"Won't work. He's a reporter, and reporters talk. He'll discover soon enough that no one can remember seeing him there and he'll suspect I've done something."
Azriel raised his eyebrows. "But what if—as far as everyone was concerned—he did appear?"
Meaning he'd become Jak? "How is that going to keep him safe? I mean, for all intents and purposes, everyone will think he was there."
"True. But remember, Ilianna warned you that more trouble could be headed your way tomorrow night, and the timing coincides with this gala. It's possible the face-shifter we know as Nadler is ready to react at the slightest hint of a problem."
A taxi pulled into the rank up ahead, and I started walking again. "I'm not sure you could pull something like that off convincingly."
He fell in step beside me again, his hands clasped lightly behind his back and the warmth of his presence doing more damage to my breathing than Jak's excitement had. "Why not?"
"Because—" Because he's warm and real, and you're not. Not in a flesh-and-blood sense, anyway—even if he felt altogether too real right now. "You can't inhabit the personality of a person you hardly know."
"I am as real as you, Risa," he said softly. "And you'd be surprised at just what I can do."
No doubt. I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. "If you think you can be convincing, then it's worth the chance. As much as I hate what Jak did to me and my mom, I don't want to see him hurt."
"This will at least keep him safe from whatever trouble Ilianna has seen coming tomorrow night." He hesitated, then added, "But it has a second benefit."
I glanced at him. "That being?"
"He doesn't get to dance with you." And with that he winked out of existence again.
Goddamn you, Azriel. You can't keep running like that.
Why not? his thought came back. You do.
Which was not something I could argue with. I grabbed the cab, gave the cabbie the hotel's address, then dragged out my phone again and called Hunter.