"Bell and Sons," Beth answered the phone in her best professional voice. I glanced at the clock. It was 11:20, which meant it was just after three in the afternoon in Seattle.

"Hey, chicky, it's me."

"Aisling? Girl, where have you been? Darien is going out of his head. We got a call earlier from a policeman in Paris who says you were involved with the murder of Mme. Deauxville. What on earth is going on?"

I pulled a pillow behind me as I sat back on the bed, shuffling the many phone messages that were

waiting for me when I returned. There were six messages from Uncle Damian (I tossed those away—I wasn't ready to face his wrath until I had the aquamanile), three from the U.S. Embassy saying they needed to get in touch with me re-garding my status in Paris as an undesirable (so much for. help from that quarter), and one from someone named Wart who claimed that once I had a taste of his forked tongue, I'd never go back to dragon again.That message I set aside to burn. "Beth, if I told you what was going on, you wouldn't believe me. Honestly, this has been the worst couple of days of my life, and frankly, it doesn't look like it's going to get better soon. What did the police tell Uncle Damian?"

"Not much. I got the idea they were fishing for infor-mation about you more than they were telling him any-thing. What happened?"

I gave her a brief summary of the events.

"Good golly, Mss Molly, you really have been busy. What can I do?"

That's what I like about Beth—she doesn't waste time hashing over useless stuff. She gets right to the point.

"First, you can tell my uncle that I didn't kill anyone, and I'm going to do everything in my power to get the aquamanile back from the man who stole it."

"Damian said the police mentioned that you claimed it had been stolen."

"Yeah, well, they don't want to believe me, and considering the guy who stole it, I don't entirely blame them. But it was stolen, and I'm going to get it back."

I didn't tell her that I planned to use the statue to tempt Drake into helping me, but hey, international calls were expensive. I couldn't mention everything, now, could I?

"I'll tell him. Is there anything I can do here?"

"Yeah. I need to you to drop by my apartment and grab a transcription of one of the medieval texts I read last summer."

"This is hardly the time for a little light reading, Ash."

"Don't I know it." I gave her instructions on where to find the transcription and read the hotel's fax number off the informative brochure that I had picked up in the lobby. "Fax me the chapter on summoning a demon, 'K?"

"What?"

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. Despite the strength the fiery Dragon's Blood had given me, I was bordering on exhaustion. "I don't have time to explain the hows and whys now, Beth. Just fax me the chapter."

I spent a few more minutes reassuring her that I hadn't lost the wits remaining to me and finally hung up, col-lapsing on the bed, asleep even before I could turn off the light.

The dream started sometime around dawn. I thought at first I was dreaming about walking into a darkened G & T, but quickly I realized that I was back in Mme. Deauxville's apartment, a soft, silvery

light from the streetlamps shining through the open curtains doing little to pierce the darkness. The air was musty and warm; the flowers on the table I'd seen before were still scenting the room. In the center of the room the circle of ash re-mained, but thankfully Mme. Deauxville's body was missing.

"What am I doing here?" I asked aloud.

A shadow separated itself from the wall and resolved itself into Drake's form. He glided toward me, the light casting the lines of his face into harsh relief while the rest of his body remained in shadow. "I called you here."

"You're a dream," I said, unsure if I really was dream-ing, or if I had somehow been transported to the scene of the murder. "You're not real."

"No? Perhaps not. Or perhaps the line that divides re-ality and fantasy has become blurred in your mind."

His hands slipped up my bare arms. I looked down at myself, surprised by the touch of his hands on my bare skin. I was wearing an absolutely gorgeous cream-colored satin-and-lace negligee, one that emphasized my good points and hid the bad ones. "Now I know this is a dream. I don't own a nightgown like this."

I slipped effortlessly into his arms with just the slight-est tug of his fingers on my shoulders. He was wearing a black silk shirt that felt like cool water beneath my hands.

"Perhaps that particular gown is part ofmy fantasy," he admitted with a roguish smile, his fingers dancing along the exposed flesh of my back, trailing fire with every touch.

I leaned closer to catch that elusive, spicy scent that seemed to cling to him. "Are you saying that this is real, then?"

"It's as real as you want it to be, sweetheart," he mur-mured against my collarbone, his lips caressing my skin. If I thought he had magic fingers, his lips were candidates for the Houdini Hall of Fame.

"Really?" I breathed, allowing my fingers to do a lit-tle walking of their own. He groaned as I slid my hands down the silken contours of his chest. "Then maybe you'd like to talk about why you were at Mme. Deauxville's last night?"

His chuckle was a bit rusty, as if he didn't use it very much. "You don't give up, do you?"

"Not when my freedom is at stake." I swirled my fin-gers lower, over his belly. Beneath the material of his shirt, his stomach contracted. "Did you have an appoint-ment with her?"

He discovered the sweet spot behind my ear. I arched into him, my mind threatening to completely give itself over to the pleasure of his mouth on my flesh. "Not with her, no."

It took every ounce of willpower to keep my mind on the questions I wanted so desperately for him to answer. "Did you draw the circle?"

"Dragons can't summon demons," he whispered into my neck just before he sucked my earlobe into his mouth. My knees buckled. His arms tightened behind me, hold-ing me up as I let my hands drift lower, over the tight front of his black jeans. Beneath the zipper he twitched.

"Do you know who did draw it?"

He breathed a groan into my ear. "If you touch me there again, this dream will become more real than you can imagine."

I was tempted—oh, how I was tempted. My fingers hovered just in front of him, but I needed answers, so when sanity sank through all the desire and need and lust that were swirling through my brain as they tried to blot out rational thought, I payed attention to it. I reversed my hands and sent them upward instead, mapping out the ter-rain around his rib cage. "The circle?" I asked again.