Master of Smoke

though.”
    “Probably.” Logan turned his gaze across the field to meet that of his lovely blond lover. The woman nodded and summoned a gate, then disappeared through it. “Giada’s gone to pick it up.”
    “Enjoying your Truebond?” Tristan asked, referring to the psychic link the couple had obviously formed.
    “Oh, yeah.” Logan’s handsome face lit with a grin. “Giada’s amazing. She’s so fucking brilliant ...”
    “And you love her for her mind.” Tristan’s smile was gently mocking.
    Logan laughed. “Among other things.”
    A moment later, another swirling dimensional gate opened, and Giada stepped through. The tall, stunningly beautiful witch extended a tiny cat statue between tapered fingers. “One pewter kitty, as ordered.”
    “Thanks, Giada,” Belle said, accepting the cat. Its moonstone eyes glinted in the field’s lighting, and she could feel power humming through it. She smiled, encouraged. “This should work nicely.”
    “I hope so.” Giada linked an arm with her fiancй. “We’ve both been so worried about Smoke. He’s a good friend.”
    “And he practically raised me,” Logan said. “I was going nuts thinking that bastard Warlock killed him.” A muscle flexed in her jaw. “We really need to end that fucker.”
    “If we can figure out a way to do it without triggering a war with the Direkind.” Tristan shrugged.
    “I’d better get to work on that spell,” Belle told them, opening a gate back to her home, where she kept the magical tools she’d need. “I want to have it ready if he surfaces again.”
    “Not without me,” Tristan growled, grabbing her wrist before she could step through it. “You’ll go off on your own and get yourself killed.”
    She gave him a narrow-eyed glare. “Tristan, I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
    He sneered. “Yeah. Sure.”
    But she let him follow her through the gate anyway.

    David hunkered down on the coffee table, his eyes shuttered as he attempted to contact the godling hidden somewhere inside himself.
    He had to escape this form before he ended up costing Eva her life. Unfortunately, so far all he had for his pains was a savage headache.
    “David?” Eva crouched in front of the coffee table, putting herself at his eye level. She looked impossibly huge, as if she’d transformed into a giant. But then, everything else looked wrong, too, blown completely out of scale. For a moment he had the horrifying sense he was about to disappear, that he’d shrink until he vanished. He gritted his small jaws and fought rising panic.
    Eva’s lovely brown eyes pleaded with his. “David, talk to me, dammit. Please.”
    He ignored her, focused on his ferocious need to transform into something that could defend her. Even if it wasn’t human. Even if it was the tiger form he’d seen in his dream, that would be better than this utterly useless creature.
    Eva rose and began to pace the living room, frustration in her voice. “Look, I know you’re pissed, but dammit, what would you do if our positions were reversed? If I’d been turned into a toy poodle, you wouldn’t let me go out and get eaten either.”
    “That’s different,” he growled, unable to resist the topic.
    “Why?”
    “Because I’m the male.” David knew the argument was irrational, but he really didn’t give a damn. “I’m supposed to be the protector. It’s what I do. It’s who I am.”
    He opened his eyes to find that Eva had stopped in her tracks to stare at him. “That is such total bullshit. I ...”
    Someone rapped knuckles against the front door. “Eva? Are you in there?”
    “Oh, hell, it’s Mom!” Before he had time to twitch an ear, she pounced, snatching him into her arms.
    “Let me go!” When he tried to struggle, she grabbed the scruff of his neck, holding him helplessly immobile while she wrapped one arm securely around him.
    “Forget it,” she hissed. “I’m damned if I’m going to let you race outside.”
    “Eva?” her mother asked again.
    She got the door open before he could decide whether to sink his fangs into her wrist. Stepping back to let her mother in, Eva forced a smile, hoping it didn’t look too frantic, as she tried to maintain her grip on David. “Hi, Mom!”
    Charlotte Roman strolled in, a slim and youthful figure in a cream pantsuit and peach blouse. Atypically, she wore a frown as she glanced around the room. “Who were you talking to? I thought I heard a man’s voice.”
    “It was the