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She turned to the south, then west and north, repeating the pentacles and beseeching the masters of fire, water, and earth for their protection. A light wind sprang up, teasing the ends of her hair and tugging lightly at her clothes. Then it died, replaced by a sense of watchfulness.
She sat cross-legged on the ground and began the finding incantation. I glanced at Azriel. “Where will the soul of the Charna go when you kill her? Hell?”
He glanced at me. “Why would you think she would go to hell?”
I shrugged. “Because she’s played with evil and will now pay the price?”
He shook his head. “She didn’t play with evil. She summoned it. There is no purgatory for her, no moving on after paying penance. She will simply end.”
“So no chance of redemption?”
“No.”
“Good.” I crossed my arms and watched Ilianna. But I could feel the weight of his gaze on me.
“You would make a good Mijai,” he said, after a few moments.
I snorted softly. “Why? Because I feel no remorse for the bitch when the thing she raised stole a little girl’s soul?”
He half smiled, but it was oddly sad. Something inside me wanted to weep—not for him, but for me. I rubbed my arms and tried to ignore the sensation of fate staring out at me from the blue of his eyes.
“Because you do not quibble with what needs to be done. You simply do it.”
I snorted softly. “Yeah, that’s me all over. Decisive and proactive.”
“You have the heart of a warrior, Risa, even if the outer shell dabbles with weakness.”
The sound of my name on his lips was somehow ominous. I met his gaze again. “I decided several years ago I didn’t want to be a warrior, Azriel. That hasn’t changed. I just want to keep running our restaurant and have a normal life.”
His gaze moved from me, and yet that sense of fate bearing down on me didn’t ease. “Sometimes we must do things we do not want to.”
“Like you having to follow me around?”
A smile flirted with the corner of his mouth. “Yes.”
“Why is that? And why, if you’ve been following me around incessantly, did you not step in and stop the Aedh from kidnapping me?”
His gaze met mine again. His face was still impassive, but there was an odd sense of impatience rolling off him. “You have already guessed why I did not step in to rescue you—having heard what your father said, I wanted to see how the Aedh would react. But once they took energy form, I was unable to track them or rescue you.”
And the truth is, he probably wouldn’t have done the latter anyway—at least, not until he’d gotten every scrap of information possible. “That’s the second part of the question answered. What about the first?”
“As I have already said, I am a Mijai.” He shrugged, a casual gesture that oddly seemed filled with tension. “I should not be following you but rather fighting those that come through the portals.”
“But that’s not why you don’t want to be here, Azriel.”
“And why would you think that?”
I half smiled. “Because I am sometimes my mother’s daughter, and I can sense the avoidance in your words.”
“There is no avoidance.” He looked away again. “There is no other truth. I do what I must.”
Yeah, he did. And his disquiet about being here had nothing to do with his wish to be hunting, but rather his proximity to me. Of that, I was sure.
Ilianna pushed to her feet and walked across to us.
“Anything?” I asked.
She nodded. “He’s at an old warehouse on Ramsay Street, Spotswood. I couldn’t see much more than that—I think the witch has spelled the building. There was thick resistance when I tried to get inside and see his exact location.”
