Thruor was administering first aid, for what it was worth. The Senator was standing there. “Did you…did you…she had a gun!”
He was already explaining it away. Security approached me.
“I heard gunshots,” I said, fitting in with the explanation, fitting with their expectations.
“And ran towards them?”
I shrugged a bit. “Yeah. I never said I was smart.”
The guy sighed. “Well…”
“I’ll disappear.” Which I did, back to the cafe. But I had seen the look on Thruor’s face.
I’d just watched somebody lose a magical duel to a demon, but at least even if she died her soul would be safe. That, as much as anything else, had been what Thruor was doing. Protecting her soul.
And she had died. I almost felt it, and then Kanesha was slipping back in opposite me. “You have glass in your hair.”
I reached up and winced. She was right. “I’ll comb it out later.”
“She’s…”
“I know. But anyone with any sensitivity knows about the demoness now. That’s…that’s something.” Not worth, I thought, a woman’s life, but she’d been protecting the man she loved. I could definitely understand that. I could understand why that might be worth dying for.
Even if dying was permanent. But that also meant leaving them. I shook my head.
“Not worth it.”
“I agree.” I reached for her hand. “Let’s go home. There’s nothing more we can do here.”
“Yeah. Let’s.”
At home, I combed the glass out of my hair and took a shower. I wanted to talk to Thruor, no, I needed to talk to Thruor.
One of them is going to die. It didn’t mean this woman, this witch I didn’t know. It meant somebody I cared about, but right now it felt like I did care about her.
Because I’d failed to protect her. Which was stupid. She was one of the ones doing the protecting. Just because I didn’t know her.
I felt my view of the matter shift a little. I didn’t need to protect people who knew what they were doing and what they were getting into. Only those who didn’t. That went for the spy types too.
Except I wasn’t sure that they had any kind of solid idea of either of those two things.