“You going to ralph? You look like you’re going to ralph. Doesn’t it hurt being on your hands and knees like that? Oh, man, that looks bad.”

I retched up nothing, gasping with both the taste of bile in my mouth and the pain from the walloping that my stomach had taken. Groggily, I turned my head to see Jim’s legs next to me. He was leaning down, his hands on his knees, sympathy mingling with wry amusement in his dark eyes.

“Urgh.”

Jim nodded his head. “I heard that it’s not easy being dragged to Abaddon if you’re not a demon.”

“Abaddon?” Wincing at the pain in my hands and knees, I managed to get to my feet, looking around as I did so. “We’re in hell? It looks like a ballroom. Except for the lava rocks. Who carpets their ballroom floor with nasty little lava rocks?”

“Someone who likes to cause people pain, I’m guessing.”

That’s when I noticed that Jim was standing on a small piece of cloth. A familiar-looking small piece of cloth. “Hey! That’s my shirt!”

“Just the back of it. You weren’t using the back, and you couldn’t expect me to stand on the sharp pointy rocks in my bare, vulnerable human feet, could you?”

“Ack!” I said, slapping my hands on my legs. “Jim, we’re in hell!”

“Abaddon.”

“And the dragons know I have the ring! Is your discomfort really the only thing you can think of at this moment?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You have shoes.”

“I give up,” I said, exasperated beyond words. “Fine, you want an apology? I’m sorry that I changed you into a human. I thought it would be easier for us both, but evidently I was wrong. Very, very wrong.”

“You said it, sister.”

“So you want to be a dog again? Go ahead and change yourself.”

“I can’t do that once a demon lord has picked a form for me.” The look he gave me was as sour as a lemon.

“This demon lord business is really just a pain in the butt, you know that? Fine, you have my permission to be a dog again, if only so I don’t have to keep seeing your naughty bits every time I turn around.”

“My other package is much, much better,” Jim said, doing a little dance of anticipation, which had the unfortunate result of making the aforementioned naughty bits jiggle around.

“Jim!” Hastily, I averted my gaze. “For the love of all that isn’t genitalia, stop dancing.”

“You have to command me! And don’t forget my white spot, and the three white toes. Those are stylin’, let me tell you.”

I rolled my eyes for a moment, praying to whatever deity was handy for a little patience, and said, “Jim, I command you as your demon lord to change back into a dog.”

“What? No, you can’t—Aw, crapballs.”

I eyed the Dalmatian that stood before me, complete with spots and little red collar. “Why are you a Dalmatian?”

“Because you didn’t order me properly. Man, I sure hope that Aisling chick is a better demon lord than you, because this is terrible.” Jim bent double to look at his undercarriage. “Yup, terrible. Change me back!”

“I told you to change into a dog!”

“Yeah, but you didn’t give me parameters. Instead I had to go with your idea of a dog.”

I blinked for a moment in thought, then suddenly remembered a Dalmatian stuffed toy that I had loved dearly as a child. “Oh. Sorry. Okay, let’s try this: Jim, I command you as your temporary demon lord to change into a dog that isn’t one I remember from my childhood, or that I particularly like.”

A heavy, martyred sigh that could rival one of Kostya’s followed immediately.

“Well, now, that’s just silly,” I told Jim the now-Chihuahua.

“Parameters,” he said, his deep voice at odds with his tiny little body. “You didn’t do them right. Again. Great, now I fit in your pocket. I don’t even wanna see what this did to my package.”

A door at the far end of the ballroom (as I continued to think of it, although who would give a ball in hell?) opened, and a man strolled into the room, accompanied by two women who were several inches taller than him and probably a good fifty pounds heavier. They looked like bouncers of a particularly hard-core New York City club.

“My pocket sounds like a pretty good place for you right now,” I said, scooping up Jim and tucking him into the crook of my arm. He was probably five or six pounds, one of those Chihuahuas that rich girls and Hollywood starlets dress up and carry around in their bags, but my main concern at the moment was to keep Jim safe.

“This is beyond humiliating,” Jim said, his voice muffled from where I had him pressed against my side. “Wait, is that your boobie? It is, isn’t it?”

“Hush,” I told him as the man and his two bouncers approached. The man wasn’t much to look at—just a normal-looking middle-aged man with brown hair and eyes, of medium height and build, but with every step forward, a sense of dread grew until it weighed down heavily on top of me. It was like being smothered with a lead blanket, and I struggled to breathe by the time he came to a stop in front of me.

He stood examining first me, then Jim, who scooted even deeper into the crook of my arm.

“Your name?” the man said with no preamble.

A squeak was all I could utter. I cleared my throat, remembered I was now a dragon’s mate, and tried again. “Hi, I’m Aoife. And you are?”

The man ignored my question. “What is the name of the demon?”

“Jim. Er… Effrijim is his full name, I think. At least that’s what Kostya says, and he would know.”

“Effrijim.” The man frowned. One of the two bouncers moved forward to whisper in his ear. “Ah. The Guardian’s demon. Why is it bound to you?”

“That’s kind of a long story. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.” I was trying to be polite, but at the same time, I really disliked the idea that I had been hauled forcibly to hell and was now at the mercy of who-knew-what.

“Oh, man,” Jim moaned into my side. I glanced down to find him trying to bury his head in my shirt. “We’re gonna get squashed now for sure. That’s the premiere prince, Eefums. The head honcho. Mr. Big himself.”

“How do you know?” I asked in a whisper. “You lost your memory, and I doubt if Rene had time to show you pictures of demon lords.”