“Are we leaving?” I ask. “It’s only about three and a half hours until dawn, and we need to be at Travis when that happens.”
“First of all, as you said before, they can wait on me.” He arches one imperious eyebrow. “But secondly, you need sleep.” He points at the bed. “You will sleep until it’s time for us to go.”
“We need to go really soon,” I insist. “It’s still nearly two hours from here to there.”
“If you can locate photos of the place we’re going, I can simply teleport us there.”
“Teleport us?” I can’t help sputtering. “What the hell, Xolotl? You could have done that all this time? Then why are we stealing money for cars and traveling by horseback?” I throw my hands into the air.
“First, I was unaware you could locate photographs of places until I stopped killing long enough that tech didn’t melt.” He clears his throat. “And also, there’s usually some value in traveling the landscape.”
“Traveling the landscape?” My blistered feet are so annoyed.
“Besides, you were supposed to be training on our way to this California, where you said we should go to find a lot of people.” He frowns. “Quite soon we’ll begin to set things to right for them.”
“Knowing you’re planning a mass slaughter in a few hours, how do you think there’s any chance I’ll be able to sleep?” I shake my head. “Let’s just go now and wait for dawn.”
“Lie down.” He points at the bed.
I stare.
“Whitney, why do you have to fight me on every single thing I ask?”
“I walked right in here without a fight.”
He tilts his head, as if that was not much of an example.
“Fine.” I huff. “I’m not sure why I always have to fight things. I’ve always been a contrarian—ask my mom. If someone tells me up, I go down. If they say we’re in a rush, I drag my feet. It’s just who I am.”
He looks annoyed, but his lip twitches, and I wonder how he really feels. I wish I had his ability to read minds, and I’m simultaneously relieved it doesn’t work very well on my dark-light brain. He walks over to the bed and pulls his boots off, and then he collapses on it, the springs complaining when he does. “This is a pretty comfortable mattress.” He pats it. “Yes, for a small and unimpressive hotel, it’s not bad.”
“It doesn’t look very clean.” I scrunch my nose.
“Don’t worry,” Xolotl says. “I killed all the bugs on the mattress.”
“Bugs?” My voice comes out as a high-pitched screech.
“They’re the kind that feed on humans.”
“Fleas?” I cringe.
He shrugs. “I’m not sure, but they’re dead now.”
“There’s no way I’m sleeping there now, you lunatic, not once you said there were bugs.”
“Dead bugs.” He stares at me.
I don’t budge.
“I didn’t want to have to do this.” He hops to his feet and comes after me.
I scramble backward. “Wait. Do what?”
He’s still walking toward me, his cobalt blue eyes intent on mine. “Whitney.”
“What?” When I back into the rubble-pile-door, I pivot and start off again toward the right. “Stop stalking me.”
He’s smiling, now. “I find that I quite like doing it.”
