But Strike shook his head. “We don’t know what she is.”
“She’s a girl,” Anna said stubbornly.
“Who might or might not be the daughter of a witch who might or might not have had actual powers,” Strike countered.
“She dreamed of Skywatch before she got here,” Anna reminded him. “She described it to Rabbit, right down to the ceiba tree out back.” Myrinne’s vision suggested that she had seer’s powers. It wasn’t clear, however, what form those skills might take, whether Nightkeeper, Xibalban, or something else. So far, Strike had forbidden all experimentation. That hadn’t stopped Anna from lobbying the point, though. With her own itza’at powers dubious at best, the Nightkeepers badly needed a visionary.
“I’ll take it under advisement,” Strike said grudgingly, and won a nod from Anna. He continued, “For now, Michael is going to focus on this new spell of Iago’s, while Anna and Jade do a first pass on the Aztec stuff. Basically, we need anything that’ll help us figure out what’s coming down the pipeline now that we’re bearing down on the three-year threshold.”
In the absence of the library, the prophecies actually dealing with the events leading up to the end-
time were few and far between. Despite the Nightkeepers’ best efforts to uncover additional artifacts with inscriptions that might help, all they had describing the events of upcoming winter solstice was a single carved inscription, badly degraded, that read, In the triad years, a daughter of the sky . . .
And that was it. Which wasn’t much help at all.
Worse, there was some debate about the actual time period it represented. Anna was convinced that the triad years corresponded to the final three years before the apocalypse. Lucius, on the other hand, had offered another interpretation, back when he’d been in his human guise, living with the Nightkeepers and helping Jade with the archives. According to him, the prophecy referred to the coming of the Triad, a legendary trio of über-powerful magi who were supposed to arise at the end of the age to join forces with the Nightkeepers. Without the rest of the prophecy, there was no way of telling which interpretation was correct. Then again, without the rest of the prophecy, the question was academic. They needed another source for information—which brought them back around, yet again, to the subject of the library.
Draining the dregs of his coffee and figuring he could legitimately make a break for it, Michael shifted in his seat. “If that’s it for the debriefing . . . ?”
Strike nodded and waved him off. “Yeah, we’re just about finished here anyway. Let us know if she’s awake, will you?”
Michael narrowed his eyes. “Don’t get your hopes up. I mean it.”
Strike turned his scarred palms up in a falsely innocent gesture. “Hey, can’t blame me for trying.”
But then he turned serious. “Look, I know things were awkward for you after you and Jade split, and again when Nate and Alexis got back together.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Michael conceded. With the skyroad gone and no new intersection found, the Nightkeepers needed all the power they could get. Because of that, there was serious pressure on the singles to pair up, whether or not the relationships made sense in real-world terms.
Strike glanced at Leah, a hint of a smile curving his mouth as he said to Michael, “Do me a favor and don’t let that turn you off something that could benefit all of us, yourself most of all.”
Or it could doom us all, Michael thought. He didn’t understand how Sasha, who seemed to embody positive energy, had reached inside him to stir up the Other, and he didn’t like things he didn’t understand, especially when they had to do with his alter ego. But once again, he was unable to break the silence that came from within him. So instead he said, “I’m just checking to see if she’s awake yet.”
Because despite the logic that said he should stay far away from her, he owed her an explanation, and an apology. More, he damn well wanted—needed—to see her. It was as simple as that. And as complicated. So he went.
The basement hallway was bland and austere compared to the lived-in feel of the level above. Back when hundreds of Nightkeepers had lived at Skywatch, the basement had been used for storage. These days, though, the storerooms were set up as more or less comfortable cells. Three of them were, anyway, having variously housed Leah, Rabbit, Myrinne, and Lucius when they’d been deemed potential security threats. And although Michael hated the thought of Sasha locked up, a prisoner, there was no arguing the fact that she was still a relatively unknown quantity.
Stopping outside the second of the doors, Michael said a quick spell to drop the ward spell that barred magic users from entering or exiting the cell, and then turned the key stuck in the exterior lock.
He was strung tight as he pushed through the door to the sparsely furnished fifteen-by-fifteen-foot cell, exhaling only when he saw that Sasha was there, still sleeping, curled up beneath a blanket.
Wearing a set of Alexis’s workout clothes, with her hair bed-wild and the strain of the prior day evident in the circles beneath her eyes, she wasn’t the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. But call it her innate healing magic, call it Rabbit’s intervention—hell, call it good genes—whatever it was, even in repose she seemed to glow from within with strength and vitality, and the sort of go-to-hell attitude he’d never been able to resist. And that was a problem, because he was starting to realize he wasn’t just attracted to her, wasn’t just drawn to her on a magical or even physical level. He was in danger of liking her, of wanting to be with her. He told himself to about-face it and get out of there before he did something they would both regret, but he was already too late. She hadn’t been sleeping, after all; she’d been faking it. Now, having no doubt identified him through cracked lids, she sat up and glared at him.
When their eyes met, magic and anger kicked, and every cell of his body lit with desire. Heat rushed through him, tensing his body, hardening his flesh. And he knew he wasn’t going anywhere, not just because of the library and the questions that needed answering, but because of her. Problem was, the Other felt the exact same way.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sasha took a good long look at her latest captor. With the clean, elegant lines of his body visible beneath soft black track pants, and a tight muscle shirt that showed off a whole hell of a lot of muscles, Michael was just as big and gorgeous as she had first remembered, when she’d awoken and found herself far more clearheaded than she would’ve expected. Or rather, some things were fuzzy while others—like the two of them tearing into each other like crazed nymphos—were crystal.
As their eyes met, heat chased through her. Still, though, she tried to hang on to rationality. What had she been thinking? Maybe she’d gotten into a couple of ill-fated relationships far too quickly in the past, but the incident in the smoke-filled chamber had to be one for the Guinness book: introductions to orgasm in fifteen minutes or less, with no payment involved. Hello, sex with a stranger. She’d nearly talked herself into believing that what had happened between them had come from nothing more than adrenaline and incense, that she’d imagined the connection they’d seemed to forge. But now, as his forest dark eyes looked right at her and saw her, really saw her rather than dismissing her or passing by, she knew she was in some big, bad trouble. He was trouble. Because even though she knew who and what he was, her blood ran hot for him and her chest tightened with the greedy, grasping need that was her downfall.