"Yes," Nora said in a very neutral tone of voice that spoke volumes.
"You know each other?" I couldn't help but ask, glancing from the rather garishly made-up Marvabelle to the quiet Nora.
"I was a Guardian, too, years and years ago, when I was young and foolish," MarvabeLle said, cutting across Nora's response. "Nora and I studied under the same mentor for a year. But T gave it up when I married Hank.
Oracles are just so much more important than Guardians, you know."
"And you?" Monish looked at Jim and me, thankfully ending the embarrassed silence that had followed Mar-vabelle's verbal slap in the face.
I tried my best to look poised and not at all like the sort of woman who falls down in hotel lobbies. "Oh. Hi, everyone, it's a pleasure to meet you all. I'm Aisling, and this is Jim, my demon. This is our first conference, and as you might have guessed, I'm a Guardian. Kind of. Not quite, but I hope to be. I think. It depends on whether I find a mentor or not."
Five sets of eyes opened wide, then hurriedly looked away from me. The sixth, Nora's, watched me with a faint frown wrinkling her brow. "You are not yet a fully trained Guardian?" Her eyes slid over to Jim. "But you have a demon."
"Yeah, but Jim is kind of a mistake."
The demon sniffled in mock sadness. "You mean that you and Daddy didn't plan to have me? Oh, the pain! Oh, the heartache!"
I pinched its paw, "When I say mistake, I mean—" My hands waved around in an inarticulate sort of manner. The rest of the table watched me with silent avidity, waiting expectantly. I gave up trying to come up with a lucid explanation of just how I'd come to summon Jim. There was no way I could explain without taking up the rest of the evening. "Well, I guess mistake is as good a word as any. No, I'm not a trained Guardian. I'm here hoping to find someone who'll be willing to teach me all the ins and outs of the job. I don't suppose you're looking for an apprentice?"
"As it happens, I am," she said, her gaze dropping to the bowl of chilled fruit that a waiter had set before her.
"Ah." She looked less than thrilled with the idea of me. Then again, she might just be shy. "Perhaps we can talk later?"
The waiter placed a bowl on Jim's plate, then slid one in front of me. Nora murmured something about setting up an appointment.
. I heaved a mental sigh over her lack of enthusiasm and shook out a napkin to tuck into Jim's collar.
"I believe we can start. Everyone else is eating," Tiffany said, flicking a long blond corkscrew curl over her shoulder, suddenly freezing into a pose with pouting lips and arched neck. I was just about to ask her if she was all right when a flash went off behind me.
A photographer skulked over to another table.
"That was Shy Eyes," Tiffany said to me, her soft European accent giving an odd but pleasing lilt to the words.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Shy Eyes. It is one of my fabulous looks. I have many of them. In addition to being a professional virgin, I am a model very much successful. I do it because being a professional virgin doesn't take up much of my time, and you know, the world would be much happier if everyone used their time to smile. I like to share my smile with people everywhere. It is a duty when you are as beautiful as me, do you not think?"
"Uh . . . sure." I picked up my spoon, stirring the fruit and wondering why weird people always seemed to sit next to me. Then again, I was the one with a demonic Newfie.... Oh, lord, / had become one of the weird people!
On the far side of the table, a man passed behind Mon-ish and Tej on his way to his own table, pausing to look me in the eye and say, "You will spill fruit juice on your breasts."
The spoonful of chopped fruit and fizzy citrusy dressing that I was in the process of piloting to my mouth splattered down my front.
"What the—dammit!" I swore, throwing down the spoon and grabbing the thick linen napkin to mop up the big wet globules of fruit that plastered the thin gauze of my peasant blouse to my left breast. "Who the hell is that man, and why is he doing this to me?"
"Oh, tsk," Tiffany said, making a sad little face as I dipped one corner of my now sticky napkin into my water glass. She actually said the word tsk. "Maybe your demon could lick it off for you?"
"Yeah," Jim said with a leer on its canine lips. "It seems such a shame to waste good soul flowers like that."
"You move your tongue one inch toward my breasts, and I swear I'll get a grapefruit knife and saw off your—"
"Sheesh, I was just offering to be helpful. Some people!" Jim turned its attention back to its own fruit cup, one massive black paw holding down the flared bottom of the sorbet dish.
"That gentleman is Paolo di Stephano," Monish said. "He is a Diviner most extraordinary. He also works with me for the committee."
"Ha! Diviner. Or so he claims" Marvabelle added with a sniff, patting her husband's hand. "Hank could be a Diviner if he wanted. But I told him no, his talents would be wasted doin' simple divinations. His gift is much more profound than that."
Spoons clinked on glass as everyone slurped down the fruit. I finished cleaning off my blouse, trying desperately to shift the sodden material so that the wet spot wasn't quite so obvious. Mentally, I cursed my decision to wear the sheerest and most elegant of my bras under the peasant top. It did nothing to disguise my breast beneath the almost transparent wet gauze. "Bully for Hank," I murmured, jerking my blouse to the side so the wet spot was more or less under my arm. The silence that resulted made me very aware that I had once again put my foot in my mouth. I offered a smile to a tight-lipped Marvabelle. "Sorry. I didn't mean that to sound as obnoxious as it did. To be honest, I don't quite have a grip on this whole Diviner/oracle thing. Can you explain the difference to me?"
"An oracle is one who provides counsel upon petition of the person seeking advice," she answered in a stiff voice, carefully spooning up her fruit without spilling a drop. "Oracles guide our lives with their sage wisdom. Diviners are nothin' more than charlatans. Mind readers and their ilk."
Jim, finished with licking out its dish of fruit, leaned its head on my shoulder and stared at my uneaten portion.
"Much as T would hate to disagree with the gracious lady," Monish said in his soft Indian accent, "Diviners are not mere charlatans or mind readers. They are known best for their ability to see into the immediate future. Many, such as Paolo, feel obligated to tell those around them of any mishaps they foresee."
A soft voice spoke in my ear. "You gonna eat that fruit, nipple girl?"
I looked down. My blouse had untwisted itself, my breast all but bared beneath the wet material. "Son of a—" I jerked the scarf off my hair and wrapped it around my neck so that the ends hung down over my exposed breast, shoving my dish over to Jim's plate so the demon could eat the fruit. "I appreciate the fact that this Paolo guy feels it's his duty lo tell me when I'm about to trip or spill food, but I can't help but feel that it is his warnings that are causing the events."
"Schrodinger's cat," Nora said, nodding her head. We all stared at her. "Quantum physics, you know. A man named Erwin Schrtidinger proposed a mental experiment involving a sealed box containing a cat, a bottle of poisonous gas, and a radioactive mineral. The mineral is such that it has a fifty-fifty chance of decaying during the time the cat is sealed in the box* and if it does so, it will release the gas and that will kill the cat."
"Poor kitty," Tiffany said, her brow wrinkled in a scowl. "I don't believe in testing being conducted on animals, even mental testing. It is wrong. It does not make for happy thoughts."
"Schrodinger... I think I've heard of him," I said slowly, digging through my memories to the summer I was madly infatuated with a physics professor and took classes that made absolutely no sense to me. "Didn't the experiment have something to do with observation of the cat determining whether it was alive or dead? Oh, I see what you're getting at—by Paolo telling me what he sees in my future, he influences it?"
Nora nodded, her dark eyes glinting behind the lenses of her bright red glasses. "Exactly. Just lik
e Schrodinger's cat. until Paolo speaks, the future exists in many states, but as soon as he tells you the future, it becomes real."
"Cheap parlor trick," Marvabelle said, her expression sour. "Oracles offer much more profound guidance than simply predictin' someone's clumsiness. Oracles offer words to influence a lifetime."
"Really?" I looked at Hank. He didn't look much along the lines of a lifetime-influencing man. He looked like an uncomfortable, slightly sweating bald man with a sizeable beer belly. "So how do you do the oracle thing? Does stuff just come to you, or do people seek your advice, or what?"
Hank opened his mouth to speak, but his wife spoke before he could. "Hank is from the classical school of oracles," she said, with a pointed look at Monisn, "First, he communes with the god and goddess of all bein'. Then he lights a special blend of herbs that allows his mind and soul to merge into a higher plain. At that point, he is tap-pin' into the wisdom of the Ancients, and he is open to questions from those seekin' his advice."
'i bet I can tell you just what sort of herbs he lights, too," Jim said sotto voce.
I stifled a snicker, careful to keep it soundless. I might not think too much of Marvabelle's boasts, but I was new to this society, and it behooved me to mind my p's and q's.
We discussed the various ways oracles consulted their sources of wisdom, and then the conversation turned to upcoming workshops and events of the conference. By the time the banquet was over, my head was spinning with thoughts of water altars, Argentinean curanderismo, ten signs that your significant other is a soul stealer (I could have used that advice before I married my ex-husband), and of course, the demon-tormenting workshops—so popular that three separate sessions were planned.
"Tell me you're not going to any of them," Jim demanded as I walked him out to the side lawn, which I'd been told was the area reserved for dogs to do their thing.
"Oht I don't know. I think they sound interesting. I might pick up some techniques to keep you in line."
"Yeah, like you need to learn any more ways to make my life a living Abaddon?"
He stopped next to a large laurel bush. I moved over to a small wooden bench almost obscured by a rowdy group of azaleas and breathed deeply of the night air. It was scented with the perfume of midsummer flowers—tall gladiolas, delicately colored roses, early-blooming mums, and beautifully waving beds of poppies in almost every color. The dog walk was a long, narrow stretch of grass that was bordered on three sides by a woodland copse, the tall fir trees casting long shadows that sent inky fingers across the grass.
"This really is a gorgeous city—it has exquisite gardens," I said, allowing myself to drink in the beauty of the surroundings. Despite the big hotel and conference complex a few hundred yards behind us, it felt as if we were totally alone in a little piece of paradise.
"'Hello, remember me?" Jim asked, a pointed look on its face. "You can still see me!"
"What? Oh. Sorry."
I turned around, giving the demon my back so it could do what it had to do without a witness. Jim didn't mind that I had to clean up after it performed its outdoor activities, but experience had proven that privacy was necessary to the act. Since I didn't want to spend all night out here waiting for the demon to take care of business, I strolled down the lawn toward the firs. The sun was a burnt orange ball half disappeared behind the distant hills, but it didn't seem to lessen the heat of the day very much. The shade of the dense clutch of trees looked cool and inviting.
From behind the nearest tree, a shadow separated from the copse. Before I could suck in a startled breath, a familiar figure lunged toward me. The street thief who had tried to rip me off at the train station slammed his fist into my shoulder, sending me flying backward into another tree. He jerked at my belt, half pulling me forward onto him.
"Hey!" I yelled, suddenly realizing what was happening. I had tied the amulet in its soft leather pouch to my belt in order to keep it safe with me, in case anyone had thoughts of searching my hotel room while I was out. (It had happened in the past.) "Stop it! Help! Jim!"
The young man snarled something as he pulled at the amulet, but I had tied it with a couple of sailor's knots, guaranteed to withstand even the most nimble pickpocket's fingers.
"I'm busy here, Aisling!" Jim's voice drifted down the lawn as I struggled with my assailant. The man grunted when I stomped his foot, retaliating by slamming his elbow into my jaw so that I reeled backwards.
"Effrijim, command thee to stop thy pooping and help thy master right this frigging second!" I yelled, my fingers clawing the man's hands as he fought to release my belt.
"Fires of Abaddon, Aisling, don't ever do that to me again. It's bad for my prostate or something—hey, who's that?"
"Get him," I snarled as the man spat an oath at me in Hungarian. Before I could clarify to Jim just how I wanted the demon to attack—one of the trials of being in command of a demon was that you had to give it very specific orders—a glint of silver flashed in the man's hands.
He had a knife. One that would laugh scornfully at my intricate sailor's knots, damn him. I tried to remember everything I'd learned in my self-defense classes about disarming a man with a knife, but before I could put it into practice the man slammed his forearm against my neck, pinning me to the tree. I reached up to poke my fingers in his eyes just as his knife swung forward in an arc intended to sever the leather straps binding the pouch to my belt.
I screamed as the knife slashed through the thin gauze and reached my tender flesh.
Jim yelled something in Latin and lunged at the man, but even as I struggled to disarm him, he cut the thongs to the pouch and bounded away, a quicksilver shadow in the woods.
I slumped to the ground, cradling my arm.
"Are you all right?" Jim asked "How bad are you hurt? Should I go after him?"
"Yes," I answered, rocking with the sharp, burning pain that snaked up my arm.
"Really?" Jim looked into the dark woods. "You want me to chase him? Uh . . . he's got a knife, Aisling."
A voice shouted behind Jim.
"Yeah? He also has my amulet, and Uncle Damian isn't going to forgive and forget if I lose another priceless object. Demon, I order thee to—"
A man loomed up behind him, immediately crouching down next to me. "You are injured? I smell blood. Allow me to see. I am a healer."
"You can smell blood?" I asked, momentarily disoriented by the man who bent over my arm. All thoughts of the amulet evaporated as he lifted his head and his silver eyes laughed into mine.
"Yes, I can. It is not a bad injury. I believe no muscles or tendons were severed—"
"You're a dragon," I interrupted, noticing the slightly elongated pupils. His skin was a warm caramel color, his long hair pulled back in a pony tail, but it was his eyes that held my attention. Bright silver, like illuminated mercury, they glinted through the darkening shadows, exotically tilted, full of secrets and mysteries.
"Yes, I am. How perspicacious of you. I am Gabriel Tauhou. I have the honor of being the wyvern of the silver dragons. And you"—he brushed aside a ruffle of my blouse, exposing the brand on my collarbone that Drake had left the month before—"you are a wyvern's mate."
"Just what we need—another wyvern," Jim drawled, sitting down next to me, giving Gabriel a piercing glare, "Look, she's been hurt, OK? Why don't you get on with the healer thing and stop flirting with her? She's got enough to deal with without you, too."
As much pain as I was in, I had to admit Jim's protective stance warmed my heart a little bit.
Gabriel's finger traced the circle pattern of Drake's brand. "This is the symbol of the wyvern of the green dragons. You are Drake Vireo's mate?"
"Not necessarily," I started to say, wanting to refute anything to do with the handsome, arrogant man who had the tendency to literally haunt my dreams when he was so inclined.
Gabriel's blinding smile stopped me. "Ah, good. You are versed in dragon lore. Then you know that a wyvern's mate is subject to the laws of lusus na
turae."
"Huh?"
"Lusus naturae. It is Latin for 'whim of nature.'" His fingers caressed my jaw as he pushed a curl off my face. "It simply means that a wyvern may challenge another for the right to a mate."
"You have got to be kidding!" I gasped, my brain grinding to a halt at the idea of what it was he was saying,
Jim heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Oh, great, now you're going to be into threesomes. I can't wait to tell Drake about that."
The amulet!" I shouted, glaring at Jim before I pushed my way out of Gabriel's near embrace.
"You have lost an amulet?" he asked, looking around at the flower beds and the lawn.
"No, the man who stabbed me stole it."
"Ah, I see. It is valuable?"
I opened my mouth to say it was priceless but remembered in time how dragons reacted to any form of treasure. They were hoarders, acquiring treasure to be hidden away in their lairs, and even if the amulet had no gold— which acted more or less like the dragon version of catnip—it was still a very valuable piece.
"It's valuable to me," I said, choosing my words carefully. "I'm a courier, and I'm supposed to deliver it to someone here in Budapest. I have to get it back."
"Sit," he ordered, pushing me back to the ground from which I had struggled to get to my feet. "I will find this amulet for you."
"But how—?" I knew from the experience of the previous month that each of the four dragon septs had special skills for which it was known. Drake and the members of his sept were master thieves, while the blue dragons, headed by a veritable god of a man named Fiat Blu, were trackers extraordinaire. But Gabriel had said he was a healer—
'The one who attacked you has your blood on him- I will find him. But first I will attend to your wound." Gabriel lifted my arm and bent his head over it. For a second I felt an abnormal fear that he was going to bite me, but it wasn't his teeth that touched my skin.
His mouth, lips, and tongue caressed the bleeding gash. I sucked in my breath at the intimate feel of his mouth on my flesh, part of me disgusted by the thought of what he was doing, another part, a dark, secret part, strangely intrigued. His breath was hot on my arm, and for an instant I thought it was dragon fire I felt licking along my skin—but that couldn't be right. Drake was the only dragon whose fire I could feel.