“Most interested,” Magoth said, grabbing my chair and hauling it closer to him so he could drape an arm over my shoulders. “My darling one, sit closer to me. I cherish the nearness of your lush, ripe body.”

The inspector pursed his lips and looked from Magoth to me, speculation rife in his eyes.

“Ah, so it was a faulty gas line?” Gabriel asked, his voice amused for a moment. Clearly he hadn’t heard Magoth in the background. “I am relieved to hear it was that, and not something more worrisome, such as a murderous dragon bent on our destruction.”

“Yes, I thought you’d be happy to hear that.”

“Our relationship is complicated,” Magoth told the inspector in a confidential tone, his fingers trailing down the back of my neck. I gritted my teeth against the touch, not wanting to protest lest Gabriel hear. “She has one lover; I have thousands. But we share a love of the same things: violent foreplay, the torture of minions, threatening to disembowel those who cross us—and it’s that sort of bond that truly makes a relationship last, isn’t it?”

“Sign there? Certainly.” Hastily, I scribbled out a signature on a release that would relieve the Metropolitan Police from any responsibility for our welfare should we insist on examining the remains of the house. At that point, I would do anything to escape from the inspector’s office.

“Are the mortal police giving you much trouble?” Gabriel asked.

“Not much. I should be through here in a few minutes.”

“That’s not to say that my sweet May and I obtain sexual fulfillment from the same sorts of things. Not at all. Nor would I want us to—similar sexual proclivities are not something you should seek in a sexual partner,” Magoth continued to enlighten the by-now-wild-eyed policeman. “How are you going to truly enjoy tying down your partner to a Catherine wheel and tormenting her if you know she secretly enjoys it? You may take my word that such a thing takes all the fun out of the experience.”

“How are things going for you? Have you found what you were looking for?” I asked Gabriel, hoping he wouldn’t hear the desperate note in my voice as I glared at Magoth.

“Not exactly.”

The police inspector stared openmouthed at Magoth. “You’re a wack job, you know that?”

“I am a connoisseur of sex,” Magoth said simply with a nonchalant little shrug. “It is more or less the same thing.”

I smiled another tooth-laden smile at the policeman, and swiveled slightly in my chair as he gave Magoth one last long look before entering some information into his computer. “How do you mean? You didn’t find him?”

“Is Kostya there, too?”

I frowned at the question. Although Gabriel sometimes exhibited the dragon trait of answering a question with a question, he was normally forthcoming with information when I asked. “Not with us, if that’s what you mean, but yes, he’s back from Latvia. He . . . er . . . had a little accident with his house, too.”

To my surprise Gabriel wasn’t the slightest bit interested in that. “Stay away from him, little bird.”

“That’s going to be a bit on the difficult side, since he’s staying in the same house as us,” I said cautiously.

“Kostya is at Drake’s house?” Gabriel’s voice was sharp with irritation. “Why is he there?”

I covered my cell phone’s mouthpiece for a moment, speaking to the detective. “I’m sorry. My ma—um—partner is having a little family issue. I really need to take this call. I won’t be long.”

“No doubt they wish to indulge in phone sex,” Magoth said, picking up a file from the inspector’s desk and flipping through it. “They are always having sex.”

The inspector snatched the file away from Magoth, saying, as I got to my feet, “We will need a statement from Mr. Tauhou, as well.”

I nodded and wound my way through a dozen or so other desks to the hallway.

“My love to the beast master,” Magoth called after me.

I growled to myself as I hurried out of the office and down a hallway to a distant stairwell. Luckily, it was empty. “Sorry, Gabriel. I was in too public a place to talk. What in the name of midnight is going on? What do you mean, you didn’t exactly find Fiat? And why should we stay away from Kostya? Does this have something to do with his trip to Paris?”

Gabriel’s voice, when he finally spoke, was guarded and tense. “Did he tell you he went to Paris?”

“No. As a matter of fact, he wouldn’t answer me when I asked him that, but Jim said he’d been there. What’s happened?”

“We missed Fiat by what must have been minutes, but a calling card was left for us.”

Fear poked irrationally at my gut. The silver dragons had no bone to pick with Fiat, and yet I had a premonition that boded ill. I cleared my throat a couple of times before I could ask, “What sort of calling card?”

Silence answered me for the count of eight. “There are sixty-eight dead blue dragons in France.”

“Agathos daimon,” I whispered, horror creeping up my flesh. “He killed his own sept members?”

“No. The dragons killed were those who followed Bastian, not Fiat.”

“He’s insane,” I said, my mind not able to get past the idea of such a horrible slaughter.

“There is no one who will disagree with that.” His voice sounded weary, and my heart went out to him. Gabriel was a wyvern, strong and arrogant, but he was also a healer, and I knew he took that role very seriously. Facing such a wholesale slaughter of innocent people would wound him grievously on a deeply personal level. “It will take me another day before I can return home to you, but until that time, I must know that you are safe.”

“I don’t understand what Fiat going on a murderous rampage has to do with Kostya. How are the two connected?”

Again, silence answered my question for a few moments. “Fiat could not have acted alone. There are too many deaths for the small band of ouroboros dragons who follow him,” he said slowly, and I could feel the regret that surrounded him. “I suspect he left the actual killing to his accomplice.”

“Who is that? You don’t mean Kostya, do you? That doesn’t make sense, Gabriel. He’s keeping his nose clean right now because of the sárkány.”