Light Dragons 02 - The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

and set its shoes on fire.
    “Argh! Not the shoes! They’re Italian! Cost me a whole month’s allowance!” Jim danced around, slapping at its shoes.
    “If Drake has something to say to me, he can say it in front of Ysolde,” Baltic said.
    “Yes! Absolutely! We’re not stupid, you know! They just want to separate us so they can do mean things to Baltic. I’m not going to allow that.”
    “Ash said you and her and May could talk about your little problem on the verandah,” Jim added once it had stuffed its shoes under a couch cushion to extinguish the flames. “Man, and I thought demon lords had hairtrigger tempers.”
    “What problem do you have with the verandah?” Baltic asked me, looking mildly confused.
    “I don’t have a problem with any form of architectural structure, not that I know of, at least. Jim, what in the name of all that is good and glorious are you talking about?”
    Jim sighed. “Next time I’ll brush up on grammar, OK? Aisling wants to talk to you on the verandah. About your little problem.”
    Both Baltic and I looked with incomprehension at the demon.
    “What, I have to draw you a picture?” It waved its hands around in the air. “Your oblempray with Ostichkay’s awnspay.”
    “Oh.” I glanced at Baltic. “Er . . . perhaps you should talk to the dragons, Baltic. After all, we are here to clear your name.”
    “That is your goal, not mine.” His dark, deeply mysterious eyes considered me for a minute. “What problem do you have with Kostich?”
    “Nothing. Not personally. I have a little job I have to do for him, but that’s all.”
    “What sort of job?”
    I avoided the penetrating look that was attempting to bore into my head. “Just something I agreed to do in order to have him lift the interdict.”
    “You will tell me about this job.” That was an order, not a request, and luckily, Baltic knew well that I didn’t like to be ordered around, because I didn’t even have a chance to get my glare really warmed up before he lifted one hand in capitulation. “Pax. I will speak with the wyverns as you have asked me to, but when I have done so, you will fulfill my request to explain what you are doing for Kostich.”
    “Fair enough. But no antagonizing the situation, not that we’re sitting horribly pretty at the moment, but there’s no need for everyone to get riled up again.”
    With a noise of impatience, he rose to leave the room, standing aside when May and Aisling entered. He shot me one last penetrating glance before Pavel and he followed Jim out the door.
    “We’re good, if you guys want to take a little break,” Aisling told the three guards. Maata and Tipene exchanged glances, hesitating.
    “We promise we won’t do anything but talk,” May added with a smile. The two silver guards nodded and left the room, leaving us with Mikhail, who still watched me with fascinated anticipation.
    “Boo!” I told him.
    He jumped a good foot in the air.
    “Shoo. We want to be alone,” Aisling said, holding the door open for him.
    He gave me a big berth, but left the room.
    “Finally,” Aisling said with a sigh, sitting across from me. “Before we get started, I wanted to ask you about Jim.”
    “I’m really sorry, Aisling. I’ve tried everything I can think of to change it back.”
    “Is it your magic gone”—she waggled her fingers in the air—“wonky?”
    “I think so. Nothing seems to be coming out right.”
    “I thought having the Grace of the Magi put on you was going to correct that,” said May.
    “I thought so, too, but it hasn’t. Obviously, something else is messing with my ability to draw the magic correctly. You tried to order Jim into doggy form?” I asked Aisling.
    “Several times. And although it changes to its normal form, it pops right back to the human one after a couple of minutes. It’s like whatever you did is overriding its choice of form.”
    “That’s just bizarre. I have no idea what happened with my spell to do that to it.”
    Jim, who had come back into the room in the middle of the discussion, gave me a pathetic look. “I’m not going to have to stay this way, am I? This form totally sucks. I can’t pee on things in the yard, I can’t lick my own package, I can’t slobber on Cecile’s adorable furry little ears. . . . It just sucks.”
    Aisling shot it a quelling look. “Go sit with the others.”
    “Why?” it asked suspiciously. “You going to talk about something racy? You going to compare