As soon as she touched him, he stilled, and so did she.
“It’s so soft,” she whispered. Somehow, she hadn’t expected that.
His head turned, and he pinned her with a glowing yellow stare over his shoulder. Her hand was still out, frozen on his wing. The shower continued spraying everywhere, and she had to wonder if she was flooding her own flat. She’d be enacting her favorite scene fromThe Shape of Waterif she kept this up.
She immediately regretted thinking of that because images of Elisa and the Asset embracing in the bathtub immediately sprang to mind. Mist may not have been an amphibian man, but he was certainly strange looking, and he was sitting in her bathtub and staring at her with those reptilian pupils, and she couldn’t help but compare—
“Why did you summon me?” he asked, snapping her out of it. Good thing too, because the image of Elisa and the Asset in the tub had been replaced with her and Mist, and she was not going there with him. That wasn’t what this was about.
Iris’s words ran through her head.There are no good demons.But then so did the tattooed guy’s. …He’s really not a bad guy.
“I need to understand,” she said finally. “Why did you seek me out? What did you want with me?”
“I sought you because of your scent. And other things about you that appeal to me. I wanted…” He broke off, turning away to stare at the tile. “It’s irrelevant what I wanted. Punishment occurs when the rules are broken. That is the consequence of insubordination.”
She frowned. By the mechanical way he spoke, he seemed to be repeating something memorized. “Did you break the rules? How so?”
As a blood-born, she knew about the rules that governed the actions of supernatural beings on Earth. She knew because those very rules had put a target on her back from birth, and she resented them more than a little.
“I should not be here,” Mist said quietly. “I should be facing my punishment.”
“How did you break the rules?” It suddenly became essential that she understood.
“That is what happens. That is the consequence of—”
“How did you break the rules, Mist?”
His head swung around again, and she fought to keep from flinching from the intensity of his stare. “I wanted to taste freedom. I wanted to bond with a female. I wanted to be something other than myself. But I cannot. I am the Hunter, and I don’t get a choice.”
“I don’t understand. Why don’t you get a choice? Why can’t you—”
“Because I am nothing.” He lurched suddenly to his feet, causing her to stumble back. The showerhead sprayed everywhere, but she wasn’t paying attention to that anymore. She was staring way up at the enormous demon above her, his wings spread across the tub and beyond, his tail whipping furiously against the tile.
“I am nothing, and I have the marks to prove it.” He thrust his wrists out. “These cuffs—”
He froze, staring at his arms. “Where are the cuffs?”
She couldn’t have been more confused if she’d been dropped into another dimension.
At his wrists were two bands of textured black-ink designs that were almost invisible on his gray skin. She saw no signs of cuffs.
His eyes lifted to hers, and this time she saw shock. Awe, even. “You summoned me.”
“I— I tried, I guess.”
“You summoned me from Paimon’s lair, and you summoned me out of the cuffs.”
“What cuffs?”
“The manacles. How did you do it?”
Manacles?“I didn’t do anything special,” she said weakly, struggling to keep up. “And I didn’t do a very good job, considering you escaped—”
His eyes had widened. “You’re a very powerful witch.”
She scoffed. “No, I’m not—”
“Your magic overrode that of the brands. It should be impossible.”
