“Besides him wanting me dead?”
“He didn’t even know you yet.” Not that knowing Sanducci ever prevented anyone from wanting him dead.
“He knew enough.”
I wondered what that meant, but knew better than to ask.
“I still think Mait was a training test. He was probably a friend of Sawyer’s.”
“A Nephilim friend of Sawyer’s who’s now protecting evil’s version of The Idiot’s Guide to the Apocalypse.” Jimmy scratched his chin, which had taken on a bluish tinge from at least two days’ growth of beard. “Strangely enough, that’s an explanation I can get behind. I was never quite certain Sawyer wasn’t playing both sides of this war.”
I hadn’t been, either, until he’d died for us.
But I was never going to convince Jimmy that Sawyer was anything other than an enigma, so I wasn’t going to try.
“What do you know about sosyes?” I asked.
“Haitian wizards,” Jimmy said. “They command night demons, which are—”
“Creepy shadow birds that fly right through you and peck your insides raw.”
“You’ve met.”
“Oh, yeah. How the hell do we kill them?”
“Mait dies, they do.”
“Otherwise?”
“They don’t.”
“Of course not,” I muttered. “Go on.”
“A sosye is part witch and part loa, a voodoo god.”
“If he’s Nephilim he’s part demon,” I pointed out.
“In the old days, people had to have a word they used to refer to those beings with supernatural powers. Sometimes they called them gods. In Mait’s case, his father was Kalfu, ruler of the night spirits.”
“Otherwise known as night demons.”
“Yep,” Jimmy said. “According to legend, Kalfu is the grand master of charms and sorceries. He’s the origin of darkness. He upsets the natural order, thwarts fate. Basically he is chaos. He protects the gate between this world and the next.”
“And his son?”
“Controls the malevolent spirits of the night as well as the displaced souls of the next world.”
“He can raise ghosts,” I clarified.
“And thanks to his mother he can perform magic.”
“Which is how he threw up the protection spell around the old church. Unlike his father, he’s protecting a book instead of a gate.”
“For all we know,” Jimmy said, “the book is the gate.”
CHAPTER 26
“There are things I need to get for tonight.” Jimmy stood.
“You want me to come?” I asked, but he was already shutting the door.
Since I was so tired I ached with it, I decided to “rest my eyes” until Sanducci got back. No sooner had I closed them than I was out. Where I went it was dark, and I was alone.
But not for long. Something was coming. Friend or foe?
Sawyer? I whispered into the darkness.
A chill wind brushed my face—bark and ice, heat and hay. The air smelled like him, but then again, it didn’t.
Are you close?
Fur brushed my knee. I reached out, but my hand found nothing. Nearby a growl, but it didn’t sound like Sawyer.
I sat up with a gasp. Jimmy stood at the small table to the left of the terrace. Orange, pewter, fuchsia, and slate fought for control of the horizon. Dusk was on its way.
I swung my feet to the floor. “What time is it?”
“Eight.”
I was dopey with sleep. I felt like I’d only closed my eyes and then opened them again. In truth I’d been unconscious for hours.
The scent of food made my stomach growl. “What did you bring?”
Jimmy drew wrapped parcels from the bag on the table. “Po’ boys.”
I bit my lip to keep from making yummy noises. A po’ boy was a shrimp, oyster, beef, or whatever sandwich wrapped inside the best baguette in the country. Sanducci had good taste. Although it was almost as hard to find bad food in New Orleans as it had been to find the Book of Samyaza at all.
A second bag sat on the dresser. I lifted my chin in its direction. “You found your sun-dried pig’s nostrils?”
“I found everything I needed. Here, it isn’t much of a problem.”
“Voodoo Wal-Mart?” I guessed.
“Right.” He took a bite of his roast beef po’ boy. The scent of hot mustard wafted my way, and I dug in to my own shrimp version.
When the food was gone along with the soft drinks we’d used to wash everything down, I asked, “What exactly did you need?”
Jimmy shoved the empty wrappings into the bag. “A priestess to provide the materials for the gris-gris.”
“You found a bona fide voodoo priestess?”
“This is New Orleans. You can’t swing a cat and not hit a voodoo priestess.”
I opened my mouth then shut it again. I’d just take his word for it. “What’s a gris-gris?”
“Combination of both black and white magic. The most powerful charm there is.”
“Isn’t a priestess a practitioner of white magic? A bokor practices black?”
“Technically. But a voodoo priestess or priest studies both sides. They believe the only way to thwart evil is to understand it.”
Had to agree with that. “This gris-gris will prevent Mait’s magic from harming us?”