Me and My Shadow - Katie MacAlister [38]
“Bring it back,” I said, my voice a low growl that I didn’t recognize.
“Don’t be silly—it’s just a sixth-class demon,” Sally said, dismissing my concern to turn her head and nuzzle Magoth’s filthy neck. She plucked a fern from behind his ear and proceeded to tickle his penis with it.
I slid a glance toward Bael. He was leaning back in his chair, watching me with an anticipatory light in his eyes.
“Bring. It. Back,” I said again, my body elongating and shifting into that of a silver-covered dragon. I drew back my lips, sending fire through my clenched teeth.
Sally’s eyes widened as I took a step toward her, sending fire to the very tips of her sparkly pink plastic shoes. “May! This is how you thank me?”
Magoth shoved Sally aside, his arms held wide as he welcomed me. “May! My own sweet, scaly May! You want to play? Right here? Right now? In front of Bael? I question your sense of timing, and yet, I am strangely excited by the thought. Let’s go for it. Give me a piece of that sweet tail!”
The air cracked. A large whump followed as Magoth hit the far wall of the room, sliding down the wood paneling with a squeak of flesh against highly polished wood.
Sally watched him for a moment before turning back to me, her eyes thoughtful, her lips pursed. “I see.”
“Do you?” I walked toward her, slowly, little compression tremors shaking the ground as I did so. “Do you, really?”
“Perhaps I was a little hasty in banishing your servant,” she said quickly, backing up a couple of steps. “I don’t want there to be bad feelings between us, sugar. What if I bring the demon back? Would that make you happy again?”
I let a slow smile curve my lips before I forced the dragon shard back into obedience, my body changing back to its normal shape. “That would make me very happy, indeed.”
She spoke a few words, and gave me a very toothy smile when Jim reappeared, its eyes rather wild. She even went so far as to pat it a couple of times on the head before turning her perky smile on Bael. “I’m sorry, Lord Bael. I forgot you said . . . I forgot.”
Bael gave her a long look before turning his head to consider the puddle of Magoth on the floor next to the wall. “He smudged my wall.”
“He had a little accident in the woods and got a bit dirty,” I explained.
Bael laced his fingers together and looked back to me. “It would appear he is also unconscious.”
“He would have just kept pestering me until I knocked him out, so I figured I’d save everyone the trouble of listening to him rant and rave. Which, I assume, he’d do, since I suspect you have something to tell me he isn’t going to like.”
“Very astute, dragon,” Bael said.
“Oh, goody, I haven’t missed it,” Sally said, beaming at me. “You’re going to love this, May. Just love it. It’s so—oh my gosh, so wonderful! I couldn’t believe it when Lord Bael told me about it. ‘May is just going to flip when she hears about this,’ I told him, and so you are.”
“Sally,” Bael said, with a weary gesture.
“Oh. Sorry. Lips are zipped,” she said, making a zipping action across her mouth. “Go right ahead and make May’s day.”
Bael leaned back in his chair, seemingly unaware of the wariness in my eyes, saying comfortably, “As I was saying before we were interrupted, there are rules that I must adhere to.”
“I am tolerably familiar with the Doctrine of Unending Conscious,” I said, mentally going over the set of rules that governed Abaddon for anything appropriate to the situation. Sally’s reassurance of loving the surprise that Bael had for me confirmed my initial impression that I was about to be sent screaming in horror from the room.
“As your employer so abrasively stated, we must grant him his due now that the expulsion has been appealed, and the appeal denied. Therefore, I am doing just that,” Bael said, flicking his fingers toward me.
I took a deep breath, holding tight to my anger and the need for the shard to dominate me. “Might I point out that Magoth running amok in the mortal