“Yes. I understand.”

“No, you don’t. You say you do, but you can’t possibly imagine the embarrassment I felt. Feel. Will continue to feel to the end of my days.”

Drake’s hand was warm on my hip as we walked down the hallway to the staircase that split midway down into two curving arms ending at the marble-floored entryway, which looked as big as a football field to my overwhelmed eyes. “You’re being overly sensitive. I was covering you. All my mother could see was that I was lying on you in an intimate manner.”

“Leaving aside the fact that anyone saw that, it was your mother! Why didn’t you tell me you had a mother?”

Drake shot me an exasperated look. “I did.”

“You know full well what I mean,” I told the look. “Why didn’t you mention that your mother was alive and well and prone to walking in on you at any moment?”

“I had no idea she was in this hemisphere, let alone in England. She loathes England. That’s why she gave me this house. I doubt if she’s been to this country more than three times in the last hundred years.”

I took a deep breath as Drake paused outside the double doors I knew led to a formal library. I’d had a quick tour of the house when we arrived, just enough to see that it wasn’t so much a house as a small mansion, but none of that mattered now. Inside that room was someone I’d never expected to have to meet, and certainly not in the circumstances I’d just found myself.

“Made it downstairs, did you? So many comments come to mind,” Jim said, sitting up from where it was lying on the gray marble floor.

“You make just one of them, and it’s back to limbo for you,” I warned.

Jim evidently read with unusual accuracy the threat in my eyes. “Sheesh! Fine. Make a big deal about it. It’s not like I haven’t heard you two going at it before.”

I narrowed my eyes and thought about a nifty curse Nora had told me about that turned the target into a slug.

“I’m really impressed with the flame-proof quality of your bedding,” Jim said in a conversational tone to Drake as the latter swung open the double doors. “Think I can get a dog bed made up in something like that for when Ash gets pissed at me? The last time she got really annoyed, she singed my blanket.”

“Behave yourself, or there won’t be anything left of you to need a bed,” I whispered, slapping a smile on my face that I felt far from feeling. The four people in the room—Nora, Pál, István, and Drake’s mother—turned to look at us as Drake gently pushed me into the room.

“So. Here you are,” the dark-haired, olive-skinned woman said from a gold brocade couch. Nora was perched next to her, Paco at her feet. Pál and István sat in chairs opposite, both looking uncomfortable. They leaped to their feet as Drake entered the room.

“Yes, we are here. Kincsem, this is my mother, Doña Catalina de Elférez.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said pleasantly, lying through my teeth as I held out my hand for her.

She looked at it like it might contain toads.

“Mother,” Drake said in a voice rife with warning.

I dropped my hand when she stood up, her dark eyes hard as she looked me over from feet to forehead. I felt hideously gawky and awkward despite wearing clothing Drake had purchased for me—a lovely pair of raw-silk black pants and a flowing fuchsia shirt that highlighted my assets. “Your woman is unacceptable.”

“That’s the second time today someone has said that.” My nerves were clearly a bit on edge, but despite the desire to snap at her, I kept a pleasant expression on my face. “Your nephew shares that opinion, for which I’m very sorry.”

“You look tired.” Catalina ignored me completely, examining Drake’s face for a moment. “You are unhappy.”

“On the contrary, at the moment I am quite content,” he answered, escorting me to a loveseat that sat at right angles to the couch. “You, however, are being unforgivably rude to my mate. Aisling has done nothing to justify such hostility and poor manners on your part.”

“Mate!” she shrieked, sending me a look that could have dropped a horse.

My fingernails bit into my palms as I squelched back any number of things I wanted to say. To my surprise, Jim marched over and sat next to me, leaning on my leg as if to offer support. I was touched by that, as well as by Drake’s hand, which he kept on my shoulder as he stood on my other side. I felt oddly protected by the two of them, although why I needed to be protected from Drake’s mother was beyond me.

“She is human!” Catalina accused, pointing a scarlettipped finger at me.

“Yes, she is,” Drake answered calmly. His fingers tightened slightly on my shoulder. I took that as a sign that he appreciated my silence while he dealt with his mother.

“You cannot have a mate who is human! You are a wyvern!”

“I know what I am. I also know what Aisling is, what the rules governing the weyr are, and the history of the sept. Regardless of all three, Aisling is my mate. The sept has accepted her. You would be wise to do the same.”

“Wise?” Her voice had a Spanish accent that became more noticeable as she shrieked. I had a few moments of trouble with the fact that she didn’t look any older than Drake—or me, for that matter—but pushed that aside to cope with the important things happening before me. “You are as insolent as your father was! If I had known you would shame me in this way, I would never have allowed them to rip you from my belly!”

Pál and István sidled toward the door.

“I think I’ll just take Paco for a walk,” Nora said quietly, following the two men. She slid me a sympathetic glance as she left. I gave her a feeble smile and wished like the dickens I could escape with her.

“And you are being deliberately insulting,” Drake answered as the door closed behind Nora. “If you are finished—”

“I have not yet begun to express myself,” she snarled, storming toward me, her black eyes lit with an unholy glint.

Jim stood up, the hackles between its shoulders standing on end as it gave a low-pitched warning growl. I stared in surprise at Jim for a second. It had never growled before, not even when various people were trying to kill me.

Catalina stopped, waves of hostility rolling off her. I wondered what I had done that set her so against me. “The mortal has a demon. How fitting.”

My hackles rose at the tone in her voice. I sat up straighter, aware that Drake moved closer until his leg was pressed against my arm. “Do not, Mother,” Drake said, the note of warning back in his voice.

Her eyes narrowed on him. She spat out something that had me flinching, even though I didn’t understand it. “You dare to criticize me? You made this choice, Drake. You cannot blame me or anyone else for having this response to your slap in the face of dragon tradition.”

“Tradition has been broken in the past and survived,” he said somewhat cryptically.

“Cabrón!”

I pursed my lips. I knew from watching Spanish-speaking TV that Drake’s mother had just called him a bastard.

“A backhanded insult if ever there was one,” he replied, releasing my shoulder to walk over to her. She was a tall woman, both taller and bigger than me, but not as tall as Drake. He loomed over her in a menacing fashion. “Are you finished, or is there a bit more bile you wish to work out?”

“You are as abominable as your father,” she snarled, her face tight with fury. “The day I was cursed with you both I fell to my knees and begged the Virgin to take me! I would have rather had my heart ripped out from my chest than know that my son, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, would shame me in this way!”

Drake had evidently had enough. His face was almost as dark as his eyes. “For Christ’s sake, Mother! I have mated with a mortal woman, not a goat! There is no disgrace in Aisling being human.”

“Tradition—”

“Can go to hell as far as I’m concerned,” Drake bellowed, startling everyone in the room.

It had an interesting effect on his mother. She stood still for a moment, then suddenly smiled, satisfaction positively dripping off her. “There is more of me in you than of your accursed father.”

I watched in utter surprise as she leaned forward and kissed Drake on the cheek. She gave me a narrow-eyed look that was downright frightening, then turned on her heel and left the room without another word.

The silence that filled her absence was almost deafening.

Drake looked at me. “You are no doubt expecting an explanation.”

“Oh, yes. About a whole lot of things, but foremost why your mother took such an instant and all-encompassing dislike to me. What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing. She has a volatile temper and is happiest when raging about something or other. She evidently decided to pick a minor point in dragon dogma to use as an outlet for her latest tantrum.”

I allowed him to pull me to my feet. My legs were still a bit boneless after our romp in bed, the fire inside me banked but not quenched. I leaned up against him, inhaling the wonderfully Drake scent that never failed to make me shiver with delight. “You’re talking about that thing where wyverns have one human parent, right? So she’s upset that rather than take a dragon mate so one of your kids will be a wyvern, you picked me?”

“I didn’t exactly pick you,” he said, escorting me through the hall to a side passage. “It just turned out that way.”

“Well, you know—” I started to say but stopped when my name was called. I hurried back into the main hall. Nora raced down the stairs from the upper floor, her bag of Guardian things in her hand.

“Pál, would you watch Paco for me? Normally I take him with me, but this time he might be considered a snack. Aisling—oh, there you are. Come quickly; there are blight hounds in the tube station.”

“Blight hounds? Oh. Sure. Gotcha.” I grabbed my purse and started after her. “Jim, heel!”

“I really hate it when you do that,” my demon grumbled, shambling after me. “I may look like a fabulously handsome and intelligent dog, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to act like one!”

“Pál will accompany you,” Drake said in a bossy voice, standing in the middle of the hall with his hands on his hips.

Nora paused and sent me a curious look. I stopped at the door and looked back at Drake. Here we were just settled back together, and already the terms of our relationship were being tested. “Thank you, but we’ll be fine.”

“I would be happier if Pál—”

I interrupted him before he could continue. “This is our business, remember?”

“Yes, it is. However, you just agreed to allow me to protect you in situations where you might be in danger.”

I took a deep breath and tried to phrase carefully what I needed to say. “Just as I trust you to not let me screw up dragon things, I trust Nora to keep me from a situation with beings I can’t handle. I’ve read about blight hounds, and I’m prepared to help her with them. They aren’t that dangerous, and I’ll have Jim and Nora with me. So thank you for offering Pál’s assistance, thank you for caring enough to want to shield me, but we’ll be fine on our own.”

An interesting parade of expressions passed across Drake’s face.

I ran across the floor to him, putting my hands on his chest as I leaned into him. “Trust goes both ways, Drake. You have to learn to trust that I know what I’m doing.”

“It’s not your abilities I doubt,” he said slowly, his eyes dark. “It is not easy to let you go in this manner.”

“I know it’s not. But it’ll get easier. OK?”

The anger on his face faded into annoyance, which did a brief tango with stubbornness, and finally morphed into resignation.

I gave him a swift kiss. “That was a hell of a battle you fought, but I appreciate your faith in me.”

“I have always had faith in you, kincsem. It is all others I distrust.” His eyes were like molten emeralds.

I smiled. “We’ll work on that, too. Don’t worry; Nora and I will be back soon.”

“You had better be,” he grumbled, giving Nora a significant look.

“I never thought you’d be able to pull that off, but you know, you just may end up getting what you want with him,” Jim said a few minutes later as we hurried down the cement steps into the belly of the Underground station located two blocks from Drake’s house. It was commuter hour, which meant the station was swarming with people entering and leaving. The distant rumble of trains echoed down the long tile corridors, dimmed by the sounds of commuters.

Before I could answer Jim, in the distance a high-pitched howl rose above the din, making every hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I muttered to myself, keeping a firm grip on both my purse and Jim’s leash.

“Tell me what you know of blight hounds,” Nora said in between apologies scattered left and right as she pushed her way through the crowd.

I rustled around in my memory for the snippets I’d read about them a few nights past. “They’re small beasts resembling hyenas, often used as a familiar to cast a curse on a location or structure. They generally serve demons but can…ow! Pardon me, sir; would you mind moving your paddle? Thank you.” I limped past a man who held a kayak paddle, rubbing my abused shin.

Nora sped around a corner, leaped a barrier intended to keep the public out of a transit employees–only area, and disappeared down a long, unlit hallway. I hurdled the barrier after her.

“Go on.” Her voice called back eerily from the darkness.

I ran almost blind, one hand out to keep from smashing into something. “They can be summoned by a knowledgeable practitioner of the dark powers.”

A dim yellow glow at the end of the disused hallway showed Nora’s form as she paused in an archway.

I leaped over a pile of disused signs, running the last few feet to her. “They are not generally considered dangerous unless found in great numbers, which seldom happens since they tend to fight with each other.”

Nora said nothing as she peered over the railing to the floor below. I stepped forward to look. We were on an overpass perched above two disused platforms, dusty and dirty and evidently now used for storage of miscellaneous office equipment. Over the broken chairs, scuffed and stained metal desks, and naked metal racks once used in administrative offices, a good hundred and fifty or so fox-sized red-and-black forms crawled, snarling and yipping at each other as they milled around. “Oh, dear.”

“This may be a little bit more involved than I originally anticipated,” Nora said slowly, her eyes on the seething mass of blight hounds.

“You want I should go back and get that guy’s paddle?” Jim asked me.

“Huh?”

Its lips pulled back in a smile. “From where I’m sitting, we’re up a creek without one.”

“We’ll start on the left side and work right,” Nora said, trotting across the overpass. “Use your wards to slow down any of them who rush you. Remember the three steps of dispatching.”

“Halt, bind, and destroy,” I said, following her.

“Exactly. Stay behind me, but don’t let any stragglers escape past you.”

“Gotcha. Jim, what’s the policy on a demon attacking demon minions?”

“We’re go for launch,” it panted as it ran after us.

“Great, so you don’t have any issues with helping me wipe them out?”

We stopped short of the platform, the nearest blight hounds about ten feet away. “Not a one. I never liked blight hounds. They have no sense of humor to speak of.”

“OK, but how will you dispatch them?”

“With lots of slobber?” Jim grinned at me as I drew a protective ward over myself. It gave a mock sigh as I narrowed my eyes. “They’re demonic, Aisling. If I destroy their physical forms, they will be sent back to Abaddon. I’ll just do a little neck snapping, and back they go.”

“Ew. No details; just do it.” I slung my bag over my back and unsnapped Jim’s leash, freeing up both my hands to draw wards.

Nora looked at me and cocked an eyebrow.

“Let’s do it,” I told her. “Effrijim, I command thee to wipe out the blight hounds!”

Jim gave a little battle cry as it ran forward into the mass of snarling bodies. Nora followed, her voice raised as she started clearing a path with a couple of high-level incantations.

The next hour and a half was grueling, exhausting, and draining on all levels—and I loved every minute of it.

“Now this is what I’m talking about!” I did a little victory dance as I dispatched the last blight hound, its body turning into a puff of nasty-smelling black smoke that hung heavily in the air. I twirled around to make sure that there were no more little nasties hiding anywhere, but Nora had rousted out the last of them. “Woohoo, we rock!”

Jim collapsed next to an overturned table, its tongue lolling to the ground as it panted, giving me an intolerant look. “Jeez, woman, get a grip. It was just a few blight hounds, not the princes of Abaddon themselves.”

I jumped over a stack of boxes containing clunky dot-matrix printers, pausing to give Jim a well-deserved pat on the head. “Cut me a little slack, OK? It was my first official infestation, and I’m celebrating. How did I do, Nora? I felt good. I felt in control, and even when that big herd rushed me and I got a little frenzied with the binding wards—sorry about freezing you, Jim, that was totally unintentional—it didn’t take me long to get the situation back under control.”

Nora poked a stack of discarded furniture to make sure no blight hounds remained, straightening up to dust off her hands and smile. “You did very well, as a matter of fact. You kept your head despite overwhelming circumstances.”

Even though I was filthy with dirt from the abandoned platform, and covered in demon smoke grit, I glowed with happiness from her praise.

“There is the little matter of the fire,” she added, hesitating.

“I put that right out. As soon as I saw the furniture on fire, I doused the flame.” A pang of guilt zinged through me as I glanced down the platform where the charred bits of rubble remained, the wall now stained black with smoke.

“Yes, you did.” Nora continued to hesitate. I stood before her, anxious to know how my first outing as a Guardian trainee had gone, worried by her obvious reluctance to speak.

“But?” I prodded her, my heart sinking as her smile faded.

“That wasn’t actually the fire I was speaking about.” She looked uncomfortable for a moment, which made me feel even more uneasy. “Are you aware that when you draw a ward, you invoke dragon fire?”

I frowned, mentally going over the ward-drawing process. “No, I wasn’t. I draw the pattern you showed me, add my own little bit, and imbue it with my belief in my powers and abilities, just as you told me. I don’t see where it is I’m drawing on Drake’s fire.”

She pointed at rat that peeked out from under a stack of garbage. “Draw a binding ward on that rat.”

“OK.” I took a deep breath, focused, and drew a symbol in the air that would, when combined with my force of will, bind the rat to the spot.

The ward glowed red in the air for a second, then faded into nothing. The rat gave a squeak of surprise as it tried to scurry away. I started to turn away, but a slight flicker caught my eye. To my surprise, fire suddenly flared to life in the form of the ward I’d just drawn, sending the rat beneath it into a frenzy of horror.

“Oh, my god!” I ran over, ignoring my dislike of rodents to snatch the rat out of harm’s way, swatting out the fire after I released the terrified rat. “I had no idea! I didn’t see any fire with the blight hounds but the one on the furniture…”

“I believe it manifests itself when you cement the ward with your will,” she mused, giving me a thoughtful look. “By the time you’ve done that and the fire manifests, you’ve moved on to the next being demanding your attention.”

I glanced back at the charred wood. “Ugh. Now I’m a pyromaniac.”

“Nothing so serious, although you will probably want to learn how to empower your wards without drawing on fire.”

Jim snorted. “As if.”

I didn’t say anything as I followed Nora and Jim out of the tube station. Jim’s words echoed in my head with worrisome intensity. What if my demon was right? What if I couldn’t draw a ward without pulling on Drake’s fire? I struggled with the need to keep the Guardian part of myself separate from Drake.

If I couldn’t do this on my own, what did that say about my abilities?