Doomsday Can Wait (Phoenix Chronicles, #2)(9)

Summer took it, and I tensed, half afraid she might go up in flames when she touched it. Who knew what that thing could do? But she didn't.

"The woman of smoke probably made it," Summer said. "Cast a spell. Sacrificed a goat."

I stilled. "Why would you say that?"

"There's always a sacrificial goat." She glanced sideways, then back at the dark road. "You do know that a goat isn't always a goat?"

"Huh?"

"The goat without horns. It means human sacrifice." I must have made an involuntary movement because she lifted her brow. "Don't tell me you're surprised? We're talking pure evil. For demons, humans are prey. Cattle. Meat. Goats, if you will."

I'd known that, had seen it practiced by the leader of the darkness, who'd kept a harem of women snacks. I was so glad that guy was dead.

Summer laid the amulet on the seat between us. "Something else is bothering you besides this."

Her intuitiveness was nearly as annoying as her manicure.

"I've seen the Naye'i before," I admitted.

"And you didn't kill her?"

"I was a kid." I'd had no idea what I was seeing. One glance into the demon's eyes, and I'd hidden under the covers for the rest of the night.

"What happened?"

"Sawyer. He—" I searched for the words to explain what I'd observed. "He ... conjured her. By killing a goat."

The car swerved as Summer's hands jerked on the wheel. "A goat, goat or—"

"A goat." It had still been quite a shock.

"And then?" Summer asked.

I closed my eyes and saw again what had happened so many years ago.

Ruthie had sent me to Sawyer the summer I was fifteen to discover all that I could about the psychometric talent I'd been born with. I'd needed to learn how to live with it, and Sawyer had helped.

Sure, it was weird to send a fifteen-year-old girl to an isolated part of New Mexico to stay with what appeared to be a thirty-year-old man.

However, Sawyer wasn't thirty. Hell, he wasn't even a man. And I was no ordinary fifteen-year-old girl.

I don't think Ruthie had been wild about the idea of sending me there, but I also don't think she'd had much choice. I was special in a way she'd never dealt with before, just as Sawyer was special in ways no one else could understand. As much as he'd scared me—as much as he still did—he'd also thrilled me, tempted me, and taught me.

On that long-ago night, I'd woken in the dark, heard a voice, peeked out the window just in time to witness the death of the goat and a whole lot more.

The blood had poured over Sawyer's hands and into the ground. Smoke had risen wherever the blood struck as he'd chanted in another language—Navajo, no doubt— and lifted his gory palms in supplication to the night. The smoke had twined with the bonfire at the edge of the yard before racing around and around as if trying to break free. Sawyer had snapped an order, and the dancing flame paused, lengthened, and became the woman of smoke.

When she'd stared at me with her bottomless black eyes, I'd tried to hide, but it was too late. She'd seen me, and I knew deep down in my trembling soul that she would come for me one day. How right I had been.

"Why would he do that?" Summer murmured when I finished my tale.

"I never asked him."

"Why not?"

"He scared the everloving crap out of me back then."

Summer nodded in agreement. Sawyer scared her, too. Which meant she was smarter than she looked. She just had to be.

"He probably wouldn't have told you the truth," she said.

"Does he ever?"

Sawyer had a lot in the way of power and very little in the way of conscience. The last time I'd seen him he'd drugged me and f*cked me—and that wasn't a euphemism, either.

Sawyer did a lot of training for the federation—both DKs and seers—for a price. Regardless of his lack of ethics and his annoying habit of doing whatever and whoever the hell he wanted, the fact remained that he knew things. When you lived for centuries upon centuries you couldn't help but know.

"What are the powers of a Naye'l?" I asked.

"Traveling on the wind. Turning to smoke."

"She dropped my friend Megan unconscious with a glance."

Summer nodded slowly. "Add it to the list. Although that could be a power she learned through witchcraft. Hard to say."

"Why didn't she drop me?"

"She likes to get her hands bloody? Who knows? Maybe that talent only works on humans."

"I'm human."

Summer snorted. "Sure you are."

"What the hell does that mean?" She'd once told me that I'd meet my mother someday and that I wouldn't like it.

"Relax. I was just..." Her voice trailed off.

"Messing with me?"

"Yeah. You do ask for it on occasion."

I asked for it constantly.

"My parents," I began.

"Are unknown to us. For now. That's a worry for another time. Don't you have enough to deal with?"

"Yeah." I sat back in my seat and watched the road roll by.

Since I'd discovered that the world was inhabited by demons with human faces, I'd begun to wonder what had lurked beneath the faces of my parents. No one seemed to know, or if they did they weren't telling, but for me to have the talents I had, I figured either one or both of them had possessed special talents, too.