Light My Fire
Page 14

“They shouldn’t, no. But, Aisling, you don’t need to come with me. I understand how important this dragon meeting is to you.”
“Be right out,” I said over my shoulder, hurrying to my bedroom. “Jim, stop reading the paper and get ready to be my trusty sidekick.”
“Yes, kemosabe,” it answered, turning the page.
Fortunately, Nora’s portal was only fifteen minutes away on foot, located in a slim belt of trees that lined an edge of Green Park.
“And your portal is where?” I asked, searching the ground at the spot Nora had pointed to for something that looked like an open conduit to Hell.
“Here,” she said, standing next to a squat, prickly pine tree. I walked around the tree, scouring the ground for the portal.
“Where? I don’t see it. Is it hidden or something?”
“No, it’s right here,” she said, touching the tree.
“The tree is the portal?”
Her eyes glittered behind her glasses. I was learning to read her expressions, and that particular glitter meant she was smiling to herself. “Yes. You expected a gaping maw to Abaddon, filled with brimstone and the screams of the eternally tormented?”
“Well. . . yeah. Something like that. Or at least like the portal that popped up in that restaurant in Budapest. Jim—” I turned to ask my demon a question, but it wasn’t there. I scanned the surrounding area. No demonic Newfie was anywhere in sight. “Where’d it go?”
Nora set down her Paco carrier and extracted a slim black case from her inner pocket. “It was here a minute ago. Does it normally go off on its own?”
“No, hardly ever... oh, there you are. Where have you been?”
Jim smirked. “Miss me?”
“Immeasurably. What were you doing?”
“I smelled some imps nearby. Being the exemplary sort of demon that I am, I thought you’d like me to locate them for you. So I did. There were only a few so I took care of them for you.”
Nora’s eyebrows rose. “Jim is trained to destroy imps?”
“Trained isn’t exactly the word,” I said, squatting next to the demon. “Open your mouth.”
“What?” Jim asked, trying to back away, but I caught its collar and twisted it tight. “I haven’t done anything.”
“You ate those imps, didn’t you? Dammit, Jim, you know how high in fat they are! The vet said your cholesterol was that of an eighty-year-old man. I told you imps were off your diet!”
Jim snarled something unintelligible, made so because it clenched its teeth together as I pried its flews apart so I could see along the edge of its teeth.
“Aha! What’s this?” I picked out a minuscule little item from the depths of its lips and waved it around in front of its face.
“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re yammering about,” Jim grumbled, looking away.
Nora adjusted her glasses and examined the bit of partially chewed blob on my fingers. “That looks to be part of an imp’s hand.”
“It is. It is also proof positive that someone has been breaking its diet. No doggie fake bacon strips for you tonight, buster!”
Nora bent even closer over my hand, holding it steady. “Jim ... the imp you ate. Was it wearing jewelry of any sort?”
“Jewelry?” I asked, peering at the remains of the imp hand. It was an odd shade of light blue, with the usual (for imps) three fingers. There was no sign of imp rings or bracelets on it. “Why jewelry?”
“Did you have a chance to read the field guide to imps that I gave you the other day?” Nora asked.
I shook my head. “I meant to yesterday on the train, but things got kind of out of control. What’s with the jewelry?”
Nora looked at Jim.
“If I had eaten an imp, and I’m not saying I did, because Aisling could have palmed that onto my lips to make me look guilty, but if I had, and it might have had a nasty little bit of gold on it, what of it?”
I shook the imp hand in front of Jim’s nose. “Bad demon! Bad!”
It rolled its eyes.
Nora took a deep breath and grabbed Paco’s carrier. “Show us where you found the imp nest,” she ordered Jim.
It looked at me.
“Do it,” I said, demons being able to take orders only from their demon lord.
“If you had read the field guide,” Nora said as she followed Jim into the clutch of trees, holding aside branches as she ducked into some dense shrubberies that lined the fence, “you would know that imps of that particular color belong to the suzerain. In addition to the unique color, they are marked by the gold jewelry they wear.”
“Great. So Jim ate an important imp?”
She squatted on her heels next to a small rhododendron, picking something out of the dirt. I knelt down to look at it. The object in her hand was a dirty bit of gold. It looked like a doll’s ring. “Not just an important imp. The important imp. This is a crown.”
We both looked from it to where Jim sat perfecting its look of innocence.
“I’m very much afraid that your demon has eaten the reigning imp monarch. I shudder to think of what sort of retribution they will seek against you.”
I glared at Jim for a few seconds. It had the decency to look embarrassed. “Lovely. Retribution from imps. Just the sort of thing I need in my life, a bunch of imps pooping in my shoes and stealing my hairbrush, and whatever other sorts of things they do to people who piss them off.”
Jim looked even more uncomfortable.
“Aisling,” Nora said, brushing off her knees as she got to her feet. “You do not understand. This is not some minor matter of revenge. Your demon has eaten the imp monarch.”
“Yeah. I’m really sorry about that, and you can bet I’ll order Jim to a strictly imp-free diet from here on out.”
“Aw, man!” Jim groaned.
Nora put her hand on my arm. “Imps may appear harmless, and most of the time they are. But I cannot stress to you enough the dire nature of this act against them. The entire imp nation will rise up against you in revenge.”
The hairs on my arms stood on end. “Good god. How many imps are there?”
“Worldwide?” She shook her head. “Thousands. Hundreds of thousands. And I’m afraid you’ve just become their public enemy number one.”