Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

mate, but I don’t like the sound of that smiting.”
    “She’s not a mage!” Savian said, yelping when, desperate to release his hold on the car door, I bit his arm. “Where’s your male empathy? Go pull her off me! I’d do it for you!”
    “Stop inciting innocent people to help you, or I’ll turn your testicles into turnips!” I yelled, head butting Savian’s back. “Now get the hell into the cab!”
    “I will die before I submit to your brutal ways!”
    “Argh!” I bellowed, and was just mentally thumbing through the list of spells I knew that might possibly help me, when the front door opened.
    “I thought I heard voices—Ysolde! Who is that you’re trying to bend in half . . . agathos daimon ! Savian? What are you doing here? Don’t tell me you’ve come to work for Gabriel again. I thought that, after the last time, you swore you’d never take another job from a dragon.”
    “Er . . .” I paused, suddenly wary as May rushed out onto the sidewalk.
    “Save me, May! This madwoman is trying to bend me into all sorts of unnatural positions! I think she’s already broken my liver and quite possibly one or both intestines,” Savian called from the cab.
    “You big baby,” I said, releasing him as I gave May a feeble smile. “I barely laid a finger on him, honest.”
    “She didn’t even turn his testicles to turnips, like she said she might,” Brom offered helpfully. “I would have liked to have seen that.”
    I narrowed my eyes at him. He grinned back.
    “Turnips?” May asked, looking from me to Savian as he unfolded himself from the car, clutching his sides.
    “It was all just a little bit of fun,” I said, putting my arm around Savian. “Wasn’t it, old friend?”
    He whimpered and clutched his sides. “My liver! Don’t hurt my liver again!”
    “You know Savian, too?” May asked.
    “Ow! My neck!”
    “Too? You . . . uh . . . know him?” I countered, releasing the pincer hold I had on the back of his neck.
    “May and I are old friends. She’s never tried to hurt me,” he said, shooting me a belligerent glare as he shuffled away from me and over to her.
    “Oh. Uh . . .” I coughed and tried to think of an excuse to get the man alone for a few minutes. “Isn’t that a coincidence. We’ve known each other for . . . oh, forever.”
    “I’ve never seen her before in my life,” Savian told May. “Don’t leave me alone with her. She’s vicious. I think she was trying the Vulcan neck pinch on me.”
    “Hmm,” May said. “Why don’t we all go into the house?”
    I trailed behind them as they entered the house, thinking furiously.
    “So what are you doing here?” May asked Savian as I closed the door behind me.
    “Savian!” I said, interrupting the man as he was about to answer. I smiled brightly and took his arm, dragging him toward the room I knew to be a small, unused study. “We have so much to talk about! Why don’t we go in here and have a cozy little chat, just the two of us, all nice and private-like.”
    “Help! She’s going to smite my testicles!” Savian shrieked.
    “You can bet I will if you keep up all that whining,” I said through gritted teeth as he fought me. “Stop struggling and you won’t get hurt.”
    “Famous last words!” he said, trying to pry my fingers off his arm. “Damn, lady, you have a grip like a . . . like a . . .”
    “Dragon?” May asked.
    “Yeah, like a . . .” He stopped struggling and gave me a long look, squinting at me slightly. “Hey. She doesn’t look like a dragon.”
    “That’s because I’m not one,” I said, flinging open the door. “Now let’s have a little chat about this business.”
    “What business? Have you hired Savian to do something?” May asked, standing in the doorway.
    “Not Sullivan, Gareth,” Brom piped up from the hall, unloading the books he had purchased from the book-shop where we’d spent the last hour. “He’s trying to save us from some bad dragons.”
    “Go and play with your mummies!” I ordered, pointing toward the back of the house.
    “You said I couldn’t!”
    “Don’t do as I said—do as I say!”
    He rolled his eyes and mumbled something about people not making any sense, but he duly trotted away toward the depths of the basement.
    “Maybe we’d all better have a little chat,” May said, giving me a long look as she entered the room. “I’d like to hear about the bad dragons.”
    “Who is bad?” Gabriel asked, following her in. “Savian! What