Me and My Shadow - Katie MacAlister [6]
“Hey, May, just thought you’d like to know that Magoth found your wallet again, and is on the phone with your MasterCard in his hand. Hey, Gabe, how they hangin’? Oooh. Nice lair. Is that a MacGyver 512 you got there? Drake has one on order.” Jim stepped around the two security experts and cast an interested eye around at the work in progress.
“István dropped it off a couple of days early,” I explained at Gabriel’s surprised expression. “Evidently Drake feels that since Aisling’s due date has come and passed, everyone would be more comfortable without Jim making references to her exploding like an overripe peach.”
“The word was actually ‘pimple,’ but yeah, Drake threatened to chop me up into demon chow if I didn’t get out of the way,” Jim said with absolute nonchalance. “But it’s all good, because Ash made May my temporary boss while she’s busy popping out that baby, and May loves me. Right, May?”
Gabriel’s quicksilver eyes flashed from the two men, now arguing over the relative merits of wards versus banes (the latter being weakish curses that were nonetheless extremely powerful, and very difficult to break). “What has Magoth done now?”
“We just have to get rid of him,” I said in a low voice, hoping he could read the message in my eyes. “Immediately.”
“Right, May?” Jim repeated, a little more forcefully. “Ya love me, right? I’m da man?”
Gabriel examined my face. “Has he touched you?”
I sighed, holding up my hand. Rather than normal, slightly freckled fingers, it was made up of long, elegant silver digits tipped with scarlet claws. “The dragon shard isn’t working correctly. It seems to be confused. And the sooner Magoth is gone, the sooner I can straighten it out.”
“Who’s your daddy? That’s right—incredibly handsome, and manly in a furry sort of way, Jim is! I’m all yours, sweet cheeks, duly authorized by Ash to submit to your every whim and desire, especially the ones that involve giving me food and belly scratches.”
“You don’t mean . . .” Gabriel’s eyes opened wide.
I nodded.
“I’ll kill him.”
The words were spoken softly, and in Gabriel’s normal velvety tones, but the underlying threat was so great it made my blood grow cold.
“Whoa, now! No offense intended,” Jim said, backing away. “If you don’t want May giving me belly scratches, I can get them elsewhere. Word of advice, though, Gabe—you may wanna think about switching to decaf.”
“You can’t,” I said sadly, the dragon shard, content at having stirred things up, subsiding into silence as reason returned to me. “He’s still immortal, and there’s a chance we can unload him back into Abaddon.”
A thin little curl of smoke escaped his nose. For some reason, that always charmed me. I leaned in to give him a quick lip nibble and kiss.
“Oh, yeah, now, that’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Jim said from the foot of the metal ladder.
I shot the demon a glare, and pointed. “Leave!”
“I was just—”
“Leave!” I ordered again. “Go tell Magoth if he orders just one more item from that high-end sex shop, I’ll stick his twelve-inch glow-in-the-dark spiked dildo where the sun don’t shine.”
Jim gave me a wounded look before it obeyed my command. “And I thought you were going to be fun. You’ve been hanging around Aisling too much—you really have.”
“Come in here,” Gabriel said, pulling me deeper into the coolness of the semifinished lair. Steel- and iron-lined to minimize the effectiveness of any magical attacks against it, the lair resembled a small wine vault, with long, gleaming shelves waiting for the placement of treasure he held in England. “Are you sure, little bird? You were not thinking of me, and the shard reacted to that?”
I smiled and kissed the tip of his nose. “I like the fact that you don’t for one moment think I really was attracted to Magoth.”
“Tch.” He made a dismissive gesture. “You love only me. I know that you could never be attracted to him.”
I didn’t enlighten him to the fact that Magoth had, previous to my meeting Gabriel, come