You Slay Me (16 page)

I gave her a feeble smile. "Drake is also involved in the murder of Mme. Deauxville. At least, I think he is. He won't tell me what he was doing there, or what he saw, or what he knows. He's so darned frustrating!"

Amelie laughed again and got off the stool to pad barefoot over to a beautiful antique glass-topped rosewood box sitting next to the cash register. She unlocked it and withdrew a small green object on a gold chain. "I believe you have more need of this than I have to profit from its sale."

I stared down at the green jade dragon. It was about three inches tall, highly stylized, obviously Oriental in origin, the curved tail of the dragon forming a figure eight around the body. Touches of gold on the head and body and tip of the tail made the piece glow with a brilliance that isn't usual in jade. "What is it?"

"It's a talisman. Its provenance is unclear, but I believe it was created by one of the dragon septs, possibly the green dragons."

"It's so pretty," I cooed, wanting like mad to touch the beautiful dragon. My fingers positively itched to feel it.

"It is. It is also something that I suspect you could use, given the present difficulties you find yourself in."

I gave in to temptation, allowing the tip of my finger to trace the sinuous curve of the dragon's body. It felt warm, not cool like jade normally feels. "It's much too valuable for me to accept, Amelie, although I greatly appreciate your generosity in offering it to me."

"It is not a gift I offer easily," Amelie said, pressing the jade dragon into my hand. "But it is one that I feel is right."

"But, it's valuable, and I don't have a lot of money—"

"To refuse a gift that is sincerely offered is to give great insult," Amelie said briskly.

I looked at the green dragon. It felt... vibrant. As if it had its own energy. It hummed silently in my hand. 'Thank you," I said as graciously as I could, slipping the chain over my head. The talisman hung between my breasts, a warm, oddly comforting weight.

Amelie nodded her approval. "What is it you came to consult me about?"

I looked up from running my finger around serpentine dragon's tail. "Huh? Oh. Well, I was wondering if you knew whether dragons have an Achilles' heel. So to speak. Something I could use to force Drake into telling me what he knows about Mme. Deauxville's murder."

She made a thoughtful face.

"No Achilles' heel?" I guessed.

"None that I know of. The only one who might have the power to force a wyvern to do something he does not want to do ..." Her voice trailed off into nothing.

I sighed and picked up the cup of coffee again. "Don't tell me: The only one who can get the upper hand with Drake is the Venediger."

She spread her hands in a gesture of impotence. "He is the only one."

"Great. So now I'm going to have to go crawling to him on my belly to apologize up one side and down the other, as well as beg for his help—which will cost me heaven only knows what, if Ophelia and Perdita were right—all while he's so pissed at me that he's put a contract out on me."

"Contract?"

I waved away the question as I climbed off the stool, gathering up my bag and Jim's leash. "Doesn't matter. I think if I'm going to have to grovel, I'll do it without my furry little friend. I'd better get back to the hotel and figure out how to do the release ritual."

Jim, who had licked Cecile's ears to the point that they were frothy with dog slobber, frowned at me as I waggled the leash meaningfully, but the demon managed to drag itself from the corgi.

'Time to eat?" it asked hopefully.

"No, time to go to the hotel and send you back to your fiery little home."

Jim sat and gave me an odd look. "You can't send me back. I told you that you were my master now."

I snapped the leash on its collar. "Yes, I know. I'm your master because I summoned you, but you belong to Amaymon, so it's back you go."

"Geez, what do I need to do, use semaphore? I told you I was unclaimed."

Amelie sucked in her breath, and with that sound I had the first inkling that something else was about to go very, very wrong with my life.

"You said that Amaymon kicked you out of his legions, but that he'd take you back in a bit," I said slowly. With much portent.

Jim made a face. "Yes, but before that could happen, you summoned me. You bound me to you. That means you're my master now."

The inkling turned into a full-fledged flood of horror.
"What?"

Jim grinned; I swear it grinned at me. "It's just you and me, sweet cheeks."

"It can't do that, can it?" I asked Amelie with more than a little bit of desperation evident in my voice. "It can't refuse to go back? All I have to do is conduct the ritual, and it's gone, right?"

She shook her head. "All demons belong to a lord; that is the nature of their existence. If you summoned one who had been cast out, it would become your demon. Unless you did not command it so?"

A wild hope arose within me. I looked at Jim.

"Do the words 'My name is Aisling. I'm your master' ring any bells with you?"

My heart joined my stomach as it turned to a leaden ball and promptly dropped to my feet. "Oh, god. This means ... This means I'm ..."

"Yes," Amelie nodded gravely. "You are now officially a demon lord."

Oddly enough, I didn't collapse or burst into tears or have a hissy fit, or even throttle Jim right back to Abaddon, even though I really wanted to do all those things. Instead I drank a few more cups of coffee while Amelie looked through her extensive library for any help there might be in getting rid of an unwanted demon.

"I'm afraid that short of destroying the demon, there is nothing you can do. I do have one piece of good news, though," Amelie said.

"Hit me with it—I could use some good news," I said as I gathered up my things to leave.

"You are the only Guardian in existence who is also a wyvern's mate
and
a demon lord." ·

"Guess I'm just lucky that way, huh?"

Her lips twisted in a smile.
"Luck
is one word for it, yes."

I waved good-bye and trotted out to find a taxi to take me to the address she had given me.

"Metro's cheaper and has the added benefit of crotches right at nose level," Jim said as I walked toward a main street where Amelie said I'd find a taxi stand.

"You are in such hot water right now, I don't think you need to be saying anything, especially on a street where people might hear you."

"You're the one who's on the Venediger's hit list, and
I'm
in hot water?"

I stopped listening to Jim, concentrating on what I'd say to the Venediger when I met him, polishing up my apology for the police closing down his bar (even though that wasn't technically my fault), and trying to form a request for help with Drake that wouldn't involve me selling him anything I was attached to, like my soul.

By the time the taxi pulled up outside the four-story building in a quiet neighborhood in the fourteenth arrondissement, I had my groveling down perfectly. Trees lined a street almost empty of traffic as children ran up and down, romping on the sidewalks, dodging little old ladies with black scarves and mesh bags. The Venediger's gray stone building looked like any other in Paris, complete to the ubiquitous black scroll wrought-iron railing that graced the bottom third of every window. Twin white French doors were set back into a recessed entrance.

"Looks nice," Jim said as I paid the taxi driver. "Maybe he can put us up? It would be a nice change from those dives you like to hang around."

I shuddered. I didn't even want to think about staying with the Venediger. I had a feeling it wouldn't be at all healthy. "Effrijim, I command thee to keep thy piehole shut until I inform thee otherwise."

Jim, unable to refuse an outright order, glared at me. I smiled at it, patting its head as I pressed the buzzer. "Why didn't I think of this before? Silence, sweet silence."

Jim lifted its leg and peed on the side of the entrance-way.

"Bad demon, bad!" I scolded, quickly straightening up from where I was about to try to rub Jim's nose in the puddle when the door opened. A pretty brunette stood in the open doorway, her bright pink lips pursed in what I suspected was a perpetual pout as she looked first me, then Jim over. She was wearing the sort of black leather straps and fishnet ensemble I had always thought meant bondage queen. All the important parts were covered— just barely—but the rest was left open to inspection.
"Oui?"

"Bonjour. Parlez-vous anglais?"

"Yes," she admitted rather grudgingly. "What is it you want?"

"I would like to see the Venediger."

Her hand tightened on the door, almost as if she thought I was going to force my way into the house. Ha ha, oh ha. Almost made me laugh, that idea did.

"It's important," I added.

"He's meditating. Not for anything is the Venediger disturbed when he is communing with his guides."

"I have a feeling he won't mind being disturbed by me," I said with much loftiness, not a single ounce of which I was feeling. "My name is Aisling Grey."

Her eyes widened at my name; without a word she stepped backwards, waving me inside, which alternately pleased me (I was special!) and scared the crap out of me (the Venediger must really want to see me to allow his meditation time to be disrupted). Jim at my heels, I followed her through a surprisingly light, airy living room to a lovely small garden at the back of the house. Pink Lips gestured toward a small wooden structure in the back of the garden, situated next to a tall brick privacy fence. "He is in the gazebo."

"Thanks," I said. "Um ... excuse me, but what's your name?"

Suspicion filled her eyes. She took a step backwards. "Why do you ask?"

I raised my hands to show I was harmless. "Politeness. I thought it would be nice to know who you are."

"My name is my own," she said, snapping off the words. She turned on her heel and marched back into the house, slamming the door behind her.

"Sheesh, what did I say? Why wouldn't she tell me her name?" I asked Jim.

It blinked its eyes at me.

"Oh for heaven's sake ... you can speak again."

The answer to that permission was a rude gesture made with a big hairy paw. I tugged on the leash as we started across the yard. "Very clever, Mr. Pottypaws. Answer my question: Why did that girl get all bristly with me when all I did was ask her name?"

"I told you once—names have power."

"Uh..."

Jim heaved one of his (many) martyred sighs. "If she told you her name, you could have used that against her."

"You're kidding."

Jim flared its nostrils, not an easy feat for a Newfie. "Do I look like I'm kidding?"

"Hmm," I said thoughtfully as we strolled across the lovely velvety green lawn toward a white gazebo. Nothing about the structure was what I thought of as a traditional gazebo—a circular covered wooden deck with seats going around the perimeter. This building was made of wood, all right, whitewashed wood, but the windows were standard size and bore tinted glass panes. There was also a solid-looking door. The fence beyond the gazebo was at least ten feet high, made out of solid red brick.

Evidently the Venediger liked his privacy even in his backyard.

I took a deep breath as I stopped before the closed door, mentally running one more time over my apology and plea for help. "OK, I can do this. I'm a professional. I'm in control. I have a demon, and I know how to use it."

"Do you have a history of insanity in your family? 'Cause I think what you're about to do is downright stupid."

"Comments from the peanut gallery are entirely optional," I said, raising my hand to knock on the door. The second my knuckles struck wood, the door opened. Slowly. With much creaking. I stood in the open doorway, my hand still raised to knock as I gazed inside. Evidently there were skylights, because the closed gazebo was filled with light shining down in beautiful golden beams.

Light that caressed the figure of a man hanging upside down.

Light that shone off the highly polished handle of the seax that had been plunged into the man's chest.

Light that glinted off the blood pooled below, captured in the black-etched symbols of Ashtaroth.

Jim pushed against my leg to peer inside. "Well, now, there's a sight you don't see every day."

"Voulez-vous cesser de me cracker dessuspendant que vous parlez,"
I said, my heart pounding wildly.

"There's the spitting-in-my-face saying," Jim said softly to itself.

"J'ai une grenouille dans mon bidet!"
I growled.

"And the frogs."

"T'as une tete afaire sauter les plaques d'egouts,"
I wailed.

"Face like a manhole cover. Can
merde
be very far behind?"

"Merde!"
I bellowed.

"You can say that again," Jim said.

10

"Why does this keep happening to me?" I wailed, waving my hands around wildly. "Why, why, why? What am I, a dead body magnet?"

"You want everyone in the neighborhood to hear you, keep it up," Jim advised, looking over its shoulder toward the house.

"Ack!"
I shoved Jim inside the gazebo and closed the door behind us. "Don't touch anything. Oh, my god, he's been
killed
!”

"Looks like the same setup as the other place," Jim said, nosing around the circle. "Smells the same, too."

I wrung my hands, my mind whirling like a hamster chained to a wheel, forced to run around and around and around without stop. "He's dead! The Venediger is dead! Right in front of me, he's
dead!"

"Yeah, I think we've established that. Are you hysterical?" Jim asked. "Should I slap you upside the head?"

The threat of being slapped by a demon allowed me to get a grip on myself (although it was a close thing there for a few seconds). I took a few deep breaths to get some much-needed oxygen heading toward my hamster-on-a-wheel brain. "OK. I'm in control. I'm confident."

"But are you a professional?" Jim asked.