Phei did not step toward the cloud.
He did not need to.
The thick cloud noticed his noticing, and a single thin tendril detached itself from the bruise-like mass with the languid grace of a predator tasting the air. It drifted across the intervening distance unhurried, almost courteous, and brushed the side of his face before he could lean away.
Phei's jaw locked.
For one half-second he was somewhere else. He was a woman. He was twenty-six years old. He was begging in a language that had been dead for eleven thousand years, the syllables crumbling like ash on his tongue. He was looking up at something tall and pale that was smiling, and the smile had too many teeth where smiles should never have teeth, and then he was — she was — he was —
The tendril withdrew.
Phei stood very still in the bone-drifts and breathed very carefully through his nose, the air thick and metallic and ancient, and did not say anything for a full four seconds.
