Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

tray of leaded crystal goblets. “Those were for the après- sárkány lemon sorbet! Right! That’s it! No more Miss Nice Whatever-the-hell-I-am!”
    “Dragon,” Dr. Kostich said at the same moment Baltic said, “Mate,” and Jim added, in not nearly a quiet enough voice, “Crazy lady?”
    I snatched up a small Chippendale chair with a cream and pale blue striped seat, and lunged toward the mage with it held out before me, as if I were a lion tamer and he were a particularly obstreperous lion. “Back! Back, I say! You can’t have the sword! You can’t have Baltic; he’s mine! Go away, and don’t bother us again! Er . . . do I get paid for the last two weeks even though you put the interdiction on me? Because I haven’t seen my paycheck deposited yet, and I promised Brom he could pick out a large dehydrator for his birthday, and that’s only a couple of weeks away.”
    A burst of whitish blue light flared in front of me, the chair I held disintegrating as the arcane power blasted it to smithereens. I stared in surprise first at my hand, which held one surviving leg of the chair, then up to Dr. Kostich. “You aimed that at me!” I said, aghast.
    A low growl of anger came from Baltic, and suddenly, the room was full of a white dragon, fire erupting around him as he slammed into Dr. Kostich, the two of them tumbling to the highly polished marble floor in a confusion of dragon limbs, tail, and flailing mage legs.
    “No one touches my mate,” Baltic snarled, pinning Kostich to the ground, puffing a few wisps of smoke a scant inch from Kostich’s face.
    “Oooh. He’s drooling on him. That’s just completely gross,” Jim said, watching from the safety of the stairs.
    “Those who live in glass houses,” I told the demon before marching over to Kostich’s head and poking at him with the chair leg. “And you owe us for this chair, too! It was an antique!”
    Kostich squawked something, his face beet red, his body writhing as he desperately tried to get air into his squashed lungs.
    No one heard the front door open until the voice spoke.
    “Are we early? Oh. Er. Hello, Dr. Kostich.”
    “Heya, Ash,” Jim said, hopping down the stairs to greet its demon lord. “Lemon sorbet’s not ready yet. Why don’t you come back in an hour?”
    “Uh . . .” I blinked at the people crowding the doorway. Aisling, Drake, and his two redheaded bodyguards were crammed into the door, all with the same identical expressions of surprise. “Hi.”
    “Hi,” Aisling said, looking at where Baltic was flattening Dr. Kostich. “Hello, Baltic. I don’t think we’ve formally met.”
    “Do you know who I am?” Dr. Kostich spat out, somewhat breathily, to be sure. “I lead the Committee!”
    I straightened up and smiled at the dragons as Aisling stepped carefully over the broken crystal goblets, Drake right behind her. “You are a little bit early, but that’s all right, although as Jim says, the sorbet isn’t ready yet. Oh, hell! Jim!”
    “I can have you all banished to the Akasha! I’m just that powerful!” Dr. Kostich wheezed.
    I ignored him and turned to glare at the demon. “What? Who? Me? I wasn’t smelling his butt!” Jim said quickly, backing away from where Baltic lay crushing Dr. Kostich.
    “You’re all going to be charged for these grievous crimes against my august person!”
    Baltic swung his neck around to send a little circle of fire at the demon. I caught the fire as it passed me and tossed it back to him with a frown.
    “You’re supposed to be elsewhere, so that Aisling has to make Drake do what she says!” I told the demon. “You can’t be a hostage for their good behavior if you’re right here!”
    “That’s not my fault,” Jim said, sitting on Kostich’s foot.
    “Including the demon, who has just broken my foot! Get off, you soulless beast of Abaddon!”
    “Aisling is the one who came early,” Jim added.
    I frowned at the woman as she stopped in front of Baltic and Dr. Kostich. “You did this deliberately, didn’t you? You came here early just so you would catch me in the middle of my preparations, just so you could make me look bad. That’s really not at all nice, and after I went to the trouble of making a cheesecake!”
    “What sort of preparations?” Drake asked, pulling Aisling back a couple of paces when Dr. Kostich freed one hand and tried to grab her. “Were you setting traps for us? Arranging for an ambush? Another bomb?”
    “Lemon sorbet and canapés,”