It would have been easy to sink into the soft couch. But tension still bunched in Qebhet's shoulders and every part of her felt unclean, so instead she perched herself carefully on the edge of the seat, avoiding touching it directly with her bare skin.
"It... it was sort of both, actually," she admitted. "I thought... the dead might be able to help. So I was asking around the streets, if anyone had seen something. I didn't think there was any danger." Qebhet lowered her eyes, acutely aware now of how pathetically naive that sounded. "But it... the soul eater, it seemed to know we were still looking. It attacked me. It said..." She screwed up her face, trying to remember the exact words. "It said there was room for us all to… hunt here. That we shouldn't get in its way."
That it would kill her.
She still wasn't sure why it hadn't. The animal fury in its scream when she'd struck it, the way it had advanced on her, baring those terrible fangs. But then instead it had fixed her with a horrible, calculated stare that was not an animal thing at all. And it had laughed. Like it had seen how the poison was already twisting its way round her teeth and tongue, and it had found it amusing. Was that why it had let her go?