"But less easy to kill, I hope."
He tilted his head. No answer. I chewed eggs. They were good, I supposed. More importantly, they were fuel for a body that had spent its reserves recklessly. My body fat was gone, and my blood sugar in the negative numbers. David's infusion of energy last night had kept me alive when my mortal flesh tried to shut down, but now it was up to me to get things back in order.
"The Sentinels," he said. "Did you get anything from them? Anything that could help us?"
I dropped my fork and stared at him. "I didn't tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
"Oh my God!" Of course I hadn't. I'd been busy trying not to die, and then I'd been completely consumed by the novelty of still being alive. Until he'd asked the question, the knowledge had been lurking somewhere in the back of my mind, waiting for the right moment. "I know where he is! The - the anchor, the leader, whatever! Well, where he was, anyway."
"Where?" David was already up and on his feet, and looking more Djinn than he ought to. "Where?"
I picked up my fork and gobbled down mouthfuls of egg as fast as I could, grimly intent on getting my strength back. "The Florida Keys," I said. "Key West, or somewhere close to it. The bastard is our neighbor."
Chapter Nine
I rested for a couple of days. My appetite returned with a vengeance on the second day out from the attack, and David was at first amused, then a little appalled at my lust for calories. "Are you sure that's wise?" he asked when I opened up the fourth bag of barbecue chips. "There's such a thing as overdoing it. . . ."
I knew there was, but the food and the sleep were recharging my body, and I wanted to hasten the process. Impatient, that was me. And scared. I knew the Sentinels now, in aetheric form if not in actual physical shape. I knew how much power they were packing, and it was terrifying indeed. I wanted my body back and balanced, fast.
I knew that bags of chips weren't the way to go, but they tasted so good.
David distracted me from the chips by proposing an outing: shopping. "You," I said, gazing at him approvingly, "are getting to know me way too well."
He raised his eyebrows. "I plan to research you in the biblical sense later."
"Mmmmm, maybe shopping can wait." Those words were a sign of just how much that invitation really meant. I hardly ever delayed shopping.
"No. I want us out and visible," he said. "If the Sentinels are watching, I want them to see that you're alive, well, and strong. I don't think they'll try that again. You surprised them, and you scared them."
"I did?"
"If you hadn't," David said, "they'd have come back for you already."
Dressing took on a whole girding-for-battle significance now that I knew my enemies were going to be watching me. I bathed, scrubbed, exfoliated, shampooed, shaved, tweezed, moisturized. I spent half an hour on my hair, and another half an hour on makeup. Choosing the right sundress required another long stretch of time. When I finally appeared in the doorway, David was stretched out on the couch, feet crossed at the ankles, reading a battered paperback, which he dropped on his chest at the sight of me.
"Yeah?" I twirled for him, just fast enough that the floating hem of the light floral sundress showed my thighs. "Healthy enough?"
He pressed his lips together and struggled to sit up. "That's one word for it."
"What's another?"
"Seductive." That note in his voice made me shiver, but I put my shoulders back and shook my finger at him anyway.
"You said we needed to get out. So out we get, Mister."
He sighed, stood up, and slipped into his coat.
"David?" I hated to say it, because this was a kind of dividing line, and I wasn't even sure why. "The coat. If you want to be taken for human, only flashers wear coats in Fort Lauderdale in the summer."
He seemed honestly surprised. "But - ah. Yes. Right." He took it off and put it back on the chair, petting its olive-drab surface as he did, like a favorite pet he was sorry to leave behind. "Everything else okay?"
I gave him the walkaround. "Not bad," I said, "but we can do better."
"Oh no," he said.
"That's right. We're shopping for you, buster."
I knew all the good places to shop, but if I hadn't, even JCPenney would have been able to supply a decent alternative to the ever-present checked shirt that David seemed to think was the height of fashion. But I wasn't going for better; I was going for make women stop and stare, though with David, that wasn't exactly difficult.
He was made for Versace.
The salespeople thought so too; David was bemused by the whole affair, clearly wondering what the hell he'd gotten himself into, but as always, he was willing to experiment with the most trivial of human pursuits. I conspired with the lead saleswoman to do before and after digital pictures. Going in, David was a good-looking man, a bit conservative with his blue-and-white checked shirt and jeans.
Going out, he was so attractive that he was a menace to passing traffic. He wore a black, skin-tight Versace knit shirt, long-sleeved to give him sleekness, and his black Diesel jeans that hugged his ass and thighs, and flared out at the ends just enough. Because we were in Florida, I gave him a bit of a surfer fashion sensibility, and it suited him brilliantly. The coppery tan could have been stoked by days paddling in the surf. I added a very fine Hugo Boss sports coat, in midnight blue, and when he put it on, the salespeople gave a collective sigh and snapped pictures. He turned toward me, eyebrows raised, a slight flush in his cheeks.
I've made a Djinn blush, I thought. There was a weird satisfaction in that. Also, I planned to try to make him blush more, in private, later.
Some part of me, during all this public playacting, kept monitoring the aetheric for any signs of Sentinel activity. Nothing. It was dead quiet, weirdly so. Maybe I really had given them a shock with not dying on cue.
I started to pay for the clothes, but David slipped a wallet from his pocket and pulled out a jet-black American Express card. I caught a look at the name as he handed it over.
DAVID CYRUS PRINCE.
David knew what I was thinking, and he met my eyes briefly, then smiled at the salesclerk and signed the credit card receipt. We left the store with his old clothes and shoes in a bag. I couldn't stop stealing glances at him, darkly gorgeous as he was; every woman we passed, young or old, plain or model-in-training, gave him an involuntary stare.
"That," he said, "was a waste of time. I could have just manifested the clothes, if you'd shown me what you wanted me to wear."
"The point is to be seen," I reminded him. "Besides, buying clothes is something humans do. You want to be human, right?"
"Right." His lips quirked, and he tried to suppress a smile. "That's the first time I've ever purchased clothing, you know. For myself."
"It's good to stretch," I assured him. "Mr. Prince."
The two of us strolled through the warm, humid morning. My dress rippled and flowed in the ocean breezes, my hair looked fantastic, my shoes were kicking ass, and I had the most beautiful man I'd ever seen on my arm.
Still, I was constantly looking for a knife headed for my back. Our backs.
Nothing.
We shopped all morning, then ate lunch in a cafe next to the ocean. I could see that David was settling into his new look, which pleased me; I had the feeling that Djinn changed styles reluctantly. He couldn't help but notice the attention he was attracting, and unless Djinn were a whole lot less like humans than I suspected, attention wasn't unwelcome.
Otherwise, he wouldn't choose to be so gorgeous to start with.
Over chicken salad and iced teas, he asked me about our afternoon plans. I proposed more shopping. He counterproposed other things, which I confess sounded more interesting, but I'd pledged to keep to my timeline.
I really needed to find that wedding dress.
So after lunch, we went to Zola Keller, and I started the arduous task of trying on thousand-dollar-and-up couture. Which is not nearly as much of a hardship as you might think. I went through twelve styles, none of them quite right, and then . . .
And then it happened.
The moment the clerk unzipped the bag, I just knew. As the weight of the Italian silk settled around me, I knew even more. When she laced the back and prepped me for the mirror, I knew I'd found exactly what would drive David wild.
Unlike most wedding gowns, this was no Disney princess knockoff; it was sophisticated, subtle, sexy. Layers of silk dropped in subtle angles from the low-cut bodice, but it in no way resembled any kind of wedding cake. The fabric rippled in silk waves, layer upon layer, sweeping into a fantastic train.
But the back was what did it - a laced corset, fitted to show a deep, sexy V of skin down the spine beneath the lacings. It was demure enough, but I could sense, like a vibration on the aetheric, that it would drive him absolutely mad.
"I'll take it," I said. The clerk raised both eyebrows.
"Don't you want to know - "
"If you tell me the price, I'll chicken out, so no. I don't want to know. Just ring it up."
She cleared her throat. "I really think I should warn you about the cost - "
"You really shouldn't," I sighed.
The Warden AmEx was about to get a serious workout. Even though she was undoubtedly making a commission, my saleslady looked concerned for the state of my financial future. As well she should. If it cost anywhere near what it looked, I was going to be paying approximately the cost of a new car.
She fussed around with the dress, looking for necessary alterations and marking them. A thorough professional. We discussed indoor versus outdoor, potential hazards of having a court train to manage, and other things that I couldn't imagine ever discussing again in my entire life.
But it was done. I had a dress. And it was the dress.
I walked out of the dressing room feeling happier than I had in weeks, trailing the salesclerk like a lady's maid. I was smiling widely, anticipating the pleasant shock of seeing David in his still-new finery, and I wasn't disappointed; he was sitting sprawled on a velvet couch, looking ready for a fashion shoot. Women were finding reasons to shop in his vicinity. I couldn't really blame them.
"Done," I said serenely.
"Really? That was fast." It wasn't, but he was being kind. He kissed me, and that was very nice, especially when, as he pulled back, he whispered in my ear, "I want to take you home now."
"Let me mortgage my future first."
I don't think a sale ever went through faster. In fact, I didn't even notice the total amount as I signed the slip.
And then, of course, everything went wrong.
David sensed it first, by a couple of seconds; he looked up sharply, all the ease and humor draining away from him, and his hand closed around mine in an iron grip. He wasn't letting us be separated again, not this time.
"What is it?" I asked, or tried to. I never got to the last word. David pointed to the world beyond the glass windows.
The clouds were thickening so fast overhead that it looked like special effects from the most expensive disaster movie ever made.
I turned my focus out to sea, out to that calm and tranquil sea. There were no hurricanes brewing there, only the normal cycle of thunderstorms that needed no Warden regulation.
But someone was tampering with the clouds, forcing energy into a stable system - taking a standard garden-variety thunderstorm, which hadn't even really been threatening rain until later, and packing it with energy until it was a mesocyclone. I'd seen it done, but never this fast, never with so little to work with. The Sentinels were creating an emergency, and doing it so quickly that it made my whole body shiver with the corona effect of the power. Lightning ripped through the sky, blue-white and purple, and struck three times that I could see, blowing up transformers, destroying a metal light pole, stabbing into the lightning at-tractors on a building only two blocks away.
People began to react nervously.
Outside the windows, I saw the classic formation take shape: anvil cloud, hard and gray as lead; cloud striations below, showing the shredding forces at work; wall cloud pushing rapidly toward us, forming and hardening as it came.
An occlusion downdraft was taking shape, leading the forces into a spinning, fatal vortex.
I felt the forces coalescing, and turned my face upward as I rose into the aetheric.
Yep. Tornado. Right over the store.
David was right with me. We rose up into the boiling storm of opposing forces. I couldn't see the perpetrator; there was too much confusion, too much random energy masking his presence, but I sensed he was here, watching. Waiting.
The tornado was a trap, but it was one I couldn't help but spring. It was dipping down out of the clouds, heading for the crowded street. Heading for the bridal store.
Heading for my dress.
I took a deep breath, tightened my grip on David's hand, and prepared for battle.
"I'm with you," he said. "I'll give you what I can." I understood, in that second, that the Mother had cut his circuits again, stranded him from the core of his power. He had whatever was in him, and no more.
Just as I did. Why was she on the side of the Sentinels? Or maybe it was simpler than that: Maybe she didn't want the Djinn interfering in our internal struggles anymore.
I could understand that. It did seem a massive waste of resources.
"Watch our backs," I told him, and focused on the glittering, complex, deadly snake of the tornado that was dropping toward us with the speed of a freight train.
It wasn't the classic rope-style tornado; this one was a brutal wedge of power. That was not necessarily a bad thing; the intensity of a tornado doesn't depend on its width. But if it was an F4 or F5, being a wedge tornado would make things that much worse.