Someone crouched beside her, braced Jenna all along one side, wiped her face with a warm, damp cloth. When the stinging, salty blindness had passed, she found Noah gazing worriedly at her. “You okay, kid?”
“Yeah.” The fact that it was true shocked her. She was okay. Then it hit her why: she wasn’t quite alone any longer. She knew almost nothing about Noah Armstrong, not even the most basic thing one person can know about another—their gender—but she wasn’t alone, facing this nightmare. Noah might not be going with her when Jenna stepped through the Britannia Gate a couple of hours from now, but Noah cared. Somehow, it was enough. She managed to meet the enigmatic detective’s eyes. “Thanks.”
“Sure.” Noah gave her a hand up, steadied her.
Jenna turned slowly to face the woman whose presence, whose touch and single question had triggered . . . whatever it had been. “Did—“ Jenna had to clear her throat roughly. “Did Marcus tell you what’s happened?”
She studied Jenna gravely. “He has told me all that he knows.”
Jenna drew breath, trying to find the words to make sense of this. “My father . . .” She stopped, started again, coming at this mess from a different direction, trying to find the words to explain to a woman who had never seen the up-time world and would never be permitted to visit it. “You see, lots of people don’t like the Temples. The Lady of Heaven Temples. They’ve got different reasons, but the prejudice is growing. Some people think Templars are immoral. Dangerous to society. Perverting children, that kind of garbage.