Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1)(36)

“Splendid!” Coyote stands, placing his hat on his head. He takes up his walking stick with a flourish and gives me a slow blink with those brassy eyes.

“Walk with me a moment, Magdalena.”

I shoot a look at Kai, wondering if he knows what Ma’ii wants, but he gives me nothing. I haul myself up and step toward the door with Coyote. It’s a little silly. We’ve only moved a few feet away from Kai, so the pretense of privacy is a joke. But Coyote doesn’t seem to care.

“He’s delightful. Very charming. And those hands.” Ma’ii shakes himself, his camel topcoat swaying. “He would make a fine lover.”

“I’ll let him know you’re interested.” Not that he can’t hear everything we’re saying.

“Not for I,” Ma’ii says, annoyed. “For you.” He grasps my arm, face serious, eyes gone cold as dawn. He whispers in my ear, mouth so close his breath is warm and wet on my cheek. “Forget Neizghání. He is a deeply selfish creature. He does not love you. Cannot. You are but a moment’s fancy, a distraction, a curiosity of which he has now tired.” His grip tightens, fingernails digging into my flesh. “The Monsterslayer will only disappoint you,” he hisses.

“Neizghání is none of your business.” The good humor has leaked from my voice, and my eyes match his in bleakness. There’s the old Coyote I know, hidden for a handful of hours tonight under the pretense of friendship, but back now and as cruel as ever. His warning cuts deeper than even the innuendos of earlier.

He made me mad before, roused unwanted memories, but as painful as those memories are, they are years behind me and that distance lends me some control. I can shut them down, lock them away, keep myself safe from their horror. What Ma’ii says now about Neizghání strikes me somewhere else, somewhere in my fears of the here and now, where I have no distance to protect myself. Because what I have not admitted to myself, what I can’t face, is that Ma’ii is right. Neizghání left me without a second thought, without a look back. And not a word since. As if I am already forgotten.

Whether I am a monster or not, he should have cared. He should have found a way to contact me. He should have let me choose to die under his sword before he left me alone.

Ma’ii must see something in my face, something that surprises him. Maybe he didn’t expect the insult to fly so true. He withdraws his hand, adjusts his jacket, and frowns at me. “I suggest you get to Canyon de Chelly with some haste. Find Ní?ch’i, use the hoops, and call for me.” His voice is crisp with irritation. He pauses for a moment to check his cuffs. “Understand that this is important.”

I open my mouth to remind him I haven’t agreed to even take his job, but he’s gone. I never even see him open the door.

“Where did he go?” Kai asks from behind me.

“Wait,” I say, raising a hand. A moment later a blinding flash of lightning floods the trailer. Kai swears quietly, and I blink as webs of red veins dance across my vision.

“How does he do that?”

I shrug. “They all do that. Wish I knew. It sure would save on fuel.”

Kai scrapes at the edges of the bowl, shoveling the last of his food into his mouth. Between bites he asks, “So that was the Coyote?” Finished, he pushes the bowl away and leans back, stretching his lithe frame out and crossing his legs under my coffee table, arms behind his head. “He wasn’t what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know. A little less serious, I guess. All the Coyote stories I’ve heard portray him as kind of a fool.” He shrugs. “He didn’t seem so bad.”

I narrow my eyes, mouth open and about to protest.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he says, holding me off. “He’s sort of intense, kind of a pervert, too. I swear, half the time I think he was making eye contact with my crotch instead of my face.”

I feel like I turn two shades of red, but Kai keeps talking.

“And he gives you the creeps, too, with those yellow eyes and teeth.” A shiver runs across his shoulders and he shakes it off. “One minute he looks human enough, and then you get a flash of something else, like he’s wearing a man suit, but he’s not a man.”

“He can be a little weird,” I acknowledge.

Kai chuckles under his breath, amused at my understatement. “But he’s not a fool.”

I come to sit across from him on the edge of the armchair. “Truth is, I’ve never seen him act like that before.”

“Act like what?”

“Talkative. Telling stories.”

“He’s never told you stories?”

“The only stories he’s ever told me are horror stories. About badgers beating him to death or birds plucking out his eyes. That kind of thing.”

Kai stares at me.

“What?”

“It’s just . . .” He hesitates a moment, like he’s not sure how his next words are going to be received. “Can I give you some advice?”

I gesture for him to go on.

“Some people believe you destroy your enemies by making them your friends.”

I mull it over. “Is that what you were doing? Destroying an enemy?”

“Wasn’t I?”