Light Dragons 03 - Sparks Fly

barter?”
    “What do you want?” I countered, feeling it was better to have the upper hand when negotiating with a dragon.
    “Dauva,” he said simply.
    “You’re kidding, right?” I asked.
    He shook his head.
    I sighed. “Dauva is not mine to give. What else do you want?”
    “What do you have that is valuable?”
    “We’ve just been through this,” I said, running my hands through my hair in agitation as I frantically ran over my meager belongings. What I needed was something similar to the light blade, something that had belonged to Baltic and the black dragons, but that had been taken away from us. Dragonwood and Dauva were out. Baltic’s talisman was out of the question, even if I knew where it was. The only other thing I could think of having been stolen from the black dragons was the Modana Phylactery, the one-fifth of the dragon heart Baltic had kept in his lair until Kostya had filched it a few months before.
    “She thought of something else,” Jim said, plopping its big butt down on my foot and leaning on me. “Ear rubbles?”
    “Jim, leave Ysolde alone while she’s thinking,” Aisling said, ceasing muttering at Drake long enough to glance at me. “ Did you think of something?”
    I eyed Drake. I couldn’t ask him to steal his brother’s shard as payment for stealing the light blade-that would just rack up another debt to be settled, not to mention the fact that Drake probably wouldn’t do it. Which meant I had to steal the thing myself. I wondered how hard it would be to get into Kostya’s lair. “Yes, I think I have-”
    “I knew it! I knew you would be here! You thought to have meetings to find ways to destroy me, did you not? But I have found you out, and now, in front of these witnesses, you will accept my challenge!” A man’s voice rolled out across the room before he stalked through the closed door, stopping in front of Gabriel. “You, my godson’s brother, you will be my witness that this one, unworthy of bearing the title of wyvern, has accepted my challenge at last and will give back to me the sept I, myself, created.”
    “Constantine,” I said with a sigh, causing the man in question to spin around, a delighted expression chasing away his scowl.
    “Ysolde! You are here? How fortunate, since I had not finished speaking to you when you left the shop.”
    Drake glared at his mate. “I thought you warded the house.”
    “I did!” She looked as surprised as Gabriel was exasperated. “Those wards were supposed to keep out all spirits.”
    “I am not an ordinary shade. I am a dragon, a wyvern, and we are not governed by those laws relating to lesser beings,” he answered with aplomb before taking my hand and pressing wet kisses to it. “My adorable one, as always, perhaps we could continue our conversation in private?”
    I was about to tell him that I would talk to him later, when a thought occurred to me. “You got through Aisling’s wards?”
    “I believe we’ve just established that fact.” He relinquished my hand when I pulled on it. “My poor darling. All those centuries spent with Baltic have weakened your mind.”
    If Constantine’s shadehood allowed him to get through Aisling’s wards, then perhaps he could do the same with any protection that Kostya had on his lair. If so, that would solve my problem of how to get the shard.
    I smiled at Constantine until his words penetrated my brain. “By the rood! Did you just call me stupid?”
    “Oooh, so not the way to woo the babes, Connie,” Jim said, giving his shoes a quick once-over before cocking a furry eyebrow at the former wyvern.
    Constantine, who was obviously about to placate me, glared instead at Jim and said in a thoroughly outraged tone that had Aisling and May both giggling, “ Connie? Did that ... that ... what the hell is that thing?”
    “It’s a demon, and its name is Jim, and it’s a friend,” I said, my hands on my hips as I flared my nostrils at him. I wasn’t normally the sort of woman who went around flinging her nostrils willy-nilly at people, but this was clearly one of those moments when such action was called for. I half wished for Baltic to be here, just so he could punch Constantine in the face and shut him up ... but then I remembered not only my agreement with Constantine, but the new idea that had just struck me, and instead I kept my tongue behind my teeth.
    “Hiya,” Jim said, allowing a little tendril of drool to coil down onto Constantine’s shoe. “I’m