I should have known better. Any luck I had was usu-ally bad.
With the speed she'd shown when she'd snatched my knife at Murphy's, the woman of smoke plucked the ar-row out of the air and tossed it to the side. The long, dry summer grass began to smolder.
"Uh-oh."
Luceres tumbled out of the window, ran toward the houses. As far as I could tell, Sawyer was still messing with the first one.
"Sawyer!" I shouted, but the woman of smoke lifted her hand like a crossing guard stopping traffic, and the word was flung back down my throat, the sound never reaching the air.
As she stalked toward me, an ice-cold wind that smelled of brimstone singed my nostrils, making my eyes water. I'd never smelled brimstone, but what else could it have been? The scent was hell unleashed, fire, ashes, death, all that was evil, the end of the world come upon us.
I coughed, choked; tears streamed down my face. Then I reached for my knife—at least I'd remembered to lace that back around my waist—but before I could pull it from the sheath her hand closed about my wrist.
Wherever her fingers touched my skin it sizzled, but not with heat, with cold. The sensation reminded me of the pain that followed near frostbite, the aching, the burning, the tingling that occurred when frozen flesh began to warm.
She snapped my wrist, the dry click made by the bone breaking exactly the sound of a twig being crushed beneath a boot in the depths of a winter wood.
As I opened my mouth to scream, she yanked my knife from its sheath and killed me.
CHAPTER 11
One strike straight to my heart, then another in exactly the same place. The woman of smoke knew what I was. Did I have no secrets left?
A horrible, dying gurgle bubbled from my lips, and she laughed, a bizarre sound of both joy and malevolence. Nearby, something howled—a mournful wail of pain and fury.
The Naye'i glanced over her shoulder, lips pulling away from her gleaming white teeth into a snarl. She spun, becoming smoke again, before whirling upward and disappearing into the night.
I tumbled to the ground with the knife still embedded in my chest. As my vision faded, more snarls erupted in the distance, and the earth seemed to rattle beneath the heavy thuds of an epic battle.
The air around me went dark, and the world went out like the snuff of a candle's flame beneath the rain.
I woke at Ruthie's place. I wasn't surprised. Not only did I go there when I needed help, but Ruthie often welcomed those who'd died too soon to her own little purgatory. This meant that Ruthie's house was usually filled with children, just as it had been on earth.
Ruthie had run a group home on the south side of Milwaukee. When she'd first opened her doors to stray kids and the occasional dog, Ruthie had been the only African American within thirty miles. She hadn't cared. Amazingly, no one else had, either.
I went through the gate in the white picket fence, strolled up the pristine sidewalk to the green-trimmed white house, and knocked. The music of children's laughter, the trill of their happy voices, rang from inside. The door opened, and there she was—the only mother I'd ever known.
She looked exactly the same as the day she'd died— minus the blood splatter, torn throat, and various bite marks.
"Lizbeth," Ruthie said, and gathered me into her arms.
Despite the knobbiness of her elbows and knees, the boniness of her entire body, Ruthie gave the very best hugs.
She'd taken me in when I was twelve, fresh from another foster home that didn't want me. She'd seemed ancient even then—her lined face the shade of rich coffee, her dark eyes so sharp she saw everything about you, even things you'd spent a lifetime learning to hide.
None of that mattered to Ruthie—where you'd been, what you'd done, who you were. Once she took you in, she never let you go. For throwaway kids, that promise was worth more than money, it was worth our very souls. To be accepted, to know that no matter what happened, Ruthie would love you ...
We'd have done anything for her.
I was still having a bit of a problem accepting that Ruthie had purposely gone searching for kids who were "special," taking them in and preparing them to become part of the federation. I knew she hadn't had any choice—we were talking about the end of the world—still, it would have been nice to be chosen for myself and not my psychic abilities.
However, since my psychic abilities were what had, more often than not, gotten me tossed from every foster home I'd been in, being chosen for them instead of despite them wasn't the worst thing.
I drew back, and Ruthie let me go. She touched my cheek and worry shadowed her eyes.
"I'm dead, aren't I?"