"Protect you?" Dori sat still in her chair, looking all the more stoic for his outburst. She tilted her head in curiosity. "I'm not here for you. It isn't your time." Not by far, if the life force stowed in his chest was a proper measurement of such things. Was he really so afraid of a woman he'd taken for a teenager?

Well... perhaps it was wise to be. Dori had been no more than three when she ushered her first soul from this plane to the next. Barely old enough to comprehend death, let alone embody it.