Doomsday Can Wait (Phoenix Chronicles, #2)(69)

"Lately?" I prompted.

"I've felt oddly compelled to learn more about them."

Oddly compelled. Hmm.

One person's odd compulsion was another's supernatural push. Was the good doctor just a bit psychic? Had he felt Carla watching him? Had he sensed what she was?

"What have you found out?"

"Fascinating stuff. You've heard of them?"

"I know the basics."

"Excellent." His slow Southern drawl was at odds with the precisely clipped commentary. Colin Firth channeling Atticus Finch. "The power was passed from mother to daughter. Only daughters did a benandanti bear, and if she were killed in the underworld before she gave birth, her magic would be lost forever."

A familiar story. Ruthie had passed her power on to me before I was ready for the very same reason. Better to fry my brain circuits and send me into a short but freaky coma than to allow all that power to disappear.

"A benandanti was haglike," Whitelaw continued. "Which made it a bit difficult to procreate, unless—"

"Enough," Sawyer interrupted, his deep voice cutting the professor off mid-explanation.

Confused, I glanced behind me, prepared to tell Sawyer to zip his lip, let the man finish.

Sawyer stood deceptively still, his face reflecting nothing but the fluorescent lights, but I sensed his urgency and understood it.

Certainly I was interested in what Whitelaw knew about the legend of the benandanti, but I didn't need to know that information. We'd come here for other, much more important clues and we didn't have time to chat.

Who knew when the woman of smoke might show up. Knowing her, she'd arrive just as Whitelaw began to tell us what we needed to know and she'd rip his tongue out of his head before he finished.

"Excuse me," Whitelaw apologized. "I get carried away sometimes. You're Navajo, Mr. Sawyer, is that correct?"

Sawyer inclined his head. His gaze flicked to me then back to the doctor. His muscles flexed, the cords in his forearms tightening. If he got any more territorial, the two of them might begin a pissing contest.

However, Whitelaw seemed oblivious to the undercurrents. "I did my dissertation on the Navajo."

"So I hear," Sawyer murmured, and I sensed the rumble of his beasts just below the surface.

"Your people are fascinating," Whitelaw continued. "I've researched the Witchery Way." His words tumbled out more quickly as he warmed to his topic. "Most of my subjects equate the word wolf with the word witch. Would you agree?"

Sawyer just smiled, then struck a match against his thumb and lit a cigarette that had appeared out of nowhere.

"You—uh—can't smoke in a public—" Whitelaw began.

Sawyer lifted his brow and blew a stream in Whitelaw's direction. The professor coughed and gave up.

"I see you have a wolf on your . . ." Whitelaw flicked a finger at Sawyer's bicep, which rippled and twitched as if the wolf wanted very badly to get out. "Are you it—" He stopped as if suddenly realizing that asking a witch if he was a witch might be a very good way to get dead. He swallowed, his throat clicking loudly in the sudden, waiting silence of the room.

I jumped in before things got too uncomfortable. "I'd love in hear more about your research into the Navajo," I said. "That's why we came."

"Really?" Whitelaw's face lit up again.

"Yes—" I began.

"Tell us what you know," Sawyer ordered, and words spilled from Whitelaw's mouth like a fountain. I cast sawyer a suspicious glance. I hadn't seen him do anything to make Whitelaw talk, but that didn't mean he hadn't.

"Navajo witches are shape-shifters. Skinwalkers." Whitelaw's gaze flicked to Sawyer's tattoos again, and he licked his lips nervously. "They have sex with the dead, practice cannibalism, and possess the ability to kill from afar with the use of ritual."

"Go on," Sawyer murmured. He didn't seem shocked by the professor's words, but I was.

"Dogs will bite a witch when the witch is in human form."

"And?" Sawyer said.

Next he'd be asking Whitelaw where he'd gotten his information, and then deciding just who needed to die—those who'd told secrets or the one who'd listened to them. There were times when he was very much his mother's son.

"Witches are most dreaded when the wind blows. They travel on the storm; they take their power from lightning. They say the rain is a woman."

I doubted Whitelaw would have needed much encouragement to give us a history lesson, but the way he couldn't seem to shut his mouth was too suspicious.

"Witches are associated with death and the dead, also incest."

I jerked so hard I nearly put my neck out of whack. Sawyer's hair lifted. Just a little, as if a fan had stirred the air nearby. But there wasn't a fan anywhere that I could see. Sawyer took another drag of his cigarette, then fixed his eyes, which were the same shade as the smoke coming out of his nose, on Whitelaw as he continued.

"To take a witch's power you must repeat their true name four times."

"True name?" I asked.

"At birth the Navajo are given a secret war name. This name is that person's personal property, never used by anyone, even his or her family."