Azriel caught my arm and steadied me. “Does it always affect you like that?”
“It’s usually worse.” I shrugged, locked my knees in place, then gently pulled away from the strength of his touch. “I’m told it gets easier with use, but I just don’t use it often enough.”
“So it will become easier as the weeks pass?”
“I don’t really know.” I eyed him for a moment. “Do you really think I’ll need to hold it that long?”
“Until we know who is behind the attack—and why—then, yes, I think it very likely.”
“Fabulous.” Not. I ran a hand through my hair—my now short hair. It was an almost surreal sensation, but one I’d have to get used to on a semipermanent basis, apparently. “Will changing my hair work if I’m still riding the same bike and working in the same place?”
“As I said, the Ania are precise hunters. A motorbike is not a unique object, and it could be anyone under the helmet. Sending them after a particular facial image is far safer.” He shrugged. “But we’ll know soon enough.”
I grimaced. “Hopefully, Jak will come up with something interesting tomorrow, because I really don’t want to be sitting around waiting for either my father to contact me or to be attacked.”
“We have little other choice.” Frustration briefly edged his voice. “Where do you go now? To the café?”
I shook my head. “I’m not scheduled until tonight. I thought I’d go see how Tao is faring.”
“He still lives.”
I grimaced. “Being in a semi-coma and living a fully functioning life are two very different things.”
And right now, Tao was still doing the former rather than the latter. He could swallow food and water, but there was little response to stimuli, and no sense that he was aware of our presence. No one knew when—or if—he was ever going to come out of it. Even the witches at the Brindle—the place that was now the home of all witch knowledge, ancient or new—could find no mention of anyone ever consuming a fire elemental before Tao had done precisely that—and there was no spell or potion to reverse what had been done. We were all playing the waiting game and hoping like hell that he’d come back to us.
“The witches do not appreciate my presence in their sacred place, so I shall meet you there but will wait outside.” He winked out of existence, but wasn’t entirely gone, because he added, “The black hair is truly stunning, but your natural color is more beautiful.”
Then the heat of his presence faded completely, leaving me grinning like an idiot. An obviously insane idiot, because Azriel and I were about as viable as Lucian and I when it came to anything resembling a relationship. But at least I could enjoy sex with Lucian.
Of course, Azriel had explored the intimate delights of flesh, but that didn’t mean he’d actually enjoyed it. The term “enlightening” could have meant anything.
And I really, really needed to steer well away from this line of thinking. Azriel’s presence might not burn the air, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t somewhere nearby and following every wayward thought.
I reached into my purse and retrieved the keys to my motorbike. She sat alone in the designated bike parking area, her sleek silver body gleaming brightly in the shadowy confines of the lot. The Ducati was one of the first things I’d bought when our café finally started making a profit, and even though her hydrogen engine was more than a little outdated these days, she was still a joy to ride.
I pulled out my helmet, leather jacket and pants, and Kevlar boots from the seat storage, then deposited my purse. Once I’d donned my bike gear, I climbed onto the Ducati and started her up. Unlike regular motorbikes, hydrogen bikes run relatively silent, with only the lit-up light-screen dashboard and the slight vibration running through the frame to tell you they’ve started. In fact, when they were first developed, our nanny-inclined government had forced manufacturers to add a fake engine noise so that pedestrians could hear them coming. These days, that rule was pretty much defunct, as pedestrians had far greater worries—namely the air blades, which were basically jet-powered skateboards. Those things really were dangerous—a fact I knew because I’d tried them recently. Not only had I almost decapitated Lucian, but I’d spent more time on the ground than I had on the damn blade.
I drove out of the parking lot and headed back into the city. The traffic was light, so it didn’t take me too long to get there. I swung onto Lansdowne Street, then into Treasury Place. The Brindle was a white, four-story building that had once been a part of the Old Treasury complex. It looked innocuous until you neared it—that was when the tingling caress of energy burned across your skin. This place was protected by a veil of power, and it didn’t suffer fools—or evil—gladly.
I stopped in the parking bays along the edge of a park that had once held the premier’s office. After I’d stripped off the leathers and retrieved my purse, I locked the bike and helmet in place and headed into the Brindle. I climbed the steps and walked through the huge wood and wrought-iron doors into the shadowy interior. Even though I came here at least a couple of times a week, a sense of awe still struck me. This place—these halls—was almost as old as Melbourne itself, but it was so immersed in power that mini comets of energy shot through the air at any sort of movement.
The foyer wasn’t exactly inviting, but the rich gold of the painted brickwork added a warmth that the somewhat austere entrance lacked. I walked on, my footsteps echoing in the stillness and little explosions of fire following in my wake. A woman appeared out of one of the rooms farther down the hall, then stopped, her hands clasped together in front of her tunic-clad body.
Her gaze rose to my hair, but all she said was, “It is good to see you again, Risa.”
“And you, Margo.” I stopped and made the expected tithe at the discreetly placed urn near the reception room’s entrance. For normal dealings with the witches of the Brindle, it wasn’t required, but Tao’s situation was far from normal, and they’d been throwing a whole lot of resources behind the effort to make him whole again.
I hated to think just what it was going to end up costing Ilianna. Tithes or not, it was only thanks to her—and the promises she’d made to the Brindle that she wouldn’t tell me about—that the witches had agreed to take him in.
The only thing she had said about the promises she’d made to get him treated scared the hell out of me. He saved my life at the cost of changing his very being. I can do no less for him.
This whole key mess was changing the very fabric of our lives, and there was virtually nothing any of us could do to stop it. I’d asked them both many a time to walk away, but they wouldn’t. And while part of me was relieved, mostly I was just scared. For Ilianna and Tao, for what the ultimate cost to them might be.
They were my childhood friends, my best friends, and we not only shared a home, but owned and ran a café together. I didn’t want to lose either of them.
I followed Margo down to the far end of the hall and through a small, ornately carved door. The hall beyond was smaller, its walls a soothing green. The air was a riot of indefinable scents that had my nose twitching even though it wasn’t exactly unpleasant. We passed several rooms, including the one Tao had been in a few days ago.
“He’s been moved?” I asked, as we continued on. “Why?”
“Elementals need a heat source to survive. We suspect the shadowed room could have been the reason for his failure to improve.”
Tao was a werewolf rather than an elemental, but it was possible that consuming the elemental had changed his physiology enough that the lack of sunlight would affect him. “So the new room is sunnier?”
“Yes.” She stopped at a doorway near the far end of the hall and motioned me to enter.
I took a deep breath, fearing what I might find, then stepped inside the small, sunlit room. Tao lay on a bed in the middle of the room, his lower body covered by a sheet—more for modesty, I suspected, than any real need for a cover. Even from here I could feel the heat radiating off him.
Ilianna sat in a chair beside the bed and did something of a double take as I entered. Dark smudges dulled her green eyes and her normally lustrous blond mane hung limp and lifeless.
I frowned. “You really need to go home and get some rest.”
“I will. Soon.” She half shrugged, but the worried look in her eyes said “soon” wasn’t going to be anytime in the near future. It also suggested that nothing I could do or say would move her, and I couldn’t use force in a place like this. The building—or the magic that guarded it—would not appreciate it.
Not that that would stop me from trying if it came down to it. The last thing I wanted was her falling sick, as well.
She scanned me from head to toe. “The new hairdo is startling, but I’m thinking there’s something a little more than the need for a change behind it.”
“Someone sent demon bloodhounds after us. Azriel thinks this will throw them off the track for the moment.”
“Let’s hope he’s right.”
He usually was. Annoyingly so. “How is Tao today?” He actually looked a little better. His face—although covered in a wiry brown beard that was growing thicker by the day—had lost some of its gauntness, and his breathing was less labored.
“He’s doing okay,” she replied, touching his hand lightly. “We actually managed to get a decent amount of gruel into him today and he kept it down.”
The so-called gruel they were feeding him was a revolting mess of herbs, vitamins, protein, and carbs, designed to bolster his body and strength. Up until recently he hadn’t been able to keep much of it down and I can’t say that I was entirely surprised. If there was any spark of consciousness inside him, he sure as hell wouldn’t have been happy about being force-fed the smelly muck.
But at least he did have some basic motor capabilities. If he’d required intravenous feeding, then he would have landed in hospital. The Brindle witches weren’t legally allowed to perform that sort of procedure, even if some of them knew more about the body and medicines than many fully trained professionals.
