Up In Smoke by Katie MacAlister
“You have learned, I think.”
“I am simply taking an unnecessary precaution, nothing more.” He hesitated again, then quickly whisked all the knives from the table, depositing them unobtrusively in an urn on the sideboard just as Aisling opened the door.
“What did I miss?” she asked as Gabriel roared with laughter. “A good joke? I love jokes! Is it the one about the demon and the nun? That one always makes Jim wheeze.”
I waited until Drake had helped her into her chair before addressing Gabriel, who was dabbing at his eyes with his napkin. “Who is going to be at this meeting? Bastian or Fiat?”
“Possibly both. The sárkány was called by Bastian to address the issue of Fiat, who will probably show up claiming he’s the blue wyvern and thus has a right to be there.”
“I see. Will Kostya be there, as well?”
“Probably,” Gabriel said, “although he has yet to petition the weyr for recognition.”
I waited, but he didn’t add anything else, despite seemingly wanting to. I wondered what had been going on between him and Kostya while I was in Abaddon but figured he didn’t want to discuss it in front of Drake. While Drake had apparently never been particularly close to his brother, I assumed a blood bond was a hard one to break.
“And the other dragon sept? The red one?”
“Are you finished?” Gabriel asked. I nodded and pushed back my plate. “We have much to do before the meeting this afternoon. The red dragons will likely send a representative, although who that will be is unknown. We are unsure of what the wyvern Chuan Ren’s fate was after Aisling cast her into Abaddon.”
“That reminds me! I meant to ask you if you’d heard anything about Chuan Ren while you were with Magoth,” Aisling said, turning to me. “I have no idea where she ended up, or even if she stayed there long. No one’s heard a thing from her, or the red dragons.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t hear anything about a dragon being imprisoned in Abaddon.”
“Well, crap,” Aisling said, looking at her husband. “You don’t think she could be dead?”
“I do not know,” Drake answered slowly. “It may be that she has yet to return from Abaddon, but that no one has stepped forward to claim her position. She ruled the red dragons for more than a millennium and would have seen to it that any competition within the sept was eliminated before it became dangerous.”
“It will be interesting to see who shows up at the sárkány,” Gabriel agreed, standing and holding out his hand for me. “We will see you there. But first, I promised May I would take her shopping.”
I smiled and thanked Aisling again for the loan of her clothes.
“Oh, no problem; nothing fits me now but bed-sheets anyway,” she said, tugging at an oversized shirt. “I’ll see you two at the sárkány, later. I’m looking forward to having another mate there!”
“Er . . . about that,” Drake said slowly as we exited the room.
Gabriel paused and nodded at the porcelain vase at the opposite end of the room. “You might want to take that out before you tell her,” he said brightly. “It looks valuable.”
“Before you tell me what?” I heard Aisling ask. Gabriel quietly closed the door and took my hand to lead me down the hall.
We made it to the front door before we heard the sound of a raised voice, followed shortly by that of porcelain crashing against a hard surface.
“I did warn him,” Gabriel said, shaking his head.
“You’re a healer,” I said as he tried to pull me out the door and into the Parisian sunshine. “Shouldn’t you go and see if Drake’s all right?”
“There is no treasure that could tempt me into the same room as Aisling right now,” he answered, kissing the tip of my nose before trotting down the front stairs to where Tipene was leaning against a car.
I followed him, wondering what it was Aisling could do to instill such respect . . . and whether someday I would be able to command the same.
Chapter Six
Shopping with Gabriel was a slightly stressful experience—not because it was an activity we hadn’t done together before, but because he was footing the bill, which meant for the first time in my life I was able to shop without considering a budget, a fact that seemed to amuse him.
“I realize that you have been forced to rely on Magoth for your source of income in the mortal world,” he said as he sent the upscale Parisian store saleswoman staggering off to the cash register with her arms piled high with clothing, “but surely your twin has had centuries to build her personal resources. Did she not share them with you?”
“Cyrene may be more than a thousand years old, but that doesn’t mean she’s managed to save anything. In fact, it’s usually the opposite—she hits me up for spending money. I’m lucky that she lives rent-free in an apartment owned by a fellow naiad; otherwise, I’d probably have her living with me in my little flat,” I answered, touching with reverent fingers a lovely silky, nearly transparent midnight gauze blouse embedded with tiny little glittering crystals that sparkled like stars on an ebony sky. The price tag was that of a small used car. I moved on.
Gabriel picked up the blouse, pursed his lips as he eyed his fingers, visible through the sheer material, glanced briefly but speculatively at my breasts, then tossed the blouse onto the mound of clothing at the register. “I am not wealthy by dragon standards, but I can say in all sincerity that I can support both you and your twin without too much of a strain.”
I took the blouse back and put it on the rack, giving Gabriel a level look as I did so. “I appreciate the fact that you’re willing to help out Cyrene, but that’s not necessary. Magoth does pay me, even if it’s just barely a living wage. I may have been created some eighty-odd years ago, but I am modern enough to take pride in the fact that I can support myself and Cy, if I have to.”
“But you do not have to,” Gabriel said, reclaiming the blouse and shoving it into the saleswoman’s hands.
“No, and while I’m grateful that you are generous enough to wish me to live in comfort, I do want to pull my own weight. Or as much as I can, given the fact that Magoth is my employer.” I reached for the blouse, but the saleswoman had evidently been watching us, for she hurriedly rang it up, accompanying the process with a defiant toss of her head.
I looked at Gabriel. He grinned. My knees immediately responded by threatening to give way under me. “The only reason I’m allowing you to buy me these things is because everything I own is back in London, and it would take too long to have Cyrene send them here.”
“You are allowing me to buy you these things because you are my mate, and it is only right and fitting that you are garbed in clothing appropriate to your position,” he corrected. “Not to mention that it gives me pleasure to provide you with them. Perhaps you should have two of that see-through one.”
“No!” I said quickly, then sighed with mock resignation as he laughed. I placed my hand on his chest so I could feel his heartbeat. My fingernails burst into flame. “Fine, then. Force me to accept an entire wardrobe full of expensive and gorgeous clothing the likes of which I have never had. Go on, twist my arm.”
He laughed again, a velvety sound that seemed to curl around me, stroking my skin in a wholly arousing manner. An answering light of interest shone within his eyes, and I think he would have pulled me into an embrace right there in front of everyone, but just then my phone rang, breaking the spell.
“Oh, good, it’s Cyrene,” I said, glancing at the caller ID number. “I wondered when she would get back to me. Cy? Yes, it’s me, and I’m out.”
Gabriel looked for a moment like he wanted to say something but just gave a little head shake and moved off to pay for the clothing.
I took a few steps away to an unoccupied corner of the store, relieved to hear the voice of my twin after such a long absence.
“Mayling! I was so happy to get your voice mail! How did Gabriel get you out of Abaddon? I offered to help him by going to Magoth and begging him to release you
“Well, it doesn’t really matter because his plan did work, and I’m here now. How have you been while I’ve been trapped in Abaddon? You haven’t been rescuing anything, have you?”
“Certainly not!” she said with righteous indignation, no doubt hearing the slight tone of censure that had crept into my voice. “I told that dragon of yours that I wouldn’t get into trouble while you were gone, and I haven’t.”
“I’m relieved to hear it.” Cyrene attracted trouble the way a flame drew moths. “What have you been doing while you were keeping your nose clean?”
“Oh, this and that,” she said airily, and instantly my mental warning sirens went off. “You said you’re in Paris?”
“Yes,” I said slowly, eyeing Gabriel across the room. I knew he had kept tabs on Cyrene for me while I was out of commission, so surely he would have told me if she’d managed to get herself into some sort of trouble. “What exactly is this and that?”
Silence answered me. It was a silence I was all too familiar with.
“Oh, Cy,” I said, slumping into a chair that sat next to the wall. “What have you done now?”
“I haven’t done anything! I just got done telling you that! It’s . . . er . . . it’s just that . . . Oh, Mayling, I’m in trouble! But it’s not my fault, I swear!” The sentence ended on a wail, just as I knew it would. It was accompanied by a couple of moist sniffles that meant big tears were rolling down her face.
“What is it now? Something with the committee? Did they find out how you helped me escape confinement?”
“No, it’s not them. Kostya said they’re not smart enough to figure it out. It’s . . . it’s something else.”
“Kostya?” I leaped on the name that she’d tried to slip past me. “What does the black dragon have to do with your trouble? Is he bothering you, Cy? Because if he is, I’ll just tell Drake—”
“No!” she interrupted, her voice thick with tears. “Kostya isn’t bothering me—he’s wonderful! He’s so needy! I know you won’t like it, but we’ve been dating, and oh, May, I think this really may be it! I think he’s the one.”
I wanted to bang my forehead against the nearest wall, but knew that wouldn’t do anyone good. “You’re not making the least little bit of sense. When I left you, you had just kneed Kostya in the groin, calling him all sorts of names.”
“Oh, that. That was just a little misunderstanding. I’ve had more than a month to get to know him, really get to know him, and I know now that he’s just horribly mistreated by everyone, your wyvern in particular.”
I bristled on Gabriel’s behalf, but before I could protest, she continued.
“You remember how I said that I thought Gabriel was confused about which of us was really the wyvern’s mate, and that since we were twins, I was probably his true mate, and he just thought you were?”
“Um . . .” I didn’t want to point out that we had proven beyond all doubt that I was Gabriel’s mate. Cyrene tended to be a bit touchy about that subject. Or at least she had been . . .
“Well, I started thinking about that, and I figured out why I couldn’t handle Gabriel’s fire and you could.”
“And what did you surmise?” I asked cautiously. “We’re both wyvern’s mates!” She giggled. “Mayling, you’re breathing like a bulldog. Stop hackling up like I know you are; I’m not going to take your wyvern away from you. That’s the beauty of the situation—I have my own! I am clearly meant to be Kostya’s mate just like you’re meant to be Gabriel’s.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them, Gabriel stood before me, a quizzical look on his face. “Problems?” he asked.
“Just Cyrene being Cyrene,” I said, putting my hand over the mouthpiece. “Can you give me a couple of minutes to try and talk some sense into her?”
He nodded. “Maata’s birthday is in two weeks. I’ll tell her she may have carte blanche in the store as her present.”
I glanced over to where his two guards stood leaning against a wall near the entrance, and nodded. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
“I’ll tell Maata she has an hour, then,” he said with wink before wandering off.
Cyrene, who had continued with an lengthy line of reasoning why she was obviously the best person to be Kostya’s mate, drew up short when I interrupted her. “We can talk about the situation with Kostya later. I assume the trouble you referred to earlier is something to do with him? Have the other dragon septs said anything to you?”
“Oh.” Her voice, which had been its usual light, burbling self, flattened to a whisper. “No, that’s something else. May, it’s . . . oh, it’s horrible!”
“What?” I asked, my stomach tightening despite long decades of familiarity with the sort of trouble into which she could get herself. “Stop hemming and hawing, and just tell me. You know it’s always worse if you try to prepare me for it ahead of time.”
“I know, but this time it’s especially tricky. It’s . . . it’s Neptune.”
“Who?” I asked, startled.
“Neptune. You know, the head of all us water beings. He rules the sisterhood, not that we like to admit it, because, well, you know how some of the sisters are—they don’t like men very much, and Neptune has always been rather condescending toward us naiads, like we’re not valuable to the planet or something. As if! We do more work than any of the other elemental beings put together. Anyway.” She took a deep breath, her words having slowed down from their initial tumbling rush. “Neptune called me before him, and, May, it wasn’t pretty at all.”
“I have no doubt of that. How bad is it?”
“Bad. He stripped me!”
“What?” I asked, shocked.
“You and your dirty mind. He stripped me of my title,” she wailed. “It was horrible!”
I closed my eyes for a moment. “For the love of all that’s . . . what exactly happened?”
Ten seconds of silence followed my question. “It’s my spring.”
“What about it?”
“I’ve been so busy with Kostya the last month, the spring . . . He was so very needy, you understand, I mean, seriously needy, and he took up vast amounts of my time and attention . . . and the spring . . . well, it just sort of . . . became tainted.”
“You let your spring go unattended?” I asked in stark disbelief. Naiads, as water beings, had charge of various freshwater resources. Some protected lakes, others rivers, and some, like Cyrene, personally watched over and preserved springs that fed a number of rivers and underground tributaries. I was familiar enough with the Sisterhood of Hydriades to know just how serious a matter it was to let your charge go without due attention. “Oh, Cy. How could you do that?”
“It was Kostya! He needed me, Mayling! No one has ever needed me the way he has. He . . .” Her voice dropped to an almost inaudible whisper. “He’s so incredibly sexy. I just couldn’t resist him.”
I sighed softly to myself. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that chastisement has little effect on my twin. “Sometimes I wish you’d given up some other trait than your common sense to create me.”
“I’m sorry,” came the very small reply.
“I know you are. So you were too busy being madly in love with Kostya to watch your spring, and it became tainted. Surely that’s not irreversible. Why is Neptune involved?”
“Because Hahn the German sylph wants my position; that’s why. Did I ever mention him?”
“No. Him? I thought sylphs were female.”
“Don’t be so behind the times. At the last consortium of elemental beings, they dropped the gender requirements to be more in line with the political correctness of the mundane world. Normally I wouldn’t have a problem with a man wanting to join the sisterhood, but Hahn is evil, Mayling, pure evil.” Cyrene’s voice was filled with
“Wait a minute.” Cyrene’s life always seemed to be something straight out of a soap opera, so I was used to the usual assortment of odd characters who were attracted to her. But this seemed a bit odd even for her. “Aren’t sylphs air elemental beings? Why does he want a job connected with water?”
“I told you—he’s evil! No sylph in her right mind would want to switch biases, but Hahn is after notoriety rather than really wanting to preserve the world’s freshwater resources, as we naiads do.”
I bit back an obvious response.
She continued without the least twinge of guilt. “Well, naturally, we weren’t going to let him in after he threw that big scene and threatened to go over our heads, and now it’s very clear to me that he thinks that if I get in trouble with Neptune, he’ll be a shoo-in for my job. Honestly, how was I to know that a couple of weeks tending to poor Kostya’s mental wounds would cause half the crops in Italy to fail?”
“Half the . . . agathos daimon, Cy!”
“It’s only half! It’s not all the crops in Italy, like Hahn claims! But he had to go running to Neptune blabbing that I was abusing my position, and how the mortals were suffering because of it, and you know how Neptune is about mortals.”
“I don’t, actually. I’ve never met him.”
“Oh, he’s gaga about them. He spends all his time going to surfing competitions with them. It’s all he thinks about. That and punishing innocent naiads. But that’s neither here nor there—you have to help me, Mayling. You have to go to Neptune and explain to him that because of all the trouble with you being dragged off to Abaddon, I didn’t have time to take care of the spring.”
“Oh, no. You’re not going to use me as a scapegoat for the fact that you fell under the charms of a black-eyed dragon. You can just explain the circumstances yourself.”