“He would, wouldn’t he?”
Sawyer walked out. I took a quick shower, dressed, then packed what were mostly dirty clothes that weren’t even mine and stepped out of the house. Summer stood next to her truck.
“Sawyer asked me to take you to the airport.”
“How did he ask? He doesn’t have a phone.”
“He came to my house late last night.”
I scowled, remembering how he’d disappeared from the premises. What was it about Summer Bartholomew that made every man run directly from my bed to hers?
1 hadn’t planned to say good-bye, but now I realized I had a few questions that needed answering. If I left without those answers, I’d always wonder. I headed for the hogan.
“We kind of need to go if you’re going to make your flight,” Summer called after me.
I gave her the finger and ducked beneath the woven mat.
Sawyer lay on his bedroll. Stark naked, ankles crossed, arms beneath his head, he contemplated the drifting clouds through the smoke hole in the ceiling.
“Do you ever think to knock?”
“Why did you sleep with me last night?”
“We didn’t sleep.”
I kicked his bare feet with my boots. He didn’t even flinch, but he did lower his gaze from the roof to my face. Once that look would have made me grovel; now I just lifted a brow and demanded again, “Why?”
“You seemed insistent on sex.” He lifted one shoulder, then lowered it, his skin sliding along the skin of the sheep with a soft, sexy swoosh. “Who am I to say no?”
What had I expected to hear? That he’d been unable to resist me? That what had happened between us last night was more than sex for gain, for power, for the safety of everyone on earth?
Ha. Unlikely. Did I really want it to be?
“The snake said I’d have to do whatever it took to find my power.”
“You thought that meant do me? I can’t say I minded the freebie, but it wasn’t necessary.”
He was back to the man I’d hated, the one who had no heart, no soul, no compassion. Had he ever really been anything else? He’d tricked me into having sex with him for the sake of the world. That I’d enjoyed it, enjoyed him, didn’t change who he was, even if the sex had changed who I was.
The only difference now was that he no longer frightened me. There was an explanation for everything I’d seen, for everything he appeared to have done. He was a skinwalker, a catalyst telepath, and more. Since I now was too, the magic, be it black or not, didn’t scare me. The magic was part of me.
“What do you mean by freebie?” I asked. “Didn’t the sex we had last night allow me to have a vision of a Nephilim at last?”
“Hardly,” He smiled his thin, knowing smile, the one that always made me want to throw something at his head. “I don’t have visions, Phoenix. You got that talent from Ruthie. I unblocked you, and shared my skinwalker powers, the first time I made you come.”
“What? Then why—”
Sawyer continued to lounge on the sheepskin, body splayed suggestively, like an advertisement for a porn site. Was he trying to distract me?
“I mean… How? What?”
“Which is it? Why, how, or what?”
“Explain,” I said through clenched teeth. “Why didn’t I have a vision until this morning?”
He spread his hands, the muscles and bones moving smoothly, seductively, beneath his glistening skin. “Those who send the visions must not have had anything to say.”
“You asked Summer last night to take me to the airport today. How could you know then that I’d have a vision now?”
“I didn’t. But I knew that you would. I’ve done all I can, and it’s time for you to go.”
Was it time for me to go because he’d done all he could, or because he’d felt something he didn’t want to feel?
Either way, Sawyer was right. I had to go. If I could.
“I have all your powers?” I asked. He nodded, and I got a very bad feeling. “Which means I can’t leave the Dinetah as a woman?”
That was going to seriously screw up my life. How was I going to get on a plane as a wolf? Maybe that’s why Summer was here. She could book me a cage in the luggage compartment.
“That’s not a power,” Sawyer said softly, “but a curse.”
“You were cursed? By whom?”
“My mother.”
“She just keeps getting better and better,” I muttered.
“She knew if I was able to leave here, I’d kill her.”
“She’s still alive?”
“Why wouldn’t she be?”
I rubbed my forehead. Ding-dong, I’d really been hoping the Dreadful Witch was dead.
“You could still kill her as any one of your animals,” I said.
“True, but it’s difficult to travel across oceans and continents that way. Nearly impossible to find someone of her power without benefit of money and opposable thumbs.”
“You’ve tried it.”
“Every single year.”