“Hey, Princess Modesty, you want to come flex your übermuscles for us, too?” Jim called from just inside the doorway.

“Oh, sorry. Yeah, let me give you guys a hand.” I entered the house, feeling only a little tingle of the ward until I turned around and tried to leave again.

Bastian babbled happily as over the next forty minutes I shoved Jim, Rene, Uncle Damian, three elderly retainers who had taken care of Bastian and were loyal to him rather than Fiat, and what seemed to be an inordinate amount of luggage out through the confinement ward. By the time we were done, I was exhausted and had a horrible feeling that I looked like I’d been pulled through a hedge backwards a few dozen times.

“The demon says you have a plan,” Bastian said a short while later as Rene returned from fetching a taxi. The five of us piled into the car Rene had rented, with Bastian’s people taking the taxi. “Now that I am free, you may count on my assistance in whatever manner you deem necessary.”

“We’re going to fly back to London first,” I answered, chewing on my lip and wishing I’d thought more about what we were going to do once we had Bastian. “Fiat is there right now, and it seems as good a place as any to tackle the situation.”

Bastian nodded and waited for me to continue.

“Er…I haven’t quite worked out all the details, but I thought you could go before the blue dragons, tell them how Fiat unjustly imprisoned you so he could be wyvern when he wasn’t born to the job, have him removed, and then you can take over and disown me as mate.”

The silence that followed my words was almost deafening. “That is your plan?” Bastian asked.

I nodded.

“The full extent of it?”

I nodded again, a bit less enthusiastically.

He sighed and sat back against the seat, his eyes closed.

Uncle Damian turned around in the seat to give me a dark look. Jim pursed its lips. Rene’s gaze in the rearview mirror was all too readable.

“Well, I’m doing the best I can!” I burst out, pricked by all those looks. “I can’t think of everything! It’s not like I don’t have a gazillion other things on my mind!”

“It’s all right,” Bastian said, his eyes still shut. “You have done the impossible already, the rest is up to me.”

His face was barely visible in the darkness, little flashes of it glowing dimly now and again as the lights from buildings penetrated the car.

“A challenge?” I asked.

“Yes. You said Fiat engineered the situation with you via a challenge…very well. I will give him a taste of his own medicine.”

I eyed the man next to me. His voice had thus far been lyrical and quite pleasant to listen to, but a note of something indefinable had entered it at the last minute. Was that phrase “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” quite so true as I had hoped? Or had I just unleashed a power a whole lot worse than Fiat?

“Merde,” I muttered.

“No word?” Uncle Damian asked six hours later as I rubbed my arms in the cold morning air, our conversation drowned out for a moment by the sound of a plane taking off.

I shook my head, worry making my belly churn. “That’s not like him. He didn’t even have his voice mail on, and he always has that in case I need him for something. I don’t mind saying I’m starting to get really worried. And pissed. Dammit, why didn’t he tell me where he was going?”

“He doesn’t want you following,” Uncle Damian answered as I watched people haul their luggage over to the passenger pickup area.

“Arrogant, foolish, bossy man,” I grumbled to myself. “Jim, I summon thee.”

Jim popped into view, shaking itself in a manner guaranteed to send dog hair and spittle flying. “Do you have to send me to the Akashic plane every time? Couldn’t I, like, go somewhere else? Bahamas? Venice? How about the Mexican Riviera?”

“Hush, someone will hear you. Do you think we did the right thing by letting Bastian go off on his own?” I asked my uncle.

“Possibly. I’ll check into the address he gave us to make sure he’s not up to anything.”

“I just thought it was a bit odd that he didn’t want to stay with us, but I guess it makes sense that he must still have friends in the sept who would take him in. Oh, good, here comes Rene with the car.”

I picked up my small bag, glancing at my cell phone for a moment, willing Drake to call me and tell me he was OK, but no such miracle happened.

“As usual, it’s up to me to make my own miracles,” I said, sighing wearily.

“Uh-oh. That’s bound to end up with me losing another toe or two,” Jim said, backing away from me.

“I said hu—aieeee!”

A short, squat man suddenly burst into being directly in front of us, growling in a voice that had chunks of cement flaking off a wall behind me, “You are summoned.”

Before I could protest, the demon grabbed my arm and yanked me through the hole it had created. Uncle Damian threw himself on me just before I was sucked in, the two of us falling together in a heap on a cold stone floor.

I knelt on my hands and knees for a moment while I fought the horrible sensations that accompanied being yanked through the fabric of being, finally raising my head to see which demon lord had summoned me so summarily.

“I should have guessed,” I said a moment later as Uncle Damian, looking a bit green about the gills, helped me to my feet.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Yeah. You?”

He nodded, glancing around quickly. “We where I think we are?”

“Yes. Welcome to Abaddon. Jim, I summon thee.”

“Fires of Ab—woops.” Jim’s mouth slammed shut as soon as the figure standing at a window turned toward us.

“Aisling Grey,” the man said, looking much as I remembered him. Dark-haired, handsome, with a slight European accent—but it was his eyes that bothered me the most. They were flat, a façade to hide his true thoughts. He raised his eyebrows at Uncle Damian. “And a mortal?”

“This is my Uncle Damian. Uncle, this is Bael, the premier prince of Abaddon, and incidentally the one who tricked me into taking on this position and ending up proscribed.”

“I’m evil,” Bael said with a shrug. “It’s what I do best.”

“Does he always…er…summon you this way?” Uncle Damian asked, watching Bael warily.