The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities by Jeffrey Quyle Page B

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    Aja smiled and turned, then began her next song, while Alec slipped away to visit the restroom; there was no harm in him leaving her alone among such an adoring crowd, he knew.
    When he came back down the hallway, the song was over, and the crowd was beginning to mumble and buzz with all the convers ation that had been repressed while listen ing to the music.  Alec came around the corner, and saw that Aja was not in the corner by the fireplace.  He pressed through the crowd and made his way to the front, looking for his friend .  “Did you see where the singer went?” Alec asked a group of men sitting at a front table.
    “Some ordinary–looking fellow came to talk to her after the last song, and she followed him out the side door,” one of the men said, and pointed off to his right.
    Alec thanked them for the information, then went through the identified door, which led to the kitchen.
    “Did the singer come through here?” he asked the cook, who was still hard at work over his griddle.
    “She did, with a dandy, about two minutes ago.  Went out that door,” the cook pointed with a knife, and Alec walked rapidly out the door.  The door way faced a stable building across the alley from the back of the tavern, and Aja was not in sight down either direction in the alley.  He felt very uneasy about the situation; he was deeply aware of the genuine rapport he and Aja felt, and he didn’t believe she would simply walk away from him, especially when they had just spoken about traveling together.
    He extended his Spiritual energies, and tried to find any hint of Aja.
    Above him in the rooms of the tavern was a medley of people expressing many strong emotions, and he tried to filter those out.  To his left he detected no great emotional state, while to his right were two people tremendously excited about something.  Alec began to jog down the alley to his right, and as he reached the intersection with a street he paused and extended his senses again.
    The two people he followed were nearby, to his right again.  He walked down the street, his hand prepared to reach for his sword, as his eyes examined every possible location where Aja might be hidden.  As he passed a doorway to a building, he discovered that the entryway was deeper than he expected, hiding a stairwell and landing of dark, shadowed corners, and within one of those corners his two sought souls were together, engaged in an embrace.
    “Aja?” Alec stood at the street level and called up into the darkness that was four steps above him.
    There was no answer forthcoming.  Aja was there, Alec knew.  Yet she was not answering his call; in fact, she was locked in a passionate kiss with a man, hidden away in the darkness, oblivious to Alec’s presence, and Alec wasn’t sure what to do.
    “Aja,” he called again, quite loudly this time. 
    The voice that answered wasn’t Aja’s.   “Go away bud, and leave us in peace,” a man replied, apparently taking his lips away from Aja’s long enough to answer.
    “I want to talk to Aja,” Alec replied just as loudly as before, his voice spreading widely across the empty city street.  Alec sent his senses towards the man, seeking to learn what type of person he was, but all Alec could detect was shallow self-concern in the man, no sense of concern for the rest of the world, or for the woman he held.  And there was something else about the man; not a part of his spirit, but connected to it in some manner.
    Alec placed a foot on the stone tread of the first step, decreasing the distance between himself and the couple.  “Aja, it’s Alec.  I need to talk to you.”
    “Oh, Alec!  Hello!” the girl seemed to come out of some revere she had been in.  “Look!  It’s Erwin!  He still loves me!”
    “Aja, I need to talk to you,” Alec told her.  “Can you come down here?”
    “Sure, Alec,” she replied.  A moment later she spoke in a low voice.  “Let go Erwin, please.”
    “You stay