“So that I can use them to discover the location of a shadow-held.” She dusted the ash off her fingers. “A shadow-held that might be held by the shadow-spy that takes the information back through the gate that convinces the Shadowlord to invade and destroy your world. Yes.”

“Yeah. All right. Perspective; I get it.” Wondering when they’d started calling them shadow-spies—Like shadows alone aren’t enough?—he headed for the door, dancing sideways as Zazu hissed at him.

“What did you do to my cat?”

It had to be the attempted drag out from under the couch. Clearly, Zazu was holding a grudge. “Nothing.”

He heard Arra snort as the door closed behind him. She was the wizard; if she wanted to know, she could ask the cat. Stepping out of Arra’s apartment didn’t seem to have the same emotional effect as it had earlier. He felt . . .

Tony frowned. Actually, the feeling of safety had vanished about the time Arra woke up, and he’d felt antsy ever since. Doing her wizardship’s bidding had masked it, but now that he had nothing to occupy his mind, it was hard to ignore. The empty hall felt crowded with indefinable dangers and during the short walk to the elevator, he kept spinning around, certain someone or something was walking behind him, treading on his shadow.

There was never anything there but his shadow, clinging to his heels as if it, too, was sensitive to whatever the hell was going on. The elevator was just as distressing as it had been earlier. Squinting, Tony pressed the button for the sixth floor and hoped the shadow-stain wasn’t somehow making him sensitive to light.

Or Henry . . .

“That Nightwalker of yours teaching you bad habits?”

Henry had been feeding from him off and on for the last five years. More off than on lately, but still . . . Were there cumulative effects? He ran his tongue over his teeth. They didn’t feel any sharper. Mythically—and Tony’d made a point of checking out the myths way back when—it didn’t work that way, but Henry’d always insisted that the myths were flawed. Insisted without specifying exactly what the flaws were.

Was he changing?

Oh, get the fuck over yourself, he snarled silently as the elevator doors opened. There isn’t enough shit going on, you have to come up with new crap?