Me and My Shadow - Katie MacAlister [33]
“South American,” I said, mentally apologizing to everyone on that continent.
“Oh. Latin,” Ted said, nodding. “That explains it. Impetuous people. Excellent dancers, but impetuous.”
“I’d like a gin and tonic, my twin would like a bottle of lemon Perrier, if you have it, and Savian would like . . . ?”
“Brandy.”
“Hmm, 1996 Bollinger’s. I’ll have to check the storeroom for that. I think we have some left over from the New Year’s celebration. . . .” Ted took our orders with only one backwards look at Magoth before hurrying to the back room.
“You’d better pray no one else comes in here while you’re having your champagne,” I told him. “Because as soon as you’re done, you’re putting some clothes on. Jim, stop wiping your nose on my hand. You can have some of Cy’s Perrier, since she gets drunk if she drinks a whole bottle.”
“I do not get drunk! I never get drunk!” Cyrene said, outraged at the slur against her character.
“May eighteenth, 1921. Long Island, New York,” Magoth said, arching an eyebrow at her. “My house. Specifically, the garden. You, me, and three hundred of my closest friends.”
Cyrene flushed and looked away. “That wasn’t drunk. That was enthralled.”
“It was an orgy,” corrected Magoth. He thought for a moment, a smile erasing his pout. “A lovely, lovely orgy. Which resulted in the creation of the ever-adorable May, if I am not mistaken, and I never am about such things. Do you remember, sweet one? Do you remember being called into existence, and the exact moment when your life began, and your eyes first landed upon me?”
“Yes, I remember. I screamed.”
“Music to my ears,” he sighed dreamily. “I don’t suppose—”
“No,” I said hastily, and would have continued, but the sound of footsteps clattering down the bare wooden staircase to the basement arrested me.
A man paused at the bottom of the stairs, glancing quickly about the room, clearly about to turn around and go back upstairs. He caught sight of us, however, blinked twice, then turned and bellowed up the stairs, “Found her!”
“That doesn’t sound good,” I murmured as I watched a second man join the first. The pair of them walked toward us with unmistakable purpose—and scent.
“Demons,” Cyrene said, wrinkling her nose as the smell of demon smoke hit us.
“Wrath, by the looks of them,” Savian said, squinting at them.
Wrath demons, as anyone who’s ever been to Abaddon knew, were not the sort of beings you welcomed into your company. They were like mini demon lords, with substantial powers, and minions of their own.
“What do they want?” Cy asked.
“No doubt that cur Bael has realized what a mistake he made in expulsing me, and is summoning me back to restore upon me the rightful estates and titles which your twin’s carelessness so callously cost me,” Magoth said, watching the two men approach with an anticipatory glint in his eye.
“May didn’t do anything to get you kicked out of Abaddon,” Cyrene said, much to my astonishment. Normally oblivious to slurs made against me, now and again she surprised me by jumping to my defense. “That was your own doing, and you know it.”
“His Most Heinous and Imperious Majesty, the premiere prince Bael, has not sent us to deal with a has-been like you, Magoth,” the nearest demon said, a sneer curling its lips. It stopped a few feet away from me and jerked its head in what I realized was acknowledgment of me.
“You will address me as Lord Magoth, you sniveling little scum,” Magoth snapped, his words so chilling and filled with menace that Jim immediately backed up a few feet. I rubbed my arm nearest Magoth. Emotional outbursts caused him to leech the warmth from his environment, leaving me with the sensation of having brushed up against an iceberg. “And you will speak only when I give you permission to do so.”
My eyebrows went up at his imperious tone. I’d heard him use it before, but only on his own minions, never another demon lord’s followers, and certainly not the first-in-commands of the head honcho of all Abaddon.
The demons gave Magoth a scathing look and turned to me. “The Lord Bael desires your