Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1)(84)

I swallow, suddenly terrified. That tremor in his voice, the panicked look in his eyes.

Neizghání’s telling the truth.

“Not like what, Kai?” My voice so weak, so scared, I barely recognize myself.

Neizghání laughs. “Tell her. The Cat recognized you for what you were as soon as she saw you. Heard you speak your taking words. Tell her of your clan powers.”

“What’s he talking about, Kai? Medicine People?” And then I realize he’s never told me what his other clan power was. I assumed it had to do with the weather. But now I don’t know. I don’t know.

“My intentions may have been self-serving at the beginning,” Kai says, his voice careful. The same way he spoke to me outside of Tah’s when I faced down Longarm. Like I’m dangerous. “But the time we spent together. That wasn’t fake, Mags. We are friends. Real friends. I would do anything. I didn’t intend—”

“Didn’t intend? Didn’t intend what?”

He hesitates.

“Tell me,” I say, my voice rising. “Tell me!”

“Mags . . .”

“Don’t call me that,” I snap. I’m shaking as a cold dread seeps into my bones and threatens to shatter me into pieces. Because I think I know. That face. The charm. All so preternatural under the lights of the Shalimar with the medicine on my eyes. It was in front of me the whole time, and I couldn’t see it. But I need to hear it from his lips. I need him to confess. “What’s your other clan power, Kai? Not Medicine People. And it’s not Weather Ways. What are you ‘Born for’?”

He doesn’t try to lie. “Bit’??’nii. Talks-in-Blanket.”

“And that means?”

“I can talk people out of hurting me. The Urioste boys, remember?”

The beating back in the Burque for sleeping with the Spanish land-grant girl.

“I remember.”

He exhales. Closes his eyes briefly like he’s steadying himself against a storm. “And I can talk people into . . . helping me.”

I fight a tidal wave of nausea that doubles me over. It all makes sense. The way he was able to convince Longarm to let him leave that first day. The same with Hastiin. And Grace.

And me.

“A silver tongue,” I whisper, echoing Grace’s words.

“A way with words,” he corrects me softly. “That’s all.”

I look across the mesa, to the world beyond. But there’s nowhere I can go. No escape from the truth. “Did you use your power on me?” I ask quietly.

“Maggie,” he says, and there’s so much sorrow in his voice that it stops my heart. “You have to understand. My dreams. I couldn’t make sense of them at first. Being hunted by the Monsterslayer. I mean, how could . . . what would the Monsterslayer want with me?” His eyes flicker back to Neizghání, still standing behind me. “But the dreams don’t lie. I knew a monsterslayer was going to come for me.”

I was expecting him to confess to manipulating me into kissing him. Letting him stay with me. But this . . . And then I remember Kai’s dreams. How he worried, asking me to wake him if he started talking. How he tried to drink them away more than once. And his face today when I asked how he had slept.

“What are you saying?” I ask.

“I just didn’t know if the monsterslayer who’d come for me would be him. Or . . . you. And then you show up at my cheii’s hogan, and once I realized who you were—well, that couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? I had to make sure you liked me.” That night at my trailer. His offer of casual sex.

“So you . . . ?”

“Partners. Friends.”

A slow horror dawns on me. “Was this Tah’s idea?”

“No!” he says. “He didn’t know. I hadn’t told him about my dreams. He’d just worry. I didn’t even know who the monsterslayer was until Tah was talking about you one day and then you showed up with the monster head and I put two and two together. And what I had to do was clear.”

“Because sometimes you defeat your enemies by making them your friends.”

The words he said to me, explaining why he was so nice to Coyote that first night. But he wasn’t just talking about Coyote. He was talking about me. He sat there and told me what he was going to do, and it took me until now to understand. Funny. I’d warned him about Coyote, about recognizing the trickster for what he was, but here was Kai telling me that he was just as bad, just as manipulative, and I was too blind to see it.

“I need to know something, Kai. I need you to tell me the truth.”

“I know. I will. I’m trying.”

“That first night, at my trailer, when you tried to get me to sleep with you. Was that a means to an end? Were you telling a lonely messed-up girl what you thought she wanted to hear? A story, like you told Longarm. So that when Neizghání came to kill you, you would have already seduced me. So I’d be willing to fight Neizghání for you instead?”

He winces, like he’s the one who’s hurt. “No, Mags, it wasn’t like that.” He hesitates. “Well, maybe at first. But not after. After you saved me from Longarm. After I saw how brave you were. How much you loved my grandfather. And when you were so convinced that all you were was some kind of killing machine, and it was breaking you apart inside. And I could see you were so much more. A leader. A hero.”