Me and My Shadow - Katie MacAlister [123]
“I know. I just don’t like him referring to you as his wife,” Gabriel said. “Besides, my mother wishes us to be married in front of her people, and this will make everything easier.”
“Done,” Magoth snapped, slamming down the pen and knife. “Now you owe me one thing.”
“We just gave you your freedom. What could we possibly owe you now?” I asked.
He growled. “You will tell me where that betrayer Sally is. She will pay for her perfidy—of that I swear. Tell me her whereabouts that I may exact my lengthy and incredibly unpleasant revenge upon her.”
“I think she said something about going to Los Angeles,” I said without once blinking my eyes. I looked at Gabriel. “Didn’t she say Los Angeles?”
“Yes,” he lied, also without the slightest hesitation. “That is what she said.”
“Then that is where I will go,” Magoth declared, his face tight with intensity. “Los Angeles! The City of Angels will weep by the time I am through tearing it apart to find her! Good-bye, former wife. I will return to deal with you once I have meted out justice to Sally.”
He was gone with a dramatic flourish that would have done a Shakespearean actor proud.
Nora had been silent during the entire conversation, but she looked thoughtfully at the door now, and said, “I’m afraid to ask, but why is he so angry at the demon lord Sally?”
“Probably because I told him Sally was behind everything, including convincing us to banish him.”
She regarded me from behind her red-framed glasses, her eyes unreadable. “But that is not the truth.”
“No, but it gives him a focus for his wrath.”
She looked slightly puzzled. “You said that you consider Sally your friend.”
“We do.”
“And yet you would set Magoth on her?”
“Not really, no. We told him she was in LA. She’s not. She said something earlier about going to Germany.”
“But won’t he simply realize she’s not there and turn elsewhere to find her?”
“I highly doubt if he’ll even think about her once he hits LA. He really is the biggest ham at heart. He’ll get out there, be smitten all over again with all the Holly-wood glitz and glamour, and will fling himself back into the world of acting. He really did love his years there, you know. I have every expectation that in a few years we’ll see him back on the silver screen.”
It took her a moment, but at last she smiled. “That was very smart of you. Congratulations on both your freedom and your upcoming nuptials. If you have no further need for me, I believe I will go see if Aisling needs anything. She’s a bit lonely now that Jim is in Paris with Cecile for a few days, and I must reassure her that it was quite happy when I delivered it there.”
“Life,” I told Gabriel after she left, kissing his nose to emphasize my point, “could not be better.”
Chapter Twenty-one
“Did you see the little ones?” René asked several hours later when I entered the now-tidy sitting room. “I aided Aisling to birth them, and I can tell you that, with the exception of my own, they are the two most perfect bébés in the world.”
“I haven’t seen them yet. My appointment is for”—I glanced at the card that István had given me—“half an hour from now. Don’t you think it’s a little odd that Drake made up an appointment schedule to see the babies? Is that normal?”
“Eh.” René shrugged. “He is a new papa and very protective. To him, it makes sense.”
“But to go so far as to don surgical garb when visiting them? My card says I have to be outside Aisling’s room five minutes early so I can pick up sterile clothing.”
“He is a little overprotective.”
“And then there’s the baby-holding training class he made us take after lunch. I thought that instructor was rather rude implying that just because Cyrene and Kostya and Gabriel and Nora and I didn’t have children, we wouldn’t know how to hold a newborn.”
René couldn’t really argue with that, especially since Drake had made him, the father of seven, attend the class, as well. “He is very overprotective,” René finally said.
“And the blood tests and retinal scans to verify our identities?”
“He is doing blood tests?” Ren