“That was dog food!” Jim’s voice was rife with disbelief. “Do you have any idea what they put in that stuff? It’s, like, all ground-up lips and butts! I’m not putting that in this magnificent form!”

“Fine, I’ll buy you a hamburger once we get to G&T, but if I find you begging from anyone, it’s straight back to the Akashic plain with you!”

I was mildly surprised to see that G&T looked no different than it had before but was reminded with a jolt, at the sight of the previous Venediger’s picture on a wall near the bar, that the events I’d remembered were only a few months in the past. Despite the former owner’s brutal murder, and the manager’s spiral into madness, everything looked exactly the same. I half expected to see Drake and his two redheaded bodyguards lounging in the corner.

“I know it’s silly, but you’d think it would look different after everything we went through.” My gaze roamed the club, looking for some sign that the events we’d participated in had some sort of lasting effect. “Everything’s the same, though—same low, pulsing music you have to yell over to be heard, smoky air that leaves you craving a ventilation system, and people slinking around looking as normal as can be despite the fact that they’re anything but.”

“The band is different this week,” Amelie said, waving a hand toward a small stage at the opposite end of the club. We walked down the few steps into the room, prepared to squeeze our way through the dense wall of people who stood among the bar, tables, and dance area. I expected we’d have to use a few elbows to get through, but as I stepped forward, an aisle through the mass opened up as if by ... well, magic.

“This is odd,” I whispered to Amelie as I took advantage of the strange phenomenon. Before me, people stepped aside to make way for us. Behind, the path closed up seamlessly after Amelie and Jim. “This happened to me once before here—what gives with everyone? Why are they acting like they don’t want me to inadvertently brush against them? I’m not a leper!”

“No, but you are a person of much importance in the L’au-dela,” Amelie answered in a soft tone. “You are a demon lord, a wyvern’s mate, and a Guardian. There has never been a person who was all three—that is why many people believe you would be a good Venediger as well. They are simply showing you the respect due your position.”

“Hey, if Aisling is a celeb, does that make me one, too? Will someone ask for my picture, do you think?” Jim asked, looking around for potential paparazzi. “Should I set up my demon-jim.com Web site now?”

“Oui, you are known as well. All have heard of you: You are the demon who serves your master well.”

“Hrmph,” Jim said. “Lassie I’m not! Fame can wait if all I’m going to be known as is a trusty sidekick. What’s this biz about Ash as the V?”

“Just silly talk, nothing more. I’m not going to complain about making it through a crowd easily,” I whispered to Amelie, “but it still gives me the creeps. I’m not anyone important at all, and for them to treat me this way is ... oh, look, a table.”

We grabbed a couple of chairs and a small table in an out-of-the-way corner and accepted menus from the waitress.

“Drinks?” she asked in broken English.

“I will have a cognac,” Amelie told her, handing back the menu.

“Er.. . dragon’s blood,” I said with an apologetic smile.

“And for ze demon?” she asked, giving Jim a bland look.

Jim drooled on her foot.

“It will have a club soda in a bowl and a hamburger with all the trimmings.”

“No onions. I have Cecile to think of,” Jim corrected me.

“So? How does it feel to be back?” Amelie asked once the waitress left, tipping her head to the side as she looked at me.

I looked around again. Although the music pulsed, conversation ebbed and flowed around us, and people generally went about their evenings, I had a feeling that everyone in the room knew exactly where I was sitting. It was an uncanny, unnerving feeling, and it made me extremely uncomfortable. “It feels . .. kind of odd. The first time I stepped foot in here, I had no idea of what this world was made of. I guess what’s bothering me most is that the club hasn’t changed—I have.”

“But changed for the better, no? Now you see all the possibilities.”

I smiled. Amelie was the first one who’d told me to look beyond the obvious into something she called the “possibilities”—which I’d gathered meant that anything that could be, might be. It was all very quantum physics, and I did my best to try not to think too hard about it, just accept that there were things existing that I had never thought possible.

“Oh, look. There, do you see? The man at the end of the bar, next to the troll.”

I squinted through the smoke and tried to pinpoint the figures Amelie was indicating. “There’s a troll here? The kind with green hair and stumpy legs and a big pot belly?”

She gave me a look like I had suddenly sprouted antlers. “What are you speaking? No, of course a troll does not have green hair and a pot belly. The woman in the Birkenstocks and patterned capri pants. That is the troll—her name is Trade. She comes from Bavaria. But that is not who I want you to see—it is the man next to her. That is Peter Burke.”

“And Peter Burke is . . . ?”

“He is said to be a most powerful mage. And one of the ... what is the word? Contenders? For the position of Venediger, hein?

“Ah.” I looked at the man she indicated. He turned at that moment and looked directly at me. I smiled. He frowned and looked away again. “He doesn’t look like a powerful mage. He looks like ... well, kind of Alan Alda-ish. Placid, almost.”

“You are not seeing the possibilities within him,” Amelie said dryly.

I admitted that was so and, clearing my mind, swung open the door to my powers and released them in order to really look at the mage.

As it always did, everything seen through my super-Guardian vision looked so much brighter, so much sharper, as if the everyday world was slightly grayed out and blurred. I moved my eyes along the people in G&T, noting that a woman who sat apparently alone with two men actually had a spirit shape hovering protectively behind her. The woman Amelie named as the troll had a faint sparkle of something all over her skin—it reminded me of mushroom spores. My gaze shifted to the man next to her, and I jerked as his head turned once again to me. For the space between seconds a black tendril of power seemed to snake off him, but it was gone so quickly that I wondered if I had imagined it.