"Yeah," I said dismissively, not even glancing down at the wingless lilac dragon that twined its way up my arm from my fingertips. I certainly wasn't about to explain that it wasn't actually a tattoo, but something far more deadly—a Dušan, a spirit guardian that came to life on the gray fields to protect me. "Have we got a deal?"
"Maybe. Let me dig around a little, just to see if there really is a worthwhile story in all this."
"Just don't take too long to decide, because we haven't got a whole lot of time left."
He nodded, finished his coffee in one long gulp, then rose. "I'll let you know, one way or another, by tomorrow."
He walked out. I tried to resist the urge to watch, but my gaze still flicked that way. The man sure could move nicely… Something fluttered at the outer reaches of my vision. It was almost ghostlike, a wisp of silver that was quickly shredded by the sunlight streaming in through the window. I frowned, scanning the front of the shop, intuition tingling. Whatever it was, it didn't reappear.
Jak left the café and the door whooshed shut behind him. I sighed in relief and ordered a second cup of coffee. My damn hands were shaking so bad it took several attempts to swipe the credit card through.
"You should not have met him if his presence affects you so."
The words came out of the emptiness behind Jak's chair even as the heat of Azriel's presence caressed my skin. Reapers, like the Aedh, were beings of energy rather than true flesh and blood, but they could attain that form if they wished to.
Which was how I'd come about. My father had spent one night in flesh form with my mother and, in the process, had given life to me—a half-breed mix of werewolf and Aedh who was lucky enough to get most of the best bits of each and few of the downsides.
"You're the one that said we had to do everything possible to stop the remaining portals from being opened. No matter what I might think or feel about Jak, he is good at digging up forgotten information." I stabbed my spoon into my cake for another bite. "If it's out there to be found, he'll find it."
Azriel formed substance on the other side of the table and sat down in Jak's recently vacated chair. While reapers were basically shape-shifters, able to take on any form that would comfort the dying on their final journey, they did possess one "true" shape. Usually I just saw whatever form they used to claim the soul they were meant to escort, but for some weird reason, I always saw Azriel's real form rather than the shape he decided to take on. Even he had no idea why this happened—or if he did, he wasn't telling me.
Which wasn't exactly a bad thing, because his real form was rather stunning. His face was chiseled, almost classical in its beauty and yet possessing the hard edge of a man who'd won more than his fair share of battles. He was shirtless, his skin a warm, suntanned brown and his abs well defined. The worn leather strap that held his sword in place seemed to emphasize the width of his shoulders, just as the dark jeans that clung to his legs hinted at the lean strength of them. A stylized black tat that resembled the left half of a wing swept around his ribs from underneath his arm, the tips brushing across the left side of his neck.
Only it wasn't a tat. It too was a Dušan—a darker, more stylized brother to the one that now resided on my left arm.
Azriel's gaze met mine, and his blue eyes—one as vivid and as bright as a sapphire, the other the color of a storm-held sea—hinted at sympathy.
"Couldn't you have just asked him all this on the phone?"