Light My Fire (7 page)

Fiat rose from his chair with swift elegance. “You have
much to learn of our ways,
cara.
Your ignorance is al
most as dazzling as the whiteness of your breasts.”

I looked down at my chest for a minute, making sure
my boobs weren’t suddenly popping out of my sundress.
They weren’t. I bit back yet another retort.

“Such rigid control you have over yourself,” Fiat said,
shaking his head. “Not only is your mind perfectly blocked
from mine, you will not even play that delightful teasing
game we have so enjoyed in the past. I wonder how long
it will last?”

I let that go, too. Words—in this instance—couldn’t
hurt me. Fiat was right in that I had slipped my mental barriers into place the instant I saw him. He had a partic
ular talent for mind reading, and I wanted to be sure that he knew my mind was definitely off limits.

“What about now?” Jim asked, glaring at Fiat. “Please?
That boob comment was over the top.”

“No. Nice to see you again,” I said noncommittally to
Fiat as he stepped back from the table. I struggled to sum
mon up one last bit of polite banter. “Are you staying in
Paris for a while?”

His fingers caressed the stem of the wineglass, his eye
lids dropping until he gazed at me with a look so sultry,
it set off the hairs on the back of my neck. “Drake has
broken your spirit. I preferred you fiery and uncontrolled.
I must see what I can do to restore you to your former
state, breeding or not.”

“Now?” Jim asked, a plea in its voice.

I shot it a glance that told it to be quiet. “Fiat, you
know well that if you laid one little finger on me, Drake
would bring you down. So, much as I enjoy this bandy
ing of wits, I’ll simply say good-bye. Au revoir.”

“Pah,” he said, a flicker of annoyance visible in his
eyes for a moment before he stalked off to where his
bodyguards were waiting.

I gave the three of them a polite, tight smile of recognition and turned back to Amelie with a sigh of relief.
“Whew. That was hairier than I thought it would be. Breed
ing! Have you ever?”

“Fire hounds of Abaddon, Aisling! What’s with you?
You let him get away without once siccing me on him!”
You wouldn’t think a Newfie’s face could express many
emotions, but the way Jim worked, it could have been
on the stage. Outrage, frustration, and speculative malig
nancy each took a turn on its face.

“It’s called acting like an adult, and since when are
you so hot and bothered to defend me to a dragon?”

Jim sniffed and turned away.

Amelie gave it an interested look. “What class of
demon are you, Jim?”

The demon was silent.

“I’m sorry, Amelie; it has no manners tonight,” I told her,
“Jim, I realize you don’t have to answer questions that any
one asks you other than me, but in the polite world, when someone asks you something, you answer. Please do so.”

“So, are you preggers?” Jim asked instead, looking up
when the waitress brought it a hamburger on a pretty yel
low plate. “That would explain a lot.”

I set down the glass of spicy, fire-inducing (often quite
literally) beverage that only dragons and their mates could
drink without dire consequences and laid my hands flat
on the table, looking Jim firmly in the eye. “Not that this
is anyone’s business, but no, I’m not pregnant.”

“Are you sure?” Jim spat out a bit of pickle. “You
haven’t gone psycho hormone woman and demanded gallons of chocolate ice cream in what
...
six weeks? That
sounds pregnant to me.”

“Oh, for god’s sake ... one more word about this, and
you’re off to Akasha until I get home.”

“I wonder what Drake is going to say when he finds
out?” Jim asked between licks of the now-empty plate. “I
bet he goes nuts—heyyyyy .. .”

I spoke the words that sent the demon into limbo so quickly, it had no time to do anything but look startled.

“Sorry, Amelie. Jim’s been a bit, well, off the last few
weeks. It kept telling me its heart was broken, and we
both know that demons don’t have hearts, but even so, I
think it really was unhappy about not seeing Cecile. Looks
like we’re going to have to set up regular visits to keep it
happy.”

Amelie blinked at me a couple of times. I figured she
was making all sorts of mental comments about Ameri
cans and their snarky demons.

“I do not believe I have ever met anyone like you,” she
finally said.

“Is that good? It sounds like it could be a compliment, but knowing Jim, maybe you meant that in a less than
sterling way.”

She just looked at me with mild brown eyes.

I sighed. “Gotcha. You mean that I’m weird. It’s OK.
Ive
pretty much come to grips with that. Moving on ...
what did Fiat mean about one of my kids—not that I’m
going to have one anytime soon, and I’m not sure that
Drake and I are going to be able to work things out, but assuming that miracles can happen and we do, what was
all that about one of our kids not being wyvern after
Drake?”

“That is something for you to talk to him about,” she said, her lips making the thin line that I knew meant she wasn’t going to be forthcoming with any further information.

“But you know the answer?”

She nodded
.

“Criminy. Why does no one ever want to tell me any
thing?” I groused quietly to myself as I took another sip
of the dragon’s-blood beverage. Heat roared through me,
causing a few stray flickers to erupt from my fingertips.
Absently, I slapped them out. “It’s like some sort of guessing game and everyone knows the rules but me. I hate that
sort of thing. It makes me want to take my ball and go
home.”

“You still do not have a true understanding of what it
is you’ve agreed to do,” Amelie said, shaking her head.
“Aisling, this is not a game you play. You hold many peo
ple’s lives in the flat of your hand, and I fear that one day,
you will destroy them without knowing it.”

Her words hit me like a bucket of ice water. “I’m sorry,
Amelie—I didn’t mean to appear flip. You may not believe it, but I’m very cognizant of my responsibilities to
the dragons. Hence my rather strained restraint with Fiat
earlier. And I know Jim would say I’m whining, but some
times I feel like everything is stacked up against me, and
there’s no way I’m ever going to find my way out.”

“You will,” she said, signaling for the check. She
plopped a couple of coins on the table. “You must simply
embrace all of the possibilities.”

“Right. Like the possibility that I’m not going to
go insane, and someday, I will understand everything.” I snatched up my purse and followed Amelie through the
crowded floor of the club to the door. Once again, a
magical aisle opened up for us, and I was aware again of
being the focus of many people’s attention. It was a very
creepy feeling.

“That is one possibility, yes. How much time do you
have?” she asked as we made our way out of the club into
the soft evening air, bright lights, and nonstop low drone
of chatter that make up Paris on a summer night.

“Eeek. About twenty minutes. Is it far to the train
station?”

“Non. We will walk there.”

Security issues being what they are, we had to part at
the outer lobby of the train station. Amelie embraced me,
her smile warm and empowering.

“You will do what is right, so long as you always leave
yourself open to the possibilities. Be true to yourself, and everything will fall into place,” was her parting advice. I
wished her well in return and told her I’d give her a call in a few days to set up a time when Jim could come to
visit Cecile again.

I’d arrived earlier than required at the train station, had ample time to get through customs, and soon found myself wandering around the departure area, waiting for our slightly delayed train to arrive. Even though it was late at night, the station was crowded with English tourists returning home after a day spent shopping and sightseeing.
The station was a cacophony of the usual train station
noises—people talking and laughing, children running
around screeching as they played tag or just generally got
in the way of people trying to move through the mass of
bodies, music coming from the fringes, where several
street musicians had set up competing stations, and occa
sional blasts of static-filled, unintelligible announcements
from the train company, in what I assumed was French,
English, and German.

Since I wanted to get a good seat facing forward, I
edged my way along the platform until I found a tourist-
free spot near the far end—away from most of the
crowds, but not positioned so I’d end up at the dining car.

“Aisling! What is the most charming Guardian of my
acquaintance doing in Paris? I thought you had gone to
London to train with Nora.”

I spun around at the deep, slightly accented voice,
more than a little startled to behold a familiar face flash
ing a dimpled smile at me.

“Gabriel! What on earth are you doing here? Your last
e-mail said you had to go home to take care of some
thing.”

“I did, but I’ve been summoned by your mate. Is that
the train?”

A cheer from the waiting passengers and a whoosh of
noise and air heralded the arrival of the now-late train. I
stepped to the edge of the platform to see around the
crowd, turning back to tell the silver wyvern that the train
was in fact coming.

The words never left my mouth. Before I could turn
completely, I was struck by a tremendous blow on the
small of my back, sending me hurtling onto the train
tracks, directly in the path of the arriving train.

₅

Pain burst into glorious life on my side, pain that ex
ploded into agony as my arm was damn near yanked out
of its socket. Before my brain had time to process the fact
that I’d been knocked onto the track, I was off it again,
jerked beyond it to the other side of the platform.

A couple of people nearest me screamed, but the noise
was eaten up with the arrival of the train as it came to a
stop a few scant feet behind me.

A shriek of horror mingled with pain burbled up as I
found myself pressed against a hard, unmoving body. My
brain finally caught up to reality, causing me to shake
with the nearness of my certain demise.

“Oh, my god,” I said, clinging with desperate gratitude
to the man who had saved me. Thank god for Gabriel. I
had no idea what he was doing at the train station at that moment, but I would, until my last days on the earth, be
grateful he was there when I needed him. “Oh, my god,
oh, my god. Oh, my god.”

“Not god,
cara.
The next best thing, though.”

“I was almost killed,” I told Gabriel’s chest, great,
huge, heaving sobs of terror and relief trying to rip free of
my constricted throat. My arm and rib cage hurt like the
very devil, but all I could think of was how nice it was to be alive and feeling pain considering how near I had been
to death. “Oh, my god. I almost died.”

“You are a wyvem’s mate. Death does not come easily
to one such as you, although I will admit you could well
have been decapitated by the train, and that would indeed
have been the end to the brave little Guardian.”

Horribly vivid, gruesome images came to mind that
had me clutching Gabriel even harder. Two train officials
ran up to ask questions, but Gabriel spoke rapidly in
French I couldn’t begin to follow, and before I knew it, he
was trying to pry me from his chest. “We are attracting un
welcome attention. Come,
cara,
I will escort you home.”