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as if he was restraining a smile. I wondered again if reapers were capable of amusement, or whether it was simply a function of hormones that—for some damn indefinable reason—seemed to find him attractive.
    But that could have been deliberate on his part. If he knew I was half Aedh, then he more than likely knew I was also half wolf, and the form he’d adopted could be an attempt to appeal to my more sensual nature. After all, the full moon was only a couple of days away, and for most werewolves this was the time of the moon heat.
    But I wasn’t a normal werewolf. My Aedh DNA had apparently curtailed much of my wolf heritage, and while I had werewolf sexual sensibilities and drive, the moon had no pull on me and didn’t force a shape change during her full bloom. Hell, I couldn’t take wolf shape anytime , no matter how hard I tried. And I’d certainly tried more than once.
    And yet, weirdly enough, I had inherited Mom’s Helki skill for face-shifting. I didn’t use it often, but I could, if I wanted to—and with a fair degree of effort—change basic things like hair, eyes, and facial structure. And like my mom, I could hold my altered shape for fairly long periods.
    Which was handy for fancy-dress occasions, but not much else.
    “Well,” I said, “ this half-Aedh knows that reapers are soul guides. You take them to heaven or hell, depending on what their allotted fate is.”
    “We do not call it heaven or hell. Those are human terms.”
    “Then what do you call them?”
    “The light or dark path.”
    “Which is basically the same thing.”
    He merely shrugged, but something in the way he studied me suggested I was an idiot for believing that.
    Irritating, to say the least.
    “And is that the sum of your knowledge?” he asked.
    “I know there are gates between this world and the next—one for your so-called dark path, and one for the light. I know that Aedh priests used to guard them, but the priests no longer exist.” I eyed him for a moment. “Have the Mijai taken over that role?”
    He hesitated. “Not really. We hunt what breaks through them, but we have no power over the gates themselves.”
    “But you’re reapers,” I said. “Reapers escort the souls from this world through the gray fields to the next. How can you not have power over the gates?”
    “As you said, the Aedh were the gatekeepers. We are merely the guides.”
    “So how do the guides get the souls through the gates if they have no power to open them?”
    Again his lips twitched. Part of me wished he’d smile for real. The other part was damn glad he didn’t. This man—this being—was dangerous enough.
    “The gates are attuned to souls and automatically open when one approaches. But the term gates is really a misnomer. Each gate is more a series of energy portals, not an actual structure.”
    “As you are not actual flesh?”
    “I am flesh as of this moment. I am as real as you.”
    “So why isn’t everyone in this place getting weirded out by the sword-carrying half-naked guy?”
    “Because they do not see my true form. They see what they expect to see—whatever that might be.”
    “But this isn’t your true form, is it? Reapers are energy beings, just as the Aedh are.”
    “It might be more accurate to call us shifters. We are all born with both an energy and a flesh form, whether Aedh or reaper. The reapers can take on other forms, however, to suit what their assigned souls expect. The Aedh cannot.”
    I nodded. The Aedh were also winged when they found flesh, which is why many people mistook them for angels. Thankfully, the wings were something we half-breeds missed out on. “As interesting as all this is, it’s not explaining why you’re so keen on tracking down my father.”
    He uncrossed his arms and leaned forward, resting his forearms comfortably on the table’s edge. The sheer force of the heat and energy radiating off him had pinpricks of power crawling across my skin—a sensation that was