“You’re taking him seriously, but the whole shadow thing . . .”

“Is something I’ve been through before and if I was taking it as seriously as you think I should be, I’d be sitting in the closet with a blanket over my head unable to function. I watched a good green land destroyed and the people right along with it. So, to put it in a way you might understand, to put it, in fact, in the vernacular of this world, if you don’t think I’m taking this seriously, you can kiss my wrinkled ass!”

The rhythmic thrum of two cats purring, the buzz from the fluorescent light over the sink, the shuff of clothes rearranging as Tony shifted his weight—but mostly silence. He felt he should apologize, had a strong suspicion Henry was waiting for him to apologize, but he wasn’t going to do it. He wasn’t sorry—he was right. Arra had messed with his memory, let Lee be taken over by shadow, and, in spite of knowing that the evil wizard was spying on them, had no intention of doing anything but playing computer games. If he hadn’t gotten his memories back, if he hadn’t brought Henry with him, she’d still be sitting on her wrinkled ass.

And the silence continued.

Henry could wait, predator patient, for as long as he had to. Apparently, so could Arra.

Tony squared his shoulders, lifted his chin, and said softly, “You’d think, having seen one world conquered, that you’d be working a little harder to keep the same thing from happening here.”

The wizard turned from the stove and stared at him for a long moment. Stared until Tony began to run over recent memories just to make sure they were still there. “I said destroyed, not conquered,” she pointed out at last.

He shrugged. “Same thing, aren’t they?”

“Not always.” Her brows drew in and he felt like he did when Henry turned that kind of intensity on him. Like she was looking inside his skin. “In this case, yes.” Still frowning, she bent and picked a clean jam jar out of the recycling container beside the fridge. “Find the lid for me.”

What did your last slave die of? He’d have asked the question out loud except that he was half afraid she’d have an answer. The lid had slipped down to the bottom of the bin, under a dozen or so washed and crushed cat food tins. Tony brushed it off against his jeans as Arra laid a strainer over the top of the jar and decanted the hot, greenish-brown vodka into it. When she held out her hand, he placed the lid in it, asking, “Shouldn’t that cool down a bit before you close it?”

“Expert on potions, are we?”

“No, but . . .”