He merely smiled and didn’t answer.
“Where are your night demons now?” I lifted my face to the sky.
“At night they protect this place. In de daylight, I do.”
“How long have you been here?”
His gaze lowered to my breasts again. “A long, long time.”
Oh, brother.
“Would you like to see de Book of Samyaza?” he asked.
“Sure.”
Once again, it couldn’t be this easy.
“All you need do is fuck me.”
And it wasn’t.
There was no way I could sleep with this guy for the book. He was a Nephilim. I’d been warned. I could absorb his evil along with his strengths—whatever they were. For all I knew, I might even be trapped in this place with him forever.
“How about we do it my way?” I asked.
“We can do it any way that you like.” His voice roughened in anticipation.
I flicked my hand, hoping I could knock him senseless on the first try. No such luck.
He murmured a few words that didn’t sound like French—maybe Latin, maybe Greek—and something that felt very much like the fist of a giant smacked me in the chest and sent me flying backward several feet. I landed on my ass with a thud.
“Care to try again?” Mait asked.
“What exactly are you?” I managed when I could speak. I climbed to my feet, but I stayed right where I was. The farther away the better.
“God of night demons, protector of de book.”
“You threw my power back at me.”
“Not me. The spell.”
My gaze narrowed. “From the book?”
He shrugged. “What else am I to do while I’m waiting for another Nephilim to arrive?”
I didn’t think he was supposed to be reading the book and trying out the spells. Then again, I would have been.
“What else can you do?”
He smiled and went inside.
Shifting into a phoenix, I followed. In this form I could fly through the doorway, snatch the book out of his hands, or wherever it might be, and leave. If he tried anything, I’d fling fire at him. If he flung it back, it wouldn’t matter. I was a firebird. I didn’t burn.
I never got the chance to see what he’d do; I never got close enough to see anything at all, at least not the Book of Samyaza.
Three feet from the door, I hit a wall. I’d say it was literal, except there was nothing there. Nevertheless, I slammed into a tall, wide, immovable object and fluttered to the ground with the worst headache I’d had since I’d blown my brains out with my own gun. Don’t ask.
Luckily I didn’t lose consciousness. I fluttered my wings until I was upright then stumbled sideways on woozy talons.
Mait leaned through the empty window. “I possess de power of protection. Around anything or anyone I can build a wall that cannot be breached.”
I let out my breath in an annoyed huff and fire swirled outward, running up the invisible barrier, then back down, hitting the ground and disappearing in a puff of dirt and black smoke.
“You have failed.” Mait turned away, dismissing me as if I were no more powerful than the last Nephilim to try.
CHAPTER 24
I cut my losses. I needed to learn more about Mait. I could stand in the swamp until I was as old as he was and never figure out how to break through his invisible, enchanted wall.
I had no doubt it could be broken. One of the many things I’d learned since I’d become the new me was that everything had a weakness. Nothing and no one was indestructible. Just look at Sawyer.
Not a scratch on him but tattoos for centuries, and then I was born. Had he known the first time he saw me that I’d be the death of him? If so, then why had he ever left me alive?
I returned to town as a phoenix. This might be New Orleans, but I still didn’t think I’d make it from the Honey Island Swamp to the French Quarter, naked, without drawing a crowd or at least a cop.
Less than half an hour later, I landed on the terrace, shifted, and went inside. I scared the shit out of the maid.
“Eeek!” she squeaked as I strode in from the balcony.
“Whoops.” I snatched my clothes off the floor.
“I knocked,” she managed. “You didn’t answer.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I could lose my job.”
“Not if we keep this between us, all right? You didn’t come in when I was naked,” I said.
And a woman-sized bird didn’t just land on the balcony, I thought.
She nodded eagerly, her eyes too calm and her manner too normal for her to have seen anything but me walking in off the terrace.
“I’ll just—” I edged toward the bathroom.
“Of course.” She inched toward the door. “I’ll come back later.”