"I would be honored to see to your injuries," Gabriel said gently, keeping his hands on his legs, not rushing her. I flashed him a smile of gratitude and shifted a little to give him room.

"No!" Nora said, clutching my arm. "Please ... I hate to be so foolish, but if you could ..."

"I'm not going to leave you," I said firmly. "I'll stay here as long as you want me."

She nodded, swallowing hard. Gabriel gave me a warm look, then proceeded to doctor the worst of Nora's wounds. I was relieved to see that he knew other methods of healing than ones involving his tongue. He pulled from the pocket of his shirt a small silver tube containing a clear gel, which he dabbed on the worst of the injuries. The bleeding stopped immediately, and even the swelling of her eye and lip seemed to go down after he spread a light coat of the ointment on them. Nora tolerated his attentions without a sound until he peeled back the blanket to look at her blood-soaked nightgown. Then she started to panic. "No! I don't want... I can't..."

"I think she would be more comfortable with you applying this," he said softly, handing me a clean square of gauze bandaging that Pal had brought.

Drake was at the door again, this time admitting Monish, who looked heavy-eyed and sleepy.

"Clean around the scratches first, then use the curcain gel."

I did as he ordered, gently dabbing the long, vicious scratches on her chest and breasts, concealing her as best I could from the men. Istvan returned from his mysterious mission, joining the cluster of Monish and the dragons.

"What exactly is curcain gel?" I asked Gabriel quietly, dabbing it onto a long scratch on Nora's arm. It looked as if the man who attacked her had clawed whatever part he could reach.

He leaned close, his mouth almost touching my ear. "Curcain is a healing enzyme found in some plants. It also occurs in the saliva of the silver dragons."

I looked in horror at the smear of colorless gel on my fingers. "This is dragon spit?" I whispered back.

"A highly concentrated form, yes."

I rubbed on a little more, waiting until I was sure Nora was distracted before asking, "Whose? Yours?"

He just smiled, his dimples flashing. I don't know why it made me feel better to know it was his saliva I was rubbing all over Nora, but it did. Chalk it up to not wanting a strange dragon's saliva all over my friend.

"You're going to be just fine," I told Nora, who sat Muring into the distance, clearly trying to distance herself from everything that was going on. "You're a strong woman. You have power. You aren't a helpless victim. You beat the horrible monster."

Her eyes, still liquid with tears, focused on me as I pulled the remains of her nightgown over her, gently easing the blanket around her. She nodded, her throat working hard.

"Nora? I must ask you some questions now. You understand I would prefer to let you recover in peace, but if we are to locate the being that did this, I must know what happened. Although we cannot be sure of it, since your attacker did not leave any physical evidence behind, it is possible that he is the same being who killed the other Guardians."

Monish's singsong voice was as soft and soothing as Gabriel's had been, but Nora stiffened as he took a seat in the chair next to the couch. She made an effort to pull herself together, though, saying in a low, raw voice that she would do whatever she could to help.

"Did you see the man? Can you give us any description?"

She shook her head. "It was dark, and my glasses . .. I don't see well without them. I saw nothing at all of him, but I know it was a man. He was nude. Large, and very strong."

"No scars or any physical deformities that you could feel?"

"No. Nothing."

"You're quite sure it was an incubus that attacked you? It couldn't have been a zduhacz? Or a liderc?"

She shook her head. "No, I would know a zduhacz, and lidercs have a different odor to them. This was an incubus. He smelled of smoke."

Monish made a note on a small notebook he'd pulled from his pocket. "Did he give you his name?"

"No. He said nothing. One moment I was sleeping, the next he was on top of me, biting and clawing."

Monish made a sympathetic face. "You did not summon the incubus?"

"No."

"You did not conduct any spells or incantations that might have drawn one?"

"No," Nora said, a faint line between her brows.

"You did not conduct any rituals at all during the evening hours?"

At the word "ritual" I stiffened. Slowly, Nora's head turned until she was looking at me. I licked my suddenly dry lips. "She oversaw the apprentice ritual for me earlier," I said, fear twisting my innards. "But I did nothing that would summon an incubus. Nothing! It was just basic stuff, like drawing wards and things like that. Nothing dangerous"

Beyond her, Drake stood watching impassively

"Nora?" Monish's voice was gentle but insistent. "Was there anything that Aisling did that could summon an incubus?"

Her gaze held mine for another few seconds before it dropped to where Monish had covered her hand with his own. "No. There was nothing in the ritual that could have summoned an incubus."

My shoulders slumped with relief. I was about to give her a reassuring hug when she lifted her head and looked at me with eyes that had gone dead with pain. "But it was your name the incubus invoked when he attacked me."

Chapter 21

"I think this officially has been the longest day in my existence," I told Drake an hour later. "Do you have some sort of mystical dragon power that would allow you to turn back the clock so I could do the whole day over?"

"No. You need to sleep. You have black smudges under your eyes."

His thumb brushed over my cheek in a caress so gentle it almost brought me to my knees. "So do you. Good night."

"Good night. Sleep well, kincsem."

I closed the door of the fourth, previously unused, room in Drake's suite and paused to listen. Nora had resisted taking anything to make her sleep, but I said nothing when Gabriel dropped a pale golden powder into the tea Pal had made for her. She needed sleep as much as the rest of us.

The only sound in the room was of Nora's deep breathing. I crept along the edge of her bed to the roll-away the hotel staff had hastily brought up at Drake's demand, using the moonlight to avoid banging my toes or shins into the few pieces of furniture that were scattered around the room.