There’d been occasions I’d woken in the darkest part of the night and felt his presence, as if he were sitting at the foot of my bed. My skin would tingle, perhaps I should say crawl, as if he’d touched me when I was unaware. But always, when I turned on the light, he wasn’t there.
The feeling of being watched, sometimes followed, had continued even after I’d escaped. In truth, I still felt him sometimes in the darkness, would catch the lingering scent of cigarette smoke or hear his voice in the whisper of the wind.
“Come here.” Sawyer didn’t wait for me to get out of bed; he just turned and walked away.
I didn’t want to go anywhere with him. But I also wanted this to be over as quickly as possible. According to both Ruthie and Jimmy, the only way to do that was to listen to the man.
“Hell,” I muttered, and swung my bare legs over the edge of the bed.
When I’d packed clothes in Hardeyville, I hadn’t packed any pajamas. The dead woman had only owned sexy lingerie, and I wasn’t in the mood. So I was sleeping in a T-shirt.
I found a pair of shorts in the duffel and slipped them over my legs before I left the deceptive safety of the bedroom and trailed after the shadow that was Sawyer.
I didn’t have far to go. He paused at the next bedroom, the one where I’d assumed Jimmy lay. The door was open. The bed was empty.
Sawyer quirked a brow in my direction. My gaze went to the front door, and I ran.
He was climbing into the Hummer. He was leaving me.
Again.
“Jimmy?”
He froze, one leg in the vehicle, one leg out. For an instant I thought he meant to keep going. What would I have done if he had? Run after him? Pounded on the window? Begged him not to go?
In hell.
But he stopped, sighed, turned. “You weren’t supposed to wake up.”
I glanced into the house. Sawyer still stood in the hall. The cigarette was gone. I couldn’t see his face. Right now I didn’t want to.
I shut the door and crossed the dry, harsh grass of the lawn, ignoring the pain against the soles of my bare feet.
“Where are you going?”
“I told you I’d question every one of Ruthie’s DKs and find out who betrayed her.”
“You have to do that now?”
“Why not? You’ll be busy.”
There was something in his voice I didn’t like, but I wasn’t sure what it meant. “Stay.”
“No.”
“Just like that? What if—” I paused. I’d been going to say, “what if I need you to?” but I still had enough pride to keep that to myself.
“This has to be done, Lizzy, and I’m the one who has to do it.”
“I thought I was supposed to meet all my DKs. I could go with you—”
“No.”
He said that a lot. I liked it less every time.
“But—”
“You have to stay here. With him. You have to learn what he knows, become what you were meant to be. And I have to go and do what I know how to do, because I’m already exactly what I’ve always been meant to be.”
“Which is?”
“A killer.”
I flinched. “You aren’t—”
“Don’t lie. Not to me and not to yourself. The whole white-picket-fence dream you built around the two of us, that wasn’t ever going to be, even without the Nephilim.”
White picket fence. How did he know? I hadn’t even realized how appealing they were until one had shown up in Ruthie’s heaven.
But then he’d always understood me so well. Which was why it hurt so much when he betrayed me. He’d known exactly how to do it so the pain was almost, but not quite, unbearable.
I could have borne dealing with Sawyer as long as Jimmy was with me. Now what was I going to do?
Whatever you have to, Lizbeth.
Was that actually Ruthie, or just my own thoughts speaking in her voice? Didn’t matter. The voice was right. I’d do whatever I had to do. I’d lived without San-ducci before, and I could do it again.
“When will you be back?”
His quick glance revealed the truth. He wasn’t coming back.
“I’m your seer,” I said. “How am I supposed to give you your assignments?”
Providing I managed to receive them without getting myself killed in the process.
“Same way as Ruthie did.” He lifted his hand, thumb to his ear, pinky to his mouth. Sign of the cell phone.
1 looked at the ground. My feet were dirty. I shouldn’t have run outside without shoes.
Why was I thinking such mundane thoughts at a time like this? To avoid thinking the nonmundane ones.
Jimmy’s shoes appeared in my vision, then his hand, holding a business card. Talk about mundane. What would it say? got a problem? call i-8oo-killers.
I accepted it without glancing up. I tried to brush my fingers against his, who knew what I’d see, but he was too quick, too smart, and he was gone before I could manage it, moving toward the Hummer with a long, sure stride.
He opened the door and paused. “Don’t forget about the chindi.”
“What about it?” The thing was dead. Wasn’t it?
“You can never trust him. Never.”
Yet he was leaving me here. Alone. With him.
As if he’d read my mind, Jimmy continued, “I don’t think he’ll hurt you. You wore the turquoise. You were protected from it.”