Light Dragons 02 - The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

even think of trying to give it back to me.”
    Jim eyed my chest as it wrapped the T-shirt around its waist. “I see you still have your sept tat on your left boobie.”
    I tugged up the lacy top of my camisole and glared at the demon before marching toward the house.
    “Hey!” Jim called from where it stood. “You’re not going to leave me in human form, are you? I thought you were going to change me back.”
    “I tried. There’s something going on with Baltic’s fire that’s messing me up, so until I get it figured out, you’re just going to have to stay that way.”
    “What?” Jim shrieked, its voice startling the morning birds that were chattering and singing to each other from the safety of the shrubberies. “No way! I can’t stay like this! I had to be human for a week, and it was a nightmare! I’ll be good, I promise. I won’t make you look at my snakebite. Just change me back, pretty please with dog hair on top.”
    I stopped at the door to the kitchen. “I would if I could, Jim, but right now, there’s so much going on in my life, I think it’s all affecting my magic. If I can get a few things taken care of, then I can concentrate on figuring out what’s going wrong. Until then, I’m sorry, but human form won’t kill you.”
    “That’s what you think,” it muttered darkly, following after me as I entered the house. “I think you can change me, but you just don’t want to. Man, I’m so going to tell Baltic that you have the hots for my naked human form.”
    “You do and the kilt won’t be the only thing missing,” I warned before trotting upstairs to get a new shirt.
    An hour later, after having been forced to run into town to buy Jim a replacement kilt and shirt, along with a pair of shoes and some underwear, I left the demon with a big bowl of popcorn and a stack of Pavel’s DVDs. I stood outside Baltic’s study for a few moments, straining my ears to hear what was going on, but there was nothing audible but a faint rumble of male voices. I tapped on the door and entered, not surprised to see Thala up and about.
    She whirled around at the noise, her eyes narrowing on me. “Pavel says you are human now, and not a dragon.”
    I blinked at the unexpected statement. I half thought she might lambaste me for drugging and restraining her, but evidently she either didn’t realize what had happened—which, given the muddled state the sleeping drugs had left her in, wasn’t out of the question—or she chose to ignore it. “Yes, I am.”
    “No, you are not. You are my mate, and thus are a light dragon,” Baltic corrected, looking up from an architect’s plan.
    I let that go and eyed Thala curiously. She was about my height, built a bit broader than me, with coppercolored hair and dark reddish brown eyes. There was a blackish blue aura around her that warned she had control of some sort of dark power. Baltic had told me she was a necromancer, and that her mother was his former girlfriend, the famed archimage Antonia von Endres. What was more unsettling was the fact that she was also the sister to the woman I had recently learned was the true wife of the man I had married. “Did Ruth not tell you about me?”
    “Ruth?” Her lip curled in scorn. “That pretender. I haven’t spoken to her since Baltic was slain.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “I had no idea you were present at Dauva when that happened.”
    “I wasn’t.”
    “Odd, then, that you would date something to that event.”
    She turned her back on me, clearly dismissing my existence, addressing herself to Baltic instead. “If Kostich holds the light sword, then he must be keeping it at the vault at Suffrage House. That’s the best security he can hope for in France. We will simply have to get it from there. We should go to Paris immediately and see how much protection he has added.”
    “That would probably be best,” Baltic answered, a strange hesitancy in his manner. “Later. Now that Ysolde is here, however, we can discuss your experience at the hands of the weyr.”
    Thala’s hands tightened around the edge of the desk. “Surely that can wait for another time? Your woman can have no concern with what was said to me.”
    “My mate is concerned in every aspect of my life,” Baltic corrected, giving Thala a no-nonsense look. Love warmed my heart. I wanted to simultaneously cheer and kiss him, but that would no doubt enrage the woman who I was beginning to believe was more than a little jealous of my