Free Me and My Shadow by Katie MacAlister

able to destroy him easily when I chose.” Catalina picked an invisible bit of fluff off Kostya’s arm, speaking with a nonchalance that would have been more at home in a psychopath.
    I slid a quick look at Gabriel. One of his dimples appeared.
    Drake sighed and gestured toward the sitting room, having cast a quick glance up the stairs. “If you insist on having this discussion, brother, perhaps you will do so out of Aisling’s hearing. If she thinks we are having a counsel regarding Baltic, she will want to be present, and it is her rest time.”
    Jim made a whipcrack noise as it passed Drake on the way into the sitting room. I said nothing as Drake glanced at the dog, setting its tail on fire for a good ten seconds before the demon noticed. By that time, we’d all trooped back into the sitting room.
    â€œSo you killed him twice?” I asked Catalina, ignoring Jim’s hysterics as it ran around the room yelling at the top of its lungs until Drake put out the fire.
    â€œFires of Abaddon, Drake! I mean, literally fires of Abaddon!” it bellowed, pungent smoke trailing behind it as it marched over to where we sat.
    â€œSit down and be quiet unless you have something helpful to say,” I ordered it.
    â€œSuch a very odd demon,” Catalina remarked, watching as Jim obeyed my orders albeit with ill grace and no little amount of glaring. “And yes, my dear, I had to kill Toldi a second time. I couldn’t leave him . . .” She paused and gave me yet another pitying look that had me grinding my teeth. “But we have agreed not to speak of such unfortunate things. I just hope that Gabriel has the strength to do what is necessary when the time comes.”
    She brushed off my look of utter disbelief with a smile at Gabriel before taking Kostya’s arm. “Come, my darling Kostya. Tell Mama what you have been doing these last one hundred and thirty years.”
    â€œI have no time for talk, Mother,” Kostya said with a glance at his watch. “I have a sept meeting in less than an hour. I simply wished to tell Drake . . .” He hesitated a second, very pointedly not looking at either Gabriel or me. “. . . tell Drake that our trip was fruitful.”
    Catalina demanded to see him at the first opportunity, and went off to oversee the unpacking of her luggage.
    â€œYou found the lair, then?” Gabriel asked after she left.
    Kostya stared at him for a second, then sharpened his gaze into a glare and pointed it at his brother. “You told them where I was going?”
    Drake shrugged one shoulder. “It concerns them.”
    â€œThey are not black dragons! The location of Baltic’s lair does not concern them!”
    Kostya shook off Cyrene’s hand on his arm, and stormed over to his brother, clearly about to launch into yet another diatribe, but he remembered in time that he was watching his p’s and q’s. With an effort, he bit back what he was about to say, forcing a smile to his lips as he looked at Gabriel and me.
    â€œIt’s killing you to be nice to us, isn’t it?” I asked, leaning into Gabriel.
    â€œYes.”
    Cyrene punched him in the arm.
    His strained smile grew larger until I could see each and every one of his teeth. “No, of course it isn’t. I have realized the error of my intention to re-form the sept to its original glory, and have resigned myself to the fact that the si-silv—that you are happy on your own.”
    â€œHe can’t say it,” Jim said to me in a volume that was not at all sotto voce . “He was practicing last week, and he couldn’t actually get the words out.”
    â€œSil-ver,” Cyrene coached Kostya, giving his arm a squeeze. “Come on, punky, you said it on the plane. You can say it now. Sil-ver dragons.”
    A shudder shook his body.
    Gabriel rolled his eyes. “If the comedy hour is over, perhaps Kostya could give us a few minutes to