Ruthie winced. “Nevertheless, humans leave little pieces of themselves all over the place.”
“We burned his office too.”
“Didn’t realize Sanducci was a pyro as well as an asshole,” Sawyer murmured.
Sawyer might be as old as dirt, but he could also be quite childish. Especially about Jimmy.
“His apartment,” Ruthie said. “Hairbrush, toothbrush, nail clippers, hat.”
“Hat!” All eyes turned to me as my shout echoed back from the mountains. “I took his hat.”
“You didn’t think to mention this?” Ruthie asked.
“What for? It’s a cool hat. I didn’t want it to—” I broke off. I hadn’t wanted it to burn. I’d liked Xander. I wished I’d had time to get to know him better.
I went to the rental car, leaned in and came back out with the felt hat. Sure enough, several blond hairs were stuck in a ribbon that went around the inside of the crown. I handed the whole thing to Sawyer.
“Bury hair beneath a lightning-struck tree,” Ruthie murmured.
“That’s to kill a person,” Sawyer said. “Not raise their ghost.”
I cast Ruthie-Luther a quick glance. “Where’d you learn that?”
She lifted a bushy light-brown brow.
“Oh,” I said, and turned my attention to Sawyer. “I guess you really can kill from afar by the use of ritual.”
“I guess I can.”
“We could end a lot of demons that way.”
“Doesn’t work on demons,” he said absently.
“Of course it doesn’t,” I muttered. “That would be too damn easy.”
“What do you have to do?” The voice was Luther’s. On closer examination, the eyes and the body were now his too.
“Where’s Ruthie?” I asked.
The kid shrugged. Obviously gone. Her work here—for now—was done.
“We must wait for the lightning.” Sawyer contemplated the perfectly clear sky. “The fire of its strike is needed to raise a ghost.”
“We have to wait for a storm?” Even though storms were common around here in the summer, we might be waiting for weeks. “And the lightning has to strike . . . what? Where?”
Sawyer didn’t answer. This time when he headed for his hogan, he disappeared inside, and he didn’t come back out.
I took a step in that direction, and Luther put a hand on my arm. “He doesn’t like it when you go in there.”
“I don’t care what he likes.” And I knew better. The last time I’d gone in there, he’d liked it a lot.
But I paused and contemplated the boy. “How have things been here? With him?”
“All right. He knows stuff.”
“Living forever will do that,” I said dryly. “You aren’t uncomfortable with him? He doesn’t scare you?”
Luther had been beating on his chest—as wild animals and young males can’t help but do—when he’d said he would kick Sawyer’s ass, but I wanted to know the real truth. So, with Luther’s hand still on my arm, I opened my mind and saw into his.
Luther and Sawyer beneath the noonday sun. Stripped to the waist, sweating, laughing. Sawyer seemed almost . . . human. I got distracted.
Luther moved away, breaking our connection. My eyes met his.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
I tilted my head. I’d never told him what I could do.
He looked away. “Ruthie speaks through me, but she also speaks to me. She tells me things I need to know.”
“Okay.”
“Sawyer wouldn’t hurt me,” Luther said. “Well, he would. He has. If I let my guard down, and he knocks me ten feet into a wall or some rocks, it hurts, and I heal. But he wouldn’t . . . you know.”
“I know. Otherwise I wouldn’t have left you here.”
“No?” he asked. “Not even if my being here would make me into the type of killing machine you need?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I know what’s at stake. I know that some of us will die, maybe all of us. We don’t have any choice. You didn’t have any choice. I am what I am. I’m this way for a reason. I need to learn how to control my lion, how to kill Nephilim, and Sawyer’s the best one to teach me. If there’s a price to be paid for the knowledge, I’ll pay it.”
“I’ll pay it,” I corrected. “Not you.”
Luther’s gaze went to the hogan. “I think that’s been his plan all along.”
CHAPTER 13
Luther went into the house, and a silence as cool and navy blue as the sky settled over the land.
“How do you plan to pay me, Phoenix?”
I turned, half-expecting Sawyer to be right behind me, so close my breasts would brush his chest. I’d gasp, stumble back, nearly fall, and he’d catch me.
But Sawyer wasn’t there, and he wasn’t standing in front of the hogan or in the doorway of the house or anywhere that I could see.
“How were you paid in the past?” I asked.
“The usual way.”
His voice seemed to come out of the darkness, seemed to be the darkness, and I shivered. His mother had been the darkness. Sawyer had warned me often enough that she was a part of him. I should probably kill him, but I didn’t know how.