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Holly? Are you really okay? I think I need to call the police.”
    Hadrian sighed deeply and turned to face Karen. “Go about your own business as if we weren’t here.” Holly felt every word vibrate within her.
    Karen’s mouth dropped open. She stared at them both dumbly for a moment. Then, as if a light bulb had flickered off, she picked up her dropped shopping bags and walked over to her apartment door.
    Holly had never seen Karen back down so completely. It was scary. Unnatural.
    “What did you do to her?” she demanded. “Hypnosis?”
    Hadrian shook his head and led Holly unerringly to her apartment door. She shouldn’t have been surprised. If he’d been stalking her, chances were he’d know her address. Much like with the front door, he opened her locked apartment door with barely a touch.
    “How did you do that?” It burned her throat to talk, but she had too many questions to stay silent. “You didn’t have a key.”
    Hadrian’s hold tightened. He whisked her off her feet and carried her into her apartment. The door swung closed behind him completely on its own.
    “Who are you?” she asked as he sat her down on her sofa.
    “I’m Hadrian Graham,” he said. He fussed with an afghan blanket she’d left slung over the back of a chair, spreading it out on top of her and tucking in the edges around her. “Remember? You just saw me a couple of hours ago? Tore out of the café as if demons were chasing you?”
    “Yes, yes, I remember all that.”
    He breathed a sigh of relief.
    “Who are you?” she asked again.
    “Oh,” he said, understanding dawning, “you mean the bigger ‘who.’”
    She nodded.
    “I’m a wizard...of sorts.” He disappeared into the kitchen. The moment she started to get up and follow him, he called out, “Don’t you dare move, not until you regain some more of your strength.”
    A few minutes later he returned carrying two cups of tea.
    “A wizard?”
    “Of sorts. So are you.” He handed her a warm cup. “Sip it slowly.”
    The tea tasted sweet and lemony and exotic. It hadn’t come from her cabinet. She took another sip. It soothed her raw throat.
    “You carry your own tea?”
    “Only when I think I’ll need it.”
    She wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she took another sip of the tea. It was really very tasty. She’d have to find out where to buy it. Later, of course. After the important stuff was out of the way, like who the hell he was and what he and that other man wanted with her...a rather plain kindergarten schoolteacher!
    “Why do I feel so terrible?” she asked. “What did that man do to me?”
    Hadrian set down the tea he’d been drinking and started to pace. “This is going to be hard for you to believe,” he said. Not a good way to start. But she waited. He seemed to be putting his thoughts together. “To be blunt, you nearly died.”
    “Yeah, that’s blunt.” She swallowed some more tea. “How?”
    “That thing that attacked you wasn’t a man. It’s a soul eater. And it was feeding off you or rather your soul.” She remembered the ragged man saying something about her being tasty. “It was literally tearing your soul from your body and devouring it. You feel battered and sore because it had nearly succeeded. Your soul will heal from this, but it will take time. And your body will hurt like hell until it does.” He gestured toward the tea she was sipping. “It’ll help.”
    “Supposing I believe you, which I’m not saying I do, what would have happened if it had gotten hold of my soul?”
    “You’d be dead,” he answered a little too quickly.
    “And my soul? What would have happened to it?”
    Hadrian started to say something but hesitated.
    “I want to know,” Holly assured him.
    “Very well. If it had eaten your soul, it would have killed your spirit. The essence that lives on after our body dies would be gone. Obliterated.”
    “A fate worse than death?”
    “Exactly,” he agreed.
    “What could do something like