He studied me, his face giving as little away as usual. "It was merely a figure of speech, not an indication of intent."
In other words, what he wanted and what he intended were two totally different things.
He rose, the movement abrupt. "Do you want help to get up?"
I put my hand in his and let him haul me upright. For several seconds the room did a drunken dance around me, and it was only his grip that kept me upright. Eventually, the pain and dizziness eased. I took a deep, somewhat shaky breath, and glanced down. My clothes, as usual, hadn't exactly come through the Aedh shift in one piece.
My jeans had fared the best, with only a couple of small holes dotting the calf area. The dust from the missing patches clung to the skin visible underneath, giving my leg a weird blue sheen. My tank top was rather ragged around the edges and now had ventilation across my belly button, but it was at least still wearable. The same could not be said about my panties, which were little more than annoying bits caught in unmentionable places. One of these days I was going to learn to keep a change of clothes in my purse—although it wouldn't have done me any good in this instance, because my purse was back in the shed.
"Ready to move?" Azriel asked.
I took another deep breath, then nodded and walked forward carefully. The needles in my head reacted, but not as fiercely as before, and by the time we reached the top of the stairs, I felt a little more normal. Or at least as normal as I ever got lately.
Stepping into Stane's inner sanctum was like stepping into another world—a world that was clean, shiny, and filled with the latest in computer technology. In fact, Stane's system dominated the main living area and wouldn't have looked out of place on a spaceship. There was a bathroom to our immediate left, and a bedroom farther down, although I doubt he used it much—he seemed to spend much of his life stationed at his bridge.
I grabbed one of the spare chairs near the computer and plunked down rather inelegantly. Stane came out of the kitchen area in the living room and handed me some painkillers and an open can of Coke.
"Thanks." I quickly downed both the pills and several large mouthfuls of fizzy soda, then swallowed a burp and added, "How long will the transfer take?"
He shrugged. "A couple of minutes. What are we looking for?"
"These disks came from the man who photographed Nadler's wedding. We're hoping that if we have a youngish picture of Mr. Elusive, we might be able to figure out what he should look like these days."
"Clever thinking." Stane pressed several buttons on the left console screen. On the right, thumbnail images flashed up. "And there's no maybe about it. I have a program that can age any facial image fed into it."
"Excellent." I wheeled the chair closer and indicated the thumbnails on the screen. "They from the first disk?"
"First and second," Stane confirmed. "How are we going to know which one is Nadler?"