“Kill?” I prompted.
He blew air through his lips in a halfhearted Bronx cheer as he dropped his arm back to his side. “I was a killer long before that.”
I hated it when he called himself a killer. I didn’t think dusting Nephilim was killing. However, Jimmy had been on the streets a lot longer than I had, and he’d done things before coming to Ruthie’s that even I didn’t know about. Things I probably didn’t want to know about.
“You remember what she made me do,” he said, referring, I assumed, to his sleeping with Summer. “I knew it would hurt you,” he murmured, “but I did it anyway.”
“Why?”
“It had to be done.”
“There you go.” I threw up my hands. “So why can’t you forgive me?”
“I don’t know. Have you forgiven me?”
I thought of Summer’s beautiful face, her tiny, adorable body, her blond hair and blue eyes and her everlasting, unbreakable devotion to Jimmy Sanducci. “No.”
His lips curved just a little, and I saw again the boy who’d taken my heart and then broken it apart.
“I didn’t think so,” he said.
Jimmy was putting on his sinfully expensive Nikes, which he’d probably gotten for free after he took the most recent publicity photo of Venus Williams or Tiger Woods or whoever the top shoe hawker was this week, when he suddenly paused and asked, “What now?”
“We find the Dagda and get out from under.”
“And then?”
Jimmy was a little behind the times. Quickly I told him everything.
“Your mother,” he repeated, seemingly as stunned as I’d been. But what seemed to be true and what was true these days were often two completely different things.
“You didn’t know?” I watched him closely. Jimmy was an extremely good liar. He had to be. I could probably separate truth from fiction if I touched him. However, if I touched him one more time today, one or both of us would probably wind up bloody. Again.
“I thought she was dead.”
Hmm. Voice casual, gaze direct. He didn’t appear to be lying, but I couldn’t be sure.
“You thought she was dead, but you knew she was a phoenix? Or you just thought my mother, whoever she might be, was dead?”
“I choose door number two.” He finished tying his silver-tipped laces and stood.
My eyes narrowed. “Sanducci—”
He held up a hand. “I didn’t know, okay? I thought you were an orphan like me.”
“You weren’t an orphan.”
The past flickered in his eyes, and I was sorry I’d even brought it up.
“I wasn’t,” he agreed. “But I am now.”
“Not necessarily.” His eyes widened, and I held up my hand just as he had. “I’m just saying, parents seem to be coming out of the woodwork lately. Your dad. Sawyer’s mom. And now mine.”
“And they’re all such fantastic finds,” he muttered.
“Yeah, the reunions are a hoot. Although . . .” I paused, thinking. “I haven’t met my mother. Maybe—”
“Don’t go there,” Jimmy interrupted.
“Where?”
“Thinking that maybe she’s not evil, maybe you can have a relationship, maybe things will be different. They won’t be. She rose from the dead, Lizzy. That can’t be good.”
“It was once,” I muttered.
“And once is all we get. Anyone rising from the dead these days is gonna be a problem.”
He was right. Still—
“Sawyer’s other, and he’s not evil.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes!”
Jimmy just raised his eyebrows. My voice had been too loud, the word too emphatic, for him to believe me. Hell, I didn’t believe me.
“Think about it,” he said. “Guy up and disappears.”
“He does that.”
Sanducci stared at me until I squirmed. Everything I said was too loud or too quick and not very believable at all. Why couldn’t I lie like he did?
“Don’t you find it strange that Sawyer can raise the dead and suddenly the dead are being raised?” Jimmy asked.
“He can’t raise the dead, only ghosts.”
“So he says.”
I opened my mouth, shut it again, then said, “What?”
“Someone raised the Phoenix.”
“You think it was Sawyer?”
“Lizzy, I always think it’s Sawyer.”
CHAPTER 21
“I don’t believe Sawyer would do that,” I said. “Even if he could, which he can’t.”
“Let’s go see.”
“How?”
“Find her, find him.”
“We won’t,” I insisted.
“Wanna bet?” He held out his hand, then realized what he was doing and yanked it back.
The two of them had always been like junkyard dogs, circling each other, hackles raised, teeth bared, with me right in the middle. More often than not, whenever they shared the same air they tried to kill each other. It was exhausting.
I headed for the cave entrance. One thing Sanducci was right about was that we needed to get out of here, and the only way to do that was to find the Dagda.
Outside, the mist still roamed, impossibly thick.
“Dagda!” I shouted.
“I’m here.”
The voice was so close I jumped, but I couldn’t see him anywhere near no matter how hard I tried. You could go blind in this place straining to see your hand in front of your face.
“Where?”
“What do you need?”
I opened my mouth to tell him I needed to see who I was speaking with, and Jimmy murmured, “Just get us out of here.”
Understanding that Jimmy didn’t want to see the fairy god again—I couldn’t blame him—I swallowed the words I’d been about to utter. “We need to get out.”
“Where you came in or somewhere else?”
I glanced at Jimmy, but I couldn’t see his face. “That’s possible?”
The Dagda’s chuckle slithered across my skin as chill as the mist. “Here, all things are possible.”
Jimmy snorted.
“Where should we go?” I asked.
“Did you see anything in your vision, or whatever it was,” Jimmy said, “that might give us a hint where the Phoenix flew?”
Before, I’d been able to close my eyes and access the images. I tried, but time had faded them. I could still see the graveyard, the sky, the Phoenix, but I could no longer put myself into the scene and deepen it.
I sighed and opened my eyes. “She went into the sun.”
“Rising sun, so east.”
“Considering we don’t know east from where, not helpful.”
Jimmy let out his breath in a huff. “We’ll need to find out where there are disturbed graves.”
“And then visit every site?” My voice rose in exasperation.
Jimmy had told me once that no matter what we did to prevent it, the Apocalypse just kept on coming. At the time, I’d thought he was overreacting. Now, not so much.
“The Phoenix has the key,” I continued. “I don’t think we have that much time.”
“You got a better idea?”
“Not really. If we had an Internet connection, then the Dagda could pop us out at the first tumbled graveyard. Don’t suppose you’re computer literate,” I called out.
“You’d suppose right.” The Dagda’s huge form solidified from the mist. Jimmy tensed so fast I thought he might snap his spine. “However, I have something much better than a computer.”
“Better?” Jimmy and I said at the same time.
“Follow me.” The Dagda ducked into the cave, and after a quick exchange of shrugs we did too.
In the few seconds it took us to catch up, the Dagda had retrieved a heavy iron caldron from somewhere and hung it over the fire. The sound of something boiling, bubbling, filled the still, damp air of the cavern, and the Dagda beckoned.
I moved forward, and
Jimmy caught at my shoulder. “Don’t.”
“I think I have to.” He shook his head, frowning in the Dagda’s direction. Though I wanted to stand with Jimmy’s hand voluntarily on my shoulder for as long as he’d let it stay there, I inched away. “I’ll be right back, and then we’ll leave together, okay?”
“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a scared little kid who just woke up from a nightmare.”
“How should I talk to you?”
“Like you always do.”
“Rude, crude and downright mean?”
“I’d feel less like a crystal vase you’re terrified you might break.”
I contemplated Jimmy for several seconds. Despite the natural olive cast to his skin, he was pale, his lips a thin, bloodless line. The circles beneath his eyes were the shade of a ripe eggplant, and no matter how hard he tried to hide it, his hands shook a bit.
He was fragile, and I was desperately afraid I’d already broken him. But it wouldn’t do any good to tell him that.
“You stay here,” I said. “I’ll go there, and if I want your opinion, I’ll beat it out of you.”
I was halfway to the Dagda’s caldron when I heard him laugh. It was almost, but not quite, the laugh I remembered. Maybe Sanducci could be fixed after all. Though probably not by me.
“Ask it what you wish to know.” The Dagda pointed a finger the width of a kielbasa at the caldron.
“I—uh—” I’d never asked anything of a pot before.
Whatever was inside—obviously liquid from the way it boiled—really heated up. Snap, crackle, pop—several of the bubbles burst, spewing trickles of a tar-like substance into the air, then onto the ground.
The Dagda made an impatient noise and jabbed his hand at the caldron again. “Ask!”
“Where is the Phoenix?” I blurted.
As suddenly as it had boiled over, the liquid stilled, the surface going smooth as ice beneath a moonless sky.
“Look.” The Dagda shoved me with his shoulder, and I nearly went headfirst into the pot.
Cautiously I peeked over the edge. All I saw was my own face reflected there. “Doesn’t seem to be working.”
The Dagda’s visage appeared next to mine. “You’re the Phoenix,” he said.
“My name is Phoenix; I’m not one.” At least not yet. “I meant the Phoenix. The one who was raised from the dead. The one who carries the Key of Solomon.”
Before the last word had left my mouth, my reflection disappeared and another took its place. I recognized it instantly. The graveyard where I’d first seen my mother. All the graves were tumbled open, the place as still and empty as a postapocalyptic world.
“That’s where she was,” I said. “Where is she?”
“Wait,” the Dagda whispered.
The image wavered but did not disappear. Instead, the focus widened, as if we were a camera and the black smooth liquid the lens. The view pulled back, revealing more and more of the area around the cemetery. To the right stood a sign.
“ ‘Cairo,’ ” I read. “ ‘Population three thousand, one hundred and fifty.’ Seriously?”
I thought Cairo was huge—and in Egypt. Which made the grass and the trees in the foreground as well as the small-town streets spreading into the background a mystery.
“There’s more than one Cairo,” Jimmy said.
I glanced over my shoulder. He’d actually stayed where I’d put him, which I attributed to the Dagda’s presence rather than Sanducci’s obedience.
“How many more?”
“Not sure about other countries—”
“It’s in the U.S.,” I interrupted. I’d seen signs like that a thousand times.
“Well, then.” Jimmy took a breath. “Cairo, Kentucky. West Virginia. Illinois. New York. Georgia.”
I cursed quietly.
“Relax, light’s leader. I’m not a jinn. You get more wishes than three.”
“Jinn?” I cast him a narrow glare. “As in genie?”
“He’s kidding,” Jimmy said.
“Does he know how?”
The Dagda smiled. “I have learned much in all my years beneath the earth. Humor is only one joy of many.”
“So there aren’t any genies?”
“I didn’t say that,” Jimmy murmured. “They just don’t hand out wishes.”
I rubbed my forehead. I really didn’t have the time for this, so I turned back to the caldron. “Which Cairo are we talking about?”
The view in the black water began to pan to the right, slowly, but still it made me dizzy. I couldn’t pull my gaze away even though my stomach rolled. Right before I considered throwing up just to feel better—hey, it worked with a hangover—the picture stopped moving.
Another sign—huge, more like a billboard, with a hokey pyramid, a doofy Sphinx and a stick figure Pharaoh that seemed to be dancing the “King Tut” mambo—appeared.
“ ‘Come to Cairo,’ ” I read. “ ‘A beautiful city along America’s Nile, right at the foot of Little Egypt.’ ” I scowled. “Is this a riddle?”
“It’s Illinois,” Jimmy answered.
I turned. He was still way over there. “You sure?”
“I am a globe-trotting portrait wizard,” he said.
Better and better. He was starting to throw my sarcastic digs back at me.
“You’ve been to Cairo?”
He shook his head. “Cairo, Illinois, with a whopping three thousand souls is not exactly a hotbed of high-profile faces with pockets deep enough to pay my exorbitant, though well-deserved, fee.”
“So, basically, you don’t know dink. You’re guessing.”
“I was in Carbondale—also located in Little Egypt. The top pick in the NBA draft last year came from Southern Illinois University. Macon Talmudge.”
Sounded vaguely familiar, but I wasn’t much of a basketball fan.
“And I suppose the NBA sent you.”
“Of course. But I only took the job because I had to check out a few rumors.”
“Werewolf? Vampire?”
“Egyptian snake demon.”
“Tell me it wasn’t Talmudge.”
Jimmy and I had already been involved with the death of one NBA star—we hadn’t killed him; he’d been one of us—but if we started leaving trails of dead basketball players, we’d wind up locked in a cage without a key. Not that a cage would hold us, but the less hassle the better, and I really didn’t need my picture plastered in every post office from Corpus Christi to Anchorage.
“It wasn’t Talmudge,” Jimmy obliged.
“But the snake demon, you got it?”
Jimmy looked down his nose at me. Of course he’d gotten it.
“I’m sensing a theme here,” I mused. “Egyptian snake demon. Ancient Egyptian shape-shifting firebird. Both found in a place called Little Egypt. Why?”
The Dagda shrugged and spread his massive hands, but I hadn’t been asking him. I lifted a brow in Jimmy’s direction.
“I did some research on the area,” Jimmy said. “The origins of the name are unclear. Some say it started around the Civil War. Illinois was a free state; however, the section that became Little Egypt was given a pass so the saltworks in the region could be mined. People up north began to refer to that part as Egypt.”
“Because they kept slaves.”
“Yeah. Another theory is that the conflux of the Mississippi River—America’s Nile—and the Ohio River creates a basin similar to the Nile Basin. Which is why they named the town on the peninsula where the rivers meet Cairo.”
“That would explain why Egyptian creepy things are drawn there,” I mused. “It feels like home.”
“The Nephilim are descended from the fallen angels. They don’t really have a home.”
“No, but when they settled all over the world and gave rise to the legends that named them, they adopted one.”
“True,” he agreed.
“If Egyptian supernatural creatures traveled to America for whatever reason, I can understand why they’d
gravitate to an area that was similar to where they’d spent centuries—if not in climate, at least in terrain and name. Shall we head for Cairo?”
“May as well,” Jimmy agreed.
I glanced at the Dagda. “You’ll be coming with us?”
“I will remain.”
“But”—I clenched my hands into fists—“you agreed to fight on my side.”
“And fight I will, once you grant my boon.”
“Which is?”
“I haven’t decided.”
Jimmy made an impatient sound. “And he never will. He’s as sneaky as a leprechaun.”
“I am nothing like a leprechaun.” The Dagda appeared insulted.
“They’re cunning and slick.” Jimmy narrowed his eyes. “They twist words to suit their purpose. They deceive every chance that they get.”
The fairy god tilted his head. “Perhaps I am like a leprechaun.”
“If he never requests a boon,” Jimmy said, “then he never owes you his allegiance, which is how he’ll remain down here and out of the fight.”
“Are you afraid?” I asked the Dagda.
I expected him to reach for his huge club, and then use it on my head. Instead, he laughed. “I fear nothing, light’s leader. However, I’d prefer to choose a side when the winner is more certain.”
“We’ll win,” I said.
“When you believe that with both your heart and your head, let me know.”
I turned back to the caldron. “What does the Phoenix look like?”
The water had gone black again, but as soon as I spoke the murk cleared.
“Not me,” I muttered impatiently, lifting my hand to rub away the dirt across my cheek. “The . . .”
I paused, cursing when I realized why the reflection had not lifted her hand and rubbed at her face too.
The Phoenix looked a helluva lot like me.
CHAPTER 22
“What is it?” Jimmy started forward, but I held him back with a lift of one finger. I wanted to study the face of the Phoenix, to catalog the differences, and I needed a little quiet time to do it.
Hair curlier than mine, maybe because it was longer, darker too, more the cast of Jimmy’s blue-black tresses than the auburn I called my own, eyes also dark. Guess Daddy was the source of my blue eyes, or perhaps one of his relatives. Her skin reflected a lifetime beneath a hundred thousand suns. I’d always known I wasn’t white, that I was at least part something else. But I’d figured African-American, Native American, even Italian-American, never Egyptian.
Apocalypse Happens Page 17
