"So how did those things find us? You said the Raziq probably wouldn't be able to locate me once I was away from either my apartment or the café."
"It may not be the Raziq."
"Let's just forget the who for the moment." Annoyance edged my voice. "How did the Ania find me?"
"The Ania work along the lines of bloodhounds, only they are visual rather than scent hounds. Show them a picture and they will scour the earth until they find that person."
"How could someone show them a picture of me without becoming visible themselves?"
"If it is the Raziq, then they have Razan. The only time the Raziq ever acquire flesh to do a task is when they cannot use the Razan to interact with this world—such as the time of conceiving. And even then, it is only the shortage of Aedh females that drives some of them into the arms of humanity."
Well, that was one thing I wasn't going to complain about, considering it had given me life. "And if it wasn't the Raziq?"
He shrugged. "Whoever stole the key from us and opened the first portal would be clever enough to conceal their identity from any low-level demons they'd summoned."
I pushed open the side door into the parking lot and walked down the stairs. My footsteps echoed in the concrete void, but Azriel was as silent as a ghost.
"So what do we do, given that they'll probably hit us again?"
"We attempt subterfuge." He paused, suddenly appearing just ahead of me to hold open the fourth-floor door. "How long can you hold a change?"
I frowned. While I was part werewolf, I couldn't actually attain a wolf shape. In fact, the moon held no sway over me at all, and I was neither afflicted by the moon heat—although I did have a healthy sexual appetite—nor forced to change shape on the night of the full moon.
However, Mom hadn't been just an ordinary werewolf. She'd been a helki werewolf, and one refined in the labs of a madman. Helkis were face-shifters. They could literally alter the shape of their face, hair, and eyes—although, oddly, the eyes were the most difficult to keep altered over long periods of time. I'd inherited that ability from her, but it wasn't something I used very often, so it took a whole lot more out of me than it had Mom.
"That depends on just how much of a change we're talking about."
He stopped the door from slamming shut with his fingertips, then fell in step beside me. The heat of him washed over me, warm and comforting. "The Ania are somewhat rigid bloodhounds. Show them an image and that is precisely what they search for. I would think a simple change of hair color would suffice for now."