"That's the one."
"Yeah, she's already upstairs. We got her out ASAP. She wasn't any too happy about it. Said she wanted to see you kick some ass." He sent me a sideways look that doubted my ass-kicking abilities. Sucker.
I smiled sweetly. "Not in these shoes. They're rentals."
The elevator lurched and came to a stop, and when my bodyguard came to alert, I held out a hand and launched myself up into the aetheric, searching for trouble. A Sentinel was in the woodwork, trying to short-circuit the brakes and snap the cable. Nice. I didn't even have to act; the Wardens and the Djinn swarmed in a golden blur, smothering the unfortunate enemy combatant. I smiled serenely at the guard, who looked tense and prone to frowns, and leaned against the polished wood of the elevator wall. "So," I said, as the lift trembled and started up again. "Rolling Stones, eh? Crazy?"
"Hard to believe, I know" - he shrugged - "but I gotta say, lady, in the crazy sweepstakes, you and your wedding are coming up fast."
"I wouldn't bet against us."
The doors dinged at the penthouse level, and I strolled majestically out into the foyer. More bodyguards, equally grim and serious looking. I wasn't asked for ID; apparently, the dress was a big tip-off.
I went into the suite, walked straight to the bar, and poured myself a stiff, two-fingered shot of tequila. No lime, no salt, none of the party trappings. This was about serious alcohol, delivered in its purest form at maximum impact. It was like getting slapped with an agave cactus; I gasped and bent over the bar, tingling all over.
"Wow," Cherise said, watching me. "It's like Brides Gone Wild. Impressive."
I held out my arms, she ran into them, and we hugged. "Glad you're okay," she whispered. "I was so scared. . . ."
"I wasn't," Kevin said. He was stretched out on my nice beige jacquard sofa, ruining a perfectly good tuxedo and getting his nicely polished shoes all over the fabric. Unlike Lewis and David, he wasn't improved by formal wear. He looked like a hoodlum who'd mugged a groomsman. "I was betting you'd be barbecued."
"Asshole," Cherise said. It sounded like she meant it for a change, and Kevin's perpetual slouch straightened a little. "Her wedding just got blown all to hell. You could at least not be a total wad about it. For once."
He sat up completely, brushed the hair out of his eyes, and looked a little less smug. "Sorry," he said, and almost meant it. "I mean, I knew it was going to come out the way you wanted it to. You wanted to draw the Sentinels out; you did it. Most of them got obliterated, right?"
"I don't know," I said. "The plan was to force them out in the open so we could identify them. That seems to be working pretty well."
"It wasn't just the wedding," Kevin said. "All the shiny pieces were here, right? Ashan? The Oracles?"
Yeah, as if I'd actually planned that part. "Sure. The better to get them to step out and show themselves. "
"So you got him. The old guy." He meant Bad Bob. I didn't answer. I poured another shot glass of tequila and downed it.
"You might want to leave," I said. "Because this isn't over."
Both Kevin and Cherise looked taken aback, looking around at the calm, orderly luxury of the penthouse. Out at sea, the storms were dissipating; there was still tension in the tectonic plates, but it was being bled off in harmless ways by the Earth Wardens. The Ma'at were all over the whole balancing problem. It all looked . . . calm.
"Leave," I said, even more softly. I poured two shot glasses and put the bottle aside. "Go now."
Kevin grabbed Cherise's hand and dragged her, still protesting, toward the door. I didn't raise my head to watch them go. I stayed focused on the silvery glitter of the alcohol in crystal, and when I heard the door click shut, I said, "You might as well show yourself. I know you're here." I could feel his presence now. I couldn't believe how it felt - how cold, how empty.
I heard the chuckle, and it was so familiar, so damned familiar it burned. I tried hard not to shudder, tried to keep my head up and my back straight. "Tequila, " Bad Bob said. "Always thought you were a scotch girl, Jo."
"I am," I said. "But I remember you always had a taste for the stuff." I took a shot glass and turned, holding it out.
Sure enough, on the other side of the room, Bad Bob stood watching me. He was wearing a tuxedo, too, or half of one, anyway; the pants were formal, the shirt untucked, the tie loosened. No coat. His suspenders were in a garish rainbow that brought to mind the early oeuvre of Robin Williams.
"Like it?" He snapped the suspenders with his thumbs. "Thought I'd help you celebrate the happy day. And it's a happy day, isn't it? You and David, all cozy and bound up together, till death do you part." Bad Bob grinned, all teeth and crazy blue eyes. "I'll take that drink now."
I levitated it across to him. He laughed and snatched it out of the air, threw it back, and blew the shot glass into powder in midair with a random burst of power.
"You know what I am, don't you?" he asked. He continued to grin, relentless as a shark, and ambled slowly around the room, poking and touching things at random. "You know why I'm so set on getting you."
"I know," I said. "I've killed three of you so far."
That snapped his head around fast, and the grin turned bloody in its intensity. "Don't flatter yourself," he said. "You used our own against us twice. That doesn't even count. Any fool Warden could have done it. But the last - ah, the last one was special. She was mine."
"I didn't think the Demons had family."
"I didn't say she was family; I said she was mine. I created her; I cultivated her. I set her on you. And you stood there and watched her die." His smile twitched insanely. "Poetic justice, I suppose, your Djinn pouring poison down her throat the way I did it to you in the first place. Never been much for poetry, myself." He stretched out a hand. The bottle of tequila left the bar and arrowed across the room to smack into his palm. He swallowed one mouthful, then two, and licked his lips. "Down to us, isn't it?"
"Is it?" I cocked my head and smiled back at him, trying to be as winter cold as he. "So what're you going to do, Bob? The Djinn have twice the power they did an hour ago, and none of the restraints they used to have. You can't command them. You can't trick them. And you damn sure can't scare them anymore. The Wardens know you now, and the ones who thought the idea of the Sentinels made sense are learning better, fast. You can't threaten to go public. What's left?"
"Same thing that's always left, girly-girl." He shrugged. "Death, horror, destruction. No matter how good you are, you can't stop it all. I'll push you until you break, you, the Wardens, the Djinn. Until you make a mistake and I come for you."
"You don't think coming here was a mistake?" I asked. " 'Cause I have to admit, ballsy. Not real smart, but ballsy."
"Oh, I'll be gone well before help arrives," he said. "Might surprise you, but I can do the Djinn thing now - blip around through the aetheric. Handy when you want to visit old, suspicious friends."
I felt the atmosphere shift, slide toward the darker spectrums. "Okay. Nice to see you, Bob. Now, fuck off."
"I always did love your sharp tongue," he said. "I'm not going to fight you today. Be a shame to destroy that dress." The bastard winked at me. "No, I'll just go home, play with my new friends. You know them, I'll bet: Rahel, that rascal, pretending to be all soft and human like that. Oh, and my new friend. Someone very special."
He reached into the shadows, and he pulled out my daughter.
Imara stumbled and fell to her knees, the brick-red dress she normally wore now fluttering and writhing around her. He'd bound her up with black ropes of twisting, glittering power, and where they touched her, they burned. No, I thought numbly. Impossible. She was safe; she was taken back to the chapel; Ashan was guarding her. . . .
"Ashan never did like this one," he said. "Figures on appointing a new Earth Oracle in short order. Nice friends you have. Maybe you ought to reconsider which side of this you're on, girl; what do you think?"
I lunged for Imara and slammed into a barrier, one that blew me back across the room to slam full force into the glass tiles of the bar. I saw stars and darkness, and sank to an awkward sitting position on the floor, surrounded by fallen shards of mirror.
"Oh, don't fuss. She's not really here. Just thought I'd give you fair warning, because it's going to hurt you a whole lot worse than it hurts me when I do get around to taking your kid."
"Stop," I said. I felt light-headed, sick, hot. I no longer felt in the least invulnerable. "What do you want?"
"I want to make a deal," Bad Bob said. "Your daughter's life for David's. Fair trade."
"No." I snarled it. "You don't even have her, you bastard; you already said so!"
"I said I don't have her now. Not that I wouldn't have her by the time your little rescue party fails to take me out. Sorry, kid," he said to Imara's image. "Mommy doesn't love you all that well, looks like. Too bad, you're a cutie."
He showed me what he was going to do to her, to my child, and I didn't look away. I wanted to, desperately, but something in me that was far colder, far wiser than my heart made me stay strong.
"When I'm finished," he said, in a whisper as black as the Unmaking itself, "then I'll reach through her to destroy you. But not before. I want you to feel every moment of it, Joanne. Every . . . single . . . moment."
The Wardens and the Djinn had finally arrived, no doubt summoned by Kevin and Cherise. I felt the flare of power outside the doors; they were out there, but Bad Bob was keeping them shut out. He could do that. He had power to burn . . . but he wasn't doing it alone. I recognized the signature behind it.
Ashan. Ashan was still interfering, throwing up barriers, trying to get me killed. He'd consider his problems solved, if I just disappeared from the face of the earth. After all, the vows David and I had exchanged had elevated the New Djinn in power - made them, I suspected, a match for the Old Djinn. Maybe even more than a match.
"You don't have my daughter, and you're not going to have her," I said, with an icy calm that I was far from feeling. "The Djinn would be all over you right now if you'd harmed a hair on an Oracle's head. You're a fool if you think anything else - and that includes Ashan, by the way. He might be using you, but he'll never stand with you."
Bad Bob stared at me for a second. The grisly vision of Imara vanished into mist. Gone. He lifted the tequila bottle to his lips and drank. Drank it dry. Then he tossed the bottle back to me, and I snatched it out of the air.
"You come on, princess," he said. "You find out what I've got. Call my bluff."
I didn't blink. "All right," I said. "I call." Anything, anything to buy time. My backup didn't dare come at him unprepared, any more than I dared a direct assault against him; they had to be sure he was cut off from his support, and that they could get to him before he got me. Bad Bob had it in him to slaughter me, right here, right now. I felt it in the air. David needed to counter Ashan's influence first.
We'd wanted this. We'd asked for it. I only hoped that we were prepared to actually deal with it, now that the moment was staring us in the face.
"Good girl." That smile, that evil, dark smile, grew wider still. "So give me your expert opinion: Do you think this is just another illusion?" He reached aside, into the shadows, and this time he pulled out a book: the book, a twin to the one, bound in leather and wrapped in iron, that I'd last seen in the vault in Ortega's Miami mansion.
I felt the pull of it from here, and the whisper of power. Nope, that was not an illusion. And our time was running out. I reached through the golden thread that welded me fast to David and whispered, It's here; he has it here, and felt the Djinn surge in response.
They slammed hard into a black shell of crackling power that Bad Bob threw up so fast it made me shudder. The Wardens backed off, and the Djinn melted away, circling, looking for weakness.
I was trapped.
Bad Bob took the iron peg out of the latch with a flick of his finger, opened the book, and flipped pages. "You have any idea what's in here, sweetheart?" he asked. "What kind of havoc I can wreak? Ah, here's a good one. . . ." Words spilled out of his mouth, strange and liquid, and something in my brain trembled and screamed an alarm.
I froze as the last syllable left his lips, and felt something seize control of me, and a burning sensation high on my right shoulder blade, like a brand being pressed deep into the flesh. I couldn't flinch. Couldn't scream. I smelled my own skin burning, and couldn't so much as cry.
This shouldn't happen. This can't happen!
"Hush," Bob murmured. "Sooner done, soonest over. There. Now I own you, sweet little Jo. The way it was meant to be." He snapped the book shut and dropped it; it vanished into mist before it hit the floor. He was storing it in a pocket universe, somewhere in the aetheric. No way to get to it without knowing exactly where, without having the keys he'd crafted to hide it.
I still couldn't move. I stayed stiff and silent as Bad Bob walked toward me. He was a short, bandy-legged old man, but none of that mattered. I was looking at him on the aetheric, and he was no longer troubling to hide himself at all. He was a morass of boiling black, tentacles whipping and tangling, razor edges slashing at everything around him, and where he touched it, the aetheric bled.
