Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

weird kid who calls everyone Carrot, but no one pays much attention to him.”
    Baltic’s fingers twined through mine. “You sent my son to a mage school?”
    “Dr. Kostich thought he might have some talents in that direction, so I enrolled him in it. Unfortunately, he seems to have inherited my lack of abilities when it comes to things arcane.”
    “Ixnay on the ecretsay ummonsay,” Jim said, casting a worried glance my way. “Oh, great, now she’s giving me another of those looks, the kind that says I’m going to be sent to my room without supper.”
    “You will if you don’t give me the phone,” I told it.
    “Gotta go. Pavel said he’s doing goulash for dinner, and he promises it’ll be almost orgasmic.”
    “What’s—” Brom started to ask.
    “Out!” I told the demon, taking the phone from it. “Brom, Baltic will be happy with ‘Dad.’ You go practice saying it somewhere else, please. And Jim, so help me god—”
    “I know, you’ll skin me alive or some other heinous act if I explain to Brom what ‘orgasmic’ means. I didn’t actually mean to say that in front of him. Sometimes I forget he’s only a kid.”
    “That’s all right,” Brom said, patting Jim on the head as the two of them exited the room. “Sometimes I forget you’re a demon. You want to play catch?”
    “Naw. Let’s go play on Pavel’s Xbox. He’s got a road-racing game I love.”
    “Aisling?”
    “Still here. And you have my permission to yell at Jim. I can’t believe it’d say something so inappropriate in front of a child. Honest to Pete! It knows better than that! Drake, stop trying to take the phone away from me! I’m not done.”
    “I take it we’re off speakerphone?”
    “Yes, I thought after that last argument, it would be better. Drake wishes to speak with Baltic, but I did want to remind you that should anything happen to Jim, I will rain down destruction as you’ve never seen it. Not that I think you’d do anything to it, because you seem very maternal, and we moms have a sense about those things, but I feel obligated as its demon lord to say that. Fine! You can have the phone. Sheesh, pushy dragons . . .”
    “Oh, Aisling?” I said, smiling to myself.
    “Yes?”
    “The next time you have Drake alone, ask him about a small inn in Paris called the Hangman’s Balls. Mention the year 1699.”
    “All right,” she said slowly. “I will. Here’s Drake.”
    “A moment, please,” I told Drake when he asked for Baltic. I held the phone to my chest. “You will be polite.”
    “I am a wyvern,” he said airily.
    “You will not say rude things to Drake no matter what he says to you.”
    “You may leave. I will speak with the green wyvern by myself.”
    “We are trying to establish a relationship with these people. Please remember that.”
    He tried to take the phone. I hung on to it. “You may leave now, Ysolde.”
    “Not until you promise to be good.”
    “I’m always good. Give me the phone.”
    “Just remember what I’ve said, that’s all.”
    “I am not a child who needs to be schooled in matters of weyr etiquette,” he answered, trying to pry my fingers off the receiver.
    “You’re also notoriously short-tempered, don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks, and have a chip on your shoulder approximately the size of Rhode Island.”
    “Mate,” he said, a warning light in his eyes.
    “Yes?”
    “Do your many and varied sexual kinks run to spankings?”
    “I don’t have sexual kinks, and no—you wouldn’t!” I gasped as he tried to pull me over to the chair. “All right, I’ll leave, but if you mess things up after I’ve worked so hard to straighten them out, I will make your life a living hell—just see if I don’t!”
    As I closed the door I heard him say, “What? Yes, it worked. I recommend using the threat of it as a method of controlling an unruly mate—”

Chapter Sixteen
    “B y the rood, they can’t be early, can they?” I paused on my way through the French doors in the sitting room to peer out of the glass next to the front door. A car was pulling to a stop. “I’m not ready! We don’t have all the beverages out to the field yet, let alone the canapés!”
    “I can help you with the canapés,” Jim said, licking its lips as it emerged from the kitchen hauling a large basket. “Oooh, visitors?”
    “If your demon lord came early just to catch us by surprise—oh, no!”
    “Who is it?” Jim asked, peering around me. Its eyebrows rose.