“I can’t be married if my hands are possessed.”

The look intensified until I was squirming in the seat.

“Oh, all right, I don’t seriously believe my hands are possessed by the dark power, although I wouldn’t put it past it to try.”

Like I don’t have something better to possess?

“However,” I said, purposely ignoring the voice in my head, “it worries me greatly that a Guardian can just walk up to me and banish me. I have to find out what’s going on, and what I can do to stop it, otherwise…well, what’s to prevent a Guardian from just waltzing into the church and zapping me in front of everyone? The dragons would understand, but the rest of my family…urgh.” I shuddered.

“Very well. I will admit that I am not comfortable with the thought of you being vulnerable to other Guardians. As for your family…” His lips tightened.

“Yeah, like you have anything to complain about? At least my stepmother isn’t actively trying to have you killed.”

“I told you I spoke with my mother about the contract she placed on you. She understands now that to cross you is to cross me. She will not try anything like that again,” Drake said with a complacency I was far from feeling. He might trust Catalina, but I sure didn’t. “Since we are not going home right away, you should call your stepmother. She was very distressed earlier when you failed to show up for our wedding.”

“Don’t even think about trying to make me feel guilty about that, Mr. You Jilted Me First,” I said as I pulled out my cell phone. “Hi, Suzanne, it’s me. Is Paula there? Thanks.”

“Are we stopping to get a bite to eat? I’m famished,” Jim said, looking wistfully at an Indian restaurant as we drove past it.

“Later, after the—Ack! Rene! Stop doing that! You almost scared the shit out of me!”

“Aisling, dear!” a shocked voice breathed into the phone. “A lady never says that word! Manure or droppings, but never the other!”

“Sorry, but Rene insists on pulling race car driver moves on the streets of London.”

Rene’s smile flashed in the rearview mirror.

“Where were you? Why didn’t you go to the church? My dear, the wedding was a complete disaster without you!”

I smiled at Drake. “Yeah, I know, a wedding kind of needs a bride. I was unavoidably—”

I was cut off in the middle of my explanation by a lengthy lecture on the proper duties of a bride on her wedding day. It lasted through the better part of our drive across London, luckily petering out just as we arrived at the parking garage adjacent to the Guardians’ Guild.

“…we can try again, but honestly, Aisling, if you aren’t going to go to your own wedding, I don’t know how you can keep expecting others to show up. As for your hair, dear…I know you wanted an upswept style, but if you were to leave your hair down, and if we were to find a flower garland and several spools of ribbon, it might do well to help hide some of that bondage outfit—”

“It’s not bondage, Paula. It’s a velvet corset, and it’s perfectly suitable—”

“You have to allow me to know best about these things,” she interrupted. “I’m not naïve, you know. I recognize bondage when I see it. Oh, David, why are you still wearing your tuxedo? You’ll get it all wrinkled, dear…” Paula’s voice drifted off as she hung up the phone.

“I need to use a bush,” Jim announced as we all got out of the car, looking meaningfully out the side of the garage to the square located across the street. “Like, right now.”

“I’ll take it,” Rene offered, snapping the leash onto Jim’s collar. “We’ll meet you inside, yes?”

“Thanks. Right,” I said, facing the building. “Time to grit our loins and gird our teeth.”

Drake slid me a tolerant look. “There are times when I wonder why of all women, you turned out to be my mate.”

“And then you got down on your knees and thanked god that I came around, right?” I answered, pinching his arm.

“Hmm,” was his noncommittal reply.

“Right?” I asked, pinching him harder.

He just took my hand in his and escorted me inside. The second my foot hit the tiled floor, alarms went off all over the building. The front lobby, which was manned by a couple of women and two large, burly guys, turned into something out of a Marx Brothers movie as dozens of people suddenly poured into the small room from various back offices. In less time than you could say “prince of Abaddon,” the room was filled to capacity with Guardians, all of whom bore expressions that would have better suited the Nuremberg trials.

I mustered up a smile and tried to share it amongst the approximately thirty people jammed into the room around me. “Er…hi. I forgot about the demon lord sensor thingie. I’m—”

“We know who you are,” a man’s voice said from behind the wad of people. Instantly, the crowd parted to reveal a smallish, dapper black man wearing a Savile Row suit and bearing a mildly interested expression. He looked from Drake to me. “The question is, why are you here?”

Jim came bursting through the door, skidding to a stop in front of me. “Did we miss anyth—fires of Abaddon! Did you bring out everyone in the building?”

Rene slipped in through the door behind him, his eye brows raised as he took in the scene.

“Do you wish for me to handle this situation?” Drake asked me in a low tone.

“No, thank you, sweetie,” I said, giving him a smile to show how much I appreciated him allowing me to deal with the situation.

“I want bonus points for this,” he murmured, his muscles tight with control as he kept himself quiet next to me.

I turned back to the little man, figuring he had to be someone important if the others were deferring to him. “I’m here to talk to someone about a rogue Guardian who banished me to Abaddon.”

The man pursed his lips. “A rogue Guardian?”

“Yes. Well…technically I suppose she wasn’t rogue per se, but I am a Guardian as well, and I—”

“You are not a Guardian,” the man interrupted.

“I am,” I said firmly. “I know that most Guardians aren’t demon lords—”

The crowd, as one man, turned to stone.