"You could have just gone and gotten him. Why come to me?"
"You two have a connection."
"Seems to me that you two have the same connection."
"No." She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, the movement perking up her already too perky breasts. "What we had—" She broke off at my glare. "He loves you."
I had a hard time believing Jimmy Sanducci had ever loved anyone—except for Ruthie. She'd taken him off the streets same as me, but Ruthie was dead.
"Even if he did love me once, what difference does that make in dragging him back from Arizona?"
"Arkansas."
"Whatever."
"There's going to be trouble."
The hair on the back of my neck tingled. "You've said that before."
The day after I'd killed the leader of the darkness— a.k.a. Jimmy's father.
"It's here."
"Here?" I moved toward my duffel and the knife inside it.
"Not right this second here, but soon. It's coming."
"What's coming?" I asked, though I had a pretty good idea. The woman of smoke was going to be the next big pain in my ass.
"I'm not sure," Summer said.
"Then what good are you?"
"I found Jimmy." She lifted her just-pointed-enough-to-be-cute chin. "You didn't."
"Fine, you give me a ring when you've got him in hand."
"No."
"No?" I raised my eyebrows. "You seem to have forgotten who's the boss of you."
"You have to come with me. You're—" She paused and bit her lip.
I narrowed my eyes. "I'm what?"
I was a lot of things—some of them good, some of them kind of creepy. I still wasn't used to it myself.
"The leader of the light. You're stronger than any of us."
I wasn't sure about that, though I knew that I could be. Unfortunately, what I had to do to increase my powers was slightly more than I was willing to, unless absolutely necessary.
"Jimmy's going to need help," Summer finished.
Panic flared. Had the woman of smoke gone after him?
"How do we kill her?" I blurted.
"Her who?"
"You aren't talking about the Naye'i?"
"Naye'i," she murmured. "Dreadful One. The only time I ever heard that was—" Her eyes widened. "Sawyer's mother?"
"Yeah."
"That bitch has been a nightmare since she was born," Summer said.
Hearing the word bitch come out of Summer's sweet mouth gave me a nearly irrepressible urge to giggle. The only way I was able to stop it was by remembering that I did not giggle. Ever.
"Haven't all the Nephilim been a nightmare?" I asked. "I think it's part of the definition."
"She's different."
"Why?"
"She's more than a Navajo evil spirit, she's a witch, too."
"I know. She gained her power by killing Sawyer's father." Who'd been a powerful medicine man in his own right.
I'd said Sawyer was hard to explain. That was one of the reasons. Being raised by a murdering-evil spirit-witch-demon would give anyone issues. We were lucky the guy hadn't been gibbering in a corner for the last few centuries.
"She's the reason I was headed to New Mexico to talk to Sawyer," I continued. "She showed up tonight and tried to kill me."
"You'd better get used to it," Summer muttered.
"Ruthie didn't have to deal with constant assassination attempts."
"None of the Nephilim knew Ruthie's identity."
"True." Everyone and Satan's sister knew who I was.
" 'Leader of the darkness kills leader of the light and sets in motion Doomsday,'" Summer recited. "But when you reverse that, you reverse everything. Or at least that's the rumor."
"Say what?"
"Haven't you noticed there hasn't been a whole lot of chaos going on?"
"Well, yeah."
"The scuttlebutt on the streets is that by having the head good guy—you—kill the head bad guy, we get a rewind. At least until—"
"Some other bozo with a god complex kills me."
Summer shrugged. I guess I knew now why the woman of smoke wanted me dead.
"Are you sure this is good intel?"
She nodded. "As soon as I heard the whispers, I nabbed a few Nephilim, beat the truth out of them."
When she said things like that I was never quite certain whether she was serious or not.
"They all spilled the same story." She twirled her finger. "We get a do-over."
"Why didn't we know this?" I asked. "Why didn't Jimmy or Ruthie or even Sawyer tell me?"
"I'm not sure they knew. The prophesies about the end times are confusing to say the least. Everyone interprets them differently."
"You'd think that Ruthie, having died and gone to her version of heaven, would have a pretty good handle on the truth."
"You'd think," Summer agreed. "But what is truth?"
I groaned. I hated existential questions. Give me black or white, good or evil, truth or lies. Please.
"We have free will," Summer continued. "So, we choose one path instead of another and the whole prophesy shifts."
"Swell."