Jim right behind her. Rene leaned out the window as I
staggered toward the taxi, the mad driver doing a commando crawl after me,
refusing to release my ankle.
"You are having some difficulty, yes?" Rene asked.
"Difficulty? I don't know what you mean," I answered,
whirling around to stomp my sandal down hard on the man's wrist. He screeched
and let go of my ankle, sobbing into the pavement as I jumped into the taxi.
"Nothing out of the ordinary as far as my life goes. Drive, please, Rene, before
he stops crying about his hand."
Rene cocked his head for a moment as he listened to the man
blubber, then shifted gears and pulled out. "He was sobbing most harshly about
your rejection of him, Aisling, not because you stepped on his arm. Who is he?"
I tightened the strap on my ankle that the madman had
loosened. "I have no idea. He jumped me for no reason. I've never met him
before. As far as I know, he's just a taxi driver."
"One without his brains," Tiffany added, putting away her
mirror and gifting Rene with a dazzling smile. "I am Tiffany. I am a
professional virgin. If you were to choose between kissing Aisling's belly and
mine, you would choose mine, would you not? My belly is very smooth and white."
Rene's glance flickered from Tiffany to me in the mirror. "A
professional virgin?"
Her smile brightened until it almost blinded me. "Yes. I am
very happy to meet you and bring you the joy of my beauty. You are friend to
Aisiing and Jim the demon?"
"Rene is a very good friend," I answered, since Rene seemed
to be a bit stunned by Tiffany's statement regarding her occupation. I should
have known better, though.
Anyone who took Jim's existence in stride after only a few
moments was not a man who balked at meeting a professional virgin.
"I believe that if I were to make a choice, I would have to
choose Aisling's belly to kiss, but that is only because she is my bon ami,
heinl If she was not, then I would choose your belly above all others."
Tiffany seemed to accept that, sitting back against the seat,
looking around with pleasure. Jim sat with its head hanging out the window, as
usual. "Where is it we are going to on this long and pleasant drive?"
I met Rene's gaze in the mirror and mentally shrugged. It
looked like I was saddled with a virgin while I hermit-hunted. "I'm going to a
shop on the Andrassy lit. It's the last address my uncle had for the hermit.
Supposedly, he picks up his mail there, but Uncle Damian's last letter two weeks
ago warning of my arrival went unanswered."
"A hermit? You seek a hermit?" Tiffany smiled brightly as I
nodded. "This is excellent! Virgins, as you know, are most helpful when it comes
to hermits."
"Really?" I said, unable to keep from asking. "I thought it
was unicorns that couldn't resist a virgin."
"Unicorns, hermits, sprites—both water and forest— and
werefolk of all forms. You will find that employing a professional virgin will
increase your Guardian productivity many times. It will give you quite the
cachet amongst other Guardians, as well."
"Employ? No, I—"
"My rates are quite reasonable," Tiffany continued, just as
if I hadn't spoken. "I have many good testimonies and, of course, my portfolio,
which has splendid pictures of me in many happy poses. You will be most pleased with my
excellent services."
"But I don't have a budget for a virgin," I protested, my
mind squirreling desperately for a way to extract myself from her clutches. "I
couldn't possibly afford your services, as wonderful as I'm sure they are."
"Perhaps your uncle will allow you one if you explain to him
the situation," Rene offered as we drove through the city toward a popular
street in the center.
I groaned. "Not you, too, Rene."
He smiled at me in the mirror. "It seems to me that you
cannot have too much help, hein?"
"That's a matter of opinion—"
Jim pulled in its head long enough to shoot me a weary look.
"Give it up, Ash. You need help, and Tiffany here is offering it. You'd be a
fool to turn her down because you're a tightwad."
"I am not a tight—"
"Jim speaks correctly," Rene interrupted with a nod. "You
need help. Me, I am the driver tres bon, tres extraordinaire, but I am not
knowing Budapest as well as Paris. So if this young lady of the smooth white
belly offers to help you find the lost hermit, you should not spurn up your nose
at her."
"Turn your nose up," I corrected him, giving in with a little
reluctance and a whole lot of misgivings. I knew when I was bested, and to be
honest, both Jim and Rene had a point. I didn't know the city at all, and if
Tiffany really did have some sort of hermit-attracting powers, she could come in
handy. "All right, you can help, but I can't ray you more than a hundred and
fifty bucks. That was supposed to be my mad money, but I guess nothing defines
mad quite so much as buying a professional virgin."
"It is acceptable," Tiffany said, doing her little happy
hand-clapping thing. "Now, let us plan how to find this hermit. He will be in
the nearby forests, yes? A cave, perhaps? There are many caves in Hungary, many
around the city."
"I don't know exactly where he is," I answered. "My uncle
seemed to think he'd be camping out in a forest or something like that, but who
knows with hermits? Uncle Damian said this guy was a bit flighty, not wanting to
give his real name or any identifying information. And he paid in gold. Not gold
ingots or anything like that—he paid in gold coins stamped with some strange
symbols. I didn't have time to look them up, but they seemed very strange, not
at all like the sorts of things I've seen in theurgical books."
"Do not worry. We will find this hermit," Rene said, gaily
blowing his horn and flipping off a discourteous driver. "It is a challenge, and
we are par excellence when it comes to challenges, are we not?"
I thought of the last challenge I'd issued—to Drake, of all
people—and its subsequent outcome. Although I had intended for him to beat me, I
had hoped that he'd recognize my generous act in saving face for him and
eliminate the punishment I was due by his sept, but he hadn't. Back home in
Oregon the fact that his entire clan had a say in how I was to be punished for
failing the challenge hadn't worried me, but it was another matter now that I
was here, about to be mixed up in dragon politics.
As much as my frugal nature resented being put in a position
where I had to hire Tiffany, I admitted two hours later that she had been a very
useful translator. I had planned on pressing Rene into that position, since my
skills with the language were obviously faulty, but it turned out that he was
needed to keep Jim in line while Tiffany and I went on a wild-goose chase that
led us from the Pest side (west of the Danube) to the Buda side of the city,
finally ending in a tiny, dusty antique shop.
"Well, that was an utter waste of two hours," I said as we
emerged from the dark shop. I wiped a few cobwebs off my arm where it had
brushed against a faded, battered trunk. "We're no better off than when we
started."
"That is not true. We have spread much joy. I have smiled at
seventeen people. And you know that the hermit is definitely in a park outside
the limits of the city."
"A fact that would be more helpful if there weren't
gazillions of parks around Budapest," I groused, then immediately felt bad. It
wasn't Tiffany's fault that the hermit was evidently so paranoid he shuffled his
mail through six different points, all of which knew only the next forwarding
address. "I'm sorry, Tiffany. My bad mood is no reflection on you. You were a
great help translating for me. It would have taken a lot longer without you."
She looked pleased as we walked down the busy street toward a
car park Rene had found hidden behind an office building that still bore on its
walls the shadows of communist slogans that had been ripped off during Hungary's
bloodless revolution. We had seen many such buildings during our unintentional
tour of the city, taking us from stately, ornately decorated buildings that
counted rime by the century to modern, brightly lit shops whose neon lights
promised everything from discos to Internet access.
"I am very good with people. It is my eyes. They see kindness
within, and it spills out to light their lives with happy thoughts. Now you have
seen how I do it, you, too, must share your happiness with others."
Rene was a block away, walking toward us with Jim on a leash
beside him, the ubiquitous white plastic bag tied to the leash signaling to all
that we were in full compliance with the rules regarding dogs and their
leavings. Evidently Jim had finally convinced Rene to take it for a quick
walkie. Tiffany and I stopped next to Rene's car, Tiffany careful to avoid
touching the hot metal of the vehicle. I leaned against it, my arms crossed, as
I thought about my options. "Fiat's offer notwithstanding, assuming I had the
money, which I don't, I could hire one of his men to do a little hermit tracking
for me, but I'm fairly certain they'd need a scent or something to follow, so
that's out."
Tiffany murmured something noncommittal.
I chewed on my tower lip as the heat of the car swirled up
and around me, bathing me in a pleasant sensation of warm comfort. "I don't know
anything about the red dragons, other than that they're clearly clotheshorses,
but Gabriel... hmmm. He might help me find the hermit if I asked him."
"You would ask another for assistance when you have me?"
Tiffany stopped buffing a fingernail to give me an outraged look.
"You said your skills would be in drawing the hermit out from
where he was hiding once we found the general location," I pointed out. "Unless
you want to walk every square inch of every park outside the city, I'm going to
need more help, And if there's one thing I've learned from my time with Drake,
it's that dragons can be very resourceful when they want to be."
She sniffed and looked away. "Why do you not ask this Drake
person to help you? Jim says he is a wyvern and you are his mate, which means he
must do as you ask."
I had a good long mental giggle over the thought of Drake
doing as I asked, sobering when I realized that his earlier maneuvering might
actually benefit me as much as him. "You know, you just may have something
there, Tiff, Drake is going to owe me after this lunch—oh, crap, the lunch! What
time is it? Is it anywhere near two?"
"Any."
"Huh?" What on earth was her problem? Tiffany was giving me a
thin-lipped look that left her shy happy eyes expressing a whole lot of pointed
discontent.
"'Any. My name, it is Tiffany. Mama named me for the very
elegant shop that sells jewelry in New York, New York."
"Oh. Sorry."
She nodded primly and glanced at her wrist. "It is ten
minutes after two o'clock."
"Crap, crap, and double crap. Rene! We have to go! Right
now!"
I did an agitated little dance as Rene and Jim hurried toward
us, mentally writing the apology I'd make to Drake when I arrived back at the
hotel, late, not dressed in green, and sweaty from driving all around the city
in a non-air-conditioned car.
Sometimes it seemed like life was really against me.
Chapter 9
AS I feared, the dragons' lunch was well under way when Jim
and I arrived at the atrium at the back of the hotel, overlooking the muddy
brown (never blue, I found out from Tiffany) Danube River.
"Hi. Sorry I'm late," I said breathlessly as I stopped in
front of the large round table that dominated the small restaurant. Fronds of
tall, spiky palms waved gracefully as Jim and I rushed past them to the two
empty seats next to Drake. "Traffic was horrible. There's been no,.. uh ...
plague talk or anything, has there?"
The men at the table rose, leaving the Chinese woman the only
one seated. Drake waved an elegant hand at them, saying, "You are acquainted
with Fiat and his men."
I murmured a polite hello, first making sure my mental guards
were up to keep Fiat out of my head.
"The man to the left of Renaldo is Gabriel Tauhou, the wyvern
of the silver dragons. Accompanying him are Tipene and Maata."
I realized as the two silver dragon bodyguards bowed that the
taller of the two, the one named Maata, was a woman. All three dragons had
beautiful coffee-colored skin, short glossy black hair, and astonishingly bright
gray eyes, but hefty as Tipene was, Maata had a glint to her eyes that made me
think she was the more dangerous of the two.
"Nice to meet you. Hi again, Gabriel."
"Hi… again?" Drake asked, his jaw tightening as he swung
around to pin me back with an emerald-eyed glare. "You know Gabriel?"
"Aisling and I met last night," Gabriel said with a slight
smile. His eyes, however, danced merrily, which made me think he was enjoying
teasing Drake. "She was in some difficulty, and I was happy to be of service to
her."
"He sucked her arm," Jim said, climbing onto one of the free
chairs. 'There was tongue everywhere. It was a horrible thing to see."