"Fine." I strode past Sawyer and out of the house, shutting the door behind me. I was halfway down the steps when it banged open. I kept walking.
At the car I turned. "You don't have to come with me. You can stay here."
Confusion washed over Sawyer's face. "Why would I stay here?"
"I don't know. Why?" I glanced at Carla's place, figuring she'd be standing in the doorway watching us. But the door was closed, not a curtain moved at the windows.
"Sometimes, Phoenix, you make no sense at all," Sawyer said.
"That makes two of us."
He reached for the door, and I put a hand on his arm. For an instant the desert wind stirred the sand beneath all eight of my black legs, and the sun beat hot upon my back as I scurried along searching for prey.
I snatched my palm away from the inked image of the tarantula. In theory, I needed to open myself to the change. In fact, sometimes when I wasn't thinking hard enough about not shifting, the shifting sneaked up on me.
Sawyer turned his head, his gray eyes startling in his bronze face. He searched my gaze as if trying to see into my brain. I stared back, wishing I could see into his, but he'd always been able to block me.
"What's wrong with you?" he asked.
He was behaving as if he hadn't slept with Carla, then come immediately to me and done the same thing. To him, the two incidents were probably no more momentous than having first juice then coffee with his breakfast this morning. Both pleasant, but hardly necessary, or meaningful, or even memorable.
Sawyer wasn't like regular people. Perhaps that was because he wasn't people. He was other. No one seemed to know what that meant. But I was starting to.
He'd never be quite right; he'd never be quite human. And most of all, he could never, ever be trusted.
"Nothing's wrong," I lied. "I just want you to know that you don't have to come with me."
"You think I'd leave you alone for her to kill?"
"I have this." I lifted the turquoise.
"As long as you don't take it off, leave it somewhere, and then forget to put it back on."
Yeah, that had been dumb, but—
"I learned my lesson."
He straightened, letting his hand fall away from the car. "Obviously you've learned nothing if you think I'm going to let you go anywhere without me."
"Why do you care?" I asked. "You have no allegiance. You only train DKs and seers for the money."
"If it was only about the money, don't you think that the Nephilim would have me on their side by now? They've had eons to pad their bank accounts."
True. "Then why are you helping us?"
"You think I want her in charge? I've turned her down a thousand times. She didn't take it well. If she rules the world—"
"You'll die."
"I'll definitely want to long before she lets me."
I shivered despite the heat of the summer sun.
"Fine," I said. "Get in."
His lips curved. That was what he'd planned all along; I'd never had a prayer of stopping him.
I got behind the wheel. "Do you know how to drive?" The road to southern Indiana was a long one. I figured it would take us eight hours not including stops.
Sawyer shook his head. "Never learned. Didn't need to."
Since he could get anywhere in the blink of an eye as one of his beasts, and he couldn't leave the Dinetah as a man until he'd banged a benandanti, I could understand his lack of the skill. But it certainly would have come in handy right now.
"Carla said this professor interviewed the Navajo and discovered legends about the Naye'i."
"I was there," he said dryly. "I heard."
"How is it that a stranger has more information than you do?"
"My people don't talk to me."
They were scared shitless of him.
Smart people.
"You're telling me that in all the time you've been on earth you've never once heard a whisper of how to kill the woman of smoke."
"I heard things; I tried them. They didn't work." He stared out the windshield, his face a chilly mask. "Nothing does."
"So you think talking to Xander Whitelaw is a wild-goose chase?"
"No. I definitely think I need to discuss a few things with the professor."
"Oh, no, you don't," I said. "You are not going to kill Xander Whitelaw."
"Who said anything about kill?"
He didn't need to say it. His eyes screamed it. But then they usually did.
"You will not touch him," I said, then remembered Sawyer's hand going up and Carta's door slamming open. He didn't need to touch anyone. "You will not harm him in any way."
He didn't answer.
"I mean it, Sawyer. We need to hear what this guy has to say."
"And we will."
"And then we'll leave. With him in exactly the same number of pieces as he was when we got there. He could be useful in the future. Who knows what he knows."
“Who knows," he agreed.
"You won't hurt him?" I pressed.
"No."
I was surprised he'd agreed, until I remembered that Sawyer lied. A lot.