I shook my head, giving a wan smile when Kostya knelt beside me, pulling me to his chest. “No. I just feel… drained. A little weak. I’ll be all right in a few seconds.”

Kostya stared over my head at the man, then looked down at me. “Why?” he asked.

“Why?” I parroted.

He closed his eyes for a second, squeezing me so tight it was almost painful before letting me go and giving me a little shake. “Why did you summon the most powerful demon lord who has ever lived?”

“Huh?” I looked over at the man in the circle.

His smile grew.

“She summoned Bael,” Aisling said, slumping against Drake. “And after all the trouble it took to banish him to the Akasha.”

Seventeen

The man who stood in the circle—and who evidently went by the name of Bael—had wavy blond hair and a tiny little toothbrush mustache and wore a dark navy suit. He also had black eyes, not dark like Kostya’s, but black, utterly void of color. They were also the coldest eyes I’ve ever seen, without the slightest hint of humanity in them. Just looking at his eyes made me feel as if little bits of my soul were being torn off and dissolved into nothing.

Kostya took me by the arms and glared down at me, his eyes bright with all sorts of emotions, but unfortunately, pleasure at seeing me wasn’t uppermost. “What have you done?”

“It wasn’t me! It was the ring.”

“You summoned Bael!”

“The ring did,” I started to say, but had to stop because one thing Dr. Barlind was very big on was not lying to oneself. “All right, I did, but I didn’t mean to. I was trying to break the curse.”

“You are not a Charmer,” Drake said, his frown identical to Kostya’s. I wanted to point that out to Aisling, because I had an idea she’d enjoy that fact as much as I did, but I figured now was not the time. “You cannot break curses by yourself.”

“It would have been nice if someone had pointed that out before I tried,” I said dryly.

“It’s my fault,” Aisling said, gesturing toward me. “I egged her on. I thought maybe if Aoife focused, the power of the ring would be enough. I didn’t imagine that she would end up getting… him.”

I avoided looking at Bael. “I’m really getting tired of always being the one who asks the questions, but I’m going to have to do it again. Who’s Bael?”

“I am Bael,” the blond man said, giving me a little bow. “I am the premiere prince of Abaddon.”

“Was,” Aisling said quickly. “You aren’t the premiere prince anymore. In fact, you’re not even a demon lord anymore. All your legions were absorbed by Asmodeus, or so I was told.”

“You should not believe all that you hear, Guardian,” he told her with a smile.

Aisling pressed closer to Drake in response.

I realized at that moment that Bael hadn’t moved from the spot and that he was, in fact, being held within Aisling’s invisible circle.

“WHAT IS THIS?”

The bellow came from behind us.

Jovana stomped forward at such a speed that Guillaume had to trot to keep up with her. “I come out to tell you that the Charmer you wished me to contact has informed me she is on her way here only to discover this! Why is Bael in my club? Why is he in Paris? Who summoned him from the Akasha?”

She turned her eyes to Aisling, who held up a hand. “Not it.”

“Then it must have been you!” Jovana said, swiveling to shoot laser beams from her eyes at me. Or at least that’s what it felt like.

“I didn’t mean to!” I protested, simultaneously worried and annoyed. “It’s not like I deliberately set out to summon this dude.”

“Bael,” he corrected, frowning a little as he examined the floor around him.

“I mean, I don’t even know who he is.”

“I just told you who I am.” He glanced over to Kostya, coolly examining him before moving on to Jovana. “A mage? This is who you chose to replace you as Venediger?” He shook his head. “And I worked so hard to take that position from you. Ah, well.”

“I sense there is more going on than I’m going to be able to put my brain around,” I said somewhat sadly.

“We have a bit of a history,” Aisling said, her voice devoid of its normal warmth. She held on to Drake’s arm as she spoke, her eyes narrowed on Bael. “He’s the one who tricked me into becoming a prince of Abaddon.”

I stared at her for a moment, then shook my head. “Nope. Sorry. I’ve reached maximum capacity of things I don’t know, and I just can’t handle one more thing.”

“I dunno,” Jim said, shaking in a manner that sent both slobber and dog hair flying over to splatter on Bael’s legs. “You seem to me to have an infinite capacity for stuff you don’t know.”

“Silence, demon,” Aisling and I both said at the same time. We looked at each other, then giggled for a moment before Jovana reminded us that the situation was not one at all conducive to such things.

“Just what are you going to do about this?” she demanded to know, her arms tight across her chest. The look with which she pinned me back just about stripped the hair right off my head. “I insist that you remove this… this…”

“Prince of Abaddon,” Bael supplied.

“… former demon lord from these premises, and from all of Europe. We have enough trouble from Abaddon thanks to you dragons, and I simply will not have any more of my people adversely affected by your battles.”

“Holy garbanzo beans, lady!” My patience snapped, and I found myself standing toe-to-toe with Jovana, Kostya’s fire whipping around me in a spiral up my body. “I didn’t summon him on purpose, okay? And if you don’t like him here so much, then you have my blessing to send him back to this Akasha place.”

“Me?” She sniffed and stepped back one step when the dragon fire got a bit too close to her. I patted it out, not wanting to make the situation worse. “I cannot do that.”

“Why not? I thought you were almighty and powerful?”

She gave me a look that I’d seen all too frequently in the last few days, one that said I should have known better. “I do not have that sort of power.”