“She’s going to help him!”

“Yes. She will.”

“What are you smelling?” Henry’s nostrils had flared.

“Besides you? Cleansers.”

Tony jerked as the elevator chimed and barely managed to stop himself from forcing his fingers between the doors and yanking them open faster. The moment the opening was large enough, he slipped through and raced down the hall, his Doc Martens thudding against the carpet. Although he’d neither seen nor heard him move, Henry was beside him when he reached Arra’s door.

“Now what?”

Henry reached past him and knocked.

“Yeah, okay, I suppose that’ll work.”

He waited, thought he heard movement, and had raised his hand to knock again when Henry’s fingers closed around his wrist.

“She heard it the first time. She’s standing just inside the door.” The words didn’t so much get louder as more definite, more penetrating, as though they were being thrust through the painted wood. “I can hear her heart beating. It sped up the moment she saw us and it’s beating so quickly now that I have a strong suspicion she knows exactly why we’ve come. And she knows that if she doesn’t open the door, I will break it down, and even if there’s an alarm or she’s called for help, she’ll be dead before security even knows there’s a problem.”

Tony punctuated the threat by punching the air. He only just barely resisted the urge to sneer, I’ve got a vampire by my side and I’m not afraid to use him!

The door opened.

“Do I have to invite you in, Nightwalker?”

“No.”

Arra nodded and stepped back out of the way. “There was always a risk you’d realize his memories had been tampered with.”

“He’s right here!” Tony snapped, pushing into the apartment. “And Henry’s not here because you screwed with my memories. Not only because you screwed with my memories,” he amended as her brows rose. “There’s a piece of shadow in Lee Nicholas!”

“What?”

He turned to face her, his hands curled into fists. “You heard me. There’s a piece of shadow in Lee Nicholas! It came through and it took him over just like you said it would.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I saw it happen!”

“So you’re sure.” The sound of the door closing was almost the sound of a door slamming. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“Fix it!”

“I can’t.”

This time, Tony heard the lie. “You can.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then brushed a bit of cat hair off her sleeve. “All right, then; I won’t. And at the risk of sounding childish, you can’t make me.”

“I got that covered. I can’t make you, but Henry . . .”

“Can what?” she asked wearily, walking into the living room and dropping onto the end of the couch. “You can kill me, Nightwalker, but you can’t force me to have anything to do with the shadows.”

Henry swept his gaze slowly around the apartment. Arra had turned out to be the middle-aged woman with the coffee who’d seen behind the masks that night on the street. He wasn’t exactly surprised. He could smell two cats in the bedroom, judged by their heart rate that they were asleep. “All right.”