“Upset,” I repeated, and something shifted in my chest. For an instant I felt like crying; then I remembered I didn’t cry.
“When he feels out of control.” Summer threaded her fingers through Jimmy’s shaggy black hair. “Like when he was a child and—” She looked up. “You know.”
I did. When we were kids, on the street, we’d been prey and not predator. Things were different now.
Unless you were staked to the ground being tortured by Nephilim. Or being raped by someone you trusted.
“This is your fault,” Summer said. I didn’t argue.
Once I’d known Jimmy better than anyone on this earth. Sure, there were things he hadn’t shared—he was a dhampir, a demon killer, a bastard; I’d had to find all that out for myself. I’d thought I was the only one—besides Ruthie—who knew about his past. Guess not.
Jimmy moved, groaned; his eyes fluttered, then opened and stared directly into mine. For an instant, his lips curved, and the expression in his eyes was one I remembered. He loved me. But memory returned, and the smile died along with the love.
His gaze slid away. He peered at Summer. “What are you doing here?”
“I knew you’d need me.”
Fairies supposedly have the sight, though I hadn’t observed any evidence of that myself. If Summer was so damn psychic, why was she a DK and not a seer? Maybe she wasn’t that good at it.
Summer had told me I’d meet my mother one day, and that I wouldn’t like it. So far that hadn’t happened, and I wasn’t holding my breath. My mother had dumped me, probably because I’d done something weird. No one had ever mentioned my father.
“What the hell, Jimmy?” I demanded. “You just take off? You could have gotten killed, and I’d have no idea what happened.”
“I wasn’t going to get killed.”
“How did you know where to find any Nephilim?”
He snorted, then winced and lifted a bloody hand to his nose, which was crooked. He twitched it back into place, and the thing knit together with a sickening slurch. “They’re everywhere, Elizabeth.”
Usually he called me Lizzy; sometimes, to my everlasting annoyance, he called me baby. But apparently not anymore.
“The way this works,” I said, “is that your seer has a vision, contacts you and tells you where to go, what to kill.”
Jimmy sat up, shrugging off Summer’s helping hands. “I know how it works.”
“Then explain what you just did.”
“I sense vampires. It’s what I do. What I am.”
“So you went out and staked a nest by yourself?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“Why do you think that’s okay? We get our orders from—” I stopped. I’d never been quite sure where those orders came from. Ruthie said God, and who was I to argue? I did know that the orders came; we obeyed. We didn’t just go hunting. Or at least I didn’t.
I glanced at Summer. “You ever go out on your own?”
“Sure,” she said.
“And how do you know what’s a Nephilim and what’s a human with an overdeveloped asshole gene?”
“Experience,” she answered. “I can sense them too.”
In theory, I understood what she meant. When evil came near there was a certain buzzing in the air. But still— “What if you’re wrong? What if you cut the head off of a . . .” I paused, uncertain where to go with that.
“A serial killer?” she supplied. “A child molester? A gang-banging, drive-by-shooting, drug-dealing prick?” Summer flipped her palms upward. “Bummer.”
I blinked. “Bummer?”
“You know as well as I do that most of the psychotic killers in this world are just Nephilim begging to be dusted.”
“Most?”
“All. They’re all Nephilim.”
Somehow I doubted that.
“You don’t think the world is a better place without them, be they half demons or not a demon at all?” Summer asked.
“I didn’t say that.” But I’d been a cop. I’d believed in what I’d done, loved it, thrived on it. That I’d had to give it up didn’t make me believe in it any less.
“We let the law handle the human bad guys.”
“Because they’ve done such a great job so far,” Summer muttered.
“They’re doing the best that they can.”
“We can do better.”
“Everyone thinks that.”
“But we actually can.”
Jimmy got to his feet, lips tightening in pain even though most of the bruises and cuts had disappeared. “Let it go,” he said. “Hunters hunt. We can’t help ourselves. Evil is evil, and it has to be stopped.”
I knew when I was beaten. I could tell them not to go out and fight the Nephilim, but they were going to do it anyway, and who was I to change the way things were, the way they’d always been? The federation had been around a lot longer than I had. Than we all had.
I narrowed my gaze on the fairy. Except for her.
Jimmy took a step toward the bathroom and stumbled. Both Summer and I lunged forward, each grabbing an arm; then we froze and glared at each other.
“You can fly away now,” I said.