Only when he left did Ithan let out a long breath. “What a fucking creep.”
Hypaxia leaned against the examination table. “Your guess was right, though. He didn’t have the parasite.” She crossed her arms. “I didn’t sense anything like one, anyway. I didn’t sense anything living inside him at all.”
“So what now?”
“I compare what I detected in him to what I discovered in your blood. See what stands out. See if I can isolate where in you the parasite lies.”
Good. At least he’d contributed that much.
“How could you stand it?” Ithan asked, unable to contain his curiosity. “Being that close to him?”
“I’ve had to endure plenty of uncomfortable situations and difficult people in my life,” Hypaxia said, pushing off the table and walking to the computer. She clicked the monitor on. “A lonely, scared Reaper, new to the afterlife, doesn’t bother me.”
“Lonely? Scared?” Ithan choked on a laugh.
But Hypaxia glanced over a shoulder, her face unreadable. “You couldn’t see it? What lay beneath the bravado? His clothes and attitude show how desperately he’s trying to cling to his mortal life. He’s frightened out of his mind.”
“You pity him.”
“Yes.” She turned back to her computer. “I pity him, and all Reapers.”
Sigrid included, no doubt. Guilt tightened his chest, but Ithan said, “Most half-lifes seem to enjoy terrorizing the rest of us.”
“They might, but their existence is what their name implies: It is half a life. Not true living. It seems sad to me.”
Ithan considered. “You’re … you’re a really good person.” She chuckled. “I mean it,” he insisted. “The witches are worse off without you.”
She glanced over a shoulder again, and this time her eyes were full of sorrow. “Thank you.” She nodded to the door. “I need to focus for a while. Without your, ah … hovering.”
He saluted her. “Message received. I’ll be down the hall if you need me.”
* * *
“Queen of all this, huh?”
Bryce didn’t stop sorting through the trunks of supplies Fury had brought on the helicopter, even though her friend’s question came with a shit-eating grin.
“Did you get the goggles?” Bryce asked, pushing past a layer of winter hats. All the snow gear was there, just as she’d requested. On short notice, Fury had pieced together a remarkable array of jackets, pants, hats, gloves, underlayers—everything they’d need to survive the subzero temperatures of Nena.
Bryce intended to leave Avallen as soon as her parents had a rest from the helicopter journey—as soon as they were able to get Cooper settled with Baxian, and process all she’d told them upon their arrival.
Her parents sat in the grass on the other side of the field, talking quietly, Syrinx lounging in Randall’s lap. So Bryce gave them space, using the time to check the gear Fury had brought—not that she didn’t trust Fury to have thought of every detail.
But she should check, anyway. Just to make sure that they had all the gear they might need. So many things could go wrong, and she was taking her human parents with her, she was really going to do this—
A slender brown hand touched Bryce’s wrist. “B—you okay?”
Bryce looked up at last, finding Juniper standing beside her, a deep frown on her beautiful face. A few feet away, Fury stood with crossed arms, brows high.
Bryce sighed, turning from the three massive trunks that would be loaded onto the helicopter looming behind them.
Her friends were safe here. It should have eased something in her chest—a gift from Urd, Hunt had claimed—but seeing them here …
There was a fourth trunk, resting in the grass close to the helicopter. Fury had only been able to gather so much before the quick takeoff from Valbara, but still … there were a considerable number of weapons here.
Handguns. Rifles. Knives.
A joke, really, considering that they were going up against six intergalactic, nearly all-powerful beings. Most of the weapons would be for the others—to buy them any shot at surviving.
Everything else would come down to her.
Fury and Juniper were watching. Waiting. Like they could see all of that on her face. Just as Juniper, that bleak winter, had sensed from Bryce’s tone alone that despair had pushed her to the brink.
Juniper—whose last audiomail to Bryce had been so angry, after Bryce had done such an unforgivable thing by calling the director of the Crescent City Ballet. Only love and relief showed on her face now.