“I doubt it will be that easy. Obviously, these things can protect themselves and with the wizard’s knowledge it’ll be able to set up protections we won’t be able to break.”

“So we get there early and when she arrives, we sneak up behind her and hit her over the head.” He punched his right fist into his left palm.

“And then we’re stuck with an unconscious wizard and no way to remove the shadow in order to destroy it—the shadow can’t separate from an unconscious host or the one in Mouse would have gone for me last night.”

Last night. Tony slid past the memory. “Fine, then while she’s unconscious, we tie her up and we gag her. When she wakes up, we stick her under the gate, let it suck the shadow out, and then we hit it with the light.”

“Again, I doubt it will be that easy.”

“That sounds easy to you?” He turned and laid his forehead against the cool glass and wondered if the lights across False Creek looked like the campfires of an advancing army. Probably not; too much neon. “She’d better have been grabbed by that shadow. She ditched me, man. Just tossed me to the cops.”

“Perhaps she thought you’d do better on your own and she didn’t want to cramp your style.”

Tony snorted, his breath misting the window. “Yeah. Perhaps you were right when you said she was good at running.”

“Perhaps I was right?”

He pivoted his head around just far enough to grin at Henry. Realized he was doing it when it pulled on the swollen edge of his lip. Stopped. Watched Henry’s expression change. He’d walked in and started talking—about finding Alan Wu, about the cops, about Arra. Until now, there hadn’t been a big enough opening for an awkward silence to slip through. Oh, fuck; here it comes.

“Tony, about last night . . .”

“Hey, you were hungry, I understand. You had to feed. No big.”

“What?” Realization dawned before Tony had to explain. “No, not when we parted. Earlier, when . . .”

“When you called and I came running? Like I said; no big. I’ve found my happy place with it, Henry. I’m living with it, just like I have been since we met. And you know what else? I’m bored with it. You own my ass—it’s old news. I have a life because you allow it? Well, thanks. Let’s move on. We don’t need to keep revisiting the . . .” He sketched the most sarcastic set of air quotes he could manage, knowing full well that Henry could hear the pounding of his heart. “. . . underpinnings of our . . .” And a second set, air quotes Amy would have been proud to display. “. . . relationship. This isn’t one of your romance novels, this is real life and no one talks about this kind of thing in real life. Okay?”