Jak left the café and the door whooshed shut behind him. I sighed in relief and ordered a second cup of coffee. My damn hands were shaking so bad it took several attempts to swipe the credit card through.
“You should not have met him if his presence affects you so.”
The words came out of the emptiness behind Jak’s chair even as the heat of Azriel’s presence caressed my skin. Reapers, like the Aedh, were beings of energy rather than true flesh and blood, but they could attain that form if they wished to.
Which was how I’d come about. My father had spent one night in flesh form with my mother and, in the process, had given life to me—a half-breed mix of werewolf and Aedh who was lucky enough to get most of the best bits of each and few of the downsides.
“You’re the one that said we had to do everything possible to stop the remaining portals from being opened. No matter what I might think or feel about Jak, he is good at digging up forgotten information.” I stabbed my spoon into my cake for another bite. “If it’s out there to be found, he’ll find it.”
Azriel formed substance on the other side of the table and sat down in Jak’s recently vacated chair. While reapers were basically shape-shifters, able to take on any form that would comfort the dying on their final journey, they did possess one “true” shape. Usually I just saw whatever form they used to claim the soul they were meant to escort, but for some weird reason, I always saw Azriel’s real form rather than the shape he decided to take on. Even he had no idea why this happened—or if he did, he wasn’t telling me.
Which wasn’t exactly a bad thing, because his real form was rather stunning. His face was chiseled, almost classical in its beauty and yet possessing the hard edge of a man who’d won more than his fair share of battles. He was shirtless, his skin a warm, suntanned brown and his abs well defined. The worn leather strap that held his sword in place seemed to emphasize the width of his shoulders, just as the dark jeans that clung to his legs hinted at the lean strength of them. A stylized black tat that resembled the left half of a wing swept around his ribs from underneath his arm, the tips brushing across the left side of his neck.
Only it wasn’t a tat. It too was a Dušan—a darker, more stylized brother to the one that now resided on my left arm.
Azriel’s gaze met mine, and his blue eyes—one as vivid and as bright as a sapphire, the other the color of a storm-held sea—hinted at sympathy.
“Couldn’t you have just asked him all this on the phone?”
I grimaced. “Jak’s the sort of person who prefers face-to-face meetings.”
“Because of his gifts.”
“Yes.” I gave the waitress another smile of thanks as she delivered my second cup of coffee. She didn’t even blink at the half-naked, sword-carrying man sitting opposite me.
But that wasn’t entirely surprising. The same ability that allowed reapers to see what form a soul would most likely accept in their guide allowed Azriel to take on an outer skin that would raise no eyebrows, no matter where he was. The waitress probably saw him as just another man in a suit.
“Actually,” he said, “she still thinks Jak sits at the table.”
“Well, I’m glad he isn’t,” I muttered around a mouthful of cake.
“Odd words, since your thoughts suggest otherwise.”
“As you have previously noted, human thoughts are not always rational.”
“But you are not human.”
“And right now, I’m not exactly rational.” I finished the last of my cake, then pushed the plate away and reached for Jak’s. Never let it be said that I let chocolate cake go to waste, even if it wasn’t the best I’d ever tasted. “So, what’s next?”
He shrugged. “Until your father contacts us with details of the next key’s location, we are basically at a standstill.”
“Well, if he wasn’t the one who stole the first key from us, maybe he won’t.” And if he wasn’t the one who’d stolen it, I was more than happy for him to remain far, far away. If only because I’d seen him angry—and, despite the fact that I’m part werewolf, it had taken days for the bruises to fade. “Maybe he’ll consider us too great a risk to use us again.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you honestly believe that?”
He knew I didn’t. He could read every thought, after all. I threw the spoon onto the plate, but it bounced and clattered over the edge of the table. Azriel caught it casually in one hand and gave it back to me.
“Finish the cake,” he said softly. “You need the sustenance.”
I scowled at him. “Stop mothering me. Besides, cake isn’t sustenance.”
“It is impossible for me to mother you when I am male,” he replied evenly, but there was a hint of humor glinting in the depths of his eyes, and, as usual, it did strange things to my pulse rate—which only emphasized just how irrational I really was. He added, “And is not chocolate one of the five essential food groups?”
I rolled my eyes. “You, reaper, need to stop believing everything you read in my thoughts.”
He merely raised an eyebrow. “If it is not essential, why do you have it so often?”
I studied him for a moment, wondering if he was still teasing me or not. “Because it’s like love and sex—it’s just something a woman has to have.” I paused, but couldn’t resist asking, “What about you? Is there anything in your life that you’d consider essential?”