“Because there are a rare few in this world who can see past the glamour.”
“Feeling better?” Stane swung around in his chair and gave me the once-over. He frowned slightly. “You still look a little peaked. Maybe a coffee would pick you up—”
“Not coffee,” Tao said, as he galloped up the last couple of steps. “In times like this, only a Coke will do.”
He handed me several cans, then his gaze fell on the dragon glittering fiercely on my arm. “What the fuck is that?”
“Long story. I’ll explain on the way home.”
He grunted, and his gaze slid past me. “Then who’s that?”
“Azriel.” I popped a can open and gulped down some fizzy brown life-giver. I immediately felt better—although by rights, given I’d only just finished chucking my heart out, it should have had the opposite effect.
“The reaper?” Tao said, surprise in his voice. “Why the hell does he look like Marat Neale, then?”
Marat Neale was the youngest of the brothers who co-ran the Neale wolf pack. Kellen—who’d once been one of Aunt Riley’s lovers—was Stane’s father and the oldest. Sian—the middle brother—had been Tao’s. I looked over my shoulder. Azriel’s gaze met mine, a small smile touching his lips and briefly warming his eyes. “The man-mountain previously mentioned.”
“Ah,” I said, then reached out and squeezed Tao’s shoulder. “Long story. Right now, we need to concentrate on finding the people behind the attack on Stane.”
“And we need to do it quickly,” he said. “Ilianna’s stuck at home with Mom, and she’s not happy.”
“Yeah, already spoke to her.” I glanced at my watch. “We’ve got fifteen minutes. I told her we’d be back in twenty-five.”
“Ris, this is far more urgent than a goddamn birth—”
I pressed a fingernail against his chest and tapped lightly to emphasize my point. “You tell that to Ilianna after she’s spent weeks organizing it, because I have no intention of having a clumsiness spell—or something far worse—flung my way.”
Which she probably wouldn’t actually do given the threefold rule, but when Ilianna was pissed off enough, you never knew.
He obviously saw my point, because he said, “Okay, what did we learn?”
“We learned that the people behind this didn’t want Stane dead. They were merely trying to scare the shit out of him.”
“Well, they succeeded.” Stane leaned forward, caught a nearby chair with his fingertips, then rolled it in my direction. “But why would they spare me and not the others?”
I gratefully spun the chair around and collapsed more than sat down. The day had been a long one, and it was starting to tell. I felt like something the cat had regurgitated. Worse still, I thought with a sliver of amusement, I probably looked like it.
I met Stane’s gaze. “Maybe the other attacks were either a final warning or a last resort. Maybe there had
been previous warnings that had been ignored. Or maybe they simply need you alive for the moment.”
“There are simpler ways to send a warning,” Tao commented. “Why in hell would anyone want to wreck a person’s very existence? Especially when it’s a little girl?”
“Humanity is often more monstrous than the monsters they endeavor to emulate or control,” Azriel said softly. “And many times the cause is nothing more than money.”
I spun the chair to look at him. His mismatched eyes were as unreadable as his expression, but the wash of his contempt ran across my senses, stinging like flame. He might be a reaper, he might be a warrior who protected us from the things that came through the portals, but that obviously didn’t translate to any respect for those of us who populated the real world.
“Not all of us are like that, Azriel.”
One dark eyebrow rose slightly. “Did I say they were?”
“No. But you implied it.” I spun around again. “When the soul stealer attacked me, I got an impression of the witch behind it. She’s powerful, she’s mean, and she’s borderline insane. But while she might be part of whatever is going on, in the end, this is just a job for her.”
“Could the link between me and Handberry,” Stane said slowly, “be something as simple as the fact that we both work on this street?”
“A street someone is trying to buy up,” Tao said, catching on. “Although I still can’t see why they’d go to this extreme for a housing development.”
“Interestingly enough,” Stane commented, “this area is classified as commercial, but no approaches have been made to the council about rezoning the land.”