“Do you think she’s in any danger?” I asked, surprised by his demand.

His answer was slow in coming.“I sense there is a threat to her, yes, but that could be connected to the dragon shard you bear. I ask that you be very careful, May, with yourself and my mother. You are both very dear to me.”

I warmed down to my toes with the love I heard in his voice. “I’m so glad you’re not Drake.”

“So am I. But . . . ?”

It was my turn to laugh. “Drake won’t let Aisling so much as lift her arm without a spotter and three pillows to protect it.”

“Her history might have something to do with that,” he said, amusement back in his voice. “She has not always been so competent with her powers. But you are.”

We hung up a few minutes later, after a few exchanges of a more private nature. But something he said had me thinking, so after double-checking that Magoth was all right—he was snoring softly to himself, so I gathered no serious damage had been done to him—I went in search of Maata.

“Do I look any different to you?” I asked her when I found her.

She stopped putting clean clothes into her dresser and eyed me. “Should you look different?”

“That’s not what I asked. Do I look any different? Or . . . feel any different to you?”

“I haven’t felt you.”

I made a face at her grin. “You’re being deliberately dragon.”

“I’m sorry,” she laughed, closing the drawer and walking around me to examine me from all angles. “It’s habit. Let’s see. . . . No, you look pretty much the same as you did when you and Gabriel left. Why do you ask?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that I was now in possession of a demon lord’s full powers, but I decided that was probably best kept to as few people as possible.

“Just a thought I had. I’m going to trot over to Aisling’s house—What in the name of the spirits is that?”

Voices raised in anger could be heard from downstairs. The house had an elaborate security system, but due to the fact I was now bearing a priceless relic of dragonkin, Gabriel had added additional security in the form of extra patrols by silver dragons. The two dragons who watched the downstairs were yelling now, but it was a familiar, higher-pitched voice that had me racing down the hall to the stairs below.

“Sounds like your twin.”

“It does indeed. And that man’s voice is very familiar, as well. What on earth has she done to bring him down on our heads?”

The two dragons, Obi and Nathaniel, were doing their best to stop a very determined individual from entering the house, but Cyrene was getting in their way. Obi had his hands full with Cy, trying to pull her off the visitor, but it was difficult going, since she was determinedly fighting, kicking, making dire threats, and yanking the hair of her victim.

“How dare you!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. My eardrums rattled. I felt sorry for anyone closer to her than I was. “I am a daughter of Tethys! You will feel the true vengeance of a sister of the house of Hydriades!”

“Let go of me, you madwoman, or you will find out what vengeance really feels like!” the man yelled back.

“Is that—Hoo,” Maata said, getting a good look at the man Nathaniel was all but wrestling.

“What in the name of the sun and moon is going on here?” I yelled, trying to be heard over the noise of so many people shouting. “Cyrene, let go of Dr. Kostich’s hair.”

“He called me a name!” she snarled, giving his hair a good yank. “He called me a tree hugger. Me!”

“You like trees. Let him go. And you can stop doing that, too.”

Blood flowed from the punch Cyrene managed to get in to Kostich’s nose.

“I may like trees, but I’m not a druid. I’ve never been so insulted in all my days!”

Druids and water beings, for some reason I’ve never been able to fathom, insisted on perpetuating a feud that went back at least a millennium. There was no insult worse in the water-elemental circles than to be thought in sympathy with druids.

Dr. Kostich bellowed an obscenity, trying desperately to fling Nathaniel, Maata (who was helping Nathaniel), and Cyrene off him. “Cease, you insane watery twit! I demand that you unhand me!”

“Watery twit? Watery twit! Oh! I’ll show you who’s a watery—”

“Stop it right now!” I yelled, grabbing Cyrene with both hands and pulling. The dragon shard wanted to help, but I didn’t want to let it loose. I dug in my heels and pulled, finally ripping my twin off the head of the L’au-delà with a shriek that made my ears ring a second time.

“Just you wait,” Cyrene panted, shaking her fist at him as both Obi and I dragged her over to a chair next to the wall. “Just you wait until there’s no one around to save you, mage!”

“Cy, remember who you are speaking to,” I warned, casting a worried eye over at Kostich.

“Oh, he can’t do anything to me. The council of el ementalists isn’t afraid of the L’au-delà committee,” she said, tossing her head. She straightened her clothing with dark mutters.

“I apologize for my twin’s actions,” I said, leaving her to see how Dr. Kostich fared. He slapped away Nathaniel’s hands as the dragon tried to dust him off. His glare was world-class, almost as good as Magoth’s—and almost as potent. It stopped me dead in my tracks for a few seconds, a horrible sensation of immobility gripping my entire body, including my heart and lungs, before I instinctively shadowed and slipped out of his control.

Dr. Kostich murmured something rude about doppelgangers under his breath as I dropped the shadow.

I handed him a couple of tissues, and said, “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, mostly because I feel bad that you and Cyrene got into a fight, but also because I suspect the dragons wouldn’t take kindly to you insulting their wyvern’s mate. I take it you came here to see me, and not Gabriel?”

“. . . never been treated in such a manner. What?” He stopped muttering as he dabbed at his bloody nose. “Yes, of course I came here for you. You and that turn-coat thief taker who has been shielding you.”

“Savian Bartholomew?” I shook my head. Gabriel and I had discussed the fact that sooner or later Dr. Kostich was going to find out where I was, and I was confident that I could placate him by some means or other. “He’s not here. In fact, he’s out of the country.”