Downstairs, no one raised the alarm. They’d obviously expected one of us, probably me, to throw a violent hissy fit. Unless plaster began to rain like hail in the living room or the house came tumbling down, I figured they’d leave us alone.
“Can you hear me now?” I asked, the inflection on the words just like that annoying, bespectacled cell phone hawker on television.
Jimmy laughed once, short and sharp. “Yeah. You got a plan?”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. We can’t escape or kill them yet. Although I’d really like to do both in reverse order.”
“Shh,” I hissed.
We were speaking fairly quietly, but still . . . Around here, everyone had supersonic hearing.
“We’re alone,” he said. “Can’t you feel it?”
I closed my eyes and “listened.” For us, supernatural entities buzzed like bees; the more demony the demon, the harder the sensation strumming along our skin. I’d been feeling it in the background since we’d gotten to Cairo, so I was surprised I hadn’t noticed when it had faded.
Of course that didn’t mean Sawyer and the queen of the damned or one of their newly risen slaves couldn’t return at any moment.
Then, from what sounded like the second floor but still distant, maybe the rear of the house, came a shout: “Now! We will play now!”
A deep, calm, familiar voice answered, though I couldn’t make out the words.
What followed made my skin vibrate. The Phoenix shrieked—fury or passion, I wasn’t sure, maybe both. The scream went on so long, my hair ached. Then it lowered—in pitch and volume—lower, lower, lower still, until it became a moan that was definitely sexual. I guess we didn’t have to worry about them lounging in the hall eavesdropping on our conversation.
“He does everyone, Lizzy. It’s not personal.”
“I know,” I said too quickly. It had never been personal; it had always been just sex.
“I often wondered why Sawyer hung around,” Jimmy mused. “Why he helped us just enough to be considered friendly, but never enough to actually be one of us—and never for free.”
“What did you conclude?”
“He stayed close so he’d know when it was time to raise the Phoenix and take over the world.”
“He wouldn’t know that anyway? He is Sawyer, remember?”
“Ruthie was the leader of the light. Until she died, we were just marking time.”
“You really think Sawyer raised the Phoenix?” I asked.
“He raised Xander.”
“He said he could only raise ghosts, not people.”
“She’s not people.”
“I know, but—”
“Lizzy,” Jimmy interrupted, voice soft. “Sawyer’s said a lot of things.”
He had. And I wondered now if any one of them were true.
Another scream erupted from somewhere in the house. Not the Phoenix this time, but I doubted it was Sawyer. I couldn’t imagine him screaming in passion or pain. I couldn’t imagine him screaming for any reason at all.
Perhaps I’d make it my mission. Before I died, I would definitely hear Sawyer scream.
That decided, I felt much better. I always did once I had a plan.
“What are we going to do?” Jimmy asked.
I wasn’t going to tell him what I’d just decided. Not that Jimmy wouldn’t be down with it. In fact, he’d probably be so down with the plan, he’d steal it for himself.
“Wing it,” I answered.
“I hate winging it.”
“You got a better idea?”
His silence was its own response. All we could do was wait—not only because we were a little tied up, har-har, but also because we still didn’t have the key.
“You might have to seduce it out of him.” Jimmy’s murmur drifted on the silver-tinged night, cascading over me like chill water, making me stutter and shiver and gasp.
“Seduce what out of who?” My voice was much louder than it should have been, even if there was no one around who cared to listen.
“The key out of Sawyer, what do you think?”
“He doesn’t have it.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“No.”
“Because even if he did, consider the source.”
Silence settled between us again and it went on for a long, long time. Jimmy was right, but there was just one problem.
“I don’t think I could seduce anything out of Sawyer.”
“Why not?”
“Because to Sawyer sex is—” I broke off. I shouldn’t be talking about this with anyone, especially Jimmy.
“A means to an end,” Jimmy filled in. “A job. Currency. He’s messed up. We all are. But he wants you. He always has.”
Sawyer had said as much, and when we were together the sex was incredible. But it was never anything more than that. I never got the feeling that he cared about me any deeper than he’d care about any other protégée who got his engine revved. Perhaps our shared powers, the fact that we could shift into the same animals, gave me a bit of an edge—I was more like him than anyone else on this earth—but I really didn’t think our similarities would get me very far with Sawyer. Of course it didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.
“Let me get this straight,” I began. “You want me to seduce him.”