Windfall

Chapter Eight

No surprise: I woke up feeling like I’d had the hell beaten out of me by the Jolly Green Giant. Definitely not one of my better mornings. I tried to get out of bed, ended up more or less leaning on the wall, staring down at my naked body. I’d washed away the dump stains, but the bruises were pretty spectacular.

Couldn’t see the really painful one, which was in the small of my back; I shuffled into the bathroom, dragged messy hair out of my eyes, and used an awkwardly angled hand mirror to take an appraisal of the damage. It didn’t look as bad as it felt, but then, it felt awful. The bruise was black and blue, the size of a fist. Swollen, too. Ow.

I took another shower, because what the hell… massaging showerhead… and dried my hair into a more or less glorious shower of curls that didn’t frizz too much, and put on makeup. Why? Hell if I know, except that the worse I feel, the better I want to look. After applying all the disguise, I put on a light bra and a kickin’ peau de soie blouse, and contemplated my choices for things that wouldn’t press agonizingly against the bruise on my back. The low-rise panties and blue jeans seemed the only possible choice, other than walking around half-naked…

I flipped on the sleek little flat-screen TV that had come with my new bedroom suite, a luxury I’d never even considered before, and tuned to WXTV. Just to see.

They were finishing up the news portion of the morning show and moving to the weather. They had a new Weather Girl, I saw immediately, and hey, I felt just a little bit bitter about it for a second, because she was stunningly pretty and had a lovely smile and was well dressed in a blue jacket and silk blouse and tailored slacks, and what the hell?

The anchors were laughing. She was forecasting a storm for later today.

The camera pulled back, and back…

… and there was Marvin. Squeezed into a foam rubber cloud suit, with little silver drops hanging off of him, sweating like a pig and glaring like a pit bull. Red with fury.

“Sorry,” the new Weather Girl said, “but you out there know that Marvin always puts his integrity first, and today, he’s paying off a bet to Joanne, our former meteorological assistant. Love the outfit, Marv. So what’s today going to be like out there?”

“Cloudy,” he snapped. “Severe storms. And—”

Water. Lots of it. Dumped from way up high. He gasped, jumped, and they cut his mike before he got more than the first syllable of the curse out, but the camera itself was shaking from the force of the laughter on the set.

Son of a bitch.

It was probably evil of me to feel so good about watching him dance around dripping and cursing, but, well… I was at peace with it.

I was feeling almost happy when I walked out into the living room, heading for the kitchen. It was still dark outside—cloudy, with muttering and lightning continuing over the ocean—so I didn’t immediately see my sister’s new boyfriend until he flicked on the light next to the couch.

He was sitting on one end, sprawled gracefully, head leaning back against the thick leather tufted back. Sarah was curled on her side with her head resting on his thigh. She was wrapped in a thick terrycloth robe that gaped at the top, showing the inside slopes of her breasts. She looked exhausted and vulnerable, and he looked down at her with a careful expression, and touched her very gently. Fingertips tracing her cheek.

I knew that touch. That was the way David touched me.

That was regret, and love.

She didn’t move, even with the light blazing down, and continued to breathe deeply and steadily. Deeply asleep. Eamon’s long, elegant fingers threaded through her frosted hair and stroked the curve of her head in long, soothing motions, as if he couldn’t bear to stop touching her.

I wondered for a second if he even knew I was there, and then he said, “Good morning.” He looked up. “Did you enjoy the new bed?”

“Yeah.” I paused, watching him, trying to figure out how they’d ended up on the couch like this when Sarah should have gone straight to her room, tired as she was. Also, when and how Eamon had found his way into the apartment. Sarah had probably given him a key already. She was like that. “Did you guys sleep out here?”

“I haven’t slept at all,” he said, and it struck me that he was speaking in a normal tone of voice, not keeping his voice down. That was odd.

Then he shifted a little, and Sarah’s head rolled off his leg, limp as a rag doll.

Too limp. Her eyelids didn’t even flutter.

“Sarah?” I asked. No reaction. “Oh my God, what’s wrong with her?”

Eamon didn’t answer. He readjusted her to put her head back in his lap, stroking her hair, the curve of her face. A lover’s slow, steady touch.

I could not understand what I was seeing in his expression. “Eamon? Is there something wrong with her?”

“No,” he said. “Nothing that won’t wear off in a few hours. She may have a few side effects; most likely some mild nausea and a dull headache.” His eyes remained fixed on me.

I couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t honestly fathom it. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I injected your sister with a drug—nothing too addictive, don’t worry—and I put her to sleep for a while.” His tone was changing, moving away from the kind, slow, gentle cadence I was used to and toward something more clipped and cold. Not the eyes, though. Or the caresses of Sarah’s skin. Those stayed gentle. “Don’t fuss, Joanne, it’s not the first time. I like my women a little less talkative and more compliant, in general. Sarah thought it was a bit strange, too, when I asked, but she’s willing to try new things. I find that truly sexy, don’t you? She’s exceptional, your sister.”

I took a step toward him, bruises forgotten. I was going to kill this son of a bitch.

His hand instantly slid from stroking her hair to fasten around the pale white column of her throat. “I wouldn’t,” he said. Now there was a feverish hint of cruelty in his face. “It only takes about one second to crush a trachea. I’d rather not do it. I honestly do like her. So relax. Let’s be friends. We’ve been friends up till now; there’s no reason we can’t go on being civil to one another.”

I knew nothing about crushing tracheas, except that it would kill her and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I froze where I was. His hands, although long and soft and elegant, also looked strong and very capable.

And the expression in his eyes was deadly serious now.

“Go on,” he invited. “I know you want to ask questions. I’ll oblige.”

“Fine. What do you want, Eamon? If that’s even your name.”

“It is, actually.” He didn’t move his hand from her throat, but he let it relax a little. His fingertips trailed over her skin in a random, soothing pattern. I wasn’t sure he even knew he was doing it. “I didn’t lie about that, although of course the last name isn’t the one on my passport. Then again, the one on my passport may not be right, either. You follow?”

“You’re a criminal.”

“Good girl. I’m a criminal. I’m a bad, evil man, and I came here for one reason. Not your sister, although I have to say that I’d never have imagined meeting someone so… lovely. It’s quite a benefit.” Those fingers strayed, curving over the skin revealed by the parted terrycloth robe. I shivered all over with the urge to kill him really, really dead, but those eyes were constantly focused on me, assessing. Too careful. “I came here for you, Joanne.”

“Get your hands off her.”

“I don’t think I can.” His smile was gentle and sad, a little-boy smile begging to be understood and forgiven, no matter what he did. Women probably forgave him anything. Gave him everything. Even now, sitting there staring at me, I couldn’t wrap my head around the unmistakable fact that he was a very, very bad man, because very, very bad men don’t have such a soothing, gentle touch, do they?

Sarah loved him. Oh, God, Sarah loved him. That turned my stomach.

I must have let my revulsion show, because he lost the smile, and his eyes turned colder. “Are you afraid I’ll molest her in front of you?”

“You are molesting her in front of me, asshole!”

“No.” There was now no trace at all of warmth in his tone, and even his hands had gone still. “Not yet. Why, do you want me to? You’ll have to ask nicely, in that case.”

“Keep your fucking hands off my sister!”

He lost that last tinge of humor, and without it, Eamon was something very different indeed. Very cold and focused and scary. “Don’t tell me what to do, petal. I don’t care for it. And every time you do it, I’m going to leave a mark on Sarah, to remind you.”

He pinched her inner thigh in a sudden, vicious movement. She didn’t move, didn’t react, but it was shocking enough that I flinched and involuntarily took another step toward him. His hand moved back to her throat and squeezed in unmistakable warning.

I stopped. Neither one of us made a sound.

The place he’d pinched her flushed a bright, angry red. He’d really hurt her; that hadn’t been just show. Son of a bitch…

“Do we understand each other?” he asked. “I’m only using my hands. I do have other methods.”

I was a Warden, dammit. I could command storms and call lightning. I shouldn’t have been helpless.

I rubbed my fingertips together and concentrated. Got a crackle of power, maybe enough to administer a good sharp shock… but not enough to knock him out from a distance. I didn’t have enough power to manipulate the air, either. What I had might be good enough for one shot, but I had to make it count, and Eamon’s hand was one motion away from killing my sister.

“I’m listening,” I said. “Just tell me what you want.”

He nodded and relaxed a bit again. “My business associate—I think you’re acquainted with him, Thomas Quinn, sometimes known as Orry—was in the midst of a transaction when he—disappeared. He’d acquired several dozen bottles of a unique nature, which disappeared along with him. I understand that you might have been there to see what happened to them.”

“Who told you that?”

“Quinn’s detective partner. Detective Rodriguez? I believe you know him as well, as he’s spent several days down there in your parking lot spying on you. I had to go ask him some questions yesterday. He really wasn’t forthcoming, until I got out the knife. You won’t make me get out the knife, will you, love? The furniture’s new. I’d hate to bloody it.” I was watching Eamon’s personality change right before my eyes, and it was completely terrifying.

The worst part? The look in his eyes. He still, even now, looked as if he were genuinely sorry he had to do this.

But nowhere near sorry enough to stop.

I backed up and sank into a chair, unable to stand any more; my knees were shaking, and my back was on fire. Son of a bitch. There were two possibilities to what he’d just said, neither of them good: one, I’d totally misread Rodriguez and he’d been in this from the beginning with Eamon; or two, Eamon had somehow gotten the drop on him yesterday and Rodriguez was…

“Is he dead?” I asked.

Eamon put his right hand—the one he wasn’t using on my sister’s throat—palm up.

“No idea, really. By the time he decides to recover enough to talk, if he can, I’ll be long gone, so I can’t see that it really matters. Of course, you’ll be the person who was last seen having words with him. That might be a problem for you, seeing as he’s some sort of policeman. The plods do not like one of their own being maimed, in my experience. They might not ask too many questions. Might even get a bit overzealous when they come to take you in, as well.” He glanced down at the mark on Sarah’s thigh. “You fair-skinned girls bruise so easily.”

I didn’t take the bait. He raised his eyebrows and sank even lower against the leather couch. I remembered all his gentleness, his smiles, his courtesy. I wondered which Eamon was real, or if it all was… maybe he was capable of all of this, from passion and friendship to cold-blooded menace, all of it real.

Maybe the regard he felt for Sarah was real. Even now, the way he touched her was… odd. Gentle. As if he could force himself to be cruel, but it wasn’t his first choice.

My mouth was so dry. I tried to swallow and deliberately unclenched my fists.

“All right,” I said, trying to keep it calm and even. “What exactly is it you want?”

“I want the bottles,” he said. “I want them back. It’s not personal, love, it’s business. My client paid Quinn a great fucking pile of money for them, and he’s none too happy about seeing neither merchandise nor refund. And as I have no refund for him…”

“Eamon, there are no bottles. Quinn’s SUV exploded in the desert. The bottles were inside. They were destroyed.”

“So the Djinn were set free,” he said quietly. “Correct?”

I deliberately played stupid. “Gin? You’re threatening to kill my sister over bottles of martini juice?”

That got a genuine, charming smile. “I knew I liked you, love, you’re quick. Nice try, but I’m afraid I’ve known about the Djinn for a long time now. Magic, bottles, controlling the weather… does it sound familiar? Because Quinn was very informative on the subject. He was positively obsessed.”

“Quinn was insane.”

“Well, yes, I’d have thought so, too, until I met a few more of your friends. Like, for instance, your friend Ella, you remember her. You were talking with her earlier today before that messy business at the office building. I took her back to her house for a chat. Reminds me of my mum, Ella—not very bright, and likes money, though I’m not sure she’d do street trade for it, so perhaps she’s not that much like Mum at all.” He rolled his head slightly to one side and let his eyelids drop to half mast, watching me. I wasn’t fool enough to think he’d let down his guard. “Ella really can control the weather. I’ve seen it. So don’t try to give me any bollocks about it not working. She’s done a nice job of it for your weatherman boss these past couple of years, she told me. And she’s made some tidy sums off of it. I believe her on that score. She tried to give me some of it to leave her alone.”

I’d wondered what had happened to Ella during the chaos at the offices. She’d just… vanished. Eamon was the answer. Eamon had followed me. Eamon had grabbed her and hustled her off without anyone noticing, in the chaos.

“Is she still alive?” I asked.

“Repetitive question. Same answer.” His eyes were taking on an almost metallic shine. “Amusing as all this is, I’m running out of patience, love. So let’s get back to the subject.”

“I told you, I don’t have the ones Quinn stole.”

“Oh, yes, I understand that. Those are gone, never to return. I hope you understand; this gentleman Quinn took money from, this lovely gentleman in South America with whom he had a preexisting drug business, he won’t be very happy with that. But that’s really not my affair, as I was fortunately a very quiet partner, and the South American gentleman doesn’t know my name any more than you do. But if he locates me, I’m afraid I’ll have to tell him exactly what yours is.”

“I—” I hated to admit anything to him. “I don’t understand. What the hell do you want?”

“Well, I came here to recover property for my client,” he said, as if it was a normal business arrangement and he was more than a little surprised that I wasn’t following. “There’s no property to be recovered—and I do believe you about that, by the way—but I still have expenses. You can, in fact, be rid of me very cheaply. All I’m asking for is my commission.” He paused and looked down at my sister’s slack, unconscious face. Ran a contemplative thumb over her parted lips and tilted his head, considering her. Enraptured. When his voice came again, it had lost its briskness and sounded more like the old Eamon, slow and warm. “All I want is one. Even trade, one sister for one Djinn.”

I felt my breath lock up tight in my chest, but managed to loosen enough to get the words out. They sounded tight and furious. “You’re deluded. That’s one Djinn more than I have to give you, you asshole.”

For answer, he picked up the remote control from the coffee table and flicked on the big-screen plasma TV on the wall. I turned to look at it. CNNfn was playing, giving a report on falling stocks; he pressed buttons, and a recording began to play. It was at an odd angle, but the focus was sharp enough.

It was my bedroom. My old bedroom. As I watched, the door banged open and I came backing into the room, David with me, both of us feverishly touching each other, devouring each other…

“Stop it,” I whispered.

My on-screen image fell backward onto the bed. David stood looking down at her, and he looked inhuman, beautiful and unsettling, and incredibly…

“Stop it!”

Eamon hit PAUSE. “As pornography goes, it isn’t bad,” he said. “Although personally I prefer my women a little less vocal, as you know. I’ve had your apartment bugged for weeks, love. I had to get to know you before I got to know you, if you follow me. Your sister’s arrival was a complication, but I was able to… improvise.”

I was so angry I was seeing red spots, and had to breathe hard to try to keep from leaping out of the chair and throttling the man dead. He must have known it. He clicked the power off and dropped the remote back to the coffee table.

“You’ve got a Djinn,” he said. “Obviously. And although I hate to break up a grand love affair, well, sorry, but maybe you can have him back when I’m done with him.”

“No. I can’t. I don’t have him.”

“Lying to me will cost your sister another injury, love. I know you have him. I’m not being unreasonable about this, but I’m not going to be lied to.” He put those fingers on the creamy-pale skin of the swell of Sarah’s breast that was exposed in the gap of her robe. “You know I’m not bluffing.”

“I don’t have him! Look, Sarah and I spent last night at the dump, all right? We were looking for David’s bottle, his Djinn bottle! She threw it out during the—the—the big makeover! The one you helped her with!” I gestured compulsively around at the designer’s showroom of an apartment.

He stared at me for a second, astonished, and then laughed. Really laughed, a genuinely amused guffaw. He moved his hand away from Sarah’s throat to stroke her hair, then grabbed it and wrenched her head back to a dangerous angle.

I came up out of the chair. “Leave her alone!”

“Or?” Eamon didn’t even look at me. He no longer seemed amused, or casual. There was something dark and tense in him now, and I could see a compulsively cruel streak in him that was very unsettling. He liked doing this to her. Almost couldn’t resist it. It’s hardly the first time… I wondered what he’d done to her at night, when she’d been lying in that bed with him, zoned out on whatever drug he’d given her. Oh dear God. I had to stop this.

“Stop it or I’ll kill you,” I said. I meant it.

He looked up then, the nightmare still in his avid eyes, the hungry set of his lips. “I live on borrowed time with a very scary set of characters as company. Threats from you are like being threatened by a sprog on the playground, love. But do go on. It’s amusing.”

I changed tacks. “Is that why you want to get a Djinn? To save your skin? Make you invincible?”

He was thinking over what I’d said, clicking it over in his brain. It was easy to see that he was brilliant. His transparency was part of what made him so damn frightening. “Invincibility,” he said. “No. Although that would be nice, wouldn’t it, invincibility? But I can take care of myself, always have. Not interested, really.”

“Why do you need a Djinn, then?”

“For someone else.”

“You don’t strike me as the type who thinks of others.”

I got a hot flash of temper, the first I’d really seen. “I haven’t struck you at all, pet. But if you insult me, I may have to take my fit of pique out on someone more ready to hand. Here’s what I want from you, and it’s not negotiable: be a good little bitch and go out and find me a Djinn. Any Djinn. I don’t care what it looks like, because unlike you I won’t be fucking it.”

“I’m not leaving you here with Sarah!”

The flare of temper I’d spotted was nothing compared to the full-throated roar that erupted out of him. “I’m not giving you a bloody choice!” He took Sarah’s limp left arm, skimmed the sleeve back, and held her forearm in both hands.

Prepared to snap it.

His eyes dared me to test him.

I swallowed hard and said, “If you hurt her, you have no idea how much I’ll make you suffer before you die.”

“You’re repeating yourself, and as there’s only one of the three of us who’s sustained any injury at all, you might think hard about the trend.” He tightened his hold on her fragile, limp arm. “You have exactly two hours before I start breaking things, working up from the bottom. If I go slowly enough, she’ll wake up before I’m finished. Oh, and love, just in case you have any brilliant ideas about calling the police, I’m taking her with me. I’ll call and tell you where to meet me with the Djinn. One life for another. I’m not unreasonable, but I am very, very determined.”

I stood, tense and agonized, as he rose and effortlessly lifted Sarah’s limp body in his arms. It was a parody of a romantic picture, her hair tousled, her head cradled against his chest. Arm draped loosely around his neck. I remembered seeing them asleep in bed together, curled into each others’ warmth.

It made me sick.

“If you try to stop me leaving, I’ll toss her down the stairs,” he said, and walked to the door. “I can assure you she’ll break her neck at the very least. Maybe if you’re lucky she’ll only be paralyzed and you can be changing her bedpans and apologizing to her the rest of your life.”

I swallowed and somehow managed to get myself to stand still. He looked back on his way out, warning clear in his eyes.

“Two hours, Joanne. No excuses.”

I let him go. Partly, I just didn’t see a way to stop him without risking Sarah’s life; partly, I was just too stunned to cope. It was too much. Just … too much.

I slid back the patio door and walked out into the cool predawn breeze.

Cotton-thick clouds formed a black shield and blotted out every evidence of approaching morning. It was as dark as midnight out here.

The security lights in the parking lot showed Eamon walking calmly to his car.

Sarah looked fragile and small and vulnerable in his arms. He put her in the passenger seat, strapped her in with no evidence of anything but gentleness, and shut the door. He even hesitated to be sure her robe was inside the car first.

He looked up at me for a moment, with no expression that I could read, and then got in and drove away.

I wanted a Djinn, all right.

And when I got my hands on one, Eamon was going to understand just how dangerous screwing with me could be.

I wouldn’t have followed him even if I’d had the skills, mainly because there was no way he wouldn’t notice the great white whale of the minivan trailing him through early-morning traffic. And Eamon, I already knew, had a criminal’s perception about danger. No point in giving him a reason to carry through on threats I was pretty sure he meant.

I needed serious help. With John Foster gone, there was no Warden in town I could turn to for help, and I didn’t have time to apply for any outside assistance. Two hours wouldn’t get anything from Paul. Even if Marion had been inclined to lend a hand, she was out of the picture, recovering in some hospital from what must have been a near-death experience with one of Ashan’s militant Djinn.

My allies—never plentiful—were MIA. I tried making calls, but Lewis wasn’t answering his cell, Rahel didn’t seem inclined to show up at my beck and call, and I knew better than to count on anything but the back of Jonathan’s hand at this point.

David… no. I couldn’t rely on David at all.

It was just me, and time wasn’t on my side. Neither was power. I had enough power to get by, not enough to stage a major confrontation. It would take more than vitamins and protein shakes to bring me back from the kind of energy devastation I’d been through recently… it was going to take time, and rest.

Neither of which I’d had, or was likely to get.

I stood on the balcony, watching the horizon. There was something out there, something big and badass and coming this way, and I could feel it like a storm of needles over my skin. It wasn’t supposed to be there, hadn’t been forecast by any of the normal weather models. It was purely, aetherically magical.

Everything was out of balance, wobbling like a bent wheel, and I didn’t know if it could ever be fixed again… or if it could, what that price would be.

I closed my eyes and went up to the higher plane.

The world dissolved into a map of shadows and lights and fog. My apartment building turned featureless; nobody spent enough time in it to give it character. I soared up, arms outstretched, and watched the city grow smaller under me, consolidating itself into a flickering pattern of energy.

I went higher, until the Earth curved away from me. As high as Wardens could safely go. I felt the drag warning me to stop, and hovered there, staring down at the world’s giant, swirling mass. In Oversight, it wasn’t blue and green and peaceful; it was a mass of shifting colors, bands of energy that moved and twisted, fought and shattered and reformed. That wasn’t just human potential at work. Part of it was Djinn. Part of it came from deeper, stronger places.

The world was fighting. Struggling with itself.

The storm off the coast of Florida was a black hole, a photonegative of a hurricane. Still tightly wound up, clouds just starting to spiral out from that hard center. It felt… old. Ancient. And powerful.

I tore my attention away from it and concentrated on what else I could see.

Djinn were hard to spot; they registered as flickers in the corners of my eyes, if they were bound to service, and as nothing at all if they were Free Djinn and trying to keep out of sight, which most of them would be. Wardens flared here and there like fireworks. Lots of activity throughout North and South America.

The intensity of the flares meant that substantial power was getting expended. I couldn’t help but imagine what that meant. Wardens were being killed, or fighting for their lives at the very least. And there was nothing I could do about that, either. A lot of them would be friends, people I’d met or worked with. Lots of names going up on the memorial wall, if there was a world at the end of this to remember them at all.

I couldn’t see anything that would help me. The closest Warden to me was in the Florida panhandle, and he or she was hard-pressed with some kind of tornadic activity. Besides, from the intensity of the flares, no Djinn were involved.

Somebody has you, I whispered into the fog. Where are you, David? Who found you? Who took you?

Something stirred, creating eddies of power that whispered warm on my skin. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him. David was still alive. Still barely qualifying as Djinn, hoarding the power he’d taken from me at the dump.

Just tell me, I begged him. Tell me and I’ll come get you.

I wasn’t prepared for something to hit me, but something did, hard, knocking me in a stunned loop on the aetheric. My insubstantial body wavered, and I started to fall back toward reality in an uncontrolled spin. The world spun into a blur, and wham, I hit flesh again with enough of a shock to cause my body to stagger and make painful acquaintance with the stucco wall.

Whoever had David didn’t want me finding him.

I remembered, with a hard shock, that I’d actually seen someone with a Djinn just two nights before. On the beach. One of Shirl’s wolfpack going toe-to-toe with Lewis had been packing a Djinn. The last I’d seen of them, they’d been taking to the hills, but if they were really serious about taking out Lewis …

… then, if I found Lewis, I’d find Shirl. And a Djinn. Right now, any Djinn would do. I wasn’t about to be picky, and somehow, taking a Djinn away from that particular crowd didn’t bother me nearly as much as it probably should have, but then, when it came to people trying to kill the people I loved, my ethics got a little bendy.

I went up on the aetheric level again, this time searching specifically for Lewis. A bright flare of power to the west, maybe an hour down the coast. Where other Wardens showed up in Roman candle spurts, Lewis was a steady, bright torch. He had the ability to disguise himself nearly as well as a Djinn, but he wasn’t currently bothering.

I kept half of my attention in Oversight, grabbed minivan keys and purse, and banged out of the apartment. I didn’t have a lot of time, and God knew the mommy-mobile was hardly power transportation…

When I got to it, I realized that the land yacht was canting sideways, like a ship heeled over on a reef. Eamon had taken the trouble to slash two of my tires before he’d absconded with my sister. Probably had done it while I’d been sleeping. Son of a bitch… !

I grabbed my cell phone and hit speed dial, pacing the parking lot nervously while it rang, and rang, and rang…

Cherise’s sleepy voice finally said, “Oh, you’d better be cute, male, and horny.”

“Shut up. I need you,” I said flatly. “Skip the gloss and get your ass over here.”

A rustle of sheets. Cherise’s voice sharpened into focus. “Jo? What’s wrong?”

“I need a ride and a driver who’s not afraid of the gas pedal. Are you up for it?”

“Um… okay…” She sounded cautious. I didn’t blame her. She’d never heard me in full-on action mode before. “Give me thirty min—”

“I don’t have thirty minutes. I don’t care if you show up in a sheet and fuzzy slippers; for Christ’s sake just get here. Five minutes, Cherise. I’m serious.”

I chewed my lip and finally added, “My sister could die if you don’t.”

I heard her intake of breath and had a bad moment, wondering if she’d just quietly hang up and leave me stranded. But Cherise, when it came down to it, was made of sterner stuff than that.

“Five minutes,” she promised, and I heard the phone clatter to the nightstand before it shut off.

It was six minutes, but I was impressed with her commitment; when Cherise’s car screeched to a stop in front of me, she was wearing a pink crop top, tight sweat pants, and flip-flops. No makeup. Her hair was yanked back into a ponytail, still frizzy from the bed.

It was the most unpolished I’d ever seen her look, and I loved her for it.

I dived into the passenger door as she threw it open, and she hit the gas and scratched the Mustang’s first gear as she accelerated back toward the road. I managed to get myself buckled in—that much, I figured, was necessary—and got myself up into Oversight. Just enough to keep an eye on Lewis’s beacon.

“Get to the beach and head west,” I said. Cherise threw me a look, blew past a yellow light, and scratched the gears again as she hit third. The car roared and threw itself into a flat-out run. “I owe you.”

“Fuckin’ A,” she said, and checked her rearview mirror. No cops, so far. I didn’t dare glance at the speedometer, but when Cherise made the turn onto the highway I felt the tires screaming and struggling to hold the road. She wasn’t cutting it any slack. The Mustang got traction and fishtailed and broke into a full gallop on the open road. There was early-morning traffic, but it was light.

Cherise pegged her speed at just under a hundred and maneuvered in and around the slower traffic with the kind of precision reserved for combat drivers and NASCAR professionals. I’d picked the right girl. She did love to drive.

“So,” she said as we hit a clear stretch and the Mustang opened up to a low, feral growl in fifth, “maybe you’d better explain to me why I’m about to get my ass arrested, not to mention take a mug shot with bad hair and no makeup.”

“Cute British Guy,” I yelled, and held my whipping hair back from my face in the brutal wind. I’d forgotten how much of a beating it was to drive this speed in a convertible. “Turns out he’s not so cute. He says he’s going to kill Sarah if I don’t turn over a ransom.”

“What?” Cherise’s eyes were all pupil in the dim wash of the headlights, her face zombie green from the dashboard lights. “No way. Cute British Guy? Dude, he was fine!”

“I’d tell you that you can’t judge a book by its cover, but…”

“I know, first I’d have to have read one.” Cherise sent me a faint, wind-whipped smile. “I’m not dumb, you know!”

“I never thought you were.”

“I just like guys!”

“Yeah. I know.”

“So he’s bad? Really?”

I thought of him on the couch, smiling, a hand gripping Sarah’s pale, slack throat. “The worst.”

Cherise considered that for a few seconds in silence, and then nodded. “You going to pay him off?”

“I don’t know.”

She nodded again, as if everything I’d just said made perfect sense. “I’m glad we have a plan.”

We blew past one hundred twenty miles an hour, still accelerating.

The winds started kicking up twenty minutes later. I shifted my view in Oversight and saw that the storm was picking up speed and rotation. From the color bands in the aetheric, the eyewall probably had already hit Force Three speeds, and it was just getting started. The clouds were unfurling like war banners out of its core. The rotation was going to be monstrous. It could cover the entire state, once it got to its full size.

I could feel it. This storm was old, and angry, and it wanted blood. The core of it was surrounded by a thick, black curtain that felt like death.

I swallowed hard as I dropped back into real-world time. Cherise was nervously eyeing the clouds.

“I think I’d better put the top up,” she said.

“Do you have to stop to do it?” She sent me a wordless Are you mental? look. “We don’t stop, not for anything.”

“We’ll get soaked!”

“I’ll keep the rain off of us,” I said. There wasn’t any point in concealing anything now. “I can do that. Just worry about keeping us on the road.”

The rain hit about five minutes later, a patter of thick drops that quickly turned into a flickering silver curtain. Cherise backed off on her speed, shivering, and I hardened the air in a bubble over the top of the car. Warmed it a little, too. Invisible hardtop.

The rain hit the hardened barrier and slid off, just like glass. Cherise nearly wrecked her Mustang trying to get a look at it. “What the hell… ?!”

“I can do that,” I repeated. “Don’t worry about it. Just keep going.” If we survived all this, I’d be in big trouble, but trouble was a cute, fond memory, at this point. I’d settle for mere trouble. If the Wardens wanted to haul me in and dig out my powers with a spork, they were welcome to, but after I finished this. Anybody who got in my way today was going to get a very ugly surprise.

“Man, that’s… cool,” Cherise murmured. She took one hand off the steering wheel, reached up, and flattened it against thin air. “My God, Jo. That’s, like, the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Or not seen. Whatever.”

The rain slid off in a continuous stream about an inch above her hand. The Mustang hit a puddle of water and shivered, unsure of its footing; she slapped her hand back down on the steering wheel and fought the car’s need to spin out.

It took an endless two seconds, but she got it under control and never slacked off the gas. “Okay, that was close.”

“No shit.”

“Fun, eh?”

We blew past truckers and passenger buses and nervous morning travelers. No cops. I couldn’t believe the luck, but I knew it wouldn’t last…

There was a sudden, white-hot bolt of lightning through the clouds, traveling in a straight line above our car.

Up on the aetheric, Lewis’s beacon suddenly went out.

Chaos. There was a lot of it, and it was getting hard to tell what was significant from what wasn’t; the storm towering up over the sea and moving relentlessly this way was filling the aetheric with energy and a kind of metaphysical static. On top of that, there was power being thrown around on a more Wardenish level, adding to the general blizzard of instability.

I could barely get my bearings up there. I hung on grimly, half aware of Cherise talking anxiously next to me, of the Mustang hurtling on through the darkness, and tried to remember where Lewis had been. Had he gotten Rahel to airlift him out? No, Lewis didn’t own Rahel, and without that bond, she wouldn’t have been able to blip him from one place to another. No Warden I knew—not even Lewis—could do that sort of thing on his own.

So he was still here. Somewhere. Moving, maybe, and concealing his presence from a magical perspective. Lewis was really good at it; he’d eluded the entire organization for years while continuing to do his own thing. That took guts and talent.

I didn’t see Lewis, but I did see a distinctive red-hot flare of power that surged and faded like a vacuum tube about to blow. I fixed on it and waited.

Another flare, brighter. It was off to the west, almost directly parallel to the road we were traveling.

“Turn right!” I shouted.

“Where?”

“Anywhere!”

I felt the heavy physical impact of the Mustang taking the turn, and grabbed for a handhold to keep myself from being thrown against the safety straps. Kept my attention up on the aetheric, though. It was getting tougher. The thin-air hardtop I was maintaining over the moving car took a hell of a lot of concentration and control, not to mention draining that finite reserve of power I had from Lewis.

Another pulse of power, this one longer. A couple of answering spurts of gold, weaker and briefer.

“Where am I going?” Cherise asked. She was yelling again, with that edge to her voice that meant she’d asked the question at least once or twice already. “Yo! Jo! Out of the coma already!”

I blinked and dropped down enough to study the real world. Not that there was a lot to study. We’d turned off the main road onto a smaller two-lane blacktop, and apart from the hard, relentless shimmer of the rain and the floating hot gold of the road stripe, we might as well have been pioneering intergalactic travel. Nothing out here. Nothing with lights, anyway.

The Mustang growled up a long hill and, in the distance, I saw a flash of something that might have been lightning.

“There!” I pointed at the afterburn. “See them?”

Cars. Two cars, driving fast. Not as fast as we were, but then, not many people would even think of trying it, especially in the rain. Cherise nodded and concentrated on holding the Mustang on the wet road as it snaked and turned. In the backwash of the headlights, I could see the flapping green shadows of thick foliage and nodding, wind-whipped trees.

Jeez, I hoped there weren’t any ’gators on the road.

We took a turn too fast but Cherise held it, in defiance of the laws of physics and gravity, and powered out to put us just about five car lengths behind the other two drivers. They were side by side, matching speeds—or, at least, the big black SUV was matching speeds and trying like hell to drive the smaller Jeep off the road. Every time it tried, it hit some kind of cushion and was shoved back.

No grinding of metal.

“Lewis,” I said. Lewis was in the Jeep. I couldn’t see or feel him, but he was the only one I could think of to be able to pull off that kind of thing while on the move and driving. Driving pretty damn well, too. He wasn’t Cherise, but he was staying on the road, even at seventy miles per hour.

“What now?” Cherise asked. I didn’t know. The SUV gleamed in our headlights like a wet black bug, nearly twice as large as the Jeep it was threatening. There were Wardens in there. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t just go into a straight-up fight—lives at risk, and maybe they were innocent lives, at that.

Not to mention that the chaos swirling around us hardly needed another push.

I was coming to the conclusion that there wasn’t a hell of a lot I could do until the two cars ahead of us resolved their dispute, one way or another, when I felt a surge of power and suddenly there was a presence in the backseat, moving at the corner of my eye, and two hands came down on my shoulders from behind and clamped down hard, holding me in place.

Diamond-sharp talons dressed up as sparkling neon fingernails pricked me in warning.

“Hold on!” Rahel yelled, and it all happened really, really fast.

The Jeep’s flare of brakes.

A blur of green. I couldn’t even see what it was, but it came out of the underbrush on the left-hand side; suddenly the SUV was lifting, soaring up engine-first into the air as if it had been shot out of a cannon, corkscrewing—

“Shit!” Cherise yelped, and hit the gas hard. The Mustang screamed on wet pavement and whipped around the Jeep. I felt the shadow pass over us and looked up to see the shiny black roof of the SUV tumble lazily across the sky, close enough to reach up and touch, and then the back bumper hit the road behind us with a world-shaking crunch.

When it stopped rolling, it was a featureless tangle of metal.

Cherise braked, too hard, fishtailed the Mustang to a barely on-the-road stop, and Rahel’s hands came away from my shoulders. It felt like there’d be bruises, later. I unbuckled my seat belt with shaking fingers and bailed out of the car to run back toward the wreckage.

I was halfway there, pelted by the cold rain, when the wreck blew apart in a fireball that knocked me flat and rolled me for ten painful feet. When I turned my head and got wet hair out of my eyes, I expected to see a Hollywood-style bonfire.

No. There was nothing much left to burn. Pieces of the SUV rained all over a hundred-foot area. A shredded tire smacked the pavement next to my outstretched hand, hot enough that I could feel its warmth; it was melted in places and sizzling in the rain.

Three people were standing in the road where the wreckage of the SUV had been.

No—I corrected myself. Two people, one Djinn. I could see the flare of his yellow eyes even at this distance.

There was a heat shimmer coming off the other two, both in the real world and in the aetheric, that made me shiver in a sudden flood of memories. They were still wearing skin, but Shirl and the other Warden with her were just shells for something else. Something worse.

I remembered the feeling of the Demon Mark hatching under my skin, and had to control an impulse to run. They’re after Lewis. They’d be irresistibly drawn to power that way.

I hadn’t come to fight Lewis’s battles for him. I needed a Djinn, and Shirl had one. Clearly, she’d kept the bottle on her, and it remained miraculously unbroken. Yep, all I had to do now was fight two Wardens with Demon Marks, liberate a Djinn, avoid explaining any of it to Lewis, and…

… and not die.

Simple.

I hadn’t had any doubt that it was Lewis driving the Jeep, but I’d forgotten about Kevin; the kid exited the passenger door and ran to my side. He reached down to pull me up to a sitting position.

“Shit, you’re alive,” he said. He sounded surprised.

“Sorry about that. I’ll try to do better next time.”

Since I was getting up anyway, he gave me a strong yank and steadied me when I went a little soft on the upright part of standing. He didn’t say anything else.

His eyes were on the three facing us—or, actually, facing the Jeep.

Lewis stepped out of the driver’s side, closed the door, and sent a quick glance toward me and Kevin. “Get them out of here,” he said to Kevin. “Take the Mustang.”

“I’m not going,” I said. Lewis gave me the look, but he really didn’t have time to argue because right then, the yellow-eyed Djinn came at him.

He wasn’t fast enough to beat Rahel. The two met in midair, snarling and cutting at each other, and I felt the aetheric boiling and burning with the force of it.

The Djinn was trying to move the Jeep, roll it over on Lewis. Lewis didn’t move.

Neither did the Jeep.

“If you’re staying,” Lewis said, “do me a favor and hang on to my truck a minute.”

He sounded utterly normal, like this was all in a day’s work for him. Hell, maybe it was. Lewis’s life was probably a lot more unexpected than mine. I didn’t understand what he was saying for a second, and then I felt him shift his attention, and the Jeep started to shiver.

I hardened the air around it, holding it in place, as Lewis walked forward to within ten feet of where the other two Wardens were standing. Shirl—punk-ass Shirl, with her black goth clothes and bad attitude—was looking pretty rough these days. Lank, greasy hair; dark shadows around her eyes that weren’t so much affectation as exhaustion. Her skin was an unhealthy shade of pale, so thin I could see blue veins under her skin. The shimmer in her eyes was full of pain and rage and something else, something inhuman.

“Lewis,” I warned. He stopped me with an outstretched hand. He knew the danger of Demon Marks as well as I did, maybe better. The thing inside Shirl would do anything to get into him, to have access to that huge lake of power.

“I can help you,” he said to her. “Let me help you.”

I wanted to yell No or, more appropriately, Are you insane? but that was Lewis, all right. His first impulse always had been to heal.

Shirl called up a two-handed fireball and slammed it straight into his chest. It hit, exploded, and spread over him like molten lava. Under normal circumstances, Lewis would have simply shaken it off—fire was one of his powers, of course, and he had a natural resistance to it—but this was demon-fueled, and a hell of a lot stronger than usual.

It dug deep into his skin. I saw him stagger, concentrate, and manage to clear it off, but it left blackened holes in his clothes and angry red marks on his skin that looked raw and painful. Before he could do more than take a breath, the other Warden called up the Earth, and I felt the ground shudder as a huge tree toppled, straight toward Lewis. Lewis managed to move, jumping forward, almost close enough to go toe-to-toe with the two fighting him.

Shirl slammed him again, a dazzling orange curtain of flames, and he staggered and fell. Vines whipped out of the underbrush and fastened around his ankles, snaking around his calves, pulling him flat. Before he could focus on fighting them, Shirl was on him again, leaping like a tiger, fireball at the ready.

I hit her with wind and tossed her a dozen feet down the road. “Do something!” I yelled at Kevin. He looked torn, and more than a little scared; I remembered that he’d already been in a dogfight with Shirl and her crew, and come out near death. Dammit. I couldn’t blame the kid.

“No, Kevin! Stay out of it!” Lewis yelled, countermanding me, and the vines holding his ankles shriveled and he rolled up to his feet…

… just in time for Shirl to throw another fireball.

This time, he caught it. One-handed, a neat, graceful capture, and he juggled the hell-ball from one hand to the other as he watched Shirl approach. The other Warden was up and moving, too. Both stalking him.

“Dammit, Lewis—” I said.

“Nag me later.”

One of the two Wardens must own the Djinn, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t Shirl. That meant the other guy—the one who had the clever, off-kilter face and Canadian accent that I remembered from back on the beach—was the proud owner.

One of Shirl’s running buddies.

One I needed to take down.

I shook free of Kevin and moved right. Shirl watched me with bright-glimmering eyes. I was more powerful than she was, and that meant the Demon would want to jump to me… but then again, Lewis was the most powerful guy in the world.

No way it would pass him up for me.

Unless, of course, it didn’t mind doing a little hopscotching. I watched her carefully as I spiraled in closer to the other Warden.

“So,” I said to him, “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. Joanne Baldwin. Weather. You are… ?”

Pissed off, apparently. Because we were on an asphalt road, he couldn’t do Marion Bearheart’s favorite trick of softening the sand beneath my feet, but he had plenty of other stuff to work with. The area wasn’t exactly denuded of life.

Sure enough, he found something. Something that sailed out of the dark and landed on the road with a raw growl, and padded into the glow of the headlights.

It was a cougar. Its long, lean body gleamed in the rain, and it had the most gorgeous green eyes I’d ever seen, large and liquid and pure animal power. It paced toward me with unnatural focus, and I could see its back legs tensing for a jump. Oh, yeah, that would keep me busy.

“Um… nice… kitty…” I took a step back, trying to figure out what I had in my arsenal, short of lightning bolts, that was likely to stop a predatory feline.

Nope. I had nothing.

There was a flare of fire, and Lewis was abruptly too busy to help—I felt the heat blaze over my skin, harsh enough to singe my hair. That left me, the cougar, and the Earth Warden.

“No fair, using endangered species,” I said, and swallowed hard as the cat began to growl. It was watching me with fixed, hungry, empty eyes. “Seriously. Not good, man.”

The cat jumped. I yelped and ducked and called for wind, which was a mistake because the intense fire being summoned up between Lewis and Shirl created updrafts and unpredictable wind shears and, instead of tossing the cat safely off to the side, it landed right on me and knocked me flat on the pavement.

Heavy as a man, warmer than one, smelling of wet fur and fury and blood, claws already digging into the soft flesh of my stomach and oh God…

I sucked the air out of its lungs. Just like that, faster than thought—I admit, I wasn’t worried about doing it nicely. The cat choked, opened its mouth, and gagged for air, but it couldn’t find any. I rolled. It scrabbled for balance, digging bloody furrows in my flesh. I called another gust of wind. This time, it cooperated, and knocked the big cat off of me onto its side. It rolled up immediately, gagging, head down, shaking in confusion.

“Sorry,” I whispered, and swiped bloody hands across my face to drag my wet hair back. I didn’t dare take too close a look at my body. The bottom part of my torso felt suspiciously warm and numb. At least my guts weren’t falling out. I was counting my blessings.

I couldn’t kill the cougar—evil people, yeah, okay, but not cats who were just doing their survival job—so I only had a few minutes at most to get rid of the one controlling it.

And he already had something else lined up. I caught the blur of motion out of the corner of my eye. There was no way I could move in time, and my brain snapshotted a snake—a big, unhappy-looking snake—striking for me with enormous fangs in a flat, triangular-shaped head as big as my hand.

Rahel caught it in midstrike, thumped its head with one neon-polished fingernail, and the snake went limp in her hands. She looked perfectly well groomed. There was no sign she’d been in any kind of a fight, and I didn’t see the other Djinn anywhere.

“You should be more careful,” she said—to the snake—and set him down in the underbrush. He crawled away with fast convulsions of his body and disappeared in seconds.

Rahel turned her eerie, hawk gold eyes on the Earth Warden, and smiled. Not the kind of smile you’d want to get on your worst day, believe me.

The Earth Warden took a giant step back.

“Djinn are killing Wardens,” she said. Again, it might have been a comment to me … or not. “I don’t altogether find this distressing.”

“Good thing for me that I’m not a Warden anymore, then,” I said. “Busy?”

“Not especially.”

“Don’t need to, ah, help Lewis… ?”

Her eyes flicked briefly to the enormous fireball that surrounded the other two.

Inside of it, it looked as though Lewis had Shirl in a choke hold. “I don’t believe that will be necessary.”

“Then would you mind—?”

“Not at all.”

The Earth Warden’s nerve failed and he bolted. Rahel took him down with one neat jump, carrying him down to the shining, wet pavement, and shoved him flat with a knee in the small of his back. He flailed. It didn’t much matter.

“You can let the cougar go now,” she called back to me. “It won’t harm you.”

Oh, right, easy for her to say… I removed the vacuum from around the cat, and it choked in a fast breath, then another, and bounded up and away. Following the path of the snake. I wished them both luck.

Speaking of which… I skinned up my shirt and traced the wounds in my stomach with my fingertips. Blood sheeted wetly down, pink in the rain, but it looked pretty superficial. No guts poking out. Some prime scar material, though.

I gulped damp air and tried not to think how close I’d come to being cat chow, and then moved to where Rahel had the Warden in a position of utter helplessness.

I got down on one knee, which was painful, and he turned his head to stare at me. Yep, there was a definite component of demon-shimmer in his eyes. I didn’t know if anyone else could have seen it; I was a pretty unique case, having had the Demon Mark and Djinn experiences. It looked like he was in the early stages.

Probably wasn’t even aware yet how the creature growing inside of him under that mark would be influencing his actions, compromising his judgment.

Eating his power even as it stoked the fire and made him feel more in control.

I couldn’t help him with that. He had to help himself, and I was about to take away his only way to do that.

“Hold him,” I said to Rahel. She shifted her weight off the man, but kept him flat with one hand between his shoulder blades.

“Let go!” he yelled. I ignored him and stuck my hand in his right coat pocket.

Nothing. The left held a ring of keys. I dropped them on the ground.

“Roll him over,” I said. The Djinn took one arm and flipped him like a pancake, and this time held him down with her palm on his forehead. Paralyzed. She flicked me a look, and I read unease in it. She reached over and sliced open his shirt with one taloned finger, and folded the cloth back to show me the black, slow-moving tattoo of the Demon Mark.

He started screaming. Whatever she was doing to hold him down, the demon didn’t like it. His whole body arched in pain, and Rahel’s face went blank with concentration.

I ransacked his pants pockets and came up with—of all things—one of those cheap leather lipstick cases, the stiff kind exported from India or China that snap open and have a mirror built in for touchups. No lipstick inside of this one.

This one held some cotton batting and a small perfume sample bottle, open and empty. The plastic snap-in plug was lying next to it.

I reached in and grabbed the cool glass, and felt the world shift in that odd, indefinable way, as if gravity had suddenly taken a left turn.

A Djinn misted out of the dark, staring at me. It began forming into a new appearance, and I realized that I didn’t want to see what effect my subconscious was going to have on it (please, God, don’t let it look like David…). I folded it in my fist and said, “Back in the bottle.”

It disappeared. I took the plug from the cotton in the lipstick case and slid it home in the mouth of the bottle, and felt that connection cut out, except for a low-level hum. Not nearly as strong as David, this one, but then it didn’t really matter.

Rahel was watching me with a frown. It’s not good when Djinn frown. In general, Djinn shouldn’t be annoyed.

“I thought you didn’t believe in slavery,” she said. Her cornrows rustled as she cocked her head, and I heard the cold click of beads even over the continuing pounding rain. “Ah. Unless, of course, it’s expedient. How human of you.”

“Shut up,” I said. “And thanks for saving my life.”

She shrugged. “I haven’t yet.”

And she let go of the Earth Warden.

He came up fast and fighting, and we went back to work.

The aftermath was like a war zone, if war zones had spectator sections. The wrecked SUV still smoldered and belched smoke; the whole damn road was buckled and uneven and burned down to the gravel in places. There would be some serious repaving later.

The spectator section was composed of Cherise and Kevin and Rahel, who were over by the Mustang. Cherise and Kevin were sitting on the trunk, huddled together under a yellow rain poncho held like a tent. Rahel paced back and forth, oblivious to the rain, casting looks out to the east, toward the ocean. Her eyes were glowing so brightly that they were like miniature suns.

Shirl and the Earth Warden—I still didn’t know his name—were unconscious in the Jeep, restrained with good old-fashioned duct tape. Lewis had also done some fancy Earth-power thing that lowered their metabolisms. He could keep them in a sleep state for hours, maybe days, if he didn’t have better things to do.

Lewis and I were leaning against the Jeep, gasping for air and trying not to moan. Much.

“You okay?” he asked me at last, and put that warm hand on the back of my neck.

I managed to nod. “No, you’re not. You’re too weak. Again.”

“I’m all right.”

“Bullshit.” He looked like hell; he was one to talk. Burned, blistered, ragged, suffering in his eyes. And a bone-deep weariness, too. He’d been running hard for a long time, and today was just another one of those days. He didn’t push the subject, though; he looked over at Rahel, then out toward the sea. “You feel that?”

“Yeah.” I sucked in a deep breath. “It’s bad. Maybe as bad as Andrew back in ’92.”

“Worse,” he said succinctly. “This is bigger and stronger.”

Worse than a Category Five. That wasn’t good news, clearly. “So? What do we do?”

“You do nothing. Jo, you’re like a wet rag; there’s nothing you can contribute. You need to get the hell out of here, I told you before. Fighting will get you killed.”

I swept him with a look. Burns, bloody wounds, and all. “Is this the last of them? The ones looking to take you out?”

“Probably not.”

“And who should be running?”

He smiled. It was just a little smile, tired and sweet, but it went through me like an arrow. “How’s David?”

I turned away, all the light going out inside. “I don’t know. I don’t know where he is. Things are…” I took a deep breath and said it, just said it. “I lost him. I lost the bottle.” God, it hurt. I couldn’t imagine that anything could ever hurt worse.

I could feel Lewis staring at the back of my head for a long few heartbeats, and then the Jeep’s weight shifted as he pushed off.

When I turned, he was stalking through the pouring rain to where Cherise, Kevin, and Rahel were.

Okay, what did I say?

He grabbed Kevin by the collar and yanked him bodily out from under the plastic poncho. Cherise yelped and flinched, and Kevin yelled, and Lewis dragged him, stumbling, by the front of his greasy-looking T-shirt back over to me.

“Give it back,” he said. Kevin flailed until Lewis shook him, hard. “I’m not fucking around with you, kid. Give her back the bottle.”

“What the hell… ?” I blurted, amazed, and then I remembered something Detective Rodriguez had said, in the surveillance van. The kid who was in your apartment last night ripped off some cash from the flour jar in your kitchen. Kevin had ransacked his way through the apartment, hadn’t he? And if anybody knew about the value of Djinn bottles…

I’d never even thought about it. I was too stunned to be angry.

Kevin looked pale, panicked, and stubborn. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man!”

Oh, wait, the stun was wearing off now. Yep, anger was coming on strong. I shoved Lewis out of the way and grabbed the kid’s skinny, strong arms, shoving him back against the Jeep. “Don’t bullshit me, Kevin! Did you call him out? Did you try to use him?” Kevin didn’t say anything, just looked at me. Pale as skim milk, and just about as appetizing. “Dammit, say something! Is David all right?”

Kevin licked his already wet lips, averted his eyes, and mumbled, “Not my fault. He asked me to do it.”

I felt shock slip over me in a cold wave. “Excuse me?”

“I was just looking around. He—he appeared in the room and he told me to take the bottle.”

“He couldn’t tell you where it was, you asshole!” Djinn rules, although I’d seen Jonathan break them once. I’d asked David point-blank where his bottle was, and he couldn’t tell me…

… or, I realized with a sinking feeling close to despair, he didn’t want to tell me.

“He didn’t have to say anything,” Kevin was explaining. “He just stood there, you know, next to the nightstand. It was kinda obvious.”

I tried to say something—what, I don’t know—but it didn’t make sense when it got to my lips. I just stood there, staring at Kevin’s blank eyes.

“Look, he didn’t want you to get hurt anymore,” Kevin said. “He thought—if I held on to the bottle for a while—maybe you could get stronger. I was supposed to give him back, later. When things got better.”

I felt my knees go weak. My stomach hurt where the cat had clawed me, my head hurt, my knees hurt; God, my heart was breaking. “He wanted to leave me.”

Lewis put his hands on my shoulders. “I think he was trying to save your life, Jo.”

“Bullshit. Bullshit!” I was suddenly furious. “This is—you guys just—men! You don’t make decisions for me, got it? I’m not some fragile little flower! I have a life, and it’s my life, and if I want to—”

“Throw it away?” Lewis interjected helpfully.

Okay, he had a point. I didn’t let it bother me. “Hey, I grubbed around at the dump looking for him! Hello! Leave a damn note if you’re stealing my boyfriend!”

And I realized that Kevin hadn’t answered my original question. His eyes were still frightened and blank.

“Oh God,” I said. “Did you use him? Kevin, did you call him out of the bottle and use him?”

He nodded. Rain dripped in silver strings from his lank hair to patter onto his soaked T-shirt. He was shivering. We were all likely to get hypothermia out there if we weren’t careful.

“Is he—”

“He’s gone,” Kevin said. It sounded hard and harsh, and I could tell he didn’t want to say it. “Sorry, but it’s like the bottle’s empty. He’s just—gone, he just screamed and he, you know… blipped out. I kept calling, but he wouldn’t come back. He couldn’t. I needed him, Jo, I’m sorry but I had to do it, Lewis was in trouble and—”

I knew. I’d done the same thing, hadn’t I? I’d called David even when I knew it was killing both of us.

And now I knew why Kevin hadn’t waded into the fight with his usual teen-angst enthusiasm. He couldn’t. Like me, he’d been drained of power. And it hadn’t been enough.

If he couldn’t sense David in the bottle, it was because David was an Ifrit.

Maybe he was in the bottle, maybe he wasn’t; Kevin probably hadn’t thought to order him back inside and seal it up. To him, David had just vanished without a trace.

I couldn’t help but feel a sick certainty that this time he wouldn’t be coming back.

I still had hopes, until Kevin dug the blue glass bottle out of his bag and put it into my hands, but it was no more mystical than grabbing an empty jar out of the kitchen cabinet. No sense of connection. It was an empty bottle, and God, I couldn’t feel David’s presence at all.

I couldn’t even feel him draining me, and that had at least been something, before.

“Back in the bottle, David,” I said, and waited a second before I slammed the rubber stopper home into the open mouth. I wrapped the bottle in a spare towel from the back of the Jeep, then buried it in my purse with the lipstick case and the Djinn sealed inside.

“Um,” Kevin said hesitantly, “are we—are you—”

“Do I want to kill your punk ass? You betcha.” My hands were shaking, and not from the chill. “I don’t care what David said, you didn’t have any right to do this. No right, do you understand?”

He nodded. He looked sullen and miserable, a combination only possible in teenagers.

“You ever touch anything I own again, and I swear to God, Kevin, you’ll wish I’d torched your ass in Vegas.”

“Like I don’t wish it already,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He gave me a blank, militant stare. I threw Lewis a furious look.

He shrugged.

I growled in frustration. “I have to get back to Fort Lauderdale.”

It wasn’t like me to run out, not when the storm of the century was building up force out there off the coast and roaring our way. He raised his eyebrows. “I thought I’d have to get Rahel to haul you out of here kicking and screaming,” he said. “And you didn’t come chasing all the way out here to find me, flattering as it might be, did you? What’s wrong?”

I told him about Eamon and Sarah, and watched his eyes go lightless and angry.

If it had been me, I’d have dropped everything to go to his aid, but I knew not to expect the same in return. Lewis was a big-picture guy.

“I can’t,” he said finally. Regretfully. “I’m sorry. This thing—” He nodded out at the black void on the east horizon. “One life saved might mean thousands lost. I have to stay here.”

“I know.”

“Jo—”

“I know.” I swallowed hard and put my hand on his cold, wet, beard-roughened cheek. “Go do what you do. Eamon’s just a guy, not a Warden. I can handle him.”

I knew Lewis was thinking, You’ve done a bang-up job of it so far, but he was too much of a gentleman to say so.

“Yeah,” Kevin snorted. “Like you’ve done such a good job so far.”

Case in point.

I walked away, back to the Mustang, where Cherise was still sitting under her poncho. Shivering. Looking dazed and storm-tossed. Her high-gloss finish had been power-stripped, along with her self-confidence about her place in the world.

“Cher?” I said. She fastened a blank stare on me. “We can go back now.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, in a bright, almost normal tone, and slid off the trunk to go around to the driver’s side. Sometime during the hysteria, I noticed she’d remembered to put the top up on the convertible. Her hand was shaking uncontrollably as she fumbled for the door handle.

I gently guided her back around the car and opened the passenger side for her.

“My turn to drive,” I said. It took her three tries to get in the car, even with help.

The interior was wet enough to squish. I sighed and hated myself for wasting the energy, but the truth was I was tired and cold and shaking too. I banished the moisture from the car and our hair and clothes, leaving a sharp, fresh ozone smell and, unfortunately, frizzed hair. Cherise didn’t seem to notice. I turned on the car’s heater and pointed all available vents in her direction.

I had to reach over and fasten her seat belt for her. She wasn’t responding to suggestion.

The Mustang rumbled and growled as I backed it up and weaved it around the Jeep, catching Lewis and Kevin in the headlights. They looked fragile and bruised, far too small to go up against the fury of nature gathering out to sea. Lewis gave me a nod and a small, funny salute. Kevin’s eyes were lingering not on me, but Cherise. I bumped the car over the uneven, buckled road until we were back at clean surface again, and then opened it up to a run. It drove tight and fast, hugging the road and responding to a touch like an eager lover.

I’d missed Mustangs.

Cherise said, “So you’re, like, a witch, right?”

“What?”

“A good witch?” She didn’t sound too sure of that.

I sighed. “Yeah, kind of. I hope.”

She nodded jerkily. “Okay, sure. That makes sense.” Hollow words, and an empty, scared look in her eyes.

I’d forgotten what it must be like, to have your certainty in life taken away, to find all the science and order and logic taken away. To find out humankind wasn’t the center of the universe, and things weren’t simple and controllable.

It hurt. I knew it hurt.

“Cherise,” I said. We rounded a curve and the headlights washed a riot of vegetation with color. I caught the glint of green eyes, quickly gone. “What you saw—that doesn’t happen all the time, okay? It’s not that the world is a lie you’ve been told. It’s that there are some truths you haven’t heard yet.”

She shrugged. “I’m okay.” The words were just as wrong as the movement, mechanical and dead. “So when you were working at the station, were you just—was it just some kind of game? Were you ever really—”

“This stuff doesn’t pay the bills,” I said gently. “Saving the world really isn’t all that profitable. You’d be surprised how little you get paid for that kind of thing.”

That won a smile of surprise.

“Not really,” she said. “Crime pays better than virtue.”

“You hear that on TV?”

“Read it,” she said, and leaned her head against the window glass. “Damn, I’m freaked.”

“Anybody would be. Take it easy, okay? Ask questions. I’ll do my best to answer you.”

She hesitated a second, then waved a hand out at the storm assembling over the ocean, like a million soldiers ready to attack. “Can’t you stop that?”

“No.”

“Just no?”

“When it’s that big and mean? Yeah. Just no. Maybe Lewis can do it—”

“The old one or the young one?”

“What?”

“You know, the old guy in the flannel or the young one in black?”

Old guy? I threw her a look. “He’s my age!”

“In your dreams.”

“Not the young one, the—the—” I glared. “Lewis is my age. Kevin is the punk-ass kid.”

“Well, the punk-ass kid was nice to me,” she said, and shrugged. “What? It’s not my fault I’m twenty-two and you’re—not.”

Oh, I was so going to get my own car.

We drove in silence for another ten minutes before I said, because I couldn’t resist it, “I’m not old.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, and sighed, and put her head back against the upholstery. “You just keep telling yourself that.”

I gunned the Mustang up to one hundred thirty on the way back through the storm.

Surprisingly, we didn’t die in a fiery crash, but that was probably just God looking after fools and children, and as I blasted past the WELCOME TO FORT LAUDERDALE road sign and had to kill my speed to just under sixty, due to traffic, my cell phone rang. I fumbled for it and took the call.

“Eamon?”

“The same.” That lovely voice sounded as calm and deceptively friendly as ever.

“Got what I asked for?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’d hate for Sarah to suffer.”

“Is she awake? I want to talk to her.”

“What you want really doesn’t concern me, love. As we seem to have a storm kicking up hell, I’d like to get this ended as soon as possible. No point in dying tonight, especially from something as stupid as fate.”

My hand was clenched tight around the cell. I forced it to relax. Ahead on the road, some grandpa in an ancient Ford Fiesta swerved into my lane doing thirty-five; I instantly checked perimeters and glided into the left-hand passing lane to whip around him. Tractor trailer ahoy, lumbering like a brachiosaur. I managed to slip around him and behind a white Lamborghini that wasn’t any more patient with the current traffic than I was. I drafted him as he negotiated his way to free airspace.

“Where?” I asked. Eamon’s warm chuckle was unpleasantly intimate.

“Well, why don’t you come to my place? Maybe we can enjoy a nice drink after we conclude our business. Possibly Sarah might be open-minded enough to…”

“Shut the hell up,” I snapped. “I have a Djinn. Do you want it the nice way or the hard way? Because all I have to do is tell him to kill you, you know.”

“I know.” All of the needling humor dropped out of Eamon’s voice, replaced by something hard and as chilly as winter’s midnight. “But if you do that, you won’t get your sister back. It took a lot of research—which was accomplished with a lot of screaming on the part of my research subjects—but I know the rules. I know what the Djinn can do, and what they can’t. And you’d best not take a chance that I’ve been misled.”

He was right. There were rules to the covenant with the Djinn. Responsibilities a master had to accept. Violating those rules had some serious blowback, and if he understood enough, he could have set it up to be sure Sarah died with him.

No, I couldn’t take the chance. Not that I’d been willing to in the first place.

“Fine,” I said. “Give me the address.”

It was close to the beach, which wasn’t an advantage right now; I hung up and checked the progress of the storm. The streetlights were blowing nearly sideways, and signs were fluttering like stiff metal flags in the relentless wind. Hurricane-force winds, and it was just the leading edge of the storm.

As I took the exit from the freeway heading for the beach, I caught sight of the ocean, and it made my guts knot up in fear. Those smooth, greasy-looking swells out toward the ocean, exploding into gigantic sails of spray when they hit shallow water… blow on a small bowl of water and look at the way the waves form, heading toward the edge. Concentric rings, mounting higher as force increases.

The storm surge was going to be horribly high. Houses at or near the beach were already doomed. My apartment complex was probably toast, too—so much for the new furniture.

Life was so fragile, so easily blown apart.

“Look out!” Cherise yelled, and threw out a hand to the right.

I barely had time to register something big coming from that direction, hit the brakes, send the car into a spin across two lanes of traffic—thankfully, unoccupied—and manage to get us straightened around in a lane by the time we came to a lurching stop.

A boat bounced in from the right and landed keel-first on the road, oars flying off like birds into the wind. It splintered into fiberglass junk. I watched, open-mouthed, as it rolled off in a tangle.

“Holy shit,” Cherise whispered. “Um… shouldn’t we, like, get somewhere? Maybe the hell out of Florida?”

Yeah. Good idea.

Eamon’s building was a needle-thin avant-garde structure, the kind of place that, when they talk about building erection, they really mean the double entendre. I couldn’t read the sign, but I decided the best possible name for it was TestosteroneTowers, and it was someplace I intended never to live.

Even if Eamon wasn’t there.

Cherise looked pale and scared, and I didn’t blame her; the weather was getting worse, and this was exposed territory. Last place I wanted to be was in a high-rise… safe from the storm surge, sure, but way too much glass. I was thinking of something in a tasteful concrete bunker, up on a bluff. And as soon as I had Sarah back, we were going to find one.

“Should I stay here?” Cherise asked cautiously. I pulled the Mustang into the parking garage and went up to the next-to-highest level. It was the logical spot … not completely exposed, only one level could collapse on you, and it was higher than the likely storm surge. Bottom level would be safest from flying debris, but a collapse was possible, and drowning an added hazard.

“I think you’d better come with me,” I said. “Just stay close.”

We got out, and even in the shelter of the garage the scream of the wind was eerie. It ripped past me at gale speeds, pulling my hair and grabbing at my clothes. I braced myself and went around to take Cherise’s hand. I had a little more height and weight than she did; she was too small and light for this kind of thing.

We made it to the stairs and found a hamster tunnel of plastic and lights leading from the parking garage to the building. It looked like being in the middle of a dishwasher on full spray, and I could hear an ominous creaking and cracking from the plastic. I tugged Cherise along at a trot. The concrete under our feet—padded by carpet—trembled and yawed. Leaks ran down the walls, and half the carpet was already soaked.

When we were three-quarters through it, I heard a sharp crack behind us, and turned to look back.

A huge metal road sign had impaled itself through the plastic and hung there, shuddering. It read SLIPPERY WHEN WET.

“Funny,” I told Mother Nature. “Real funny.”

The plastic shivered under the force of another brutal hit from the wind, and I saw stars forming around stress points. This little tunnel through the storm wasn’t going to last.

I tugged Cherise the rest of the way. The big double doors were key-locked, but I was well beyond caring. My little theoretical addition to the practical chaos already swirling around wouldn’t matter a damn, really; I focused and got hold of the running-on-empty power I had left, and found just about enough to fund a tiny lightning bolt to fry the electronic keypad.

The door clicked open.

Beyond that was a deserted, impersonal lobby, with a long black couch with kidney-roll pillows running down one wall. It was very quiet. There was a large computer screen displaying names and numbers—almost all of the spaces were vacant. In fact, it looked as if the building was just opening up for renters.

Pity about the hamster-trail tunnel out there, in that case.

These kinds of places usually had security on duty, but there was a noticeable lack; I figured that the cops had already been around and instructed evacuation, and the security guy had scurried along with them.

I walked over to the touch screen and paged through the floors. Blank… blank… an import/export company… blank… blank… Drake, Willoughby and Smythe. Seventh floor. I took a look around the lobby. It was built for impressing visitors, not views, so there weren’t many windows. That was good. I spotted a camouflaged door behind the empty security desk. When I tried the doorknob, it was locked; I braced myself and kicked half a dozen times before I got the lock to yield. It looks easier on TV, trust me.

The room behind was small, bare except for a cot, desk and chair. I sat Cherise down on the cot and took her hands. “Wait for me,” I said. “Don’t leave here unless you have to, okay? It’s a windowless interior room; you’re pretty safe here.”

She nodded, pale and looking young enough to braid her hair and sell Girl Scout cookies. I couldn’t help it; I hugged her. She hugged me back, fiercely.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” I said. I felt her gulp for breath. “It’s going to be fine, Cher. Who’s the tough girl?”

“Me,” she whispered.

“Damn right.” I pulled away, gave her a smile, and watched her try to return it.

She was scared to death. Had reason to be. I was trying not to indulge in a complete, total freakout myself.

I left her there, kicked off my shoes, and hit the stairs.

When I got to the seventh floor, I was wheezing and flushed and the place the cougar had slashed me was throbbing like a son of a bitch, but the bleeding was still minimal. Still, I was willing to bet that I was looking like a wrathful Amazon. Frizzy hair, bloody, ripped shirt, and I hadn’t had the time or energy to shave my legs in days.

The mostly intact jeans were all that was saving me from complete embarrassment.

I gasped until I was sufficiently oxygenated, then adjusted the weight of my purse, dropped my shoes to the ground and stepped back into them. And yeah, okay, I straightened my hair. Because when you’re going to confront someone like Eamon, every little bit helps.

The last thing I did was take the stopper from David’s blue glass bottle. I left it buried in the bottom of my purse. Now or never, I told myself. I had no way to hedge this bet. I had to take some things on faith.

The frosted glass doors at the front advertised, in small, discreet type, the investment offices of Drake, Willoughby and Smythe. Lights on inside. I pulled on the ice-cold metal handle and the glass swung open with a well-balanced hiss.

Beyond was a reception area, all blond wood and silver, with a giant picture window at the back. The contrast was eerie and terrifying… the cool indifference of the interior design, the roiling primal fury of the storm outside, smearing the glass in sheets of rain. The glass was trembling, bowing in and out. There wasn’t all that much time to waste.

There was a second set of glass doors, these clear instead of frosted. I shoved my way through them and into a hallway lined with a dozen offices.

Light spilled out the open door of the one at the end.

I walked down the expensively carpeted last mile, passing reproductions of old masters, framed documents, alcoves with statues. At the end of the hall I turned left and saw the name on the door.

EAMON DRAKE.

The office was a triangle of glass, and his desk sat at the pointy end, sleek and black and empty of anything but a blotter, a penholder, and a single sheet of white paper. Very minimalist.

Sarah was lying on the black leather couch close to the left-hand wall. She was awake, but clearly not fully conscious; she was still wearing the bathrobe, and he hadn’t bothered to fully close it. At least, I thought with a wave of sickness, he hadn’t fully opened it. That was a little comfort.

Eamon was sitting on the arm of the couch, watching me. There was a gun in his hand.

It was pointed straight at Sarah’s head.

“Let’s not waste time,” he said. “This storm could make our little, petty differences seem mild. Hand it over and we’re finished, thanks, ta, bye.”

I opened my purse and took out the lipstick case I’d taken from Shirl’s demon-infected Warden friend. I flipped it open to show him the bottle.

“Open it and make him appear,” Eamon said. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I say that I don’t want a free sample of Eternity for Men instead of what we agreed on.”

I took the small perfume sample bottle out, unstopped it, and told the Djinn to appear. He obliged, not that he had much choice; he came out as a youngish-looking guy, dark-haired, with eyes the color of violets. Blank expression. I felt a resonance of connection, but nothing deep and certainly nothing strong. Djinn were, of course, powerful, but on a scale of one to ten, he was maybe a three.

“Back in the bottle,” I told him, and he misted and vanished. I put the stopper back in and raised my eyebrows at Eamon. “Satisfied?”

He cocked his head, staring at me with those deceptively soft, innocent eyes.

Oh, he was a clever one. He knew there was something wrong.

“I’m not a bad judge of people,” he said. “And this is too easy, love. You’re taking this too meekly.”

“What do you want me to do? Scream? Cry? Get my sister killed?” I clenched my teeth and felt jaw muscles flutter as I tried to breathe through the surge of helpless fury. “Take the fucking bottle, Eamon. Otherwise we’re all going to die in here.”

He caressed Sarah’s hair with the barrel of the gun. “Threats don’t serve you.”

“It’s not a threat, you idiot! Look out there! We’re in a goddamn Cuisinart if these windows go!”

He spared a glance for the storm, nodded, and held out his hand. Long, graceful fingers, well-manicured. He looked like a surgeon, a concert pianist, something brilliant and precise.

“Throw it,” he said.

I pitched the bottle to him, underhanded. He plucked it effortlessly out of the air, and for a second I saw the awe in his eyes. He had what he wanted.

Now was the moment of risk, the moment when everything could go to hell. All he had to do was pull the trigger.

He looked at me, smiled, and thumbed the stopper out of the bottle. It rolled away, onto the carpet, and the Djinn misted out again. Subtly different, this time. Paler skin, eyes still violet but hair turning reddish, and cut in a longer style that made him look younger and prettier.

“Pity he isn’t female,” Eamon said critically. “What’s your name?”

“Valentine.”

“Valentine, can you keep these windows from breaking?”

The Djinn nodded. I opened my mouth to warn Eamon he was making a mistake phrasing it as a question, but he didn’t need me to tell him that.

“Keep the windows from breaking,” Eamon said, and the order clicked in. The glass stopped rattling. Outside, the storm continued to howl, but we were about as safe as it was possible to be. From broken glass, at least.

Eamon let out his breath in a trembling sigh, and I saw the hot spark in his eyes.

“You’re only human,” I told him. “You don’t have the reserves of power to fund him for anything more powerful than that. Don’t be stupid.”

“Oh, I’m not interested in the world, I assure you. One person at a time is my motto.” He gave me another fevered, glittering smile. “You kept your bargain.”

“Yes,” I said. “I did.”

“You know, I’m sorry I’m going to have to do this. Valentine, kill—”

“David,” I said, “come out.”

That was all it took.

A black blur that Eamon couldn’t see, and suddenly Valentine was falling, screaming, ripping at the black shadow that formed over and around him. It was a nightmare to watch. David had changed into something more horrible than I could stand to see, and something that even my eyes wouldn’t properly focus… I caught hints of sharp edges and teeth and claws, of insectile thrashing limbs. I stumbled off to the side, well away from them, until my hip banged painfully into Eamon’s desk.

Eamon was thrown. “Valentine! Kill her!”

Valentine wasn’t in any shape to obey commands. He was down flat on his face, screaming, and the Ifrit’s claws were ripping him apart into mist.

Killing him.

Devouring him.

Eamon hadn’t expected this, and for a long moment he was frozen, staring at his Djinn dying on the floor, bottle still held useless in his hand.

I called lightning and zapped him. Not fatally, because I didn’t have it in me, but he screamed and jerked and slid bonelessly off the arm of the couch into a twisted pile on the carpet.

The bottle rolled free. The gun bounced under the couch.

The Ifrit finished its meal and began its transformation, taking on weight and shape and human form.

A trembling, naked human form.

David fell to his hands and knees, gagging, gasping, and collapsed on his side, his back to me. I stared at the beautiful long slide of his back and wanted so badly to run to him and stroke his hair, cover him in kisses, and hold him close and swear that I’d never let this happen again, never…

He turned his head and looked at me, and what was in his eyes burned me to ash.

Nobody, human or Djinn, should live with that kind of guilt and horror. That much longing.

“Let me go,” he whispered. “I love you, but please, you have to let me go.”

I knew he was right. And it was the only time possible I had left to do it.

I hardly felt the bottle shatter as I slammed it against the desktop. Even the slashes in my hand hardly registered. That kind of pain was nothing, it was insignificant against the bonfire burning in my soul.

I felt him leave me, a sudden cutting of the cord, an irrevocable loss that left me empty inside.

He stood up, clothing himself as he moved. Faded, loose khaki pants. A well-worn blue shirt. The olive drab coat swirling around him, brushing the tops of his boots.

He was warmth and fire and everything I had ever wanted in my life.

He fitted his large, square hands around my shoulders, slid them silently up to my face, and pulled me into a kiss. His breath shuddered into my mouth, and I felt his whole body trembling.

“I knew it had to be this way,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, Jo. I’m so—I can’t stay in this form for long. I have to go.”

“Go,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

One last kiss, this one fierce and devouring, and in the middle of it he turned to mist and faded away.

I cried out and lurched forward, reaching with a bloody hand for nothing.

At the other end of the room, a window blew out in a silver spray of glass, and buried shrapnel in the wall above the couch.

I gasped and lunged forward, nearly tripping over Eamon, who was moving weakly, and grabbed Sarah to pull her upright. She couldn’t walk, but she mumbled, something about Eamon; I slung her arm across my shoulder and half walked, half dragged her to the door.

As we reached the safety of the hall, another window let loose with the sound of a bomb exploding. Oh God. The whole building was shaking.

I dragged Sarah to the stairwell and leaned her against the wall, then ran back to get Eamon. I just couldn’t leave him there, helpless, to get shredded, no matter what he’d done. He might deserve to die, but this would be a kind of death I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

I pelted in and was blinded for a second by a blaze of lightning that hit close enough to make the hair on my arms tremble. Eamon was still slumped on the floor, bleeding already from a dozen deep cuts; I grabbed him under the arms and pulled, groaning with the strain in my back, across wet carpet and wedges of glittering glass. He twisted around, trying to help or fight; I screamed at him to stop and kept hauling.

Somehow, I wasn’t really sure how, I got him into the stairwell and rolled him onto his bleeding back on the concrete. Sarah was on the steps, clinging to the railing, looking pale and vague-eyed and in danger of tumbling; I left Eamon there and jumped over him to catch her when she stumbled. “You’re on your own!”

I yelled back at him as he reached slowly for the handrail to pull himself up to a sitting position.

I put my arm around Sarah’s waist to guide her down the steps.

It was a long, long, long way to the bottom. One torturous step at a time.

Sarah’s bare feet were scratched and bleeding by the time we made it, and she was more or less coherent.

Coherent enough to turn in my arms and look back up the stairs and mumble, “But Eamon…”

“Eamon can go to hell,” I said grimly. “Come on. We need to get out of here.”

She didn’t want to, but I wasn’t going to take any crap from Sarah, not now. And not over her abusive psycho boyfriend.

We banged through the door to the stairs into the lobby…

… and into a group of men standing there looking at the touch screen, just the way I’d done earlier. Rescue! I thought in relief, just for a second, and then I realized that these guys weren’t exactly dressed like they were public servants on patrol. Three of them looked tough as hell—tattooed, greasy, muscled up past any sensible point of no return.

The fourth one had on a Burberry trench coat that had gone from taupe to chocolate from the force of the rain, and under that a half-soaked hand-tailored suit with a silk tie. I felt sorry for the shoes, which surely looked Italian and not hurricane-safe. He had an expensive haircut even the rain couldn’t dampen, a dark mustache, and a cruel twist to his mouth.

He took one look at me, nodded to his Muscle Squad, and they rushed me. Sarah went flying. One of them knotted a big, tattooed hand in her hair and dragged her upright; she wasn’t medicated enough not to scream. I didn’t fight. I knew I didn’t have much of a chance, especially when the Suit pulled out a gun that looked remarkably similar to the one Eamon had been using upstairs. Apparently it was a model much favored by sleazebags.

I wasn’t really scared anymore. The kind of day I’d had, adrenaline starts running low after a while. I just stared at him, dumbfounded, and he stared back with lightless dark eyes.

“You’re the one,” he said. “You’re the one who killed Quinn. Drake said you’d be coming. Nice to know I don’t have to cut his tongue out for lying to me.”

Eamon had sold me out. I don’t know why that didn’t surprise me.

He walked up to me and shoved the gun under my chin. “I am Eladio Delgado, and you have something I want.”

I shut my eyes and thought, Here we go again.