“May I?” I asked Aisling as she stopped in front of a door.

“Please do.”

“Do what?” Jim asked, its eyes suspicious. “Ow! Ow, ow, ow! Someone call the demon-abuse hotline! I’m being abducted by a sadistic doppelganger!”

I grabbed Jim by one fuzzy black ear and hauled it upstairs with me to my room. There I lectured it again about inappropriate comments to Aisling.

“No one around here can take a joke anymore,” it grumbled when I was done. “I didn’t mean she was really going to explode.”

“Perhaps not, but she’s more worried than she lets on about the baby taking its time, so you just lighten up with the explosive comments,” I said, patting it on the head. Jim was fond of Aisling, I knew, and wouldn’t really want to hurt her, but obviously had not been as observant as it might have been. “Go watch some movies or something, but watch the cracks to Aisling about the baby.”

“Aw, do I have to? I want to hear how to re-form the dragon heart,” it said as I ushered Kaawa into a small upstairs sitting room that Drake had told us we could use. It was dark and slightly musty-smelling, as if it hadn’t been occupied much.

“Why on earth would you want to do that?” I asked, opening the curtains.

Jim shrugged. “You never know when something like that might come in handy.”

I glanced at Kaawa.

“I don’t mind if the demon stays,” she said, watching Jim closely. “It appears to be one of the rare sixth-class demons, and thus should not pose a hazard to you.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” I said, wondering what sorts of powers a demon in possession of the dragon heart would be able to wield. The thought left me a bit sick to my stomach, so I moved on.

The following two hours were spent learning the steps of the ceremony to decant the shard, most of which was rote memorization of a couple of incantations. The language the incantations were spoken in was Zilant, a Slavic language that all dragons learned early on, and that, until recent centuries, had been the common language between the septs. I’ve never been much of a linguist, and it took me several tries, aided by copious notes, before I felt comfortable conducting the invocation that would separate the shard from my body, and allow it to re-form the dragon heart.

“Where did you learn all this?” I asked as I closed the notebook in which I’d been making notes. “Gabriel said you were very learned in dragon lore, but I’m surprised you know so much about something so outside of your normal interests.”

She smiled, and continued to rub Jim’s belly as she had been doing for the last half hour. The demon was on its back, legs kicking gently in the air, soft little half moans, half snores of pleasure coming from its furry black lips as it slept. “You know of Ysolde de Bouchier.”

I nodded. “You’ve mentioned her before. She left some notebooks behind about her experiences with the shard after she became a phylactery, right?”

“That is correct.”

“That’s reassuring. If the invocation worked for Ysolde, it’s a sure thing to work for me. Despite the interesting experience of turning into a dragon, there’s nothing I want more than to get rid of the shard.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “I did not mean to imply that the invocation was foolproof, wintiki. There is still a very large element of the unknown to the process of re-forming the heart. Much of what I’ve told you is speculation.”

“But you had Ysolde’s notebooks,” I said, suddenly worried. I had assumed all along that I would be able to get rid of the shard. But what if I couldn’t? What if I was stuck with it? Forever?

My stomach dropped at the thought.

“Yes, but they did not provide a detailed step-by-step guide to ridding oneself of a dragon shard. They merely gave information about what Ysolde herself did, and what sorts of things could happen should one try to re-form the heart, or use the shards by themselves.”

My heart sank to join my stomach. “So you don’t have any idea if the ceremony is going to work?”

She shook her head, sympathy rich in her eyes and face. “I wish there was a foolproof method, but we are talking about the dragon heart. It is not controlled, never controlled. If it wishes you to, it will allow you to use it, but never against its wishes.”

“You speak of it as if it’s alive,” I said, gently touching the mark on my chest where the shard had entered my body.

She smiled. “It has powers, little night bird. It may not be alive in the sense that you are alive, but it is sentient. It will not allow you to use it if it does not approve of you, or the use to which you wish to put it.”

“Well, great. Here I am trying to get rid of this shard, and it’ll probably go tell the rest of them what a horrible person I am, and they’ll all refuse to re-form.”

She laughed and patted my hand as she stood up, much to Jim’s unhappiness. “It is not that you have to worry about.”

“Oh really?” I caught something in her tone that made me uneasy. “Is there something else I should be worrying about?”

She hesitated a second before saying no.

“Kaawa,” I said, rising as she reached for the door.

She stopped, her shoulders slumping for a moment before she turned back to face me with a perfectly innocent expression. “Yes, wintiki?”

“I appreciate you trying to protect me, but I assure you I can take care of myself. Gabriel knows that. That’s why he’s not fussing around while I take care of this. So if there’s a danger involved—other than the obvious one of being vulnerable while the decanting and re-forming processes are going on—I’d really appreciate you telling me what it is, so I can be ready for it.”

Her hesitation and concern were almost palpable, making me worry anew.

“I would not for the world insult you, May, and I would never hide something that you could use to protect yourself.”

“But?” I asked, waiting for her to finish.

“But you possess many qualities of humans, and not so many of dragons.” She looked away, obviously not wanting to meet my gaze.

I went over everything she had told me about the shards, everything that Ysolde de Bouchier had done . . . and enlightenment dawned.

“Kaawa?”

She held on to the door as if she wanted to escape. “Yes, child?”