Fire Me Up (4 page)

"Looks like Istvan hasn't forgiven you for almost neutering
him," Jim commented.

"That was an accident and you know it. Besides, I've sworn
never to play darts again, so he has nothing to be surly about." I gritted out a
smile at both men, gave Pal a little wave in return, and ignoring the stares and
whispered comments from everyone in the lobby, made my way to the front desk.

"Here is my cousin Bela's mobile number." When I was finished
checking in, Rene pressed into my hand a postcard with a phone number scrawled
across the back. "You will call me when you are ready to find the hermit, yes? I
do not like to think of what trouble will find you if you were to go off on your
own. Did you learn any language for this trip?"

"Language? Oh, Hungarian. Yeah. There was this guy I ran into
in a chat room when I was online looking up information on the hotel, and he
gave me a couple of phrases to say. Let's see ... uh ... szeretnelek latni ruha
nelkul."

Rene's eyes widened as he choked. "What... eh ... what is it
you think you just said?"

I frowned. "What do you mean what do I think I said? I said,
'It's a lovely day out.'"

He shook his head. Jim snickered.

I thinned my lips at them both. "Well, I'm sorry, my
pronunciation is probably a little off. I'm new to this learning foreign
languages thing, as you both very well know. What did I say wrong?"

Jim licked its leg with strange absorption, A faint smile
tugged at the corners of Rene's lips. "This once, your pronunciation was good.
Not excellent, as is mine, but good enough to be understood."

"Oh," I said, pleased by his praise. Rene had tried to teach
me some useful French a month ago (useful if you want to say things like "I have
frogs in my bidet") and previously had only scathing things to say about rny
pronunciation. Clearly French was not going to be iny forte, but Hungarian was
obviously another thing altogether. Maybe I'd turn out to be a linguist after
all. "So what was wrong with what I said?"

He stopped fighting the smile as Jim put a paw over its eyes
and groaned. "To me, you say, 'I would like to see you naked.'"

"No!" I gasped, mentally damning the man in the chat room.
"That poop! And I went to the trouble of learning all the stuff he gave me.
Dammit!"

Rene shook his head as he laughed, giving my hand a
sympathetic squeeze. "You will be sure to call me? I do not want to think of you
walking around Budapest telling people you like to see them naked. You call if
you need a driver. Or if you need help with others. You remember I am much good
behind your back."

I gave him a hug. "Yes, thank you, you are wonderful at
watching my back, and I very much appreciate all your help. It's getting too
late today to find the hermit, but what say we make an appointment for
tomorrow?"

We agreed upon a time, and with a final grin, Rene toddled
off, his hands in his pockets as he whistled a jaunty tune, looking utterly
normal in a world that I was fast realizing was anything but.

"Come on, you hairy hound from"—Jim raised an eyebrow at
me—"Abaddon. Let's go get ourselves spiffed up, and we'll see what's going on
with all the Diviners and Theurgists and Guardians."

"You do that really well," Jim said as I dragged the suitcase
over to an elevator, checking the plastic key card for the room number.

"Do what? Twelve-fifteen. Drat. I hate rooms above the third
floor."

"Ignore the fact that the second you saw Drake, you stood en
points faster than an Irish setter spotting a pheasant."

I glared at it. "I am not a dog, and I resent you comparing
me to one. You're the one with the dog fetish, not me. I'll thank you to
remember that I'm perfectly happy being a human."

"No, you're not a dog, but you are changing the subject."

"So observant, my little demon." I patted Jim on the head as
the elevator doors closed.

"Do you really think you can just ignore him? It didn't work
when you were on the other side of the world, Aisling. Now you two are in the
same city—the same hotel. And the second you see him you're all but drooling on
the man."

"Demon, I order thee to keep thy trap zipped until I tell
thee otherwise."

Jim glared at me, unable to violate a direct order. I hated
having to resort to such harsh measures, but I was having a hard enough time
getting my brain to stop running around like a deranged Chihuahua to tolerate
Jim poking at something I just couldn't deal with at the moment.

"I am a professional," I told the empty hallway as I dragged
my suitcase down the long, opulent passage, Jim walking silently behind me. "I
have seen the worst and triumphed over it. I can do this."

I didn't release Jim from its bondage of silence until I had
taken a fast shower, changed into a gauze peasant skirt and matching blouse that
I thought looked exotically pretty, wrapped a colorful scarf around my hair in
an attempt to look totally and completely different from the crazed woman who
had fallen in the lobby, and gathered my new organizer.

"You're to be on your best behavior," I warned Jim on the
ride down to the conference level of the hotel. "No peeing on anything unless I
say you can. No gender checks by sniffing anyone's pertinent body parts. No
wisecracks about me in relation to men named Drake. You got all that?"

Jim's lips curled, but its great black furry head gave a curt
nod of agreement.

"Good. You may speak now."

"I hate it when you do that," it burst out, eyes bulging a
little with the strain of having kept its comments to itself. "Not even Amayon
used to make us be silent!"

"Don't tell tales about your former demon master. Ah, I think
this is where we're supposed to be." We exited the elevator to walk through a
busy reception area. Over a wall of doors a huge banner hung, reading (in
French, English, and what I assumed was Hungarian) 238TH INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE OF GODTAM. Although the conference wasn't due to start for another
hour—with the official kickoff banquet—there were a number of people in business
attire milling around, some sitting on the scattered benches and chairs, others
in small clutches talking quietly with one another. A latte stand in the corner
of the room did brisk business. "Wow. Our first conference. Maybe I should have
worn my brown suit? Do I look dressy enough to you? This is kind of exciting,
huh?"

"Yes, no, yes, and it would be downright thrilling if you
were to feed me," Jim answered, watching an attractive couple wander past
bearing paper latte cups and elaborate pastries bristling with almonds.

"The dinner will start in an hour or so. You will kindly
remember that I had to pay for you to attend the meal and not embarrass me by
demanding horsemeat or something ghastly like that."

"You sure know how to take the fun out of life," Jim snorted
as we joined a short line before a skirted table manned by several individuals
all wearing badges with a nine-pointed symbol.

Although I knew from experience that most of the citizens of
the Otherworld looked perfectly normal—the dragons' slightly elongated pupils
being the only physical sign that they weren't human—I still half expected to
see something out of the ordinary, some indication that we had stepped out of
the real world and into something cloaked in mystery and magic.

"Name?"

I pulled my mind from its wanderings to attend to the
registration woman. "Aisling Grey."

"Ashling?"

"That's right." I spelled my name for her. "It's Irish."

"Denomination?"

"Huh? Well, my mother is Catholic, but my father was
Presbyterian. I'm kind of neither."

The woman gave me an annoyed look. "Are you a Diviner,
Theurgist, Guardian, Oracle, or Mage?"

"Oh, that sort of denomination. Guardian. Kind of. Really
more like Guardian lite."

"Less filling, half the fat," Jim quipped.

The woman ignored both of us as she pulled a box of envelopes
toward her.

"And there should also be a registration for my... um ...
demon. Its name is Effrijim."

Jim nosed the box. "I hope it just says 'Jim' on the name
tag. I don't want anyone to think I'm a sissy."

"A demon?" She gave Jim a cold look before flicking through
the thick envelopes, finally extracting two. She handed me clip-on name badges
for both of us, as well as a thick packet of material. I clipped my badge to a
ruffle on my peasant blouse, then attached Jim's to its collar "Demons are
expected to be kept under control at all times and are not to be left
unattended. If you do leave your demon without supervision, it will be trapped
in limbo and returned to its demon lord at your expense. The main convention
hall and ballroom have been warded and spelled so that you cannot conduct dark
magic within their confines. The meeting rooms are unprotected, however. Do you
understand and accept these terms?"

Jim started to tell the woman that I was its demon lord, but
I interrupted it before it could blather that news to everyone. "Sure. No
problem. I'm not really hip with dark magic. I'm just here to find a Guardian
mentor."

The woman tapped a few keys on the laptop computer sitting
next to the registration materials, and a printer at the end of the table hummed
to life. She pulled a piece of what looked like parchment from it, sliding it
toward me along with an old-fashioned nib pen.

"Kind of an odd mixture of high-tech and quasi-medieval,
huh?" I commented, waving at the printed parchment with the pen.

She just looked pointedly at the paper.

In the upper corner of the sheet was my name, written in a
beautiful, ornate calligraphic font In the center was drawn the same elaborate
nine-pointed star that the conference workers wore, I looked closer at the pen
and realized that it wasn't a pen at all. It was a lance, the sort diabetics use
to get a drop of blood for testing. "Uh—"

"You must seal the agreement in blood," the woman said in an
annoyed, put-upon voice. "Failure to do so will result in ejection from the
conference."

"Heaven forbid," I murmured as I jabbed my thumb with the
lance. "Where do you want it?"

"In the nonagram." I blinked. She sighed. "A nona-gram is a
nine-pointed star. It is the symbol of studied achievement, which is part of the
motto of the GOD-TAM."

Without further ado I pressed the bead of blood into the
center of the star. The parchment must have had some magic worked on it, because
the second my blood touched it, I was overtaken by the sensation of silken cords
wrapping around and around me.

"What—was that—?" I rubbed my arms. Despite the fact that I
could see there was nothing on me other than my clothing, the feeling of the
bonds remained.

"You are now bound by the covenant of the GOD-TAM," the
registration woman intoned in a bored voice. "Welcome to the conference, and
blessed be. Next!"

"Oh. Does my demon need to be bound as well?"

"Demons cannot be bound in such a manner. You are responsible
for its behavior. NEXT!"

Jim and I passed through the doors into the main conference
area, following a group of men in expensive, well-tailored suits.

"Mages," Jim said in an undertone, its eyes on the men.

"Really? How can you tell?"

"Their shoes. Mages go in for Italian footwear. So do
dragons, but those guys don't smell like dragons."

I slid a curious glance down to Jim, walking at my side.
"Just what exactly do dragons smell like?"

It lifted a furry black lip in a sneer. "You ought to know,
you've spent enough time with your nose buried in Drake's—"

"Jim!" I shrieked.

"—neck."

I pinched the thick skin on its back. "Just forget I asked,
OK? Shall we mingle?"

"Oh, yeah. Are those hors d'oeuvres for everyone? I'm gonna
get me some before I starve to death." Jim shimmied toward a waiter wandering
through the gathering crowd offering a tray of tall champagne flutes and another
with tiny canapes.

"Save room for dinner!" I called after the demon, then stood
looking around at everyone in their suits and chic outfits, feeling very out of
place, very bumpkin visiting polished town cousins.

"Hullo. You're a Guardian, too? Is this your first time?"

I turned at the friendly singsong voice. A tall blond woman
wearing a slinky black dress smiled at me. She looked like a Barbie doll come to
life, a Scandinavian Barbie doll, if her accent was anything to go by. "Yes, to
both questions, although the first one is kind of iffy. I'm Aisling. I'm
actually here looking for a mentor."

"Really?" She eyed me from crown to toes, walking a circle
around me to get a better look. I wished I had put on my brown power suit. It
might not be a sexy little black dress, but at least T looked professional in
il. "I have been thinking it time to take on an apprentice. We might suit. I am
Moa. I am from Berge, Sweden. You have completed the ritual?"

"Ritual?" I bit my lip. "I've done a couple of rituals. I
summoned a demon, and later I almost summoned a demon lord—"