“Raven?” Darren pounced on the world. Anzu didn’t look like a raven, so maybe these Native shamans had seen another ifrit.
Angel held his hand up. “No. Nope, that bastard will regret shit on his own. I’m not going to come in like the hand of fucking justice.”
“This man and his ifrit partner tried to kill Darren. They nearly succeeded,” Kavon said, his voice tight with anger.
Angel studied Darren for a second. “You look fine to me.”
“If it weren’t for Les’s girlfriend getting involved in this fight, I’d be dead, and so would Kavon and our guides. And from the spirit plane, we probably would have gotten to see our friends die as they tried to help us. Les and Coretta and Les’s incredibly competent military-trained nurse friend. We all would have been standing on the spirit plane wondering how to warn the rest of you. And that might not have been easy because the spirit plane is...” Darren let his words trail off. He didn’t know how to describe it.
At that, Angel nodded and said softly, “Yeah. I’ve been there. It’s all storms.”
“That’s going to be Earth if Anzu has his way. He’s already leaving power sinks all over the city, and he raised a huge storm downtown.”
When Angel turned his back, Darren knew they were making progress. He stepped forward. “Can you help us identify him?” Darren asked. “You said you could tell I had an ifrit partner. Could you tell if someone else did? We have a few suspects, so all we would need you to do would be look at them.”
Angel turned back around. “So you can then kill them?”
“So we can talk to them,” Kavon said. “If they know we have their identity, maybe they’ll stop. Darren has an ifrit guide. I don’t object to the old ones, only the behavior of this one. He’s threatening the city and my people.”
Silence fell on the kitchen, and Angel stood with his back to them. Even without an ability to read a person’s emotional pile, Darren could feel the pain and the hint of panic. If they pushed, Angel was going to run for the hills, and with his bank account, those might be the hills of some country on the opposite side of the world.
“Kavon?” Darren asked.
Kavon nodded. “Let’s go. Mr. Zamora, please consider giving us some assistance. Sometimes we do things we hate because the alternative is something we would hate more.”
They walked out, leaving a shaken Angel behind.
“That didn’t go as well as I had hoped,” Darren said.
Kavon was silent as they walked back to the SUV. Once he started the vehicle, he said, “He’s meaner than I remember. That man knows how to use the truth to cut a person.”
“What?” Darren asked, but Kavon was silent and the bond was still. Great. Kavon had locked him out. Again. Darren sighed. This was the worse vacation ever, and that included the one where he’d gotten caught in the suction cleaner of a hotel pool and nearly drowned.
