Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1)(53)

“Maybe you can’t reason with them. I didn’t even get a chance to talk. Otherwise—”

“Kai.”

He raises a hand in surrender. “You’re right. You’re right. I blew it. I’m just glad you were there to play hero.”

I want to laugh, but the sound gets stuck in my throat. “Pretty sure heroes don’t shoot cops. Pick again.”

“I did pick,” he says, low and intense.

I flush under the weight of his gaze, the flash of twilight in his eyes. When he takes my hand, I let him. We sit there silent, both of us looking out at the desert sky, the thin line of clouds above the horizon painted orange and purple and deep navy by the setting sun. Faint voices and honky-tonk music waft over from the All-American, the party starting up inside.

“Do you want to talk about Grandpa?”

“No.”

“Maggie—”

I take my hand away. “You say one more word and I will walk.”

He leans back, runs a hand across his eyes. His palm comes away wet. I know I should try to comfort him. But I can’t. I can’t. Something like terror wells up at the thought. He swipes his face clean with the hem of his shirt. It’s another minute before he speaks. “I heard you tell Grace’s daughter you were leaving.” His voice is raw, but there’s another emotion besides sorrow there. Something tense. Worried. Which makes sense, I guess.

“Yeah. I did. I was.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know.” And that’s honest, or as honest as I can manage. I can’t admit the rest, not to him, barely to myself. I’m not even sure what the rest is, exactly.

I expect him to push me about it, say something smart or make another dumb joke to try to lighten the darkness that’s settled around us. But he sits there, silent.

“Kai—” I start.

“I hate this depressing shit,” he says, cutting me off with a laugh, raking his hand through his hair and leaving it standing on end. “People die, right? They die all the goddamn time.”

“We don’t know for sure.”

He sits forward in his chair and leans toward me. “So live while you can, right? Isn’t that what they say?”

“Who’s ‘they’?” I ask, wary of his burst of mania.

“I don’t know. People.” He stares at me, until whatever it is breaks and he slumps back down in his seat. He lets out a little laugh, a bitter sound, and turns to me with a smile. “Don’t suppose I could talk you into a couple of beers and some country line dancing?”

I’ve been thinking about something, so I say it. “You should leave, Kai. It would be safer.”

“Leave?”

“Now’s the time. This is more than you signed up for. And it’s only going to get worse. I think you need to go.” I sound forceful. Convincing. The best lie I’ve ever told. “I’m sure one of Grace’s twins can get you as far as the Wall. Cutting across the open desert from here, it’s not more than twenty miles. All Checkerboard, no cops.”

“You want me to leave?” He pauses. “What will you do?”

“I’ve still got a witch to find, remember?”

He’s quiet for a minute. “I can’t leave.”

“No,” I say. “It’s wrong for you to stay. You’ve lost . . . Anyway, now’s the time. I know you can’t go back to the Burque, but there’s other places. Lake Powell. New Denver. Better to—”

“I said I can’t.”

“But—”

“Maggie, stop. I’m not going anywhere.” His eyes lock on mine, a blaze in the waning sunset.

For a second I lose my train of thought. Instead I think about how his hand was in mine, how his laughter brings me back from dark places in my head.

“Say ‘okay,’ Mags,” he says, his voice quiet, intense. “Ask me to stay.”

I close my eyes and breathe in the night sky. “Stay?”

“Of course. Partner.”

After a while I stand up and slide my shotgun into the holster across my back. My hands check my weapons out of habit—knives, shotgun, ammo in the belt around my hips. And the half-empty Glock tucked in my belt. I give him a smile.

“Then let’s go.”

A voice says, “Whatever you’ve got planned is going to have to wait.”

It’s Rissa, coming across the yard and up the stairs two at a time, her twin brother on her heels. She has an AR-15 hanging from the shoulder strap across her back, a .44 Magnum in a holster at her hip. Black combat lace-ups, tan-colored camo pants, and actual stripes of black and sand-colored paint on her face. Her long red hair is in two tight braids against her head.

Her brother is suited up pretty much the same way, with the addition of a leather glove on one hand and what appears to be an old watch wrapped around his palm, a red plastic lighter attached with Velcro to his wrist, and a thin clear tube running between the lighter and the watch face.

“What is that?” I ask, staring at the device on his wrist. “What’s going on?”

Rissa answers. “We got a report over the radio of something bad going down in Rock Springs.”

My eyes flicker to Kai. “Didn’t you mention Rock Springs the other day?”