Holy Smokes
Page 14

Suddenly angry, I whirled around to face him, inadvertently bumping into a woman who was trying to pass us.
“Oh, sorry. Did I step on you?” I asked, handing her a shopping bag I’d knocked from her arms.
She smiled. “No, I’m fine. You’re American, too? Isn’t it fabulous here?”
“Yes, it is. If you’ll excuse me, there’s someone whose head I need to bite off.”
The tourist’s eyes widened as I marched backed to Gabriel, standing close to him so I could whisper with much vehemence. “How dare you insinuate that I’m responsible for bringing harm to anyone! You are not the victim here, Gabriel—I am.”
“Are you so sure?” he asked quietly, all signs of the smile that usually lit his eyes gone.
I hesitated for a moment, wondering why he was pursuing this. Was he working with Fiat again, trying to set us up for some other heinous act? Or had there really been some circumstance that had befallen him that made it appear he had betrayed us?
“Aisling?” Uncle Damian called from where he stood next to the car. Jim had already gotten into the backseat.
“Be there in a second.” Drake had been oddly silent on the subject of Gabriel. I’d tried to talk to him about it once or twice since the events at the fencing club, but what with the wedding planning, and Drake’s ability to distract me simply by kissing me, we’d never fully discussed what happened.
“Aisling, I am not your enemy. I never was,” Gabriel said, making a gesture as if he wanted to take my hand again.
The car behind the double-parked Rene tooted its horn.
I could see by Uncle Damian’s agitated reflection in the shopwindow that he was uncomfortable with me standing out on the street. This was clearly not the time or place to debate the subject of past actions. “I’m busy right now, Gabriel. Maybe in a few months when I have forgotten what it was like to almost die of poisoning, I’ll be in the mood to talk to you about what happened, but not right now.”
“I saved you from dying,” he called as I started toward Uncle Damian and the car. “And I can save you now, Aisling.”
“Save me how?” I asked, putting as much scorn into my voice as was possible.
He took a step toward me, his gray-eyed gaze intense as it searched mine. “I know how you can end the proscription.”
Hope lit within me. If I could be pardoned, or forgiven, or whatever the act was that ended the proscription, I would be able to work with Nora again. Not to mention the fact that the dark power would stop trying to seduce me. But the flicker of hope died when I realized that this was quite likely a trick, some sort of trap that Gabriel was using to do god-knew-what.
I lifted my chin and bit back all the nasty things I wanted to say to him. I might not technically be Drake’s mate any longer, but he and the sept still treated me as such, and it behooved me to act with dignity when dealing with other dragons. “I will tell Drake of your offer. Good-bye.”
I was about to get into the car when the American tourist I’d bumped into suddenly ran toward me calling, “Oh, hey, you dropped something!”
Time slowed to a crawl as I turned to see what it was I’d dropped. Behind me, Uncle Damian stood holding the car door, waiting for me to get in. People streamed around us on the busy sidewalk as the smiling tourist approached me, her hand outstretched.
She uncurled her fingers, revealing a silver symbol that seemed to float in the air above her palm.
I stared at the ward in confusion, not understanding what I was seeing until it was too late.
“Begone,” the woman said, and horrible pain ripped through my body as I was yanked through the fabric of existence.
5
Awareness ebbed and flowed around me, the pain gradually wearing off. Slowly, voices filtered through my fogged brain.
“—think we should call it. The old lord never used to regurgitate whenever he visited,” a troubled voice said.
“You’re right there. And this one has done it before. You remember when she banished the old one?” a second voice said.
Every part of my body ached, including my teeth and hair. Even my eyebrows hurt.
“That was a horrible mess to clean up, let me tell you,” the second person continued. “I was all for destroying the room, but Traci said it wasn’t cost-efficient and would have a negative impact on the budget. ‘But we’re demons,’ I told it at the time. ‘Negative is what we do!’”
“What did it say to that?” the first voice asked.
“It just shrugged and said the lord insisted on a nonegativity policy and a very strict budget, and if I had problems with that, I’d have to take it up with her. Well, you can see what she’s like!”
I could feel the speakers eyeballing me. I made an effort to pull myself together, absently noting that something was cold beneath my cheek.
The first voice tsked. “They’re just not making demon lords the way they used to, are they?”
“I hope to god they aren’t.” I opened my eyes and lifted my head to find myself on a familiar gray marble floor. Next to my head were two pairs of shoes. I winced as I tilted my head back to see the speakers. “Hello, Saris. And you’re…”
“Caron, my lord,” the first speaker said, bowing stiffly. “Greetings, Lord Aisling. Traci did not inform us that you would be paying a visit to Abaddon.”
I heaved myself off the floor, trying not to retch again as another wave of nausea hit me. “This isn’t a planned visit. Someone zapped me here.”
“Someone…zapped you?” the demon named Saris asked.
“Yeah. Jim, I summon thee.” I staggered over to the red velvet fainting couch that I remembered sitting in the room which used to belong to Ariton. My demon doggy appeared with a look of surprise on its face.
“Man, Ash! Your uncle is going bonkers on the streets of London! Hi, Caron. Hey, Saris. Long time no see.”
Both demons bowed at the sight of Jim. “Greetings and welcome, Effrijim.”
Jim grinned. “I could get used to being your second-in-command.”
“Enjoy it while you can, it’s not going to last,” I said, checking my body for any injuries. “Did you see the tourist?”
“Only about a gazillion of them. Which one in particular did you mean?”
“The one who slam-dunked me here.”