Forget About Midnight (Alexa O'Brien, Huntress #9)(74)

Falon grinned, happy with my angry reaction. “Isn’t it what I’m doing? Again?”

I groaned and flung the pillow from the bed at him. My bound wrists made the throw terrible. He caught the pillow and set it aside on the desk.

I held my wrists out, feeling pathetic and needy. It was not a good feeling. “Can you please get these things off me?”

He could. I’d seen him break them off Gabriel like they were toy cuffs. He stared at my cuffed wrists, pondering as if it were a tough decision. “I can. That doesn’t mean I will.”

“I’m going to claw your eyes out,” I hissed between clenched teeth. “If you only came to antagonize me, then you can just leave right now. How did you find me anyway?”

Falon’s chuckle was low and smooth. He was enjoying this. “You don’t want to know.” At my glare, he added, “I felt out your energy signature. I know it pretty well by now.”

That was awkward. “You’re right,” I said with a nod. “I didn’t want to know.”

Too many strange encounters involving fallen angel blood and succubus thrall had enabled him to know my energy very well. So well that he could pick it out of all the vampires and shifters in this building and find me. My sense of self-preservation did not feel good about that.

Falon’s silver stare grew heavy. His appraisal began to make me feel like a freak on display: Look at the hybrid, as crazy as crazy bitches come.

“Stop staring at me like that,” I said, still holding my wrists out. “Either you came to help me or you came to taunt me. There are enough people here who want to study me already. I don’t need you doing it.”

He held the stare a few more moments, just enough to get me riled up, then he got up and approached the bed. “Correction. I came to both help and taunt. It’s kind of a package deal.”

The only thing that stopped me from snarking back at him was the fact that he reached for the cuffs. With very little effort, he pried them open, freeing me. Having access to my power again felt so good, like everything could flow free, as it was meant to.

“Thank you.” It wasn’t easy to show gratitude toward him. I despised it. “Why do you want to help me? What’s in it for you?”

Falon tossed the cuffs into the corner behind the door as he strode over to peer out the window. “You sure are catching on to the ways of our kind. I’ve been thinking about what you said before, about Shya. I don’t think we can keep him from manifesting on this plane, but I do think we have options. But we’ll have to work together.”

With a frown, I pondered this. Falon had been Shya’s right hand guy, which was especially odd since Falon wasn’t even a demon. He was still walking that barely there line in between. Their partnership had changed the night Falon helped me drive Shya back to the other side. Or maybe it had never been what Shya had presumed it to be. Falon always had seemed to do his own thing, regardless of Shya’s expectations. The fallen angel had an agenda, and I wanted to know what it was.

I was about to say as much when Falon reached for the door handle. There was a sound like a loud zap of static electricity and a charge so strong it made my hair float. Falon was flung back like an explosive had gone off in his face. He hit the wall above the desk and slid down.

“What the f*ck was that?” I breathed the words, shock having stolen my voice.

Falon gathered himself and shoved off the desk, looking pained. “That was me f*cking up. Enjoy it while you can. It doesn’t happen much.”

My gaze darted between Falon and the door. “Explain.”

His well-defined features were set in a hard scowl. He seemed to be both embarrassed and pissed at himself. “Someone put a ward on the room,” he said. “We’re trapped in here. I can’t get out.”

Chapter Twenty

I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or hit something. “What do you mean you can’t get out?”

Falon cast a scathing look my way. “I mean what I just f*cking said. There’s a ward on the room. Cast by a demon if I had to guess. To keep us magically inclined types trapped inside. I had no idea it was there until I touched the door.”

Laughter was easier than tears and violence. So I laughed because it was just so f*cking ridiculous. Rather than coming to my so-called rescue, Falon had only gotten himself trapped in here with me. His glare darkened. He didn’t share my amusement.

“So no poofing either?” I asked when my laughter had subsided.

“No.” That one word held enough seething anger to silence my laughter entirely. “In, apparently, but not out.”

“But what about sunrise when you can’t take corporeal form anymore? Then what?” I stared at him, perplexed.

“Hard to say for sure. It could bind me to the room, so I’m forced back here when the sun goes down. Fuck.”

That’s when it sunk in. Falon was trapped in here with me, at least until whenever Briggs or someone else came back. There was nothing funny about that at all. “Well… f*ck.” I eyed him, assessing his sour mood. I couldn’t decide if having his company was better than being alone or not. “Why would a demon do such a favor for the FPA? Never mind. Stupid question.”

Demons only did things when they got something out of it. There was a good chance Shya himself had put the ward on this door when he was still chummy with the Feds.