Page 22 of The Dragon With A Girl Tattoo
I thanked him, texted Skye an update and reassurance that I would be present for the performance, and then settled in for the short flight to Paris, trying to calm my mind as I worked up a couple of glamours.
“We were thinking that Jim should go with you into the Asile,” Aisling said about twenty minutes into the flight.The dragons had been clustered together, obviously talking over the situation.
I stopped the glamour I was tweaking and looked at the dog.
It winked at me.
“Why?”I asked.
“Despite what you may think, Jim can be helpful,” Aisling said, giving it a little fondle on the head.“Especially if I give you temporary management of it.”
“I suppose that couldn’t hurt, although I’m not sure how helpful a demon would be in dog form,” I said, studying Jim.
“I can order it to human form,” Aisling offered.
Jim made a face, but said nothing.
“You can talk if you have something helpful to say,” she told it.
“Man, I really hate it when you do that,” it said with a big gulp of air.“It always makes me feel like I can’t breathe.Heya, Beckles.You don’t want me in human form, do you?’Cause that always blows.”
“No, I don’t want you in human form,” I said after a moment’s thought.
“You don’t?”Aisling asked.“If it’s the endless, nonstop complaining that Jim is prone to when ordered to human form, you don’t have to worry.I’ll order it to keep mum about that.”
“See?”Jim said, wandering over to plop down next to my cushy chair.“Even the Beckster doesn’t want me in human form.”
“Oh, I do, but not a form you pick,” I answered, quickly starting a new glamour.
“Why not?”it asked, leaning against my leg, leaving a slime trail on the black leggings I wore with a tank top and open gauze tunic decorated with colorful Peruvian animal art.
“Jim!I’m so sorry, Becket,” Aisling said, snatching up a cloth and mopping up my leg before ordering her dog to go sit in a dog bed placed at the rear of the plane.
“The answer is because you are a demon, and people versed in demons—as I assume the guards at the Asile will be—would recognize any form you take as being demonic in nature.They won’t see through the glamour I make for you, though,” I answered, my hands dancing in the air as I took bits of energy that drifted around all living things, and bound it into the glamour.
“Oooh, smart thinking,” Ysolde said, and, after a look at her husband, added, “Baltic and I had a thought this morning about how to get you into the Asile place.”
“I figured I’d just use a glamour, too,” I said with a little shrug, tucking away Jim’s glamour to make a backup for myself.I preferred to have a selection available should I need to get away from anyone who posed a danger to me.“They won’t see through it, I assure you.”
“Yes, but you still have to have a reason to get inside,” Ysolde said.
“Oh, I see what you mean—that even if Becket wears one of her awesome glamours, the guards might not let her in unless she has a reason?”May said, glancing around at the other dragons.“Should we brainstorm some ideas?”
“You don’t need to,” Ysolde said, smiling at her dragon.“Baltic had an excellent suggestion: that we make you—temporarily—the weyr representative to the Otherworld.”
“And a weyr is ...?”I asked, finishing the backup glamour.
“The collective of dragon septs,” Ysolde answered, picking up her phone.“Damn.Brom says he and Pixie just caught sight of a demon at the festival.Ah, there’s a text from Allie saying the same thing, but that the vamps had captured the demon and destroyed its form.Evidently it was a lesser type.”
I had a moment of feeling bound tightly, so constricted I couldn’t draw a breath.There were more demons after me?My stomach turned over, making me thankful I had forgone breakfast.
“I’m glad the demon wasn’t a big deal, but holy crapballs, that’s brilliant, Ysolde,” Aisling said as the male dragons all looked thoughtful, all but Baltic, who wore what I was coming to think of as his standard enigmatic expression.“The bit about Becket being a rep, not the demon.”
“Why is it brilliant?”I asked, rubbing a growing headache at the back of my head.
“Because Yrian’s a dragon,” she answered, looking pleased.“It makes absolute sense for our rep to make sure he’s being treated well.But can we do that?Doesn’t it take asárkány—that’s a weyr meeting, Becket—to designate someone?”
“We can do it with a simple majority vote,” Drake said, glancing at the other two wyverns.They nodded, and Drake tapped on his phone before saying, “Kostya agrees to the temporary change.That means we can proceed.”
