"He thinks I know something about a crime that happened while I was-before you ask, no. I didn't." She opened her mouth to fire off another question, and I hastily searched for an excuse to escape. "Sorry. I have to use the bathroom."
Even persistent people don't want to argue with full bladders. She let me go. I hurried through the doorway into the living room, heading for my closed private space, and... the doorbell rang.
JESUS! "Get that!" I yelled over my shoulder, and kept moving. I ran into the bedroom, slid open the bedside table, and grabbed David's blue glass bottle. My heart was hammering. I was about to take a huge gamble, and it was likely to get me hurt or killed in the process. I went back out into the living room, passing Sarah on her way to answer the doorbell, frowning at me; she'd taken the time to remove her apron and fluff her hair.
I slid the sliding glass door open and stepped out onto the patio. Ashan turned from contemplation of the ocean to stare at me. His eyes flicked toward the bottle in my hand.
"At least you take direction properly," he said. "Call him."
"You don't want me to do that," I said.
Ashan's eyes went stormcloud-dark, tinged with lightning blue. "I won't tell you again."
"You want to kill him."
Ashan smiled. Not nicely.
I closed my eyes, opened them, and said, "David, come out of the bottle."
For a long second I was sure that I'd made a terrible mistake, that he'd never gone back in the bottle at all, and then a shadow detached itself from the corner and stood, swaying and angular, at my side. It wasn't David. It wasn't ... anything I could recognize. But it answered to the name, and evidently I still had some control over it.
Ashan took a step back. That predatory smile went south, fast.
"What's wrong?" I asked him, and this time, my voice stayed steady and cool. "You wanted David. Here he is."
"Ifrit."
"Oh, now that's just mean. You shouldn't judge a Djinn by the color of his ..." Before I could finish what was admittedly a very weak joke, I lost whatever control of the situation I had, as the Ifrit formerly known as David lunged, fastened himself around Ashan, and began to feed.
Ashan screamed, backed up, hit the railing, and began raking the Ifrit-I couldn't think of him as David-with silver claws. Ashan's form changed, flowed, became something larger and only barely human in form. Gray and vague and shot through with vivid streaks of white.
The two of them misted through the railing and plunged down, twisting, falling.
The Ifrit had two misshapen, angular limbs plunged deep into the Djinn's chest, and the silver essence flowed in spirals up coal black, glittering arms, disappearing into the black hole-mouth?-in the center of that twisting shadow.
He's in pain. Not Ashan, David... I could feel it. I could feel his agony, and it made me stagger and grab for the railing and bite back a scream. The connection between us was coming back, and oh God it hurt. Like a gallon of bleach poured into my guts. I held onto the railing in a death grip, staring down at the two battling figures as they hit the parking lot-like Rahel before them-and rolled, ripping at each other like wild tigers.
And then, suddenly, just when the pain was about to drive me to my knees, it stopped. There was a floating sensation, an overwhelming burst of peace, and I saw the Ifrit change.
Twist.
Take on color and shape and form.
David was crouched on top of a prone Ashan, hands sunk to the wrist into the other Djinn's chest. He was dressed in jeans and nothing else-bare-chested, gleaming and bronze and shimmering with what looked like sweat. His shoulders heaved, although he didn't need to breathe, unless he'd really taken on human form.
He yanked his hands free of Ashan's chest. They were smeared with silvery residue. Ashan, for his part, lay there motionless, staring up at the darkening, cloud-littered sky.
Lightning jumped from one cloud to another, a hot, white flare that I felt along my nerve endings. Thunder slammed through the air and buffeted my chest, such a physical presence that it set off car alarms.
David looked up at me, and his eyes glowed hot bronze. Alien. Familiar. Haunted.
He pulled himself away from Ashan, staggered to his feet, and braced himself against a convenient Volkswagen Bug. The car's alarm went off. He absently shushed it with a tap of his fingers against the fender, got control of himself with a visible effort, and formed a blue checked shirt out of thin air. He put it on, but didn't bother with buttoning it. I don't think he had the strength.
He looked so weak.
"David," I whispered. I was gripping the rail so hard I thought I might have to have it surgically removed from my fingers.
He looked up again, and I got a faint, ghostly smile.
And he misted out.
I gasped and leaned over, looking for him, but he was gone, gone...
Warm hands slid over me. I bit my lip, tasted tears I didn't know I'd shed, and leaned back into his embrace.
"Shhh," David whispered against my ear. His breath stirred my hair. "Not much time. I couldn't take enough from him to stay in this form, and I won't kill him. Not even him."
"I know," I said, and turned to face him. He looked normal. Healthy and sane and perfectly all right, and that was the torture of it, that it was temporary. That he'd have to feed again and again to maintain this illusion of normality.
I kissed him breathlessly. Hard. He returned it with interest, trying to pour emotion into the briefest span of time possible, and reached up to cup my head in his large hands, holding me in place while his warm, silk-smooth lips devoured mine.
When we parted, it was like losing a limb. I could feel him again, inside-the connection was strong, humming with potential. But I could already feel the drain. I had little energy left, and something in him was siphoning it off. It was like trying to fill up a black hole.
"Put me back in the bottle," David said. "You have to. Do it now."
I nodded. He stroked hands through my hair, smoothing curls, making it silky straight the way he knew I liked it.
"I love you," he said. And that hurt, oh God. Because I knew he meant it, despite everything.
I said the words, and he was gone, back into the blue glass bottle I'd dropped, forgotten, on the wrought-iron table. I hadn't even remembered putting it down.
I picked it up again, shocked by the several-degrees-too-cold chill of the container, and remembered to look back down at Ashan.
He wasn't dead. In fact, he was moving. Rolling up to his knees, with one hand bracing himself on the pavement. He looked like he'd had the shit kicked out of him, but I had absolutely no doubt that he was completely, utterly pissed off, and looking for payback and something more than a pound of flesh.
I couldn't use David to protect me. Not when he was barely clinging to his sanity and identity.
I stood there, looking down at him, as Ashan made it to his feet. He passed an absentminded hand over his suit, and the rips and dirt disappeared. He was once again a Brooks Brothers ad, except that his expression wouldn't effectively sell anything but firearms or funeral arrangements.
He didn't move, just stared at me with that burning threat in his eyes, and waited.
I said, "If you come back at me, I'm going to make you an all-you-can-eat Ifrit buffet."
He said something in that liquid-silver Djinn language, the one I could almost understand. I doubted it was complimentary.
"I mean it," I said. "Get out. If you come back, I won't be the one getting bitch-slapped."
Behind me, the sliding glass door rumbled open, and I heard Sarah say, "Jo? Eamon's here. I'm getting ready to serve the pasta. And I'm serious about the police. You really should call them. I don't care if that man is a cop; he still can't do this to you. It's not legal."
I didn't move. Down on the pavement, Ashan didn't, either. We stared for a good thirty seconds. Wind whipped at my clothes, my hair, going west, then south.
Random winds, confused by the boiling disturbances in the aetheric. God, the weather was so screwed up. The Wardens were going to go insane.
Which reminded me of what had happened on the bridge. I had no idea of how much all this was affecting the Wardens, but I knew for certain there'd already been one human casualty. I needed to report it.
"Jo?" Sarah sounded concerned. "Are you all right?" The patio door slid farther open, and she stepped out next to me, enveloping me in an ever-so-slightly overdone cloud of Bulgari's Omnia, which was-she'd assured me-a bargain at $75 for two ounces. The wind ruffled her highlighted hair, and she frowned out at the parking lot, focusing on the white van. Her breath exploded in an exasperated sigh. "That's it. I'm calling the cops. At the very least, they can make him stop parking down there and staring at us all the time."
Down in the parking lot, Ashan's intense eyes-swirling from silver back toward teal blue-suddenly shifted away from me to focus on my sister. And he smiled. It was a dark prince's smile, something chill and amused and terrifying. I felt an answering righteous surge of fury. Don't you dare, you bastard. Don't you dare look at my sister like that.
Whether he sensed that or not, he misted away without another sound or word.
Gone, except for that lingering, unspecified threat.
I sucked in a deep breath, turned, and laid a hand on Sarah's bare shoulder. Her skin felt creamy-soft under my cold, shaking fingers.
"It's okay," I said, and smiled. "Everything's okay now. Let's just have a nice, peaceful dinner."
Yeah. That was likely.
While I'd been playing Juliet to Ashan's homicidal Romeo out on the balcony, Sarah had transformed my dining room table-another secondhand special-from its usual distressed state into something that might have made an interior designer reach for a camera. I recognized the tablecloth, which was something of Mom's that she'd left me-a gigantic crocheted ecru thing, big enough to use as a car cover-but Sarah had dressed it up with an accenting silk-tasseled runner, candles, a bowl of fresh flowers floating in water. The dishes-all matching-looked suspiciously new. Also mod and oddly shaped and matte black, which I knew had not been in my meal-serving arsenal last night. In fact, my china collection mostly consisted of secondhand Melmac, with the occasional chipped Corningware.
The kitchen looked spotless. There were three glasses of chilled white wine sitting next to the plates, glimmering delicately in candlelight.
Eamon was standing next to the table, his back to us, watching something playing silently on our (still crappy) television set. Financial news, apparently. At the sound of the closing patio door he turned, and I have to admit, he looked good. Like Sarah, he'd gotten the "let's dress to impress" memo I'd missed. His pants were some kind of dark, rough-textured silk, his shirt a deliciously pet-table peachskin, open just enough to demonstrate how casual he was, yet nowhere approaching the sleazy post-modern disco look so currently in vogue. He looked hand-tailored, and still just the slightest bit forgetful about it.
Class without effort.
He extended his hand to me. I reflexively accepted and watched his smile go dim, a frown of concern take its place.
"Joanne," he said. "You're cold. Everything all right?"
"Yes," I said. "Thanks. I'm fine."
His long fingers-long enough to span my wrist and wrap over by at least three inches-slid up to touch a bruise on my arm left over from this morning. "You're sure?" He sounded doubtful. "You don't want to see a doctor? No problem with the arm?"
"I'm fine." I tried to put some conviction into it. "Glad you could make it. Sarah's been cooking for-hours." Which might have been true. I had no idea.
Eamon let go and accepted the conversational detour. "Yes, it smells delicious. And your apartment looks lovely, by the way."
I shot Sarah a look that she accepted with raised eyebrows. "Yeah, apparently. Much to my surprise." I looked significantly at the new plates. Eamon's eyes darted from me to Sarah, then back again.
"I hope you don't mind," he said. "She said you were short on a few of the essentials, so I took her shopping. We got a few things."
In my world, fancy black foo-foo plates and new wine glasses and silk table runners didn't really constitute essentials, but I was willing to go with it. "I don't mind, but really, if you bought them, I'll pay you back." Then again, those plates looked like they might be worth more than my entire shoe collection.
"No need." He shrugged it off. "As it happens, a freelance payment came through today. I don't mind contributing a bit, since you're being so kind as to invite me as your guest."
"Most dinner guests just provide a bottle of wine, not the whole place setting. Well, anyway, it's nice to hear good news for a change."
He smiled slowly. "I don't know if it's good news for everyone; money that comes to me does have to come out of someone else's pocket, at someone else's expense ... ah, well. Life does turn in interesting ways." His eyes flicked toward David's bottle. I was still holding it in my left hand. "May I put that in the kitchen for you?"
I immediately flinched backward. "This? No, it's-skin cream." Which might have been the dumbest explanation I'd ever come up with, but I was rattled. Too much, happening too fast. And I obviously couldn't let Eamon touch the bottle, or he'd have ownership of David. At least temporarily. "It's empty." I turned it upside down to demonstrate. "I'm just putting it back. To refill it."
I slipped past him and went to my room. Stood there in the dark for a few moments, sliding my fingertips slowly over the glass, thinking about David, about how good he'd looked. Could he have been... cured? Maybe he was fine now. Maybe...
Yeah, I told myself. Maybe you could call up your Djinn boyfriend and bring him out to dinner and explain how your musician boyfriend was living in your closet when you said he was on the road. Now was not the time to experiment. I slid the drawer open, kissed the glass, and slipped the bottle into its padded case.
After a hesitation, I zipped the case shut. If I needed to grab things in a hurry, seconds might count, and with Ashan on the warpath, flight might be the best defense.
Since Sarah and Eamon looked so nice, I threw on a blue dress-nothing too suggestive, since he wasn't supposed to be looking at me, after all-and stepped into a decent pair of secondhand Jimmy Choo kitten-heeled pumps. Lipstick, some mascara-it was a fast makeover, but at the end I looked decent. The mirror showed a brightness in my eyes that hadn't been there before, and a flush in my cheeks.
My hair was glossy and straight from the touch of David's stroking hands.
I thought about the Djinn, fighting among themselves. I thought about Wardens taking killing falls from bridges.
I thought all that for about thirty seconds, then sat down on the bed and picked up the telephone. Dialed a number from memory.
"Yo," said a rough, Italian-spiced voice on the other end; I could tell he hadn't yet looked at Caller ID. There was a short, fumbling pause, and then a much warmer, "Jo! Nice to know you still remember the number."
"Paul, how could I forget?" I sat back and crossed my legs, and smiled; I knew he could hear it in my tone. "I just thought I'd better let you know that there's something going on with the Djinn. It's bad, Paul. Really bad."
Sometimes, being proactive with your ex-boss is a good idea, especially when said ex-boss has the power to haul your ass into a special clinic and give you a lobotomy. Forcibly. For not much of any reason at all, actually. And I wanted Paul to hear things from me before he started getting the reports in from Florida of wacky things happening around me up on the aetheric.
He sighed. "What's going on?"
"I personally witnessed a Warden get killed." I wrapped a hand slowly in the bedsheets. "Paul... the Djinn meant for it to happen. It was deliberate."
Silence, for a long moment, and then I heard his chair creak as he readjusted his weight. "He's not the first."
I'd been afraid of it. "How many?"
"I can't tell you that. But if I didn't know better, I'd go join some cult and start preaching about the Apocalypse, because all this is... it's bad, Jo. And it's making no sense to me. You got any information I can use?"
I chewed my lip for a few seconds. "It looks like the Djinn are splitting into sides. It's a power struggle of some kind. We're just... caught in the middle."
"Great."
"Look, I know it's probably nothing at this point, considering everything that's going on, but... I got taken for a ride by three Wardens the other day. They seemed to think I was still in the weather manipulation business. Is that coming from you?"
Silence.
"Paul?"
"I can't discuss this, Jo."
Dammit. It was coming from him. "I need to know. Look, I'm not running, I just ... there's so much happening. I can't afford to be caught off guard by Wardens right now."
"Cards on the table?" he asked. "I've got a dozen senior Wardens yelling for your blood. Their point is that whatever's going on, you're in the middle of it, and besides, you haven't been straight with us, not about much of anything. And I know that part's true. So. Where does that leave us?"