“Fuck, Risa, are you all right?”
Stane came down the stairs two at a time. From behind me came a fierce half cry—Azriel moving his sword i
nto attack position.
“Whoa!” Stane said, skidding to a halt at the base of the stairs and throwing up his hands. “Ris, tell the man-mountain I mean you no harm.”
Man-mountain? Azriel wasn’t small, but it was obvious Stane was seeing something far different from what both Ilianna and I did.
“Azriel, he’s the one we came here to rescue.” I sat back on my heels and wiped a hand across my mouth. What I really needed was a drink to wash the sour taste away. “Stane, why the hell would a soul stealer be attacking you?”
“Was that what that thing was?”
“Yeah. It killed a little girl two days ago, and Handberry last night. Now it’s come after you. There’s obviously a link we’re not seeing.”
“Well, I can’t think of a goddamn thing Handberry and I have in common.” He knelt down beside me and touched my arm lightly. “Are you all right? Do you need to come upstairs and freshen up?”
“That would be wonderful.” I glanced back at Azriel. “You’d better come, too.”
He nodded, his gaze on Stane, his expression intent. Assessing. I briefly wished I was telepathic. Right then, I really would have loved to know just what was going on behind those bright eyes of his.
Stane’s grip slipped underneath my elbow; then he all but lifted me to my feet. The room did several giddy turns before settling down, as did my stomach. I swallowed heavily, then said, “Okay, ready to move.”
It was slow progress, but by the time we reached the top of the stairs, I was actually feeling a little better.
“The bathroom is the second door on your left,” Stane said, releasing my arm but keeping rather close—no doubt ready to catch me should I suddenly drop.
“Thanks.” I took a tentative step forward. A slight tremor ran in my limbs and my head was aching even fiercer than before, but it didn’t immediately seem like I was going to collapse again. I gave him a reassuring smile and added, “You’d better call Tao and give him the all-clear.”
He nodded. I walked across to the bathroom. Azriel followed me in and closed the door behind him.
“You know,” I said, exasperated, “it is polite to let a lady go to the bathroom in peace.”
“There is nothing you can do in here that I haven’t seen before.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean there aren’t certain things that a girl desires privacy for.”
“But you wish to speak to me privately, do you not?”
“I do.” But how the hell did he know that? Did the fact that he was connected to my Chi give him a far deeper connection than I’d figured?
“Then talk.” He crossed his arms and leaned a shoulder against the wall, his expression once again dispassionate.
Annoyance flickered through me, but I thrust it down and turned on the tap, wetting my face and rinsing out my mouth before asking, “What took you so long to get here?”
“The fact that I cannot follow you in Aedh form. I tried to tell you, but you’d already left.”
I frowned. “Why wouldn’t you be able to follow me when you’re supposedly connected to my Chi?”
“The Chi is a complex form of energy that manifests itself in the form of your human vitality, spirit, and flesh. But when you become Aedh, you become an entirely different form of life—one that I am not attuned to.”
“But I’m still me. No matter which form I take, it’s my spirit, my soul, inhabiting that form. So I can’t see why that would make any difference.”
“The soul may be the same, but the energy force changes greatly. I cannot track that force, nor can I attune myself to it.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “I do not know the whys, I only know the fact.”