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Sawyer’s hand appeared, reaching for the knife, and I sprayed glitter dust without thought, coating him from knuckle to neck.
“Don’t touch him,” I said, and beneath my usual voice, rumbled a beast of my own. I was going to kill him. As soon as I figured out how. “Never touch him again.”
Sawyer squatted on the other side of Jimmy’s body. “If you want him to heal,” he said in a voice that was so deep it rumbled the mountain, “you need to take out the knife.”
I lifted my gaze. My magic still clung to his skin, but it did nothing to stop him from snatching the blade and yanking it out. He stuck his fingers into the hole the knife had left in the shirt and yanked, exposing Jimmy’s chest, slick with blood, and the two-inch slice in his skin, which had just begun to close. Not as fast as Sawyer’s—his was nearly gone—but fast enough.
“Who is he?” Sawyer asked. “From the way you were keening, I’d guess him to be your long-lost love.”
I kept my gaze on Jimmy’s face, but I felt my own burn. “I just met him yesterday.”
“Sure you did.”
“Ruthie sent him.” I frowned. “To kill you.”
“I doubt that.”
“You don’t think Ruthie would kill you?”
Sawyer laughed, and the sound seemed to flow from those mountains and not his mouth. “If only she knew how. If only anyone did.”
“But he—” I began.
“He’s a dhampir,” Sawyer interrupted. “And a vampire I am not.”
“I know what he is.”
Jimmy’s face was less gray but still pale. The knife wound continued to knit together slower than I’d like. Of course, I’d like never to have been there in the first place, but I’d learned, way back at the Fall, that what I liked meant nothing at all.
“If that were the case, you would have known better than to think a simple knife to the chest would end him.”
I blinked. He was right. But I’d seen Jimmy die so many times in so many ways, I’d panicked.
“I still don’t understand why Ruthie would send him to kill you.”
“She didn’t,” Sawyer said slowly, as if I’d hit my head when he’d tossed me. Maybe I had. Because none of this was making any more sense now than it had before. Unless—
I tilted my head, eyes narrowing. “This was a test?”
Sawyer lifted his bare shoulder—the one where a black wolf howled.
Seemed like a fairly easy test to me. Although Ruthie probably hadn’t expected Sawyer to be on fire when we arrived.
Jimmy’s eyes fluttered, then opened. I smiled. “Hey,” I began.
A spark of red flared at their center, and he reached out quick as any beast, grabbing Sawyer’s ankle and yanking him to the ground. An instant later, he landed on Sawyer’s chest, wrapped both hands around his throat, and began to squeeze.
Sawyer just looked bored.
“Jimmy.” I pulled on his hands. I was strong; he was stronger. So I hit him with a faceful of fairy dust, and whispered, “Stop.”
He did.
Sawyer shoved him off and stood.
“What’d you do that for?” Jimmy wiped the sticky sparkles from his eyes. “And why’d it work?”
“He’s—” I paused. What Sawyer was had always been a mystery.
