turned my attention back to Kostya. “Aisling wants to speak to me.”
“Wyvern,” he repeated.
“No, she’s the wyvern’s wife, and she wants to talk to me. I’m going to do so. You stay here.”
“Drake,” he snarled, his teeth grinding slightly.
I eyed him. “Don’t make me give you orders like the dog there.”
A muffled, “Hello, standing right here! I have a name. Plus, you said you love me. You can’t refer to me like that if you love me, can you?” came from behind Kostya.
Kostya’s eyes focused on me. “Are you insulting me?”
“No, but I will if it will make you stop fighting. Stay right here. I’m going to walk over there to talk to your sister-in-law, okay?”
He looked past me to Aisling, then to Drake, growled again, but nodded.
“Jim, I changed my mind; you can come with me. Since you used to belong to Aisling, she’ll probably want to see you and make sure you’re okay and possibly even ask for you back. Which I will be happy to do, since you don’t seem to like the way I take care of you.”
“Being run over kind of makes you lose a little faith in the quality of care you can expect,” Jim answered in a dry tone, but he followed me as I met Aisling halfway between the two men.
“Hello, Aoife. As you guessed, I’m Aisling,” she said, giving me a friendly smile before squealing softly, “Jim! I’m so happy to see you! Where have you been? Why are you in Sweden? Why aren’t you with Magoth?”
The demon allowed her to hug him, snuffling her hair and her chest before answering. “Hiya. The Eefs says I used to hang with you. I don’t know who Magoth is, but you seem nice enough. You wouldn’t happen to have any food on you, would you? My current demon lord says she loves me, but the sad truth is that she’s trying to starve me to death.”
Aisling looked startled. “She is?”
“Yeah, she only let me have one hamburger for lunch. One! Like that is enough to sustain what is clearly an outstanding example of Newfiness.”
“The vet said he could stand to lose a couple of pounds,” I told Aisling, worried that she might think I was mistreating her dog. Demon. Whichever.
“Oh, that. Yes, my vet said the same thing. And Jim is the master of bitching about lack of food. Pay it no mind.” A look of confusion crossed her face. “Wait—what do you mean you don’t remember Magoth?”
Jim shrugged. “Memory’s gone. Don’t remember anything except Aoife mowing me down and then hauling me in to the vet.”
“It was an accident!” I said quickly, panic filling me at the look that Aisling gave me when she stood up. “It was night, and he was standing in the middle of the road, just standing there, and of course, I took him to the vet, and she said he was fine, absolutely fine, not hurt at all, and I took him home, because I had no idea who he belonged to, but I assure you, I did not deliberately run him down.”
“I see.” Her voice was cold, but after a few seconds of giving me a tight-lipped look, she shook her head. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be angry. I’m sure you didn’t run Jim over on purpose.” She stopped to run her hands along his body, obviously checking for signs of injury. Jim moaned happily and leaned into her. “But it’s come as a shock to me that Jim doesn’t even recognize me. I don’t… I just don’t have any idea what could have happened. I bound it to Magoth.”
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“A demon lord. Former demon lord, that is. He’s by way of an acquaintance.” She gave a wry smile. “In a nutshell, he has the hots for Drake and Kostya’s mom, but she dumped him. Anyway, he was helping us smuggle Jim into Abaddon—that’s hell to the common man—to find out what Asmodeus was doing and, if possible, to locate his ring.”
I rubbed my forehead. “I feel like I should have a scorecard with everyone’s name and stats. Is this the same Asmodeus of the curse?”
“One in the same, Mr. Head of Abaddon, the villain of the dragon and immortal worlds, what with this curse that’s making a mess of all our lives.” Aisling suddenly looked worried. “We’ve got to break the curse, Aoife. The war isn’t just affecting the dragons; it’s threatening to spill over to the mortal world, too.”
“Now there’s a war in addition to demon lords and a curse?”
I must have looked a bit wild-eyed because Aisling suddenly took my arm and called over her shoulder to her husband.
“We’re taking a little walk. No, you do not need to accompany us. Don’t kill your brother. We’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” Kostya asked, clearly torn between posturing at his brother and following us.
“Aisling’s going to explain to me why there’s a war and a demon lord curse.”
“I could explain that to you,” he yelled after me, his voice tinged with outrage.
“Yeah, but you never do, do you?” I turned my back to him and strolled with Aisling toward the main building, which was strangely unpopulated. “Getting a straight answer out of him is like finding a pearl in a clam.”
“I thought pearls grew in oysters?” Aisling asked with a frown.
“That’s my point. First things first—why is Kostya attacking his brother, and vice versa?”
She sighed. “It’s part of the curse. Not only can the septs not talk to one another, which really makes it difficult to conduct any weyr business, but the curse also causes them to be overly antagonistic to dragons outside of their sept. And in this case—”
A roar of anger behind us had us both spinning. Drake and Kostya had evidently not been able to stand the strain any longer and were rolling around on the ground pummeling each other.
It was my turn to sigh, and I did, a long, martyred sigh. “Sweet salivating salamanders, that man does like to fight.”
“Dragon,” Aisling said, and to my complete surprise, turned her back on them.
“Um… shouldn’t we stop them?” I asked when she took a few steps forward.
“I don’t think it would do much good. They’d just interrupt us again. We might as well let them work off the worst of the curse while we get a few things straight. Where were we?”
I cast a glance back
over my shoulder, part of me wanting to keep Kostya whole and unharmed, but the other part in agreement with Aisling. “They won’t do any permanent damage, will they?”
“Not so long as they don’t go into dragon form, no. Human form is much less effective, you see.” She gave me a bright smile and paused in front of a cement bench next to a tiny control tower. The ground was littered with cigarette butts, indicating this was a favorite break spot of employees.
“I wonder where everyone is?” I asked, glancing around.
“Drake arranged for the airport crew to leave for an hour after we landed. He thought it was best that no one see us together. So, that’s where we are: Jim was supposed to be with Magoth undercover in Abaddon, but it’s here with you and Kostya. And we’re no closer to bringing an end to the curse.” She sat down, her shoulders slumping in defeat. “I wish Jim hadn’t lost its memory. I’d like to know what it found out while it was skulking around Asmodeus’s palace.”
I let the idea of demon lords living in palaces slide by and focused on the important things. I sat down next to her and said, “I can’t help you there, but I’m sure you’d like Jim back, yes? I’ll just hand him over.”
Aisling bit her bottom lip as she looked from Jim to me. “It may not be that easy. Jim, who are you bound to?”
Jim sat down with a put-upon look on his hairy black face. “I don’t suppose I could have a burger first? Lunch was a long time ago.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Fine! I’ll just sit here and quietly starve to death. I’m bound to Aoife, not that I knew that until Slick over there told me who I was.”
“Slick?” Aisling asked.
“That’s what he calls Kostya. Mostly because it infuriates him.” A little smile tugged at my mouth. We both looked over to where the fight was going on. Kostya and Drake were now on their feet, dancing around each other and making swinging jabs. The two redheads watched from the sidelines.
Aisling laughed and ruffled the top of the dog’s head. “Well at least I’m happy to see that nothing else has changed, even if you did lose your memory. I’m going to have more than a few things to say to Magoth when I see him, but I suppose until I can get Jim back to where it belongs, I’ll let that go. Can you please transfer Jim to me, Aoife?”
“Sure.” I gestured at the dog. “Jim, you’re now Aisling’s demon.”
He scratched his neck. “I’m not saying that I wouldn’t like to do that, ’cause she has a nice smell and she knows how to scratch behind my ears just how I like it, but I don’t think I can do that.”
“Oh, I have to order you. Okay. Jim, I order you to be Aisling’s demon.”
Aisling was shaking her head before I could even finish. “It doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid. First you have to disavow Jim first; then I can summon it and bind it to me.”
I looked at Jim. “How do I do that?”
He shrugged. “No clue.”
“You’re the demon. You should know this sort of thing.”
“You’re the demon lord. You shouldn’t go binding demons to you if you don’t know how to give them back to their rightful, food-giving homes,” he countered.
I turned back to Aisling. “I’m afraid I’m going to need a little help.”
She frowned and shook her head. “Demons aren’t bound to individuals by any set method. How you bound Jim to you determines how you unbind it.”
I slid a glance over to where Kostya was battling his brother. Both men were now wielding what looked like two-by-fours.
“Um… maybe we can talk about passing Jim along later. I get the feeling if we don’t do something pretty quick, those two are going to really start hurting each other. You may not think they will, but Kostya’s kind of a badass.”
“That’s what comes from having too much testosterone,” Jim commented. “That makes your balls big, right? Kostya’s got quite the pair on him, so yeah, gotta be testosterone overload that’s making him jump everyone in sight.”
We both looked at the demon. Aisling appeared to be disconcerted for a moment. “I… you know, I really don’t think I need to know about Kostya’s testicles, thank you, Jim.”
“Just trying to be helpful,” he said, giving her hand a lick before wandering over to plop his butt down on my foot. “Eefs’ll back me up on the ball thing, won’tcha, babe?”
A memory of Kostya standing in the doctor’s office without the towel rushed front and center in my mind. “Um…”
“Moving on!” Aisling said brightly, and got to her feet. We both started forward, Jim following behind. “I suppose they’ve had long enough to fight. But we should make some plans. What exactly has Kostya told you about the curse?”
“Not much at all. I only met him yesterday.”
She blinked at me a couple of times. “You what?”
I described briefly how Jim and I had found Kostya.
“That’s… unexpected. I don’t quite know… I assumed you were… Have you taken his fire?”
“Taken it where?”
She shook her head. “This is going to sound very impertinent, but you appear so much like a mate that I have to ask—have you been intimate with Kostya?”
I straightened my shoulders. “I realize that you dragon people are different from the rest of us, but that’s seriously over the line.”
“They played sucky face a couple of times,” Jim said helpfully.
I ignored him. “Not to mention more than a little insulting that you think I’m the sort of woman who jumps into bed at the drop of a hat… er… dragon.”
“And she keeps ordering me out of the room so she can touch his naked chest,” Jim added, waggling his eyebrows. “They keep saying they aren’t interested in each other, but you could steam broccoli with the looks they give each other when they think no one’s looking.”
“Oh, we do not,” I said, feeling my face go hot nonetheless.
“You totes do, babe,” Jim said, giving me a knowing look.
“Well, he’s a handsome man,” I snapped, feeling defensive. “You’d have to be dead not to want to kiss him. And touch his chest. And run your fingers through his hair, and feel those muscles in his back, and…” I realized what I was saying and stopped to clear my throat. “You’d have to be dead, and I’m not.”
“I had a feeling that what I was going to say would come out wrong,” Aisling said with a wry smile. “I didn’t mean to imply anything. I simply wanted to know if you’ve taken his fire. Only mates are able to withstand a wyvern’s fire, but if you’ve only kissed him a few times, then obviously you don’t know what I’m talking about, so it’s a moot point.”
“Well,” I said, wiggling my toes. “There was the thing with my feet this morning.”
Jim gawked at my feet. “Ew! He has a foot fetish? Did he suck your toes? Because I’m a dog, and even I think that’s wrong.”
“No,” I said, giving him a gentle whomp on the shoulder. “Of course I didn’t let him suck my toes. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Oh, sorry, Aisling. I didn’t mean to hit your dog.”
Surprisingly, she gave me a cheery smile and stopped a few feet away from where Drake and Kostya were now fencing with the two-by-fours. “Don’t think anything about it. I frequently have to banish it to the Akasha when it gets overly lippy with us. What happened with your feet?”
I glanced at Kostya, but he seemed to be fine, other than a stream of blood running from a cut on his forehead. “Kostya kissed me, and somehow that set them on fire. I thought they burned to horrible stumps, but they weren’t touched at all.”
Relief spread over her face, and suddenly she hugged me. “Oh, thank God, I was right after all. I wondered if he’d ever find anyone after Cyrene, but there you are, and you’re perfect. You look absolutely perfect for him, and I’m sure you’re just what he needs. Drake will be so happy. We’ve worried about Kostya, you know. Now, about the curse—”
“Whoa now, I didn’t say I was his mate, if that’s what you’re
implying with the hugs and such. I’m not exactly sure what a mate is, because Mr. Pigheaded won’t tell me other than declaring that under no circumstances should I consider myself one, or that he is looking for one, or for that matter, does he even want me… Wait, what do you mean you’re worried about him? Worried how?”
Aisling waved away the sudden worry I had that maybe Kostya wasn’t all he seemed. “It’s nothing to fret over. He’s just… well, intense. I’m sure you’ve noticed that.”
“Oh yes.”
“A lot of that comes from the fact that he spent so long in captivity. In solitary confinement, actually, although he doesn’t like to talk about it. He feels things deeply, but he doesn’t want people to know that, so he puts on this brusque front and… and… really,” she said with a little laugh, “I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir. You probably have figured all this out about him by now.”
“Sure,” I said blithely, hoping I looked like I was full of all sorts of Kostya-insights. And to be honest, I had gleaned much of what she told me. “It’s just that he’s very reticent to speak about himself. That whole thing about him not having a mate, or even wanting one. Mind you, he usually says that right before he kisses me, but that’s neither here nor there. What does matter is that some dudes called the red dragons burned down my family home and tried to kill us, and now Kostya says I have to go to Paris with him in order to be safe. Why me? For that matter, why Paris?”
“She really is this clueless,” Jim told Aisling. “You have no idea what a cross it is to bear.”
“Quiet, demon.” Aisling looked startled to find herself saying that, a look of sadness crossing her face, followed by obvious resignation. “It’s so odd not to have Jim bound to me… but you’re right. It’s obviously fine with you, so I need to let that wait until we deal with the situation at hand. The curse is our primary focus—or at least, the breaking of it is. We need to find Asmodeus’s ring and use it to end the curse and bring the weyr together again. Not to mention keep the mortal world from being affected by the dragons warring, but so far, the battle hasn’t spilled over to them. And we’d like to keep it that way.”