“What do you have against my name?” Elayra snapped, keeping her voice low enough that it would not carry to the man as he drew ever closer. “Elayra,” she enunciated it slowly. “It’s not that hard.” She looked back to Miles as he nearly finished closing the distance between them. “I take it you know this man?”
	Realizing the shield above them may gain extra unwanted attention, she shifted her focus away from the magic maintaining it. Without her direction, it burst once more into a glittering dust that vanished quickly in the rain. “And for the record,” she added as the raindrops at last managed to reach them in full, “I wasn’t going to shoot him. Yet, anyway.”
	When Miles stopped in front of them, Elayra returned his gaze, her suspicion far heavier than his as she looked him over. She glanced to his hands, hidden in his pockets, and her grip on the dagger tightened slightly. There was no telling what he could be hiding inside.
	“‘Late?’” she repeated, then glanced up at the sky as Ghent answered him, blinking away raindrops, but the cloud cover still made it impossible to tell what time it was. Though, it [i]did [/i]look like the clouds had lightened ever so slightly. 
	She tensed when the man withdrew his hands from his pockets, pulling out an unusual rectangular device no larger than his thumb. Unsure what to expect, she shifted her left foot slightly behind her, ever tense, when he flicked its top and a flame ignited easily from it. She had seen devices with similar capabilities in Wonderland, but none as small as his. Curiosity momentary getting the better of her, she moved to get a better look as he lit his cigarette. 
	She gave Ghent a sideways look when the man asked about her, wondering how he planned on answering. 
	At the prospect of her being his ‘damsel in distress,’ her face scrunched up with the effort of suppressing a snarl. As much as she wanted to scold him for suggesting such a thing, his wink only making her efforts against it that much more difficult, they needed to get rid of Miles. If Ghent's lie would get that job done, she could not risk disillusioning the man further than he already looked to be. Instead, she forced a tight smile that would not fool anyone, and her eyes narrowed as Miles eyed her weapons.
	“‘Them?’” she asked at the same time as Ghent, her her expression sobering, becoming more worried and alert. “Them who?”
	Though his answer made little sense to her, she understood one thing: it shocked Ghent.
	She glanced between the two as they exchanged their final words, the smell of the smoke rising from his cigarette and flooding from his lungs threatening to make her choak. Tobacco was not an unfamiliar scent to her, but whatever kind of substance [i]that[/i] was, it smelt like it must have been a few centuries past its expiration date. She held her breath.
	She turned to watch Miles go, taking the smoke with him as she made sure he did not decide to return. Once he had rounded the corner, she glanced to Ghent’s side, then punched him in the arm, hard, just as he apologized.
	“[i]That’s[/i] for calling me a damsel in distress,” she snarled, glaring at him. She snorted at his question. “Sure,” she began, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Let me just summon the Mystics from the grave. [i]No,[/i] it can’t meet us halfway!” She gave a growling sigh. Whatever Miles’ words had meant to him, had apparently been enough to concern him. “What are ‘cops’ and ‘punks’ in this world that they’d make you suggest that?”