Something was making a strange half growling, half howling noise. He didn’t think it was Keisha. He punched her in the stomach. She grunted and grabbed his wrist. Small bones ground together. The noise continued uninterrupted. Nope, not Keisha. Him?

“Keisha!”

A small eraser bounced off the set dresser’s close-cropped hair and hit him on the cheek.

“Go to sleep!”

Her mouth separated from his ear with a wet slurp. Her left leg settled slowly toward the floor. Her hand fell from his wrist. Tony clamped it immediately on his ear.

“Stop being such a baby.” Arra’s voice sounded both muffled and annoyed. “It seems a little over the top after you had someone deliberately jab a hole through your eyebrow.”

“Not the same thing,” he muttered, checking his palm. Damp but not bloody. As Keisha sighed under him, he pushed himself carefully up onto his knees.

“Zazu, be quiet!”

The growling howl stopped.

Reaching behind him, Tony untangled a long leg from around his. The moment he was clear, he fell to one side, crawling away until he could brace his back against the wall, cradling all his injured bits close. “Is she . . . ?”

“She’s fine,” Arra told him as she stared down at the younger woman. “Physically anyway. Unless you did damage.”

“I took damage.” And as soon as he got the chance, he was heading for the bathroom to check things out. They still fucking hurt!

“The shadow-held aren’t stronger than they were before, but they have no inhibitions. They have no fear of injury, so they hold nothing back.”

He picked the eraser up off the floor. “So what was this for?”

“To get her attention.”

“Right.” And then he remembered. “You said she’s physically fine. What isn’t?”

“What isn’t what?”

“Fine.”

“Ah. Yes.” Arra pressed her lips together into a thin line, all color leaching out. “It’s like this,” she began just as Tony thought she wasn’t going to answer him. “Putting Keisha to sleep involved her energies only—it’s undetectable at a distance. The shadow is still in there, confined. If I destroy it, the Shadowlord will know immediately where I am and I am not yet ready for him.”

“You’ve destroyed shadows before.”

“So it’s true, then. Men really do think with those?” She nodded toward his crotch and he covered it instinctively. “Because you’re not thinking now. The Shadowlord wasn’t on this world, wasn’t part of this world’s energy flow before. She’ll have to hold the shadow until we defeat him once and for all. And if we don’t, well, she’ll have worse problems than a few nightmares.”

“A few nightmares?” Now he knew to look, he could see Keisha’s eyes moving behind her closed lids.

“Constant nightmares.”