Firestorm Read online

Chapter Two

  I spent some time in lockup lying on a clean hospital bed, humming popular songs, and trying to imagine what the new Wardens seal should look like. I was currently going with a shiny circular motif, with the new motto of We're So Screwed running around the outer edge, featuring a graphic of a nuclear mushroom cloud in the center. A gold seal, probably. Gold goes with everything, even an apocalypse.

  Bored with mental graphic design, I got up and wandered around, taking stock. The infirmary was mysteriously intact. Crisp, clean, no sign of struggles. Maybe it had been empty. Djinn wouldn't have wasted time vandalizing; they'd been out for blood, and they were nothing if not focused on the mission.

  Which would have been removing any humans who might pose a genuine threat to them later. I wondered if it had been David's bunch, acting under the red-eyed influence of the Earth. Or if it had been Ashan's little merry band, coming after Wardens just on general principles.

  Either one would have been horrific, in these close quarters. I didn't want to imagine it, but the images kept springing up when I closed my eyes.

  Eventually, not even fevered imagination could hold off exhaustion, and I surrendered to a need to be horizontal. I pulled a waffle-weave cotton blanket up over my aching body and wished--again--for a shower. I was too tired even to take off my shoes, much less undress, although these clothes needed to be burned, not just laundered. I stank to high heaven, and was ruining a perfectly good bed, but as soon as I closed my eyes, all those concerns slid away like oil off Teflon.

  I was asleep so fast, I had no time to realize it was happening, falling into a soft-edged darkness that wrapped warm around me, falling without fear and without limit. . .

  . . . and then, without any sense of transition, I was sitting in a nice, comfortable living room with a fire roaring in the hearth. Curled up like a cat on a soft cotton-covered sofa, my head against the pillowed armrest, covered with the same blanket I'd been using in the infirmary.

  "Hey, kid," said a low voice. I blinked and focused across the room.

  "Jonathan?" I asked, and slowly sat up. "Am I--? Aren't you--?"

  "Dead?" the mack daddy of the Djinn supplied, and popped the tops on two brown, label-free bottles of beer. He held one up, and it floated toward me. Heavier than I expected. I nearly fumbled the bottle when I grabbed it out of the air. Cold. It felt heavy and real.

  "Aren't you? Dead?" I asked. "Yeah, well. Kinda. "

  I blinked again and sipped the beer. Seemed like the thing to do. Jonathan looked exactly the same as he had last time I'd seen him: human, tall and lean and whipcord-strong. Tanned. He was wearing khaki pants and a loose off-white T-shirt, not tucked in, and his booted feet were crossed at the ankles. He sipped his beer, unsmiling.

  I put my bottle down on the polished wooden coffee table after shoving aside issues of magazines in languages that I didn't recognize to make room for it. "You're dead," I repeated. "So why are you in my dream?"

  He raised the bill of his olive drab ball cap with one finger. "Good question. Morbid, isn't it?"

  "What?"

  "Dreaming about dead people. Creepy. You ever see a therapist about that?"

  "I'm not--" Even in dreams, I couldn't win an argument with him. Even when he was dead. "What are you doing here?"

  Jonathan took off his cap, tossed it toward a coat-tree (and missed), and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He met my stare. That was a frightening thing. Dream or not, he had the exact same eyes--dark, lightless, limitless, filled with an infinity of things I could never understand in my short human lifetime. Stars were born and died in those eyes. "I think the real question is, what are you doing here? This is the end of the world, kiddo. Or the beginning. Tough to tell the difference. It's all one big turning circle, and where we are depends on who we are. "

  I clutched the blanket closer. "I--don't understand. "

  "Yeah, didn't figure you would. But I thought I'd give it a shot. " He took another swig of beer, but those inhuman eyes never left me. "Take a look outside. "

  I rose, dragging the blanket with me wrapped around my shoulders like a bulky shawl. Not that I wanted to get up from that obscenely comfortable couch, but this was a dream, and I was going to do just what he wanted me to do. No real will of my own. My hand reached out for the drapery pull, and I yanked, and the heavy maroon curtains slid back, revealing. . .

  A big field of nodding yellow flowers. Blue sky. A few clouds drifting lazily over the horizon.

  I turned to look at him, a question on my face.

  "Keep looking," he said. "Little more to the picture than meets the eye. "

  I narrowed my eyes, and it was like going up in to the aetheric, only I never left my body; the horizon zoomed toward me, clarifying itself as it came. What looked like a shadowy mountain range resolved into something else entirely.

  Death.

  I was looking at the skeletal remains of a city. Whatever skyline shape had once made it memorable was gone, so I didn't know if I was looking at Paris or New York or Dallas; it was a twisted bare mass of metal now, corroding and twisting together, being beaten down by the gentle, remorseless rain and wind. That was how the planet triumphed, in the end. With patience. With stillness. Without mercy.

  "You're getting there," he said. "Closer. "

  And he was closer, too--across the room and standing right behind me. His hands closed on my upper arms, holding me in place against him. I didn't want to see, but it came to me anyway.

  Bones. So many bones, sinking deeper into the hungry ground. Flesh liquefying and returning to the soil, bones taking longer to flake away into bleached splinters.

  Bones were all that was left of humanity, I knew that. I could sense that. Nothing remained. Not a city untouched, not a family huddled in a cave, waiting out the disaster. We'd been completely, utterly removed from the Earth.

  "You see?" Jonathan's voice rasped, soft as velvet against my ear. I could feel the warm whisper of his breath stirring my hair. "It's like bowling. When the match is over, you have to return the rented shoes. Sorry, kid. Game over. "

  Six billion lives, snuffed out. I wanted to fall to my knees, but Jonathan was holding me up. There was a certain lazy cruelty in the way his fingers dug into my skin.

  "Don't go all weak on me now," he scolded me. "Bones and dust. That the way you want it?"

  "No," I said, and firmed up my knees and spine. Weak? I wasn't weak, and I wouldn't let him see me that way. "So you tell me, how do I stop it?"

  "What makes you think it's your job to stop anything?"

  I shook free of his hands and whirled to face him. My fists clenched at my sides. "Because you brought me here!"

  His face smoothed out, became as rigid and emotionless as a leather mask. Those eyes, God, those eyes. Fury and power and anguish, all together.

  "I didn't bring you here," he said. "You think you're Miss Special Destiny of the year?"

  "No," I shot back, furious. "And I don't damn well want to be, any more than you wanted to be--whatever the hell you are. But sometimes there isn't a choice. Right?"

  "Careful. You might accidentally make some sense. Ruin your reputation. "

  "You are infuriating!"

  "Yep," he agreed. "It's been said. "

  Arguing with him was getting me exactly nothing. I controlled my temper with a tremendous effort of will. "So how do we stop this?" Because I was not going to sit by and let a future roll toward us that contained six billion corpses turning to petroleum under the ground.

  "That's the funny thing," Jonathan said, and stepped back. He tugged his cap more firmly in place, one hand at the back, one on the bill. "You want to survive, you need to convince Her that you're worth the favor. "

  "How?" I practically yelled it. "You'll know it when you see it. But first you have to get yourself to the right place. "

  "Which is?"

  "Someplace you've already been," he said. "Onc
e. Neat little place, kinda quaint. You'll think of it. "

  "Don't do that. Don't go all vague on me just when I need--"

  "Not my business to save your ass," he pointed out. "Hell, I'm kinda dead anyway. Not my problem. And you look so cute with your face all red. "

  "Jonathan--" I was all out of smart-ass. "Please. "

  He cupped an ear toward me.

  "Please," I repeated. "Do you want me to beg?"

  "Well, it'd be nice, but. . . nah. Can you sing?"

  "What?"

  "Sing. Notes. Usually up and down, unless you're into that rap thing, which"--he eyed me--"I wouldn't recommend. A little too much vanilla in the ice, if you know what I mean. "

  "Believe me, I have no idea what you mean!"

  He sighed. "Humans. No sense of what's going on around them. . . "

  He stopped in midcondescension. His face went blank again, but not as if he was trying to conceal anything this time--more as though he was entirely focused on something beyond the two of us.

  There was a sound. It started as a kind of moaning, like a breeze beyond the window. It got louder. Stronger. Became an eerie tangle of whispers.

  No, not whispers. Something. . . musical.

  I reached for the latch on the window, suddenly desperate to hear what it was. Jonathan clapped his hands down over mine, hard. "No," he said grimly. "Do it and you're dead. "

  I fought him. I had to open the window. I had to know. I could feel it coming, and oh it was glorious and terrible and beautiful as liquid fire, and it was going to burn me to ash where I stood with the fire of creation and joy. Spirit moving upon the earth . . .

  I clawed at the window latch, got hold of it, and yanked up.

  Stuck. I screamed and battered at the window glass, but it didn't break, didn't even rattle. . .

  Jonathan muttered what might have been a curse, if I'd understood Djinn, and he spun me around to face him. The whole house around us was moving, breathing. Seduced by the power of the song outside. Longing to join with it, lose itself in that joyous, terrifying chorus.

  Pieces of it were whirling away. Jonathan stayed focused on my face. "You've got to leave," he said.

  "Am I going to see you again?" I asked, weirdly calm now, drugged by the sound. He smiled slightly and touched his fingertips to the tip of my chin. "Didn't see me this time," he said, and without any warning at all, gave me a right cross that snapped my head back with overwhelming force. Pain blocked out even the screaming of that song. . . .

  I sailed backward into the dark, falling, lost in shrieking winds and wind that grabbed and tore at me. . .

  The song turned into a shrill ringing in my ears.

  I jerked awake on the bed in the infirmary, felt my heart racing uncontrollably, and fumbled for the clock on the table next to me. Its reassuring green glow told me that I'd been asleep for exactly six hours.

  I sank back with a sigh, cradling the clock and hitting the buttons, and then realized that it wasn't the alarm going off. It was my cell phone shrilling for attention. Damn. I needed to go with a much more amusing ringtone.

  I fumbled it out of my purse and flipped it open. "Yeah?" I sounded as drugged and disoriented as I felt.

  "You stupid slag. " I knew that rich tenor voice, sharpened now with anger. "You called the police on me. "

  I flopped back into the comfort of the pillow and threw an arm over my eyes. "Yes, Eamon, I called the police on you. You threatened my life, tried to kill me, and abducted my sister--"

  "I saved your bloody life!" He sounded livid. I could almost see the veins pulsing in his neck. "I could've left you out in that hurricane to die, you know. I put myself out for you!"

  "Yeah, you're a prince--Please tell me you're not, by the way. I mean, my opinion of British royalty isn't that high, but--"

  "Shut it," he snarled. "Alerting the local constabulary isn't going to get your sister back. "

  "Can make your life damn inconvenient, though, I'll bet. "

  Silence. I could hear him breathing. I could picture him standing there, phone gripped in those long pianist's fingers. The inner Eamon didn't match the sensitive hands, though he could pretend with the best of them.

  Deep down, he wasn't elegant, and he wasn't cultured. He was a total bastard, and the fact that my sister had been enthralled with him--and might still be, for all I knew--made me feel more than a little nauseated.

  "Look," I said. "I know that you expect me to be your costar in this little drama you're playing, but I'm busy. Get to the point, Eamon. You going to kill me? Come on and get in line. I haven't got time to screw around with you. "

  Silence, for a long few beats, and then, "Is there a problem?" he asked. Which wasn't what I'd expected.

  "Why do you care?"

  "Because--" He paused for several long beats. "Because what I want from you is a Djinn. If there's anything happening that affects that goal, I need to know. "

  "You have no idea how much I wish I'd given you one back home, and gotten you the hell out of our lives," I said. I remembered the bloodstains in the conference room. Not that I wished dismemberment on anyone, but with Eamon my moral high ground was somewhere about the elevation of a sand dune, and eroding fast. "The situation has changed. I can't get my hands on a Djinn anymore. No one can. " "Won't, you mean. "

  "I don't have time to explain it to you, but even if I gave you a Djinn bottle, it wouldn't do you any good. The--the master agreement's been broken. They don't obey us anymore. And they damn sure wouldn't obey you. "

  "I see," he said slowly. "That's. . . very unfortunate. For your sister, at any rate. "

  "Where's Sarah? If you've hurt her--"

  "Don't be ridiculous. Why would I hurt lovely Sarah?" That sly hint of amusement was back in his voice. "Much more rewarding to play along with her fantasies. You'd be amazed what kind of thing that woman gets up to in the privacy of her--"

  "Shut up!" I shouted it, heard my heart thudding in my ears, and forced myself to relax. He liked sticking in the knife. It was part of his game. No matter what he said, I'd seen the way he'd touched her, and his hands didn't lie about that, at least. He was gentle with her. Gentler than he had any reason to be. It was even possible he really liked her, as much as he liked anyone. "Look, just let her go. There's no reason to keep her. I already told you, I can't give you a Djinn. Please. Just--let her go. "

  "Are you completely sure you can't give me what I want? Because if you are, there's no reason for me not to put a bullet in the head of your beautiful sister, pose her in a compromising position for the delight of the tabloid media, and be on my merry way. " He listened to my furious silence. I could feel a grin coming off the phone, like radiant heat. "I was thinking something from the oeuvre of the Hillside Strangler. Nothing like the classics. "

  "You fucking son of a--"

  "I want a Djinn. I don't care about your technical issues. You're thoroughly resourceful when you need to be--I've seen that firsthand. No, your lovely sister stays with me until you come through for me. In the meantime, she suffers whatever I see fit to make her suffer, which I promise you will get progressively worse the longer you take to satisfy me. And if I feel you haven't done your level best to get me what I want, well. . . you'll follow the breathless coverage about her bad, sad end on the news. "

  My free hand was in a fist, clenched tight. I didn't remember doing it, and deliberately relaxed until the white knuckles loosened up. "You won't get anything by threatening her. There are other things happening, in case you're not aware. Bad things. I can't just--"

  "Yeah," he interrupted. "Dead Wardens littering the landscape, very sad, I'm devastated, et cetera. But in short, bugger your problems, darling, because my problems are the priority. I'll give you exactly two days to settle your little difficulties and make arrangements to get me what I want, and no tricks, or I swear to you, your sister will not leave a pretty corpse, are we understood?"

  "
Yes," I said. "Yes, we're understood. "

  "Then it's been a slice, love, and you watch yourself. Wouldn't want anything to happen to you before I get what I want. Now, if you'll excuse me, I hear the water shutting off in the bath. I have to go do your sister. "

  He hung up before I could fire off anything I'd regret later. The number was blocked, of course. I sank down on the bed again, exhausted and aching and angry as hell, with nowhere to put all that nervous dread. Not like my sister's life could count for any more than the hundreds of thousands of people who were in danger, or the millions--billions--in the balance if we didn't figure out how to make things right again.

  Bones and dust, corpses turning to petroleum. Sunflowers nodding placidly over a graveyard. Had I just been dreaming? Or was Jonathan--the spirit of Jonathan, anyway--trying to tell me something important?

  Two days. Not enough time. Not enough time for anything.

  I felt tears coming, and choked them back furiously. I was not going to let that bastard make me cry, and I was not going to think about him standing in that steam-fogged bathroom, wiping beads of water from my sister's naked back while she smiled innocently at him in the mirror.

  No, I wasn't going to think about that at all.

  Okay, maybe I was.

  I curled up on the bed, hurled the alarm clock across the room in a satisfying crunch of plastic, and put my pillow over my head to sob out my fury and pain. That was supposed to be cathartic, but mostly it seemed to result in aching muscles, sinuses packed with fluid, and raw, abused eyeballs.

  I needed to blow my nose. When I reached for a tissue from the bedside box, my fumbling fingers met warm flesh, helpfully handing one over.

  I lifted my head slowly from the smothering embrace of the pillow, and gasped.

  "Aren't you going to take that?" David asked. I looked down. My fingers were clenched on the tissue in his hand, but I hadn't made any move to claim it. I slowly pulled it toward me.

  David was sitting in a chair a couple of feet away, watching me with his head tilted a little to one side. His eyes were more brown than bronze, just now, lazy behind the concealing round glasses. Relaxed. He was wearing a familiar outfit of a blue checked shirt and faded jeans and battered hiking boots, and God, he looked good enough to eat. Relief flashed through me like a concentrated burst of lightning, and then recent history caught up to me like the following thunder. I sat up in a hurry, heart thumping so hard, I saw red spots, because my brain finally saw fit to remind me that David, about thirty hours ago, had been intent on killing me.

  "Easy," he said, and reached out to draw a fingertip over the tender, sensitive skin on the interior of my right arm. Heat and friction, real as it could get. "It's all right. I'm myself, at least for now. Blow your nose. "

  He wasn't a dream; he was here. Really here, physically.

  I really did need to blow my nose. I did so, in as ladylike a fashion as I could, wishing all the while--mostly stupidly--that I'd had some kind of warning, that I'd been able to shower or to brush my hair or change my clothes or. . . hell. Anything.

  I tossed the tissue at the trash can nearby. He gave my underhanded girly throw an assist with a wave of his finger, not even looking. Two points.

  "I didn't know if you were alive," he said softly. "Not at first. I remembered coming after you, on the beach, and then--nothing. I thought I'd hurt you. Killed you. "

  The look in his eyes--God, it made my heart break. I swung my legs over the side of the bed. We were close enough that our knees brushed. David leaned forward, moving slowly, the way animal trainers do with skittish creatures, and he slowly extended his hand toward me. Traced the line of my cheek. "I can't stay long," he said quietly. "But I want to try to protect you, as much as I can. Help you. Will you let me?"

  I couldn't say no to him, not when he sounded like that. Soft and a little desperate. I stayed where I was. I didn't reach back to him, though every cell in my body screamed for me to do it; I just watched him, until he drew his hand back. He put his elbows on his knees and focused on my face with an intensity I remembered from the first time I'd met him. Had I fallen in love with him right then, at first sight? I'd fallen in lust, for sure. Lust had been no problem at all. Still wasn't. But more than that--and I only realized it now, looking back on it--I'd lost my soul to him somewhere along the way.

  And I couldn't regret it. Even now.

  His fingers moved together restlessly, as though fighting an urge to reach out to me again. "You're all right?" he asked. "Not hurt?"

  "No. I'm all right. " Minus a few dozen cuts and bruises and minor aches. Nothing to speak of, really. "What the hell happened?"

  His face went still. Masklike, the way Jonathan's had been in the dream. His eyes turned dark and filled with secrets. "Jonathan decided to play god," he said. "He's dead. "

  I had a sudden, aching suspicion. "Did you kill him?"

  The flash of anguish, before he locked it down again, was answer enough. David had been an Ifrit for a time, half alive, preying on Djinn for his life force. Damned and doomed and broken. . . dead, in every way that mattered. He'd gone after the biggest, brightest power source available to survive, and that had been Jonathan. Driven by the basic instinct to feed, he had turned on his own best friend.

  Just the way his best friend intended, the coldhearted, calculating, manipulative bastard.

  "David, don't," I said. "You know he wanted to die. He just--used you. Suicide by Ifrit. "

  "No, it was more than that. " He swallowed and looked aside, keeping his thoughts to himself for a few seconds before he continued, "What Jonathan was, is--necessary. Someone needs to stand where he stood. Nature abhors a vacuum. " He attempted a smile, but it looked painful. "I was the closest Djinn to him in power, so what he was--it flowed into me. In a real sense, I've become--"

  "Jonathan," I supplied.

  He looked agonized about that. Guilty. Horrified. "No. Jonathan was. . . special. I don't think any of us could really take his place and do the things he did. But I've become the conduit, the pipeline from the Mother to the Djinn. The only upside is that I've stopped pulling the life out of you, the way I did when I was an Ifrit. If I'd kept on. . . "

  "You wouldn't have killed me. " I wasn't sure of that, but I wanted to be.

  "I came damn close. " He stared at me, miserable. "Jo. None of us can tell what's coming. I don't know if I can control this. I'm not Jonathan. I'm not capable of--staying apart from her needs, her emotions. And when I fail, we all lose. "

  Nothing I could say about that wouldn't make him feel worse about it. "Look, you told me on the beach that the Wardens need to stop the Earth from waking up," I said. "That would fix things, right? Give you back free will?" "No, not really. " He was already shaking his head. "We never have completely free will. It's not the way it works. "

  "Even now that Jonathan's agreement with the Wardens is gone?"

  "Even now. We just changed hands, so to speak. Went back to our original master. Mistress. You saw. When it happened--I wasn't prepared to handle it. I didn't know how to try to hold it back, and it spilled through me to the other Djinn. "

  His eyes had burned bright red, and bright red was not a color I associated with anything good, except in fashion. Having red eyes staring at you was downright terrifying. Still, it hadn't been only the Goth-bright gaze that had unnerved me; it had been the stillness. The sense of David having been emptied out of his own skin, stripped of individual consciousness and responsibility.

  "When she's angry," he continued, "when she feels threatened, she can take control of me, and through me, all the others. In a sense, we're her antibodies. And if she wants to destroy you. . . "

  It would be terrifyingly easy for Djinn to do it. They were predatory at the best of times. Given free rein and license to kill? Slaughter. No human could battle them directly for very long, and there damn sure weren't enough Wardens to go around anyway.

  "So wh
at are we supposed to do? It's a little late to build a rocket ship and evacuate," I said, "no matter what the science fiction movies like to tell us. "

  That got a smile. A small one. "Did you know, that's one of the things we love so much about you?"

  "What?"

  "Your stories. You remake the world with stories. I don't think you understand how powerful that is, Jo. "

  "A story isn't going to fix this. "

  The smile died. "No, you're right about that. "

  "Then tell me what to do. "

  "No. "

  "No?"

  "You have to understand--"

  "Well, I don't. I don't understand. "

  "You're being obstinate. "

  "I'm being accurate! Dammit, David, why is everything such a riddle with you guys? Why can't you just come right out and--"

  "--tell you how to destroy the Djinn?" he asked, and arched his eyebrows. "Sorry, but I'm not quite ready to sacrifice my people to save all of yours. I'm trying to find a way that it doesn't come down to that choice. That's what Jonathan left me. Responsibility. It sucks, but that's the way it is. "

  I swallowed my comeback, because there was real suffering in his eyes. "So what can I do?" I asked. "I can't just wait around for the final epic battle and make popcorn. " Another smile, this one stronger and warmer. "You never could, you know. Always in motion. "

  "Damn straight. Basic principles of physics. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest. Things in motion require less effort to overcome resistance. "

  "I love your mind. "

  "Is that all?" I arched my eyebrows back at him, and his eyes sparked bronze.

  He smiled, and then the smile slowly faded. "We can't do this. "

  Damn. The warmth inside me, barely felt, began to fade. "Why not?"

  "Because it's dangerous. You begin to trust me; I begin to think you can trust me. That's a very bad idea. " He stood up. "I shouldn't have come here. "

  "Then why did you?" I demanded, out of patience. "Dammit, don't come here and look--look all perfectly hot and good enough to lick--don't just show up and tell me that I can't trust you, because I do trust you, I always have, even when I didn't have any reason to do it! Don't do this to us! It hurts!"

  My vehemence shook him. He honestly didn't expect that outburst--I could see it in the way he drew back inside himself, watching me. The bronze glints died in his eyes, forced back. He looked like a man. A tired, vulnerable, sorrowful man. "I want to help," he said.

  "Well, pony up, cowboy! Now's the time!"

  "All right. " He closed his eyes, as if he couldn't stand to look at me while he said it. "You can't cut the Djinn off from the Mother. Oh, there's a way, but if you do, you only guarantee your own destruction. The Earth would go mad. It wouldn't just be humanity being wiped away, it would be every living thing in the world. She would just--reset the game and start over. What you have to do is become. . . Jonathan. Become the conduit for humanity, to her. "

  Finally, we were getting somewhere. "And how exactly do I do that?" He opened his mouth, then shut it again. No answer. "David, half an answer is worse than none. Tell me. "

  "I hate putting you at risk like this. "

  "Dammit, how could I be more at risk? I saw--" I stopped, because I intuitively knew I shouldn't tell David about the dream. At best, he'd dismiss it. At worst, it would raise false hopes that Jonathan was. . . somewhere out there. "I'm a Warden, and I'm on the front lines already. At least give me the tools to get the job done. "

  His head jerked up, and he fixed on me with such intensity that I flinched, a little. "I'm not sure it won't kill you. "

  "Well," I said after a shaky second of a pause, "that's a 'been there, done that' situation, and anyway it's not your choice to make, is it?"

  And that was a long second of pause, from both of us. Precarious and painful.

  "No," he finally admitted, and squeezed his eyes closed as he thought about it. "All right. I can't tell you how to do it--I'm not even sure how Jonathan did it, in the first place. But I can tell you where. " He made a visible decision and opened his eyes. They were glowing now, Djinn-bronze flecked with ruddy amber. "You've been there once already. Seacasket. " "Seacasket?" I tried to remember. . . and then I did, with a chilling rush of pain and panic.

  Once upon a time, I had been a Djinn, and I had been sent to Seacasket by my master (if you could call a punk like Kevin a master, which was a stretch) to destroy the town. In fire.

  David had stopped me that time. And somehow, Kevin's stepmonster Yvette had known that he would. It had been the trap she set for him, to get him back in her power.

  "Seacasket's special," I said. "Yvette knew. "

  He nodded. "It's a--thin space in the aetheric. One of two or three places in this country where a human might be able to reach one of the Oracles. "

  "Oracles?" I'd never heard of Oracles, other than the ancient Greek kind. Or the software company. From the regretful look that flashed across his face, it wasn't something any human had probably heard before. Or that the Djinn ever intended we would.

  "They don't exist here, on this plane. They're--different. And Jo, they're dangerous. Very dangerous, even to Djinn. I--can't imagine how dangerous they'd be to a human, even if you can get one to allow you contact. Which isn't likely. "

  "Can't you--I don't know, introduce me?"

  "It doesn't work that way," he said. "I wish to heaven it did, because this would already be finished and I'd have done this for you. The way I'm connected is subordinate. The Djinn are part of the body, not apart from it. Oracles. . . " He was out of words, and he shrugged. "There's no way to describe this, really. It's not a human thing. "

  I let out a slow breath. "Okay. Leaving all that on the table, is there anything you can do about all of the--the chaos out there? Weather, fire, earthquakes?. . . "

  "I'll do what I can. " David leaned forward and extended his hand again. This time, I took it. His skin was firm and hot and smooth, and my skin remembered it all too vividly. He was astonishingly tactile, always touching, and even as I thought it his fingers moved to my wrist, tracing my pulse. "I want to protect you. I want that with everything in me. The idea of sending you into danger without me. . . it terrifies me. You know that, right?"

  My heart began to pound. I wanted to forget all of this. The wreckage outside of the infirmary door, the dead Wardens, the destroyed agreement with the Djinn, the upcoming end of the world. The future of bones.

  I wanted him to keep on touching me, always.

  "Jonathan always thought it was a kind of insanity, Djinn loving humans," David murmured. "Maybe he was right. We have to face losing what we love so often, and the urge to keep you out of danger is. . . overpowering, sometimes. But now I'm the danger. And the truth is, you can't really trust me, from this point on. Promise me you'll be careful of me. "

  "David--"

  "I mean it, Jo. Promise me. I love you, I adore you, and you really can't trust me right now. "

  His hand tightened on mine. Our fingers twined, and he leaned closer and fitted his lips to mine. Hot and sweet and damp, anguished and wonderful. I let go of his hand and wrapped my arms around his neck, buried my fingers in the warm living fire of his hair, and deepened the kiss. Willing him to be with me, to make this world be something it wasn't.

  He made a sound in his throat, torture and despair and arousal all at once, and his hands fitted themselves around my waist and slid me off the bed and onto his lap. My chest pressed to his, every point of contact a bonfire. Our bodies, beyond our control, moved against each other, sliding, pressing, sweet wonderful friction that reminded us what we wanted, what we needed. For the first time in months, we were both healthy, both whole, both. . .

  . . . both too aware of what this might cost us in the end.

  I don't know which of us broke the kiss, but it ended, and we pressed our foreheads together and breathed each other's air without speaking for a l
ong time, our bodies tensed and trembling, on the edge of burning.

  "You're right," I finally whispered. My lips tasted of him. "I can't trust you. I damn sure can't trust myself when I'm with you. "

  He smoothed my hair back with both hands. "Good girl. " He kissed me again, softly. "Smart girl. Remember that. "

  And then he lifted me, effortlessly, and set me on my feet. I got the impression he was about to leave, and panicked just a little. "Wait! Um. . . Seacasket. I'm not sure I can find it again. "

  "MapQuest," he said. "The modern world is full of conveniences even the Djinn can't match. "

  "Do I--?" I bit my lip, and then continued. "Do I go alone? Or am I going to have to fight my way through some kind of honor guard?"

  "Take Imara," he said. His smile turned breathtakingly sweet. "She's astonishing, isn't she? Our child? I wish you could see her the way I do, Jo, she's--a miracle. "

  Oh, I agreed. With all my heart. "I don't want to take her with me if there's going to be any danger--"

  "I have faith in you to keep her safe. "

  "David, she's two days old!"

  "What she is can't be measured in days, or years, or centuries," he said. "She'll be fine. Just--take care of yourself. You're the one I'm worried about. "

  A slow, warm pressure of his lips on mine, and then he was gone. Not a magic-sparkle slow-fade gone, but a blip, he-was-never-there gone. Except for the manic damn-I've-been-kissed-good tingle of my mouth and the racing of my pulse and general state of trembling throughout my body, I might have thought it was all another dream.

  I walked over to the mirror. I looked like hell, but my eyes were clear and shining and my lips had a ripe, bee-stung redness.

  Doesn't get much more real than that.

  He was right: I really couldn't trust him. Should never ever trust him again. But that wasn't, and never would be, my instinct, and he knew it. He was my true fatal flaw, and maybe I was his, as well. I hoped that wasn't going to end up destroying us both, and our child with us.

  If I was inclined to mope about it, I didn't have time. There was a rattle at the locked infirmary door, and Nathan, the security guard, looked in and jerked his head at me.

  "You're wanted," he said. "Move it. "

  I cast one last look at the empty chair where David had been, and followed Nathan out.

  The infirmary was relatively soundproofed, as I discovered when I went out into the hall; there was a riot outside. People yelling, screaming at each other. Tempers flaring. There were more people crammed in than there'd been before, and everybody looked stressed and confused. There were arguments raging from room to room; some idiot was yelling in the hallway that we had to uncork the Djinn still imprisoned in the vault several stories below, under the theory that we could be prepared to give them ironclad orders to protect the building and the remaining Wardens at all costs. Someone else was making the case against it, but I could tell popular sentiment was building for the supposedly simple solution.

  Paul had given up, evidently. He was sitting whey-faced in a chair in the North America conference room, eyes shut. Marion was vainly shouting for order, but since she was in a wheelchair, it was hard for her to make an impression.

  I went for the floor show.

  I levitated myself four feet up off the stained carpet, dangerously close to the ceiling, reached deep for power, and felt it respond to me with an ease and warmth I hadn't felt in. . . a very long time. Since before my battle with Bad Bob Biringanine, in fact.

  I let the power crackle around me, building up in potential energy in the air, and most of those around me noticed and backed off.

  Making light--cold light, light without heat--is the biggest trick in the book when it comes to my variety of powers. Light has heat as a natural by-product of the energy release that creates it, so I had to balance the radiation with rapid dispersal throughout a complicated matrix of atoms.

  I got brighter, and still brighter, until I was glowing like a girl-shaped chandelier, hovering in the hallway. Conversation stopped. In the brilliant white light, they all looked stark and surprised, and to a Warden they flinched when I released a pulse of energy that flared out in a circle like a strobe going off.

  I let the glow die down slowly and touched my feet back on the carpet.

  "Right," I said. "Let's quit freaking and start working, all right?"

  Nobody spoke. Dozens of faces, and they were all turned to me--young Wardens barely out of college, old gray-haired ones who'd been handling the business of earth and fire and weather for three-quarters of their long lives. They were tough, or they were damn lucky, every single one of them.

  And most important, they were what we had.

  I pointed to the Warden who'd been arguing against opening the bottles--a slender little African American guy, about thirty, with a receding hairline and bookish wire-rimmed spectacles. "What's your name?" I asked. He didn't look at all familiar.

  "Will," he said. "William Sebhatu. " "Will, I'm putting you in charge of the Djinn issue," I said. "You need to get every single Djinn bottle, empty or sealed, make an inventory, and put everything in the vault. And then you seal the vault and you make damn sure that nobody, and I mean nobody, opens up any bottles. Got it?"

  "Wait a minute!" That was Will's debating opponent, a big-boned woman with a horse face and bitter-almond eyes. "You can't just make a decision like that! Who the hell do you think you are? You're not even a Warden anymore!" I remembered her. Emily, a double threat--an Earth and Fire Warden out of Canada. She was blunt, but she was good at her job; she also had a reputation for being pushy.

  "Back off," Paul said wearily from his chair in the conference room. His voice echoed through the silence. "She's one of us. Hell, she may be the only one who knows enough to get us through the day. " He sounded defeated. I didn't care for that. I hadn't meant to take away his authority--at least, not permanently--but Paul wasn't acting like a guy who could shoulder the burden anymore. "Jo, do your stuff. "

  "Okay," I said. I turned back to the woman, who was still giving me the fish eye. "Emily, you think you can make this work because you think you're smarter than the Djinn, or faster, or more powerful. You can't. You all need to unlearn what you know about the Djinn. They're not subservient. They're not stupid. And they're not ours, not anymore. "

  The assembled Wardens were whispering to each other. Emily was staring at me. So was Will. I heard my name being passed around, in varying degrees of incredulity. I thought she was dead, someone said, just a little too loudly for comfort.

  "This is stupid," Emily finally said. "Paul, I thought she was out of the Wardens. How does she know anything?"

  "She knows because she was with the Djinn when it happened," Marion said, and rolled closer with a brisk snap of her wrists. "Right?"

  I nodded. "I saw it happen. We've lost control, and as far as I know, we've lost it for good. We need to face that and figure out how to go forward. "

  "Forward?" somebody in the crowd yelped. "You've got to be kidding. We need the Djinn!"

  "No, we don't," another person countered sharply. "I barely escaped, and only because mine got distracted. Whatever's happening, we can't risk involvement with the Djinn. "

  "Exactly," I said. "We have to rely on ourselves, and each other. Will? You up for the job?"

  He swallowed hard and nodded. "I'll get started. "

  "Get some people to help you. Draft them if you have to, and don't be afraid to use Paul's name as a big stick. " I waited for some confirmation from Paul; he waved a hand vaguely. I turned to Emily. "You're not going to give this guy any shit, right?"

  She was silent for a few seconds, looking at me, then shrugged. "Not right now. You're right. We need to stop the bleeding, and save the surgery for later. "

  I was glad Emily let me push it through, because she'd be a tough opponent. Nothing weak about her, and we needed her on our side.

  There was only
one side, right now. The side of survival. I faced a crowd of people, and everybody looked tired and harassed and worried. Not the faces of winners. They looked. . . lost.

  "All right," I said. "Everybody, listen up. We've taken some serious hits, and there's no question, things are desperate. But we are Wardens. Wardens don't run, and they don't abandon their responsibilities. There are six billion people on this planet, and we stand up for them. We need to be strong, focused, and we need to be united. No more backbiting, politics, or ambition. Understood?"

  "Oh, come on! Look around you. It's impossible," someone in the crowd complained. I fixed that area with a stare that, from the way those in its way quailed, might have been Djinn-strength.

  "I was just hanging in midair glowing like a UFO," I said. "Don't tell me about impossible. We're Wardens. "

  A ripple of laughter. Some of the tension fled from their faces, and there were a few nods.

  "I need a volunteer to handle cleanup crew," I continued. "Earth Wardens, probably, maybe a couple of Fire Wardens. Get this place back in operation. Everybody else, pick a conference room and get to work triaging the crisis information. Go. "

  And amazingly, after a scant second, Emily raised her hand and bellowed, "Right! I need two Earth and one Fire for cleanup!" and the rest of them began milling around and filtering into conference rooms.

  They were actually listening to me.

  I looked at Marion, who was sitting, hands folded in her lap. She inclined her head, very slightly. Under the bruises, she was smiling.

  I said, "Somebody had to. "

  "You have a gift for it," she countered. We both looked at Paul.

  He was gone. Sometime during my little speech, he'd walked away. I felt a little stab of regret and worry. I'd taken away Paul's authority again, maybe for good this time, and that was not only unkind, but also deeply unwise.

  "Excuse me?" someone asked from behind me. "Warden Baldwin?"

  I turned to find a petite blond woman standing there. I didn't know her, but she was different from the others in the hallway. There was no worry in her expression, and no exhaustion. Perky, which just seemed strange. There was something else, though, that sent a ripple of unease up my back that exploded in an ice-cold shudder on the back of my neck.

  The woman was just. . . wrong.

  "Jo!" Marion's warning shout came a second too late.

  The woman had a gun. Must have taken it off one of the guards. Nathan? Janet? One of the many who'd died? And now she raised it and pointed it straight at me. I froze, unbreathing. The muzzle of that damn pistol looked big enough to swallow the sun.

  And she fired.

  I felt it happening in slow motion--the hammer striking the cartridge, the blooming flare of explosion inside the metal jacket. . . I felt it. The same way I usually felt the flare of lightning bursting out of the sky, or the swirl of air and water.

  I not only felt it, but I could. . . touch it.

  It didn't take much, just a whisper, and I killed the spark before it ignited the powder in the cartridge.

  Click.

  My would-be assassin looked baffled, then angry, and pulled the trigger again, with the same results. I smiled thinly at her, reached out, and took the pistol away. While I was doing that, Nathan, the tall security guard, pelted breathlessly around the corner. I emptied the clip out of the gun--well, it always looked cool in the movies--and Nathan took it away from me the way you'd take a semiautomatic away from a teething baby.

  He also took possession of the Warden, and handcuffed her.

  She still had that same eerily calm, predatory light in her eyes, and she hadn't taken her eyes off me. I recognized that starvation in her. I'd had it eating through my own veins not so very long ago.

  I was staring at her, wondering how to go about handling this particular problem, when an arrival at the end of the hallway stole my thunder. Heads popped out of conference rooms, and whispers flew down the hall, contagious as the flu. "Lewis!"

  Well, well, well. . . Elvis was back in the building.

  Lewis Levander Orwell wasn't looking his best, but then, who was? Rough and tired, but intact except for some livid dry cuts and scrapes that looked suspiciously like road rash, as if he'd gotten dragged over asphalt. At least a three-day growth of beard. Still, much improved from the last time I'd seen him. There was a palpable sense of relief as he walked down the hall toward us, a feeling that at last, stability had arrived. Lewis had that effect. He was, without question, the most powerful living Warden, and he was the proverbial triple threat--weather, fire, and earth powers, all in one package.

  He didn't look like the big head cheese, really--tall, long arms and legs, a kind of lanky grace and an ironic smile, brown hair that badly needed a trim, a worn pair of close-fitting blue jeans and a loose flannel shirt folded up to expose the aforementioned cuts and road burns, and corded, sinewy arms. Hiking boots. Competence and authority in a handy carrying case.

  A little like Jonathan, now that I thought about it.

  He gave me a bare, welcoming nod, and took a good look at the imprisoned Warden, whose eyes had started glowing even more brightly at the sight of him.

  "Hey, Joanne. " He nodded to me. "What have we here?"

  "Guess," I sighed.

  Lewis always did have an economy of words. He reached over and yanked down the collar of her shirt.

  It was only a glimpse, but I saw it--a black tangled mass that writhed just under her skin, and then burrowed deeper, hiding from view.

  Demon Mark.

  I had an instant nauseating sense-memory of how that felt. How seductively warm it could feel. How the power of it pulsed so brightly in your veins. You felt like you could do anything with one of those, and sometimes, you really could.

  I couldn't save her. So far as I knew, there was no way to save any of them.

  "Marion," Lewis said. "Got anything in this building that will hold somebody with a Demon Mark?"

  He didn't trouble to keep his voice down, and it sent shock waves through the assembled Wardens. Demon Marks, like Free Djinn, weren't supposed to exist. Hell, even if they did exist, they were supposed to be dealt with quickly and quietly, off behind the curtains.

  "There's a secured cell two floors down," she said. "We usually augment it with Djinn guards, but--"

  "Yeah, that's not going to happen. " Lewis's eyes assessed those standing around, lightning-quick, and he pointed at Nathan and two other Wardens. "You three. Go with Marion. Get her secured. Marion, we'll talk later about what we can do for her. " He watched as the parade organized itself, then put his lips close to my ear and said, "Come with me. We need to talk. Privately. "

  I stepped back and nodded, then led him around wreckage and repairs and down around the corner, to an office that had remained mostly intact. There was a junior-level Warden working on forecast maps. I evicted her with a significant nod of my head, and closed the door behind her, then turned to face Lewis.

  "Senior management?" he asked.

  "Mostly dead," I said. "Paul's on the walking wounded list; Marion isn't even that good. Morale's in the toilet, of course. I haven't seen any other faces I recognize from the higher ranks. " I stopped and looked straight into his eyes. "We're in big-ass trouble, Lewis. "

  "No kidding. " He leaned against the desk and folded his arms, looking down. Hiding whatever he was thinking. "You know about Jonathan?"

  "Imara and David say he's dead. "

  "Imara?" Lewis looked up, curious.

  "Ah--long story. Short version, she's my daughter. Mine and David's. "

  His lips parted, and his eyes widened, and I had the rare pleasure of seeing Lewis Orwell rendered. . . speechless. For a moment, anyway. "That's--surprising," he said, finally. "Congratulations. Where is she?"

  "Safe, I hope. Away from here, anyway; the Wardens were a little trigger-happy, and even if it isn't too likely they could hurt her, I didn
't really want to put it to the test. She's--" Precious. Special. Unique. Strange. Amazing. "She's my kid. Okay, she looks like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, but. . . "

  He blinked. "I thought you said she was a kid?"

  "Don't ask me how Djinn biology works. First she's a gleam in her father's eye; then she's borrowing my clothes. "

  He made a low-throated sound of amusement. "So in other words, it's been a busy couple of days. "

  I gestured around at the wreckage in the office, piled like driftwood in the corners. By extension, at the chaos swirling around in the world. "You could say. " "Come here. "

  I frowned, but took a step closer. He reached out and took my hand, then pulled me into a body-to-body hug. I relaxed against him, letting the comfort of his warmth sink deep. He needed a shower. Hell, so did I. We were well beyond little things like that. After a few seconds, I felt the surge of power building between us. . . a cell-deep vibration, like calling to like. We had harmonics, we always did have, and the one time we'd allowed it to build out of control, we'd called up storms and shattered windows.

  It built so fast, it was breathtaking. Glass and steel rattled around us. I took control of myself and stepped back, breaking the circuit. I glimpsed something wild and a little desperate in Lewis's eyes, quickly covered.

  "Did you feel that?" he asked. "Looks like we're getting stronger. "

  "Just the two of us?"

  "No idea, I'm afraid; I could feel it happening to me, but I've always been kind of the far end of the curve. " That wasn't ego, just fact. "Still, nothing's what it was yesterday. Not the Djinn, and not us. Maybe in breaking the contract, Jonathan reset some kind of equilibrium. Maybe the Wardens were originally a lot stronger on their own. It could be that we've been bleeding off some of our own power to feed the Djinn. "

  Interesting notion. "So maybe we don't need the Djinn after all, if this keeps up. "

  "Oh, I wouldn't go that far. " He was still watching me. Warm brown eyes, always fired with a little bit of amusement. "It's also possible that maybe you and I are a little more connected to the source. "

  "Meaning?"

  He stretched out a palm, and a tiny flame flickered into life, lemon-pale and growing redder as I watched.

  Redder and larger. Lewis wasn't watching this minor miracle; he was watching me, still with that sly bit of amusement lighting his eyes.

  And then he pitched the softball-size ball of fire straight at me. Not a girly pitch, either. He put some English behind it.

  I yelped, ducked, and felt the heat singe my hair as the fireball streaked past me. It hit the wall, bounced, landed in a pile of scattered papers, and ignited.

  "Shit! What the hell are you doing?" I yelled, and without even thinking about it, felt blindly for the structure of the fire. Delicate as glass, strong as steel, but fragile.

  I put it out. Not even a wisp of smoke to show it ever existed.

  I rounded on Lewis, shocked and furious; he had his arms crossed, leaning back against the desk, and he was. . . grinning.

  "What the hell was that?" I demanded.

  For answer, he extended his hand again and called another tongue of flame. "Put it out," he said.

  "You put it out! This is a nonsmoking building!" "You're missing my point. "

  "No, I'm not! You're trying to make me--" I stuttered to a stop, because I realized what he was trying to do. Or, more accurately, trying to demonstrate. Hey, I never said I wasn't a little thick. "Oh. "

  I extended my hand, cupped it over his, and felt the fire's warmth spill over me. Fire is a kind of fluid, when all is said and done: plasma dynamics. It flowed over my skin, persistent and gentle, and when I opened my palm, it was burning there. A steady tongue of flame like a pilot light, red and gold and blue.

  I closed my fist around it and put it out, then opened my fingers again and called fire.

  It came without even a hesitation, a flutter and a sense of pleasant warmth on my skin. I stared at it, fascinated, letting it drip from one finger to another, then rolling it back up to my palm.

  "See?" he asked. He sounded smug about it. "You're Water and Fire. Interesting combination. Pretty rare, too, there's been, what? Six or seven in recent history?"

  I looked up at him. "But I never had any power over fire. Never. They tested me. "

  "Was that before you died and got yourself reborn?"

  I'd died in a fire, and David had brought me back, as a Djinn. Then Patrick and his lover Sara had given their immortal lives to make me human again, and in his youth, Patrick had been. . . a Fire Warden.

  I could feel it coursing through me now, a kind of awareness that I'd never noticed before--a sense of the electricity inside the walls, like bright glittering lines. Of static hovering like glitter in the air. Of the aura surrounding Lewis himself, glorious as a rainbow.

  I blinked, and it was gone. Good. I wasn't sure I wanted to live in a world that distracting full-time. "But--why now? I didn't feel this before--?"

  "Maybe it took some time to build the power channels. " He said. "Or maybe something else has shifted. Hell, Jo, you just gave birth to a Djinn. Who knows what's changed inside you?"

  Queasy thought. "Um, one little problem. I don't have any formal instruction for fire powers. "

  "Consider it on-the-job training. And don't get cocky. You still need a third black belt to land yourself a shot at my title. "

  I laughed, and in the next blink, the glitter was back in the world. I stared, mesmerized by his glow, by the revealed glory of the world around me. Beautiful and complex as a machine made of crystal. Was this how Fire Wardens saw everything? No wonder they always looked spaced out. . .

  "Jo," he said, and drew my eyes back into focus. "We're running out of time. "

  I sobered up quickly. "We are," I agreed. "Not to mention manpower. We've lost who-knows-how-many Wardens, and effectively all the Djinn. I hope you're right that we're getting stronger, because we need it--"

  "Damn straight," said a weary voice from the doorway. I turned to see Paul standing there. He walked in and slumped with a sigh in the nearest unsplintered chair, visibly gathering strength to speak. Dirty pale. "Lewis. "

  Lewis nodded silently, clearly worried at Paul's state. "Do you want me to--?" Paul waved it aside irritably. "I'll live, and you've got better things to do with your power than heal my boo-boos. Listen, kids, we need to decide some things. "

  Lewis glanced at me, then at Paul. "Maybe this isn't the best time. "

  "It's the only time," Paul sighed.

  "You need rest--"

  "No. I need to retire," Paul said bluntly. "The thing is, I can't handle this anymore. It's out of control, and I'm not the guy for the job. I couldn't get their attention out there earlier, Jo, and you know it. You did. "

  "Not me," I replied, and held up my hands to push the implied offer back his direction. "I can't stay. David gave me some ideas on how we might be able to solve this without a lot of further bloodshed, but I need to do it alone. "

  "Yeah? How do you know you can trust him?" Paul demanded.

  I met his eyes and held them. "I know. And I have a plan, which is more than anybody else has right now. " Well, more or less. At least, I had a place to start. Didn't seem to be the moment to worry him with details, frankly.

  Paul sighed and turned his gaze to Lewis, who straightened up fast. "Oh, no," Lewis said. "I'm not going to take command. That's your job. "

  "Hell, kid, I inherited the damn job, and I never wanted it in the first place. I'm a field guy. Now I'm a field guy treading water. I want you to take it, Lewis. I need you to take it. You're the one guy everybody trusts around here, because you're the one guy who walked away from all this rather than play the games. "

  "He's right," I said quietly. "It should be you. " I bit my lip, because it felt like being a traitor to say so--a traitor to Paul, who deserved my support even if he didn't want it, and a traitor to Lewi
s, who patently didn't want the responsibility. Especially not now. "This is what you were born to do, Lewis. We all knew it, right from the start. And--there might be something else. "

  "What?" That had both of them looking at me. Paul looked as if he really couldn't stand another dangerous surprise.

  "David once told me that Jonathan used to be like you, Lewis. He had all three powers. And in some way, he was more. . . connected. To the Earth. So maybe you can work on that angle. "

  Paul nodded. "The sooner the better. If the Earth wakes up, takes a good hard look at what we've been doing to her this last ten thousand years without anybody to do some explaining, there won't be enough left of us to form a decent fossil record. "

  "Who says she won't like us?" Lewis murmured.

  Paul raised his eyebrows. "Do you like us?"

  "Some of us are pretty winsome. " I could have sworn Lewis looked toward me, under those long lashes.

  "Wow, thanks for the compliment," I shot back, largely sarcastically. He gave me a look that meant he was getting a particularly interesting mental picture, probably nothing suitable for public consumption. He shook it off with a rueful smile. "Where are you going?" Lewis asked, back on track again.

  "Seacasket. "

  "Where the fuck is Seacasket?" Paul cut in, eyes closed. "Sounds depressing. "

  "It was someplace I was sent when I was a Djinn. "

  "When Yvette and Kevin had you?" That had caught Lewis off guard. "That business with Yvette wasn't my finest hour, sorry. I got a little distracted--"

  "Distracted?" I let out a laugh that really wasn't much amused. "The way I remember it, you were pretty focused, Lewis. Somewhere south of your belt buckle. "

  "Yeah, thanks for the memories. " He had the grace to look embarrassed. "Anyway, I was pretty much out of commission for most of that. You want to tell us about Seacasket?"

  Not really. I sat and crossed my legs, then my arms. Defensive body language. Remembering Yvette gave me a seriously sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, because I couldn't think about her slinky, skanky sexiness without also remembering how she'd looked at the end, when Jonathan had remorselessly carried out her stepson's orders and crushed her skull.

  "Okay. " I sucked in a deep breath. "Kevin, Yvette's stepson, was my master while I was a Djinn. She didn't want me. She wanted David. She had a whole kinky-sex-and-bondage thing going for him. "

  "And?"

  "And what?"

  "Seacasket," Lewis prompted.

  Oh, I so didn't want to remember. "She wanted David, and he wasn't showing up for her to claim the way she'd intended. She figured the way to get him was. . . to make him come and stop me from doing something terrible. "

  "In Seacasket. "

  I nodded. "It's a little town in Maine. I didn't know why she picked it, I only knew that she had every reason to believe that David would show up to defend it. It was a trap. For him. So she could. . . " I couldn't go on. I didn't want to remember that part, didn't want to think about her getting her hands on David and doing the things she did. Lewis looked away again, as if what was on my face was too private to witness.

  I'm okay with what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms, and David's not my property (in any sense anymore), but dammit, David hadn't been a willing participant, then or ever. He'd hated it. Loathed it. And she'd taken great pleasure in the rape of his will, not to mention his body. I could never stop hating her for that. Never.

  "I remember something Jonathan said once," Lewis said contemplatively. Jonathan wouldn't even give the time of day to most humans, but Lewis was no doubt on Djinn speed dial. . . "There are other things out there. Things even the Djinn are afraid of. "

  Paul was watching us the way you'd watch a tennis match, and there was a bit of a spark in his eyes again. Not quite out of the game yet. "There's something in the Warden records," he said. "Early writings. Nobody thought the translation was correct. There was a reference to some kind of higher form of Djinn. Nobody's ever found any trace of one, though. "

  "Think that's what Jonathan was talking about?" I asked Lewis. He shrugged.

  "Don't know. I think you're right. You've got the best shot of anyone, especially if David's at least trying to help you. " He paused to look at Paul inquiringly--a formal gesture, and a kind one.

  Paul nodded. "You do work best out there, kiddo. Go do your stuff. I'll stick with Lewis, help manage things here. And Jo?"

  I looked up at him, and was caught by the intent focus of his eyes.

  "I don't care how into him you are, you be careful of this Djinn of yours," Paul said. "Don't trust him. "

  "Funny," I said, and opened the office door to leave. "He said pretty much the same thing himself. "

  The last time I'd seen Lewis, back in Florida, he hadn't been alone, and so it didn't come as that much of a surprise to run into his traveling companion out in the hallway.

  Kevin Prentiss had started out a dangerous, disaffected kid with a grudge and a rogue Djinn, and had ended up a surprisingly solid citizen, at least so long as Lewis exerted a good influence on him. Lewis had appointed himself Kevin's guardian and mentor. I wasn't too shocked by that, either; he'd always been the kind to take on wounded birds and outlaws. But it was still a pretty brave thing to do, considering that Kevin's last official guardian had ended up really, really dead, and Kevin hadn't been all that sorry about it, either.

  Not that I could blame Kevin. I couldn't even begin to imagine what kind of terrible life the kid--seventeen, maybe?--had had with the psychopathic Yvette before David and I had come along to receive a short, radioactive burst of that horror.

  Still, the first thing I thought when I saw Kevin was that I'd never seen him smiling before, at least not like that. It was a full, charming, sweet kind of smile, one that lit up his eyes and changed his normally surly expression into something that would melt the heart of any teen angel. Oh, he still looked slacker-chic, all longish tangled hair and sallow skin and slouching body language.

  But that smile.

  One instant later, the smile made sense, because Cherise was with him.

  She looked freshly scrubbed, and she was restored to her usual glossy perfection--hair artlessly tousled (but perfectly ordered), makeup flawless. She wore a tight little top that showed off a tanned midriff, and low-rise jeans that were so low, she ought to be handing out referrals to her bikini waxer. A real pocket-size bombshell, from her head to her newly enameled toenails.

  Kevin was--of course--enthralled. Cherise didn't seem to mind that, but frankly, I didn't understand why. Kevin was a bad boy, just not in the generally accepted attractive way. He was trouble in faded baggy jeans, with slouched shoulders and an attitude that sneered in the face of authority. Okay, so that was exactly what most girls Cherise's age--younger than mine, okay?--found sexy. But still. Kevin? Cherise could have literally any guy she wanted. I was perplexed by her sudden turnaround on the issue of quality date material.

  And then I thought, She wanted to get back in the door. Being with Kevin did the job nicely, because he wasn't accustomed to taking no for an answer, and besides, he had the long arm of Lewis to back him up.

  Lord, I hoped she wasn't quite that manipulative, to come on to a guy just to get an invitation back in through the front door, but I wouldn't put it past her. . .

  Or myself, come to think of it.

  "Hello, Kevin," I said with a reasonable degree of welcome in my voice. The sweetly angelic smile twisted in on itself.

  "Hey," Kevin mumbled at the floor. "Seen Lewis around?"

  "Yeah, he's in there. He'll be out in a minute. " I couldn't bring myself to the point of small talk. I mean, I appreciated that Kevin was a complete and total jerk sometimes, but it was hard to get over having been his Djinn. Even that, I could have gotten over, if it hadn't been for the stupid French maid outfits he'd forced me to wear, the better to ogle me by.

  He must have taken my silen
ce for accusation, and looked up to glare. "Lewis brought me. I didn't just show up or anything. "

  "I'm glad he did. We need you here," I said. I meant it. Kevin had a pretty impressive talent, when he wasn't trying to be a jerk about it, and we couldn't afford to be choosing only the nice people with good personalities.

  Lewis, who'd come up behind me, nodded. I could see his face out of the corner of my eye. He was standing just a little too close, and I could feel the feedback burn of our powers responding. He didn't move away. "Kev, they could use you in the last conference room. They're talking about fire control. You can help. " He looked at Cherise, glanced over to me. "And--you can--?"

  "Cater," she said brightly. "Gotta feed all these people. Bottled water, coffee, sodas, ice--I'm hell on wheels with logistics. Um, as long as somebody has a credit card to use. Any volunteers? I'm looking for something with a platinum limit. . . "

  "Cherise," I said, and reached out to take her hand. "You really don't need to be here. You should go home. I mean it. Everything's okay. "

  She studied me for a long few seconds. "I never knew you were so good a liar," she said. "Everything's not okay. Kevin told me. I saw a lot of it for myself anyway. Things are all screwed up, and you people are the ones who can set them right again. I want to help. "

  "You're not--look, this isn't about you. It's just that you don't have the kind of skills that this needs to--"

  "Give me a credit card and phone line, I'll show you some skills. Step off my thing. " She stared me right down, turned to Lewis, and gave him the same treatment. "Wow, you guys just don't get it, do you? This isn't your planet. It's our planet. And you may be all kick-ass powerful superheroes, but that doesn't mean you don't need our help. Well, my help, anyway. Because I am the goddess of getting food delivered, and don't you forget it. "

  Lewis quirked an eyebrow and half a smile, and looked at me. I shrugged. "Girl's got a point," I said. "Maybe we need somebody with a little. . . practical perspective. "

  Kevin shot Cherise a thumbs-up. "Hey, let me know when you get the munchies ready. I could eat. "

  She made a shooing motion. Kevin ambled off in the direction Lewis had indicated. . . slowly enough to assert his independence, of course. He really was a gifted kid. I couldn't exactly call him a good kid. Maybe he'd turn out all right--he certainly had been given the chances. But I couldn't quite get the memories out of my head of what he'd been like when he'd had power over me. What he'd been like when he'd had power over his stepmother.

  He'd liked using it. Dangerous, for a Warden.

  I nudged Lewis with an elbow once Kevin was out of earshot. "You're keeping tabs on Teen Psycho, right?"

  "He's not that bad. "

  "Lewis. . . "

  "Yes, I'm keeping tabs on him. " He sounded resigned. "Somebody needs to. Listen, I hate to rush you, but I can handle things here. What do you need?"

  "Need?. . . "

  "To make it to Seacasket and check things out. " He gave me that not-smile smile. "Fast car?"

  "Oh, you think? Maybe I can borrow Cherise's. She's got a cherry Mustang that pretty much rips up the road. . . Well, it used to be cherry. I think the last drive put a few dents in it. "

  "No need to do that," he said, and dug in the pocket of his blue jeans for a set of keys that he flung my direction. I caught them out of the air.

  "This better not be an SUV," I warned. Because Lewis had an affinity for that sort of thing. I was an onroad kind of girl.

  He flashed me a full grin this time. "How about a vintage SS Camaro? Midnight blue and black? I bought it in Jersey just for you. Somehow, I just knew you were going to need wheels. "

  My heart skipped a beat.