Bee whapped Constantine on the arm. “You told him about the silk rope thing?”

“He helped me pick it out. He thought you’d like it. And you did.”

“Which is no one’s business!” Bee protested.

“I would answer you, but Bee would pinch me again, and I do not wish to distress her,” Constantine said into the black box. “However, the answer to the most important questions is yes.”

“I knew it!” Gary crowed before adding in a lower tone, “Sorry, monsieur, I must refuse your generous offer. My friends need my help in saving the world.”

Bee shook her head and saying, “Somehow, I never thought this day would end up with me hunting a demon lord with an ex-dragon and a head in a hamster ball. Come on, Sir Galahad. If you insist on helping me—and I admit, I’m very grateful for your assistance—then let’s get going. It’s already midnight, and I told Aisling I’d be in contact by now. Can I use your phone to tell her we’re on our way?”

Constantine handed over his phone and busied himself with tidying up the silk rope while she talked to the green mate. He wondered idly if she’d be interested in an electronic device that was said to heighten women’s pleasure, but decided that so long as she had him to see to her sexual needs, she wouldn’t have need of it.

“All right,” Bee said a few minutes later, when he was tucking away a scalp massager for which he found had many other uses, “Aisling says they have a hit on Bael. Well, not hit on him per se, but that he was spotted recently by some green dragons in Italy. Aisling asked my sister and Kostya to talk with us about it, so we need to head over to Aisling’s house now.”

A thump at the door indicated Gary’s arrival. Constantine let him in, saying to Bee as he did so, “Why is she calling a sarkany? The curse will keep her from being able to communicate with everyone but you.”

“A what?”

“A sarkany is a concave of wyverns.”

“It’s like you guys have a different word for everything.” Bee gave him an expectant grin.

He just looked at her.

“Not a Steve Martin fan?” She gave a mock sigh. “And to think I’d become involved with a man who doesn’t appreciate a good stand-up comedy routine. To answer your question, I have no idea why Aisling’s asked us to her place, other than I assume the Venediger won’t allow us—well, really, any dragons, given that she’s pissed at all of you—back in the club after the curse blew up so horribly and damaged the club. So there really is nowhere else safe to go.”

“Where in Italy did she say Bael was last seen?”

“She didn’t say exactly where, just that he’d been seen.” Bee started out the door.

Constantine paused long enough to snatch up the helmet he’d purchased for her, and tucked Gary in his hamster ball under his arm. “I don’t understand why we need to waste time talking with my godson and the green mate about Bael. She should provide you with the information on his location so that we can go deal with him.”

“Well, we’re only after an artifact of his, after all. It’s not like you’re going to try to take him down personally,” Bee said over her shoulder before trotting down the stairs to the street door.

Constantine said nothing, but paused at the door and gave the street outside the brothel a long scrutiny. He pinpointed two women engaged in kissing who he thought had the hint of demon about them. He kept an eye on them as he retrieved his motorcycle and mounted it, watching in the rearview mirror as one of the women languidly parted and moved off into the darkness.

He was recalled by the slight blow on the back of his shoulder. “Hmm?” he asked Bee.

“I said that you’d better keep your eyes on the road or else we’ll end up in the hospital. You almost hit two cars at that intersection back there.”

“I am a consummate driver. If I almost hit someone, it was because I wanted to do so, and not because I was watching for two women,” he yelled.

“The hell?” Bee asked, and pinched his belly. “Why are you watching for women?”

“Your jealousy pleases me, although it is not necessary. I will not betray you to another woman, or even a pair of women, no matter how comely they are.”

She pinched him even harder and spent the next eleven minutes lecturing him about how she wasn’t a jealous woman, had never been jealous, and didn’t have any plans to start at that moment, and if he thought she cared one hoot if he stared at women the length and breadth of Paris, he could just think again, and other such protestations that Constantine knew meant she cared very much about what he thought.

He experienced a twinge of guilt when he remembered the beauteous Ysolde, and how he had pledged her his heart in the best manner of the chivalric stories of his youth, but he told himself he had no time to analyze the differences in his emotions toward Bee (which were growing more and more complicated with each passing hour) and those of Ysolde (chaste, distant adoration). He promised himself a good think about Bee and his attraction to her at a later date, and proceeded to drive to the sixteenth arrondissement where the green wyvern had a home.

His godson and his mate were already there when they arrived.

“I’m supposed to do the honors of translating for everyone,” Jim the demon informed Constantine when they entered a long sitting room. It was filled with heavily brocaded antiques and dotted with pools of amber light from various lamps. At one end, a fire burned in a grate, lending ambiance rather than warmth.

“Hi everyone! I’m Gary. Oooh, isn’t that a pretty Louis the Sixteenth table. Is that inlaid onyx? Very shiny.”

Constantine set Gary’s ball down on a small half-moon table.

“Hello again,” Bee said, greeting Aisling when she rose.

Aisling’s expression was one of shock, her gaze glued to Gary. “That’s… I’m… is that a head?”

“Cool!” Jim the demon dog said, strolling over to snuffle the giant hamster ball. “Hiya. Do you get motion sickness rolling around in there?”

“Not at all. I’ve always been a good sailor,” Gary told the demon, then beamed at the room in general. “Well, now! Isn’t this nice. A room full of dragons and a demon, and of course Bee, who is the most charming of all Charmers.”