He didn’t elaborate on the nature of Shadow; she’d see it soon enough for herself and he didn’t want her to fear him. Her continued regard was already wearing away his power, and he had been weakened to begin with. If he wasn’t very careful, very controlled with his appearance, she would know Death.
She spoke her thoughts with her questions. “. . . I get the secrecy thing—I mean your kind has been burned at the stake and drowned and who knows what other horrible deaths—but do you blame us? Well, I guess you do, but still . . .”
Khan didn’t correct her mistaken assumptions. No fae had ever been killed by fire or water; those were mortal deaths. The fae existed out of time and place and could not do anything as transformative as die.
Her street was lined with buildings of ugly gray or red brick. Attached were metal landings ascending the exteriors, each connected by deathly narrow stairs. The area lacked soul, the spark of creativity, but at least it seemed clean. It smelled better than many a human road he’d traveled in his time.
A small scrap of a park opened up across the street. A group of little girls in heavy coats sat in a circle around a blindfolded child who waved her arms to locate one of her playmates. The children forming the circle chanted:
Dead man, dead man, come alive
Come alive by the number five
One, two, three-four-five
Dead man, come alive!
Again, the human preoccupation with immortality. Did it start so young?
Layla heard it, too. “Can you bring someone back from the dead?”
Khan withheld a bitter laugh at the irony of the question. Kathleen had come back from death, hadn’t she? Her soul burned bright right beside him. And then there was the devil, escaped from Hell, now at large. “It is possible to return into mortality, but none are the same as they were upon their passing. Death is change.”
A yellow vehicle, garish for the gray day, waited in front of the next building, its back lights an impatient, glaring red. Toward this building, Layla turned, saying, “This is me.”
She stopped at the door, mumbling, “Crap. My keys.”
No doorway had ever blocked Khan from his quarry. A twitch and push of Shadow and the door swung open.
“Damn handy,” Layla said, her wonder mixing with her unease. Already she was growing accustomed to the idea of magic. The human adaptive capacity was staggering. The rapid pulse of change would shred many a lesser fae. No wonder few could hold on to the form of a body long in mortality.
Layla marched up the stairs before him, took the short hallway on the second floor to a door that already stood open. She rushed inside. “Ty?”
Two mortal heartbeats accelerated within the apartment. A myriad of emotions flooded the air, most of which Khan didn’t like. One in particular he found he hated, which was a revelation.
“I was hoping I’d catch you,” a strong, male voice said. “If we could just . . .”
Both Layla and “Ty” looked over at Khan when he entered.
Ty was in the full power of youth and physical maturity. Eyes clear, blood thick, the light of his soul shone with purpose and self-assurance. He took a step back from Layla, which proved he was intelligent, too. “Sorry. I didn’t know you had company.” Ty’s tone suggested extreme irritation, but the emotion coming out of him was now distinctly one of hurt.
Too bad. “If you could just what with Layla?”
A dark, near-violent sensation hummed beneath Khan’s skin, but he could not name it. It quickened his Shadow heart, though.
“Speak with her,” Ty answered. His shoulders went back as he drew himself up.
“Khan,” Layla said with a note of warning. “This is my friend.”
Ty glanced back to Layla. “Friend? Three years and that’s what I am to you?”
She shook her head in frustration. “I want to talk, Ty, really I do, because there are things to say. But I can’t right now. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
A muscle in the boy’s jaw twitched. He jerked his head in Khan’s direction. “Are you with him?”
Khan smiled his answer.
Layla scowled. “Not like that. He’s just an informant for my story.”
“Your story. So you’re still out there trying to get yourself killed? Fine.” Ty heaved a sigh, but anguish still poured out of him. “Don’t bother calling me until this is over. Then maybe we’ll have something to talk about.”
Ty stepped toward the door, and Khan allowed him to pass, his estimation of the mortal now at dust. Layla said nothing but watched while Ty turned the corner out of the apartment. Her silence followed the tread of his feet down the stairs and only broke when the downstairs door slammed shut.
“You didn’t have to be a jackass,” she said.
“Get your things.”
But her chin dimpled with fury. “The last thing I want to do is hurt him any more. So thanks.”
Her reasoning was insane. “You seek out wraiths, and he leaves you to do the work alone? If he cared, he’d be by your side to see that you do not get attacked on the street, dragged into an alley, almost raped, almost killed. And you don’t want him to get hurt?”
Layla’s mouth compressed with obstinacy. “He didn’t know where I was, or what I was doing.”