Light My Fire (14 page)

Jim’s eyes opened wide as it whistled. “Oh, man. You
told him, and you didn’t let me hear? I miss all the good
stuff!”

“Fine. I’ll use a dragon one, then,” I told Drake from
the doorway. “Just point me to someplace that sells one.”

Drake shook his head again. “That is not possible.”

“They don’t make them?”

“They do, in fact, but just as the chemicals in the
human one wouldn’t be applicable in your case, nor
would those in a dragon test. You are a mate, Aisling. You
are neither fully human nor fully dragon. You are some
thing unique.”

“Well... hell!” I swore, slamming my purse onto the
table.

“Abaddon,” Jim corrected.

“Whatever. Was your mother or father human?”

Drake’s eyes burned with a bright light that I was fa
miliar with. I’d seen it before, when he looked at anything that qualified in his dragon brain as treasure. “My mother,
Dona Catalina de Elferez, was born in Seville, Spain,
sometime around the year 1580.”

It took me a couple of beats to get past that date.
“So, what did she do when she thought she might be
pregnant?”

Drake smiled fondly. “She tried to kill my father.”

“I know just how she felt,” I muttered.

“She succeeded thirty-five years later, after I was
born,” he added, handing me my purse. “If you are fin
ished, I will drive you home.”

“Wait a minute—your mother killed your father?” I
grabbed Drake’s arm before he could leave the room.
“She
killed
him?”

“Yes.” His eyes held mine for a moment, the emotions
in them too mixed to read. “Like you, she did not take
kindly to the idea of being a dragon’s mate. My father
was less sympathetic than I am, however. He forced the
oath out of her by threatening to kill her family unless she
accepted her role. He slaughtered half her family before
she finally gave in.”

He paused for a moment, ignoring my openmouthed,
silent, bug-eyed gawk of horror. “She’s stubborn like you, too. An unfortunate trait that I hope is not passed along to
our child.”

“I am not pregnant!” I ground through my teeth as I
left the private room, forcing a smile on my face for
Istvan and Pal, who were in the middle of their meal.
They immediately jumped up.

“No, please, sit down and finish your lunch. I’m just a
little”—I shot a look at where Drake stood next to me, his
hand possessively on the small of my back—”tired. It’s been a long day, what with Jim eating the imp king and
everything.”

All three men looked at Jim with identical startled
expressions.

“It’s a long story, one I’ll have to tell another time.
Right now I’m going to go home. It was nice to see you
both. I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.”

Without waiting for Drake to start tossing around or
ders and commands that would be sure to infuriate me, I
hurried out of the restaurant. I half hoped Rene would
magically be waiting for me out front, but the street was
strangely empty of taxis.

“I will take you home,” Drake’s voice announced from
behind me.

“My home?” I asked, braced for the worst. “My home with Nora? I don’t have anywhere else to go, but I’ll keep
her safe from the imps.”

“Surely in view of this situation, you see that your
place is with me?” he asked, doing the usual dragon trick
of answering a question by asking one.

“There is no situation. I’d prove that to you if I could,
but since I can’t, you’re just going to have to take my
word for it until time proves me right,” I said firmly, holding up a hand to stop his objections. We stood on the side
walk, surrounded by people. This was not the time to discuss something so tangled as our relationship.

“We will discuss this when we get home,” he said, acknowledging my thoughts. “I will take you to Nora’s flat
so you may gather your things. You may also tell me
about the imp situation.”

I got into the car that Istvan pulled around a few minutes
later, my heart heavy. This was the same old Drake, arro
gant, stubborn, and seeing only his own way, with no sense
of compromise. I couldn’t live like that. I just couldn’t. But
could I live without him?

I gave him a brief summary of the imp events while I
tried to sort out my conflicted emotions. He said nothing
but looked a whole lot more worried than I was happy
about.

Jim yacked nonstop all the way to Nora’s, ignoring the
fact that no one was really responding to it. Drake sat
silent, his eyes on me as his fingers rubbed his chin. The
gesture melted the stone wall I’d tried so hard to build
around my heart. I loved the man; that was the bottom
line. And since that didn’t seem likely to change, it would
be better for everyone if I stopped fighting that fact and
focused on making it work.

I examined all the possibilities, decided that absolutes weren’t going to get me anywhere, and came to the final
conclusion that I was willing to give Drake another chance
if he could learn to compromise. I’d stay at Nora’s house
until that time, dividing my day between Guardian train
ing (or nontraining, given the order from the committee)
and the dragons.

It was a sound plan. It was reasonable. It would allow
Drake and me to explore our relationship without the
usual stresses that happened when people moved in to
gether. We would have time to get to know each other, to
be comfortable with each other, and most important of
all, to understand our respective roles. When the time was
right, I’d move in with him, and we’d live happily ever
after.

We arrived at Nora’s street to find the way blocked
with police cars, fire engines, ambulances, and at least a
hundred people watching a fully engulfed building.

Nora’s
building.

“Do I get my own room?” Jim asked, turning to Drake.
“One with a water bed? I’ve always wanted a water bed. And I hope you have satellite cable, because I get really
cranky in the morning if I don’t get my dose of Montel.”

₉

We found Nora ashen faced and shaken but safe as she
stood behind the fire line giving information to a police
woman.

“Aisling!” she yelled as we pushed our way through
the crowd toward her. “There she is. That’s my roommate. Oh, thank god you’re both all right. I didn’t
think you would be sleeping at this time of the day, but
I worried.”

“What happened?” I asked, embracing her in a swift
hug. “You’re not hurt? Paco is safe?”

“Yes, he is safe. We aren’t hurt; we weren’t home
when the fire started. I got here just as the firemen ar
rived. As for how the fire started...” Her voice fizzled
out to nothing.

“I didn’t do it,” I said quickly, knowing what she hes
itated to say aloud. “I wasn’t even here. I was with Drake
all day.”

Nora turned to greet him quickly. “Hello, Drake. It’s a
pleasure to see you again.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” he said, bowing over her hand in that Old World way the dragons had.

“Of course you didn’t set the fire,” Nora said, turning
back to me. “I didn’t mean to imply that. All the fires
you’ve started have been small and easily put out... oh,
dear. That didn’t come out quite the way I meant it.”

“You are still having difficulty controlling my fire?” Drake asked, giving me an unreadable look.

“Yes. No. Sometimes. Just when I’m under stress or emotional or angry about something,” I answered.

“Which pretty much means all the time,” Jim added.
“Fires of Abaddon! I just thought of something. Is every
thing burned up? Even my collection of
Welsh Corgi
Fancier
magazines?”

We all turned to look down the street at the building. It
was a dark, sodden shell, the firemen having been able to keep the fire from spreading to other buildings. The roof
had collapsed inward, leaving black, partially destroyed walls that still glowed with occasional embers.

“Merde”
Jim said.

“Was anyone in the building?” I asked Nora. She
shook her head, then introduced me when the police
woman who had been talking to her strolled over with a
clipboard. I answered questions about what I’d last done
in the apartment, where I’d been, and whether I’d noticed
anything that could cause a fire.

“So you don’t know how it started?” I asked the fire
captain when he came over to join us.

“Not yet. We will be investigating,” he said, giving me
a close look. “You have no idea as to the source of the
fire? You were the last person in the flat.”

“I’ve no idea.
Have you talked to the owner of the
other apartment? Maybe something started there—”

The fire captain frowned. “No, the pattern of fire is
consistent with the fire originating in Miss Charles’s flat. Our investigation team will be contacting you later.”

“Oh, Nora, I’m so sorry,” I said once he had left, giv
ing her another hug. “All your things! All your lovely
things!”

“They are just possessions, Aisling,” she answered,
giving me a squeeze in return. “I am safe, as is Paco, and
no one else was hurt. That’s all that really matters. Things
can be replaced.”

“I know, but it’s still awful to lose everything. And ...
I know I’ve been having problems with Drake’s fire, but
I swear to you this wasn’t due to me. When I left the
apartment earlier, it was just fine.”

Drake interrupted both the conversation and my train of thought by putting an arm around me and pulling me
up close. Nora’s eyebrows rose a smidgen above the
frame of her glasses at his possessive move. “We will
have to work on your control of my fire before it becomes
dangerous.”

I edged my way out of his embrace, giving him a glare
as I did so. “I am not dangerous! I do not burn down
buildings!”

“I didn’t say you did,” he answered calmly. “But you
yourself admit you can’t control my fire. Whether you ac
knowledge the fact or not, you are a powerful woman.
When you join my dragon fire with your own power, you
hold a potential tool for great destruction.”

“Just what we need in the world—another demon lord
with weapons of mass destruction,” Jim grumbled. I
glared at it. It grinned back at me.

“The likelihood is that the fire was a form of retaliation,” Drake added thoughtfully, watching the firemen
poke around the remains of the building.

“The imps?” I asked, my stomach going sour at the
thought.

He nodded. “I do not believe that would be out of their
scope of retribution. Do you agree, Nora?”

“Absolutely.” She hugged Paco’s carrier even tighter. “Fires are second nature to common European imps. It is
one of their favorite weapons. Given the nature of that...
er . .. blow against them, they would have lost no time in
mobilizing a response that targeted Aisling.”

“All the more reason for you to cease being stubborn,”
Drake told me. “Come, mate. You have been on your feet
too long. The question of where you will live is now
moot. You will live with me.”

“No,” I said, stepping back so he couldn’t grab me.
Two fire trucks and an ambulance left, the crowd of peo
ple watching the mopping-up process thinning as the ex
citement ended. “Nora and I are in this together. I’m not
going to leave her, especially not now, after everything
she owns has been destroyed because of me.”

Drake sent a little smile Nora’s way. “Naturally, Nora
will have a place in my home, as well. I shall see that everything possible is replaced. It is not my intention to
separate you,
kincsem.”