“Aisling!” Smoke escaped Drake’s nostrils as he gave his mate a potent glare.

She paused at the top of the stairs. “There are times when I wonder how you dragons survived all these centuries being so pigheaded,” she snapped, and stormed off.

“I apologize for my mate’s rudeness,” Drake said, turning back to the First Dragon. “She has many excellent qualities, but control over her emotions is unfortunately not amongst them.”

“Yeah, but you secretly love that, don’tcha?” Jim asked, giving Drake a wink.

“It is not your mate who needs to apologize,” the First Dragon said, adding frustration to his list of unwelcome emotions. “I told you that I would be responsible for the confinement of Charity. For you to arrange to have her taken away by others is not acceptable.”

“If I have in any way offended you, then I apologize. Naturally, we could not—oh, hell.” Drake evidently remembered he had been on the mobile phone, for he put it back up to his ear. “Are you still there? No, I will not say hi to Jim for you, and you can accept Aisling’s invitation another time. We have a situation here in that we’ve had a change of heart, and if you could just—that is not acceptable, no. We hired you to—I don’t really give a damn about the L’au-dela, or what Dr. Kostich will do to your balls if you don’t bring her to him. Just get the woman back here or—bloody hell.”

“Uh-oh. Hung up on ya, did he?” Jim asked.

“Go help Aisling,” Drake ordered the demon before squaring his shoulders and facing the First Dragon.

“You’re not the boss of me,” Jim replied, covertly wiping its slobbery lips on the back of Drake’s leg. “Besides, she’s in one of those moods where she really fills the demon lord bill.”

“Then go blight someone else,” Drake snarled, glaring at the demon.

“Yeah? Whatcha going to do if I don’t—”

A green fire kindled in the wyvern’s eyes.

“Fine, but if I miss any good bonking news, I’m going to tell Aisling you set me on fire again.” The demon shuffled up the stairs after its master.

“I’m afraid the demon is correct about one thing,” Drake said once it was gone. “The thief taker said he was en route to Dausen, where there is a portaling service. From there, he will take a portal to Paris, where the siren will be turned over to Dr. Kostich, the archimage who runs the L’au-dela.”

“An archimage.” The First Dragon’s lip twitched. He, himself, was a master of arcane magic, but it was not something that came naturally to his kin. “Charity would not like being with a man such as him.”

“No one would like to be with him,” the guard Pal said, then looked horrified that he’d spoken aloud.

“The thief taker must be stopped,” the First Dragon decided. “Then we can rescue Charity from him. How long will it take to travel through the mortal plane to reach her?”

Drake was on his phone before the First Dragon finished speaking. “I’ll bribe the portal shop owner to tell Savian the portal is down. That will force him to go into Budapest to find the only other shop in Hungary, which will give us time to track him down.”

Drake moved off to hold a conversation with the portal owner.

The sense of frustration grew within the First Dragon. He disliked feeling helpless. It was foreign to him, and it wasn’t something he intended on tolerating. “Do you have one of those machines?” he asked Pal.

“What machines?”

“The ones that transport you across the mortal plane.”

“A car?” Pal glanced toward Drake, who was still on the phone. “Yes. Did you wish for me to drive you—”

“Let us go find Charity,” he said, and strode out the door. He felt better just taking action, although that soon faded when the act of getting the car and driving after the thief taker ended up requiring not just Pal, but the other wyverns, and two of the mates.

“We should have taken two cars,” Drake said, squishing himself into the backseat of the machine alongside the other two wyverns.

“I need no help, so long as your guard here manipulates the machine,” the First Dragon said crisply. The idea that the others didn’t realize he could rescue Charity on his own was annoying.

“After being responsible for the thief-taker capturing the siren? Aisling would kill me if I didn’t help find her,” Drake murmured, trying to make some space. “Gabriel, can you move over?”

Pal was at the steering mechanism of the machine, while the First Dragon sat beside him, the better, he thought to himself, to point out any tracks they saw that indicated the path the thief taker had followed.

“I’m pressed up closer to Baltic than I care to be as is,” the silver wyvern answered.

“Then perhaps you should stay behind,” Drake suggested.

“Oh, no, you’re not going to leave me in the same doghouse you’re in because we thought it best to have the siren removed. May made it quite clear that we need to resolve the situation. Baltic, this is not a time for manspreading! Do you mind not hogging all the seat?”

“My genitals require room. And I am crushed against the car door,” Baltic answered, then grunted when Ysolde, who had crawled across the other two wyverns, sat down on his legs. “That is my spleen, mate.”

“Eh. You don’t need it. Sorry, May, let me just rearrange my legs.”

“If there’s no room, I can stay back with Aisling—” May started to say, but Gabriel reached across Drake, who was still trying to fit into the seat alongside the other two wyverns, and pulled her into the machine.

“And have you left out when Ysolde is here? No. Besides, you’re the smallest of anyone.”

“Perhaps if one of you would sit up with the First Dragon—” Baltic suggested.

The First Dragon settled back into the leather seat, and propped his elbows on the armrests. “I am quite comfortable.”

“Got the door shut,” Drake called from the back. “Go, Pal.”

“What the hell do you have in your pocket, Drake?” Gabriel complained. “It’s digging into my hip.”

“Ow!” May turned to look over her shoulder at Ysolde.

“Sorry. I was trying to rearrange myself so I don’t crush Baltic’s noogies.”