Shadow Thief - Eva Chase Page 0,39

side of that large, carved crystal slab.

Thorn shifted closer to me, his presence looming as large in the shadows as it did on the physical plane. “Sorsha said our kind often come here. Why would any of them think it’s strange that we’re here too? It was an excuse to keep us away.”

“She really should have known better than to assume we’d go along with that order,” Ruse agreed with a teasing cluck of his tongue.

Why wouldn’t she have wanted us to see the bar? Maybe I’d asked too many questions at the market earlier today. There were just so many things to experience that I didn’t understand but wanted to.

Like the young man who was tossing coins into the circle of water to our left. I peered at him and then the coins, the metal discs glinting as they caught the tiny underwater lights. “That’s money he’s throwing away, isn’t it? Why would they put it in the water? Is that how they pay for those relaxing courage drinks?”

“They pay for the drinks at the counter,” Ruse said. “And mostly with paper bills or plastic cards. The coins don’t buy much. They throw them into the water for fun and to pretend it’ll give them the power to get whatever they want.”

My gaze jerked back to the coins. “Does that work?” So far I hadn’t met mortals who could work magic of any kind, let alone on that scale.

“Of course not. They just enjoy the pretending.”

Mortals were rather strange about a lot of things. Before I could puzzle any longer about that, Thorn moved forward. I looked in the same direction.

Sorsha was stepping away from her friend with the swishy clothes and hair. She was smiling, but tension wound through her posture. A twinge shot through my gut. “Where’s she going? Is something wrong?”

“She seems to think it is.” I could feel more than see the flex of Thorn’s considerable strength. “Four men came in together a minute ago. Their movements appear very purposeful. She may have had past dealings with them or seen some other warning sign.”

“She’s heading for the back door,” Ruse pointed out. “We’d better keep up, don’t you think?”

Thorn glanced toward the front of the room again, but then he turned to stride after Sorsha, leaping between shadows as need be. Ruse and I traveled along behind him. If any of the newcomers tried to harm her, we were between her and them now. It must have been a good thing we’d come along.

The incubus had been right about the door. Sorsha twisted the handle, murmuring a faint tune to herself, and pushed outside. We leapt after her into the thicker darkness of an alley.

A totally different combination of sensations washed over me: the faint chill of the night, the contrast between the dark, narrow space we’d come out into and the yellow glow of streetlamps at the opening a few buildings away, and a dank, definitely rotten smell seeping from the trash bin Sorsha darted around. It took me a moment to adjust—and to notice the figure that had already been out here in the alley.

The man looked so scruffy I might have taken him for a werewolf in mid-shift if everything else about him hadn’t screamed mortal. He’d been standing farther down the alley, but at Sorsha’s exit, he turned and headed toward her with steps that both lurched and swayed. A bottle of that sour-smelling liquid dangled from one of his hands. He didn’t seem relaxed or brave to me, though, only unsteady. And intent on catching up with our rescuer.

“What’s he do—” I started to ask, and sucked in the rest of the sentence and my breath at the gleam of a knife he’d pulled from his pocket.

He was going to hurt her. We had to stop him. Those thoughts blared through my mind clearer than anything—and my body went rigid. A sickly chill congealed in my stomach, so dense it erased even my memories of the treats I’d snacked on at the market and later at dinner.

I could stop him. I could—like that other time—but to do that again— Despite my urge to protect the woman who’d saved us, every particle in me flinched away from the thought with a smack of horror.

It was a good thing I wasn’t the warrior among us. As I froze, Thorn hurled himself forward.

14

Sorsha

I paused in the short hallway that led to the bar’s back door just long enough to glance over my shoulder.