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placed her hand over it, keeping him from opening it. He tensed under her touch, but she didn’t let go.
    “There’s got to be another way.” She’d meant to say it in a normal tone, but it came out only a whisper. His “quiet” command was still at work.
    Tyr searched her face and, for once, didn’t seem disappointed. “In my land, he decimated an entire village before he fled to your shores.” He clasped his hand tighter under her touch and opened the door. “And he will do so here if we do not find a weapon worthy of his hide.”
    Damn it , she thought. He sounded so sure. Sal knew that sense of certainty as a doctor. There were times when symptoms and lab values didn’t add up, but she knew deep in her gut what course of action to take, even if it meant going against everyone’s, including her supervisor’s, advice. Tyr projected that confidence with his every breath.
    And hell if her gut didn’t agree with him.

CHAPTER 21
    Sal angled them toward the nursery, and then noted Tyr’s frown.
    “I know that most are newborns in here, but some will be older.”
    “Their ages are not of concern, but their health.”
    She shook her head. “They’re fine. Otherwise, they’d be in the NICU.”
    “Then let us find this NICU, then.”
    As a nurse exited the nursery, Sal pulled him into the shadows. “You don’t understand. The neonatal ICU is for critically ill babies.”
    Again, the curt nod. “Yes. The babe must be near the veil, else the blood will not be potent with the essence of death.”
    Could this get any worse? She’d almost talked herself into getting a few milliliters of blood from a healthy newborn, but a sick baby? A baby hooked up to a thousand machines and poked so many times already that the child’s skin looked like polka dots? Could she really subject a child already so injured through even the tiniest of cuts? These babies were so fragile that the pain alone could put them into shock.
    He must have read her concern, for he gave a sad smile. “I will only take from he who gives permission.”
    “They’re just newborns. They can’t communicate yet.”
    “As your scrying box could not understand your intent?”
    For every logical, scientific reason she gave for not going along, Tyr countered with an equally illogical, unscientific anecdote that she knew nevertheless to be true. The two refused to coexist in her mind.
    “Fine. Then I’m drawing the blood.”
    Tyr cocked his head, as if he didn’t understand English, or, more likely, that she was speaking gibberish. “You are live blood.”
    “So?”
    Speaking to her as if she were a child who needed to be told not to put wads of dirt in her mouth, Tyr explained, “You are not dead blood.”
    “Dead blood?”
    “Those that have no essence in their blood. Dead bloods. They are few and far between. Only one a generation or two. Are you saying your world has none?”
    “I…Well, I’m not sure. I don’t even know what essence is, let alone know if I have it or not.”
    He grunted, seemingly amazed at their backward ways. “Then let it be known. You, being live blood, cannot draw live blood.”
    She waited for an elaboration, but he just stared at her. “Why not?”
    Tyr groped for the words, again as if she had asked him a question as obvious as why people breathed.
    “It would be as if you wanted to control a flame, yet set about kindling to capture it. The flame would consume that which meant to control it.” He paused, scanning her face for understanding. “Do you see?”
    She didn’t, but Sal also didn’t understand how her shoes weren’t squeaking incessantly anymore, either. In the end, whether she believed or even understood the concept of live versus dead blood, did it really make any difference if she or Tyr drew the child’s?
    Not believing she was agreeing to this, Sal nodded. “All right, I’ll find a nurse to let us in, then distract her while—”
    “That won’t be necessary.”
    Tyr took a tiny glass