‘‘Trust Ash on this—she knows Abaddon. She managed to get herself kicked out, after all,’’ Jim said.

Aisling tried to look humble. ‘‘It’s my job—’’

‘‘—she’s a professional,’’ the demon finished.

‘‘Sorry!’’ I said less than an hour later, breathing hard as I raced up the narrow stairs of a small jet. ‘‘I assumed we’d be taking a portal rather than a plane.’’

‘‘Drake won’t let me,’’ Aisling said with a smile at the dragon in question as she adjusted her seat belt over her expansive stomach. ‘‘He says they aren’t safe for pregnant women. Of course, he says the same thing about airplanes, but I really feel there have to be some perks that go along with being immortal, and one of those is being able to fly while preggers.’’

‘‘Ah. Well, I do apologize for us holding everyone up. It’s my fault, not Gabriel’s—I wanted to call a doppelganger who lives in Paris to see if she could help us with the L’au-delà vault, since it’s bound to be extremely well protected. It took me forever to track down her number, but she doesn’t seem to be at home.’’

‘‘Ophelia?’’ Aisling asked, causing me to gawk slightly.

‘‘Yes, that’s her name. Do you know her?’’

A little smile graced her lips. ‘‘Yes. Amelie, a friend of mine in Paris, said she’s left the country. Her . . . er . . . twin was banished to the Akasha, you know. Ophelia suffered from depression after that, but last I heard, she was in Africa devoting herself to charitable works.’’

The pilot flashed on the seat-belt warning while Aisling was talking. I dug around in the comfortable leather chair for the seat belts, wondering what the doppelganger’s twin had done to leave her banished to the Akasha.

My phone rang before I could ponder much. ‘‘Oh, sorry,’’ I said as the pilot, a dragon who had been in conversation with Drake, frowned over at me. ‘‘I’ll turn it off. I just . . . Oh, thank the gods.’’ I was about to turn off my phone, but the caller ID number blinking at me was a familiar one. ‘‘Cy? Where are you?’’

‘‘Oh, Mayling, good, you haven’t left yet . . .’’ A loud roar from what sounded like a truck drowned out the rest of her sentence. ‘‘. . . kidnapped me, which was just about the most . . . me of all people!’’

‘‘What? Cy, I can’t hear you. Where are you? And what’s that about a kidnapping?’’

I held the phone a few inches away from my head as a loud truck horn threatened to deafen me. The pilot and Drake both glared at me.

‘‘I’m sorry, May, but you will have to turn off your mobile phone,’’ the latter said.

‘‘What’s wrong?’’ Gabriel asked at the same time, cleverly picking up on the fact that all was not well.