Light My Fire (10 page)

I squinted at it. “You mean they can divine? I thought
you had to have a soul to do that. Demons don’t have
souls.”

“Newsflash: Not all demons are created equal.”

My squint turned into a pointed look. “What on earth
does that mean?”

Jim’s furry shoulders shrugged.

I decided I’d had enough of arguing with it, and in
stead gave myself up to the bliss of coffee as it scorched its way down. “I want to marry Mr. Starbucks and bear
him many children.”

“You don’t think that’s going to conflict with all the
kids you and Drake will have?”

“Stop staring at my stomach,” I said, closing my eyes
to allow the beverage to work its magic on my still-tired
brain. “I’m not grumpy or pregnant.”

“Uh-huh. Who was the one who was telling me her
boobs were hurting?”

I mulled that over for a moment. Jim was right that my
breasts had been a bit more sensitive than normal, but I
chalked that up to a period delayed by the stress of mov
ing to the other side of the world. “Boobs hurt when you
have your period, you who have no uterus.”

“Right, but you haven’t had that in over a month, have you? According to
Cosmo,
one of the seven classic signs
you’re preggers is sore boobs.”

“We are not having this conversation,” I told the
demon before I headed toward the bathroom. “We’ve got
ten minutes before we have to leave. Go lick whatever it
is you have to lick in order to be presentable in public.”

Jim’s reply was thankfully lost in news from a radio I
flipped on before stepping into the bathroom to comb my hair. A few minutes later Jim and I stood on the sidewalk,
waiting for our ride to the dragons’ meeting.

“So what’s this all about, anyway?” Jim asked as a
black car pulled alongside us. I climbed into the car after
it. “And why did you come home last night all ragged and
bloody and smelling to high Abaddon?”

“We’re going to some sort of sept meeting. I don’t
know exactly what it’s about, but Drake felt it was impor
tant I be there. Hi, Rene. Thanks for picking us up.”

“Bonjour, Aisling and Jim. I, too, am interested to hear the tale of your activities last night.”

I heaved a little inner sigh but was secretly warmed by
both Jim’s and Rene’s apparent concern. Even if it was
only a demon and a mysterious taxi driver, it was still
nice to be worried about. “Someone tried to kill me last
night by shoving me in front of an oncoming train,” I said
quickly, pausing for their reactions.

“Who would do such a horrible thing?” Rene asked
when he was through swearing. “And why would some
one try? Do they know not you are a wyvern’s mate, and
now immortal?”

I thought for a moment but couldn’t remember ever
telling Rene that I was immortal. And yet he seemed to
know that was one of the benefits of being a wyvern’s
mate ... just more proof that he wasn’t what he seemed
to be. I filed it away under my mental evidence folder and
succinctly recounted the events of the past evening.

“Mon dieu.
You think it was the silver wyvern who pushed you?” Rene asked, his eyes watching me in the
mirror.

I pointed at the road in front of him as he narrowly
missed mowing down several pedestrians. “No, of course
not. Well, possibly. Oh, I don’t know what to think! Gabriel is a friend. He wouldn’t try to kill me. It had to
be someone else or an accident... and I really don’t think it was an accident.”

“Hmm,” Rene said thoughtfully as he negotiated his
way across London. “That is most interesting that some
one would want to kill you.”

“Yeah, it’s a barrel-full-of-monkeys sort of fun, but I could do without murder attempts right now.”

“Ah. Because of the
bebe?”

My jaw dropped slightly at the last word, spoken with a delightful French accent. My head whipped around to
glare at Jim. “What have you been telling him?”

To my surprise, Jim’s eyes were filled with righteous
indignation. “Nothing! I didn’t tell him anything!”

“You just had to spout off about your wild theory
about me being pregnant—which, I assure you, isn’t so,”
I said, turning to face Rene. “If Jim didn’t tell you its silly
idea, why did you say that? I don’t look pregnant, do I?”

“Non”
Rene said hurriedly as I tugged the fitted
bodice of the dark green viscose dress, one of a couple I’d bought for dragon affairs. “I thought I heard someone say
you were
enceinte!”

“Who would say something like that about me?” I de
manded to know, intending on giving the rumormonger a
piece of my mind.

Rene gave me an unreadable look. I pointed a finger at
him. “When I’m done with all this dragon business, you
and I are going to sit down and have a long, long talk.”

“That will be very agreeable,” he said.

I ignored that. “What I meant to say earlier was that I
have enough stress in my life right now without trying to
figure out who’s trying to knock me off.”

“Ah,” Rene said, but I noticed his gaze flickering in the
mirror to my abdomen.

“I’m not pregnant!” I practically yelled. “Honest to Pete! Don’t you two think I’d know if I was?”

Jim rolled its eyes. “Ash, sweetie, honey, babykins—
you’re not the most astute person in the world.”

“No, but I’m sentient enough to know if I’m pregnant
or not.”

“My wife did not know for three months with our first
one,” Rene mused. “But her monthly time, it was not very
stable, you know? Yours is perhaps more reliable?”

I slumped back against the seat and rubbed my head.
“I can’t believe we’re having a conversation about this.”

“I’ve only been with her for a few months, but she
seems to be pretty regular,” Jim said. “Every three and a
half weeks she’ll come home with a big bag of potato
chips and lots of chocolate, and I know the next few days
will be major grouchyville.”

“I’m going to wake up now. This is a horrible dream.
Right. I’m waking up.”

“It is bad for her, the time? My wife used to be much
worse, but having the little ones seemed to cure her of
most of the trouble,” Rene said.

I wanted to bean him on the back of the head.

“You answer that, and there will be no lunch for you,”
I told Jim, who had opened its mouth to answer. It
hrumphed instead and looked out the window. “Rene,
will you be available this afternoon? I don’t know when
the meeting will get out, but I assume it’ll include a meal,
so I’m guessing three or four hours.”

“You call, and I will be here waiting for you in no
more than ten minutes,” Rene said, flashing me a charm
ing smile.

“Great. I’m sure Drake will offer us a ride home, but...”

“I will not abandon you to him, have none of the fears.”

I opened my mouth to thank him, but at that moment, a white panel van slammed into the taxi, sending us with
a horrible barrage of crumpled metal, breaking glass, and
screaming tires crashing directly into a cement zebra-
crossing barrier.

₇

The screeching noise of the accident echoed in my head
as I lay gasping with pain on the floor of the taxi. My first
instinct was to go straight into full panic mode, but I
haven’t been working on meditative exercises for noth
ing. Despite my brain shrieking at me to claw my way out
from the twisted remains of the taxi, I kept a grip on my emotions and slowly tried to sort out my impressions.

My ribs hurt where I had fallen in front of the train, but
no worse than they had earlier, which meant nothing
there was broken. I was trapped under something big,
heavy, and hot. . . which breathed, so it wasn’t the car
seat, as I had thought.

“Jim?” I asked, wiggling my feet to make sure my legs
weren’t broken. “Are you OK? Is anything hurt?”

“Aaaaagg,” a familiar grumpy voice groaned. “Did anyone get the number of that wrecking ball?”

I breathed a tiny sigh of relief. If Jim could crack wise,
then it was all right. “Get off me if you can; you weigh a
ton. Rene? Are you all right?”

“I think he’s unconscious,” Jim said, the tremendous
weight lifting off me. A shower of glass sprinkled down
as the demon struggled to get out of what remained of the
taxi. ‘There’s blood all over and he’s slumped into the
steering wheel.”

I swore under my breath, flinching when I used my
right hand to lever myself up off the floor. Around us,
voices called out questions, horns honked, and far in the
distance, an ambulance’s siren sounded. “Crapbeans. I
wrenched my hand. Can someone help me?”

Hands reached in through the broken window to pull Jim
out. I got to my knees and looked over the back of the front
seat at Rene. Two men were trying to open the driver’s door, but it was smashed against the barrier. The door on the other
side escaped the impact from the van that hit us, however,
so the Good Samaritans quickly got it open and gently
pulled Rene out of the car.

“Don’t move him,” I yelled as another man and a
woman helped me through the broken window. I held my
right hand close to my body but shrugged off the man’s
request that I sit and allow him to check me over.

“Rene? Oh, god, there’s so much blood!” I crawled
over to where he lay on the pavement, surrounded by our
rescuers and interested bystanders. “Is anyone here a
doctor?”

“I have first aid training,” a serious young man said as
he handed his messenger bag to a young woman. He
knelt down on the other side of Rene and did a quick ex
amination. “He’s breathing.”

“Is anything broken? Does he look like he’s seriously
hurt?” I asked, using the hem of my dress to wipe some
of the blood off Rene’s face. A gash near his hairline ex
plained the blood all over his face .. . but curiously, the
wound wasn’t bleeding anymore.

“It’s difficult for me to tell,” the young man said,
gingerly feeling Rene’s arms and legs. “But I don’t think
anything’s broken. Internal injuries are beyond me, how
ever.”

Rene’s left leg twitched. I was in the process of using an unbloodied bit of dress to put some pressure on his head wound, but instead I sat watching with
stunned wonder as the wound closed itself and melted
into nothing.

Two brown eyes opened to meet my astonished gaze.

I leaned close and whispered, “Who
are
you?”

“A friend,” he whispered back, a little twinkle flashing
in his eyes. The siren of an ambulance grew louder and closer as I sat back, wondering for what seemed like the
umpteenth time just who he was and why he was in my
life.

I allowed the paramedics to pull me aside and check
me over for injuries without one murmur of dissent.
Rene, however, argued with them that he was just fine,
and that the blood must have come from a slight cut in his
scalp.

“Everyone knows how the wounds of the head, they
bleed like the pig running around without its brain,” he
told the nearest paramedic.

The woman looked a little surprised but couldn’t argue
with the evidence Rene presented—he looked hale and hearty as he told everyone that he didn’t need further
examination.

“I’m sorry about your cousin’s taxi,” I said a short
while later, after signing a release form and getting a lec
ture about being checked out at the nearest hospital. I
waved at the paramedics as they left. “I don’t know if it’s
shock from the accident or what, but I’m not quite exactly sure what happened. All I remember was seeing a flash of
white, then boom!”