You Slay Me
Page 72

"Home?" I said, pinning a bright smile on my face. "Why would I want to go back to a mundane courier job when I have the opportunity to rule a dragon sept here? In fact, I'm thinking I might just take over as Venediger, too."
"What?" Ophelia choked on her tea. I patted her back helpfully before taking a seat and pouring myself a cup of tea. "You want to be the Venediger? But—but—"
"Yeah, well, I know you said that the wyverns are too bound up in their septs to be Venediger, but that's where I'm perfect for the job. I don't have any ties to the green dragons, so I'm sure I'll be able to do both jobs just fine." I blew on my tea before taking a sip. "Unless you know of a reason why I couldn't?"
Her gaze dropped to the teapot. "No, I know of no rea-son. I just assumed—you sounded as if you didn't want to be wyvern, and now you are talking of taking on a role of great responsibility—"
"The idea kind of grew on me," I said with another cheery smile that I felt far from feeling. "I have you to thank for that, too. If you hadn't mentioned something about Perdita taking over as Venediger, I never
would have thought about it."
"Perdita …," she said, her lips quivery.
I stood up and took the cups to the sink. "I'm sorry— that was cruel of me. Let's get you into bed. You've had a heck of a day."
She allowed me to escort her to her bedroom. I locked up the apartment, turned out the lights, and headed for my own room where Jim was lying in the middle of the bed. "About time! I thought you'd never dump the wet blan-ket."
"Shh! She'll hear you."
"Naw, the walls are thick. So. Drake's innocent…. Do I get to guess who did kill Deauxville and the Venedi-ger and Perdy?"
I shoved my demon over so I could sit on the bed, too. "It's not that hard to figure out who. It's just getting the proof that's going to be difficult."
Jim eyed me for a couple of seconds, then got off the bed and went to curl up on the pile of blankets I'd arranged as its bed. "I don't suppose you'd care to lend me a couple hundred euros?"
I pointed at the wall. It turned its back to me so I could get into the nightgown Perdita had lent me. "You are not going to bet on me. Or against me. No betting whatso-ever. Got that?"
Jim huffed and settled down for the night. "You sure do know how to take all the fun out of life. Bet you even made Drake use a condom."
I sighed to myself and added STDs to my list of things to discuss with Drake at a later date.
Despite the events of the day, I had trouble getting to sleep, finally drifting off around three in the morning. I half expected that Drake would come and seduce me in a dream, but he didn't. I woke once, my body jerking with the remnants of a non-dragon dream, then relaxed into the solid, comforting heat at my back. Drake's scent teased my nose. An arm lay heavy over my stomach; hard, muscled thighs spooned tightly behind mine. The faintest breath of air ruffled the hair at my neck. I drifted deeper into sleep, not sure whether this was yet another type of dream, or just a fantasy my mind had arranged to lull me into security.
I awoke alone to find that sometime during the night Ophelia had been kidnapped.
"How could I have been so wrong?" I asked Jim as I paced down the length of the apartment. "How could I have been so stupid? Ophelia wasn't guilty of anything more than being a bit shallow and trying to protect Perdita. How could 1 think she was guilty of murder? Triple murder?"
"You had me convinced," Jim said. "It's always the sweet, innocent ones that you have to watch out for."
"Yeah, well, because of my stupidity, that sweet, inno-cent one is in the clutches of some evil person. You're sure it was Bafamal you smelled in her room?"
"Absolutley. Baffie and I go way back. He was there, all right."
"Drat it all. There goes my whole big plan. How can I prove she was guilty of the murders if she's been kid-napped?"
Jim got to its feet and padded over to the bowl of water I had set down for it earlier. "You know, you never did explain to me exactly when you switched from thinking Drake was the killer to believing he was innocent."
"My conversation with Bafamal had a lot to do with that. So did something Ophelia said," I answered ab-sently, looking out the window at a rainy June Paris morning.
"What was that?"
"She told me Perdita was Drake's girlfriend."
Jim raised its eyebrows. "And you didn't believe her? Honey, we need to have a little talk about dragons and their sexual drive."
"Don't be stupid," I said, watching the rain run down the window. "I know Drake's had girlfriends before, but I happen to know Perdita wasn't one of them."
"Really?" Jim tipped its head. "How do you know?"
"The night I first met her she made a comment about dragons being different sexually. They're not. She'd have known that if she had slept with Drake."
"So, that old saying about being hung like a dragon isn't true?" Jim asked with a leering lilt to its voice.
I turned around to glare at it. "I didn't say that. I'm just saying that there was nothing unusual in the groinal re-gion. Nothing other than an … er… abundance."
Jim hooted. I ignored it as I stood indecisively in the middle of the living room. "Who would want to kidnap Ophelia? And why? And what am I going to do about get-ting her back?"
"Who says saving her is your responsibility? Last time I looked, you weren't the Lone Ranger, and I'm sure as shootin' no Tonto, even if I am the extremely cool side-kick type."
"I put her in this position. I have to help her," I said obstinately.
"Call the cops."
"I can't! Even if I had somewhere else to stay, my fin-gerprints are all over this apartment. They'd lift one print, figure out it belonged to me, and blame me for her kid-napping. Besides, I don't think this is an ordinary kid-napping. Bafamal was in her room—that means it has to be someone connected with the Otherworld who used the demon to nab her."
"Too bad you can't ask Baffle himself, but he's prob-ably still in the power of whoever summoned him."
"I suppose it would be worth a try to summon it, al-though I don't have any hope that I could. It would be in-credibly stupid of whoever was using Bafamal to release it so it could be questioned." I paced the length of the apartment, my mind back to being a hyper hamster on a wheel as it formulated and discarded various ways to find Ophelia. "I could hire a private detective.. .. No, I don't know any, and