Jimmy cast Sawyer a glare. “What do you know about Ruthie’s death?” he demanded.
“Me?” Sawyer put his hand to his bare chest with an exaggerated show of surprise. “I was here.”
“So you say, but we all know you lie. You can move faster than light. Who’s to say you weren’t there, and a few hours later right here again. You wouldn’t even need a damn plane.”
I frowned. “You can transform into animals.”
Slowly Sawyer lowered his hand, trailing his fingers along his sternum, his rib cage, his belly. The stark lines of the tattoos seemed to undulate in the half-light from the windows. For an instant it seemed that the animals traced into his skin were dancing.
I jerked my gaze to his. I could see nothing in their gray depths but myself. I felt a strange tug, one I’d never felt before. Not with him, not with anyone.
“You know what I am and what I can do,” he said.
“There were all kinds of animals at Ruthie’s.”
His lips curved. “You think one of them was me?”
I didn’t know what I thought anymore. Who could I trust? Who should I kill?
“Touch him.”
I started at the voice so near to my ear. Jimmy’s voice.
I pulled my gaze from Sawyer’s with difficulty. “Are you crazy?”
“You had a gift even before Ruthie gave you hers. You could see things. What will you see if you touch him?”
I might not see anything. Then again—
I returned my attention to Sawyer, who smirked.
Leaning over, Jimmy whispered, “I’m not sure why. Sawyer could hear every damn thing that we said. Touch him and see where he was. Isn’t that what you do? Find people?”
Our eyes met and I remembered. Touching him, kissing him, loving him, and seeing that he’d been touching and kissing and loving someone else.
I stepped back. “I don’t want to.”
Jimmy cursed and slapped something cool and hard and heavy into my hand.
His gun.
“Do it for her,” he ground out through his teeth. “If he was there, shoot him in the head.”
“Will that kill him?”
“I have no idea,” Jimmy said. “But it’ll certainly slow him down.”
Then he stalked into the house, leaving the door open behind him. I stared at the gun for several seconds.
“Are you going to touch me, Phoenix?”
Sawyer’s whisper caressed my skin like the wind, but there was no wind, there was only him and me and the gun. I stared at the doorway through which Jimmy had passed and felt betrayed, lost, alone.
What else was new?
I turned and Sawyer was so close, I stumbled back. “Don’t do that!”
“What have I done?” He followed, one step, two. “Gotten close enough to touch. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
I wanted nothing less, but when had what I wanted ever been what I could have?
Desperate to put off the inevitable, I asked, “Wh-why would the beasts drink her blood?”
His head tilted, an odd birdlike movement. My eyes flicked to the eagle emblazoned on his neck.
“Power.” He leaned in until his cheek nearly brushed my hair, inhaling deeply. “Seers reek of it.”
I gritted my teeth, tightened my grip on the gun, and tried to lift my free hand, but I couldn’t make it move.
“How do you want to touch me?”
His voice was the night swirling all around me, a voice I’d heard in my dreams far too often and too well. That voice was both familiar and frightening.
Years had passed. Sawyer hadn’t aged, but I had. That seemed to have changed everything.
Slowly I leaned back so that I could meet his gaze, and then I couldn’t look away. In his eyes swirled the images of all the animals that graced his body.
“Touch me,” he ordered. “Any way, anywhere. I won’t mind.”
I shivered, but I touched him. I saw centuries, aeons, all rushing toward me, then past me. My hair blew back; the wind felt so cool.
He’d been everywhere, in every form. He’d lived as an animal; mated as one too. He’d loved; he’d lost. He’d hated and killed. He was like all of us and yet like none of us.
The gun fell to the ground with a thump as I lifted my hand to place my right palm against his chest in tandem with my left. I wanted to trace every tattoo, see where every part of him had been and what it had done.
My fingers smoothed flesh that was already smooth. I couldn’t feel any indentation where the tattoos began and he left off. Shouldn’t I? I had no idea. I’d never touched a tattoo before. However, these seemed as if they were a part of him, as if he’d been born with them rather than having them added one by one.
I had a sudden and inexplicable urge to trace every line, every curve and color with my tongue. To taste him, to drink in his scent as he had drunk in mine. There was power here, more than I’d ever imagined. He could do many things, but had he done what I feared? Had he killed Ruthie?