Solomon said nothing the whole way to the car, or as Dexter helped him into it, or as they moved off. This car was an empty space around him, tinged only faintly with the contours of the souls within it; he stared out the window as they drove, watching the twisting currents of the lifestream around him.

Anger, he was finding, was painful to look at. Even against his wards. Dexter's banner was snapping so wildly that it made an audible crackcrackcrack sound almost like gunshots. He wasn't sure if that was anger or fear--there wasn't always a lot of difference. Ravel's soul was storm-lashed. Literally. Leaves and needles dropping, foliage whipped and wood groaning; every time Solomon looked at him he felt that storm battering against the window of his wards. Without them, he suspected he'd be in a very literal gale, metaphysical though it was.

Ravel's bitter voice made him stir but not look over. "Because you commandeered my bodyguard."

Because he needed to be anywhere but another underground temple, bureaucratic though this one was. Because he needed to be away from Skulduggery Pleasant and anywhere he might choose to be to 'do his job'. Because, once more, Solomon wanted nothing to do with the life he had right now, wanted nothing more than to retreat back into his blissful ignorance, and knew that it wouldn't happen. Maybe eventually that feeling would fade.

Right now, he needed to be somewhere. Anywhere. Anywhere he could try and figure out the turmoil in his own soul. And he had nowhere else to go.