Constantine stood with his hands on his hips, eyeing the other man. “Who is this?”

“Jovana’s assistant. Um… Willem?” I said, trying to remember the name. I’d seen him around, but never had occasion to speak with him.

“Guillaume,” the man corrected, shooting little worried looks toward Constantine. It wasn’t that the latter was so much bigger or more physically intimidating that clearly concerned Guillaume; I suspected it was an almost indescribable sense of coiled power that seemed as natural to Constantine as breathing. “Mistress Jovana will not be pleased to know that you have brought a dragon to the premises without her permission.”

“It’s the only place we could go. Constantine—oh, let me introduce you. This is Constantine Norka. He used to be a member of—”

“Wyvern,” Constantine interrupted. “Wyvern of the silver dragons. Until I died. Now another is wyvern in my place. Unless I decide otherwise.”

Wisely, Guillaume chose not to reply. Instead, he gestured toward me with the clipboard. “Indeed. I see, indeed I do see. You must be here for the item. It was left in the mistress’s safe only this morning, very early in the morning, far too early in the morning for our happiness, but that is the way of some people, is it not? As it is, we were told that we’d be notified before it was called for.”

“Item?” I rubbed my forehead where a slight headache was forming. “What item is that?”

“The ring, of course.” Guillaume gave Constantine one last look, then turned and started back the way he’d come. “What could it be but the ring? I ask you, could it be anything else? If you will accompany me to the safe, I’ll have you sign the register, and you may then take the item away.”

“You have the ring here? Aoife gave it to you?” I shook my head, not understanding what was going on. “She wouldn’t do that. She swore up and down she’d only release the ring to me when it was time to break the curse, and not a moment before.”

Constantine spun around on his heel, and marched over to the door. There he began hefting wooden crates and setting them down smack-dab in front of the door.

“Nonetheless, it was she who brought the item to be placed in the safe. They said it was the safest spot since their location had been compromised as you were no doubt tortured while being imprisoned in Abaddon.” Guillaume’s pale hazel eyes were dispassionate, leaving me with the impression of a man who was not at all interested in us or our plan. “It must have been unpleasant to be tortured while imprisoned in Abaddon, so one could not blame you for saying all that you knew about the item, one could not blame you in the least. I, myself, have a low tolerance to pain. What is the dragon doing?”

I glanced over my shoulder at where Constantine was making a pyramid of crates. “Looks like he’s blocking the door, which is understandable given what you have in your safe, although not in the least bit necessary due to the enchantments wrapped around the club itself.”

Guillaume was clearly unimpressed. “If you will come this way, I will give the item to you, and we will have fulfilled our obligation to the dragons. The Venediger will be most happy, exceptionally happy. We are not overly fond of dragonkin.”

“Ah, but I’m not a dragon,” I pointed out, and handed Gary’s cage to Constantine when he had finished moving the last crates into place.

“Woot!” Gary said, obviously excited when Constantine put him at the apex of the stack. “I’ll be your guard, okay? I can yell out if the door is forced open. And I’ll bite anyone who tries to get past me, just see if I don’t.”

Constantine made a noncommittal noise, pausing when Gary asked, “Hey, do you have any tunes?”

“Tunes?”

“You know, music? Guard duty gets kind of boring when there’s nothing to do but stare at a door.”

“There is music on my phone,” Constantine said, and set his phone up so that it leaned against the cage, turning on a curated music program before returning to my side. “The door has been made fast. Let us conduct the ceremony quickly, before the demons realize that the ring is here.” He took my elbow, and hustled me past Guillaume toward the door leading to the back part of the building.

“Wait just a minute!” I tried to stop, but Constantine was like a rolling stone, and had no intention of giving me a little time to assess the situation. “Who says we’re going to charm the curse right now? It’s not a simple matter of saying a few words, and hey, presto, it’s gone. A curse is a physical manifestation of magic. I have to unravel it to break it and, depending on how intricate it is, that will take some time. I’ll want to study the curse for a while to see how best to tackle it. Here’s how I see this going down: I’ll do some research on other dragons who were cursed, and how they broke it, and then we’ll get Kostya and my sister Aoife, and the other dragons who are around, and once I’ve studied the curse’s physical form, then we’ll have the formal ceremony where I—”

“We will do it now. It will work. You are a famous Charmer,” Constantine said matter-of-factly, pushing me through the door. “I am confident that you will break the curse without the slightest trouble.”

“You can’t possibly know that,” I protested, trying to appeal to him, but he ignored me, and just kept pushing me along a dark hallway until Guillaume called out that the safe was in the room to the left.

“I know you are a competent Charmer,” Constantine said calmly, his amber-brown eyes so bright they almost seemed to glow with an inner light.

Dragon fire, I said to myself, shivering slightly. I’d only seen dragon fire once, when the dragon I’d been dating became aroused, and the experience had not been a positive one. Absently, I rubbed my hand, which still bore the scar of a burn. “I appreciate that you’re so confident, but I just don’t think—”

“Do not think about what you will be doing,” Constantine said, opening the door to the left and with a hand on my back, escorted me inside. “Just do it.”

“You sound like a horrible mutation of Yoda,” I grumbled, but my gaze went instantly to the massive black metal safe lurking in a corner of the office. “And you’re misguided if you think I’m going to be able to Charm a curse without first getting a good look at it.”