Текст книги "Firestorm"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

… and a massive—and I mean massive—tree toppled over across the road, slamming down with pulverizing force about ten feet from the battered hood of the SUV.

I screamed and hit the brakes. Felt the thump as Emily's limp body hit the back of my seat and fell into the floorboard; she made a weak moan, so at least she was still alive. The SUV fishtailed, tried to yaw left, and lurched to a halt.

Oh fuck.

I turned frantically to look behind. The advancing fire was moving fast again, leaping from tree to tree like some demented flaming Tarzan. I felt the heat notch up inside the car.

We were going to die. If we were lucky, we'd expire of the smoke first, but I didn't think the fire was feeling especially generous about it…

I ducked my head as the tree to my left caught with a bubbling, hissing snap of pine sap combusting. Smoke clogged my throat. I coughed and slid sideways to try to find some clean, breathable air. Panic made it hard to do anything Wardenish with the situation; my body was acknowledging imminent death, and it had no time to spare for rational thought.

I tried to breathe, but it was too hot, and there was a dry, hot, sere blanket pressing down on my mouth and nose and I couldn't breathe…

And then, I felt a breath of fresh, cool air, as if somebody had turned on the biggest air conditioner in the world. I sucked it in with a gasping whoop, coughed, and kept breathing as I forced myself back up to a sitting position.

David was standing in front of the truck, arms spread wide, coat flared out like wings. He looked fragile, standing framed by a curtain of fire, although I knew he wasn't. He reached out and rested his hands lightly on the hood, staring in at me through the haze of cracks in the glass, smoke, and dust.

Cool air filled the cabin of the truck. Sweet and pure as an early spring morning. Except for the surreal roar of the fire outside, we could have been parked for a picnic.

David gave me a faint, unreadable smile, then straightened up and walked over to my side of the vehicle.

"We don't have a lot of time," he said. Master of the obvious, he was.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Other things," he said. "Surprisingly, I don't spend all my time following you, but then, I didn't think I had to. Imagine how surprised I am to see you in the middle of this. Have you lost your mind?"

"You can psychoanalyze me when we're not getting burned alive," I gasped. "For now, could you just help us get out of here?"

"I will. Once I move this tree, don't stop, whatever you see. Understand?" He reached in and traced a finger down the side of my face, a hot sweet touch that ended too soon. "Go now. Time's short. I'll yell at you later."

"But—" I gestured helplessly at the gigantic felled tree in the way.

He walked over, and grabbed a fragile little twig of a branch that should have snapped off in his hand the second he pulled on it.

Instead, he picked up the entire tree, like some balsawood stage prop. Only, clearly, it was the real thing, heavy and groaning, shaking dust and splinters as he hauled it around like a toy. He casually dragged it in a quarter circle, like a gate on a road, and dumped it along the side in a thick crash of pine needles.

"Go!" David shouted. "Don't stop!"

I gunned it. The SUV's tires flailed for purchase, caught, and rocketed us forward. As we passed David, he reached out to touch the truck, just a brush of his fingers across the finish.

The broken and cracked glass healed with an audible, singing crack. I couldn't tell about the other damage, but I was willing to bet that Emily was getting her SUV back in like-new condition.

And then he was gone, a dot in the mirror, vulnerable and fragile next to the rising giant fury of the forest fire, standing in front of the oncoming flood of plasma and flame.

I was shaking all over. Too much information, delivered wrapped up in too much personal death-threat, to absorb all at once. At least I'd seen David for all of thirty seconds. That was something…

Yeah, I'd seen a Demon hatch out of a crispy-baked Warden, too. And been attacked by a burning zombie.

I wished I could say that it was an exceptional day.

"What happened?" a hoarse voice asked at my ear. I screamed, took my foot off the gas, and then jammed it back on as my forebrain caught up with my instincts. "Sorry. Scare you?"

Emily. She was sitting up, looking weary and smoke-blackened and red-eyed, barely better than something from a horror movie herself. Clinging to the seat for support.

"No," I lied. "Are you okay?"

"Fuck no, you've got to be kidding," she said, and let herself drop back against the seats. "Is it out? The fire?"

I checked the rearview mirror. The whole sky was red and black, a churning fury of destruction.

"Not quite," I said bleakly.

"It's only a couple of miles from Drumondville. We have to—"

"No," I said flatly. "It's enough, Emily. We can't do any more."

She lunged upright, grabbed the back of my seat, and thrust her face next to mine. I got an up-close look at her red-rimmed eyes, furious and brimming with moisture.

"There are peopleout there! People who are going to die! We're Wardens! You can't just leave!"

I knew that. I felt it inside me, the same desperate yearning to make everything right, set the crooked straight, save every life and fix every broken thing in the world.

I turned my stare back to the bumpy road, blinked twice, and said, "Sometimes you have to let it burn, Emily."

She stared at me in disbelieving, weary silence for a few seconds. "You coldhearted unbelievable bitch," she said. I didn't answer. I kept driving. She was too weak to try to take the wheel from me—hell, she was too weak to be sitting up for long, and she proved it by letting go and slithering back down to a supine position on the backseat. When I looked in the rearview, she turned her face aside, but there was no mistaking the startlingly pale tracks of tears on her dirty face.

"They were right about you," she said. "You should have been neutered when we had a chance. You don't deserve to be a Warden."

I felt her words like a blunt, cold knife shoved right under my heart. If she'd been trying to rip my guts out and decorate the truck with them, she couldn't possibly have done a finer job. Since the night I'd fought for my life against Bad Bob Biringanine, the surly but beloved old codger of the Wardens, I'd been persona non grata in a big way. The black sheep of the family. Blamed for everything, and praised for nothing.

But I was a Warden, dammit. I loved the sky, the sea, the living air around me in cell-deep ways that only another Warden could ever understand. I wanted to help people so much that the impulse ached inside me. I was a Warden, and the Wardens loved the world. But it was strictly a one-way love affair, and we forgot that, the closer we got to our duties.

"Bitch," Emily mumbled distantly. She was sliding into unconsciousness again, or sleep. Too tired to be angry. I turned on the radio, glided it over to a station that had some decent music, and kept it on for the rest of the bumpy escape from the forest to cover up the quiet, uneven sounds as I gulped back tears.

The SUV growled to the top of the ridgeline, and I had a spectacular view of the inferno of the valley behind us, and what lay ahead.

"Oh ho," I whispered, and the tears finally broke free.

David had warned me. Bad things. There were dead people lying in the road.

The only ones standing were the Djinn—four of them. They were crouched among the dead, studying bodies with varying degrees of disinterest. I jammed on the brakes, remembered what David had said as the Djinn began to turn toward our Jeep.

Don't stop, whatever you see.

I didn't recognize any of these—two males, two females, at least in appearance. Two of them looked very young, almost childlike. One of the male Djinn had a burly, weightlifter-type look. The remaining female Djinn could have sat for a portrait of a Pre-Raphaelite angel, minus the wings… unbelievably, radiantly beautiful.

She was the coldest one of all.

All this went through my mind in a second, and then I hit the gas. The Jeep raced forward. I felt the engine sputter and realized, with a chill, that the Djinn were capable of stopping it dead. David had done it to me, once upon a time. Only not with such a deadly motivation.

Don't stop.

I formed shells of pure air around the spark plugs. The engine sputtered again, caught, and surged, rocking from side to side on the rough road.

"What's happening?" Emily had decided to speak to me again. I didn't have time to answer. I felt her pull on the back of my seat as she hauled herself upright. "What—What the hell?…"

She screamed in my ear as all four of the Djinn– allof them, moving in concert—stepped into the road, blocking us. The kids in front.

Don't stop. No matter what.

I closed my eyes, sucked in a panicked breath and held it. And kept the Jeep hurtling toward them at speed.

"No!" Emily shrieked, rattling my eardrum, and I felt the wheel wrench as she grabbed it over my shoulder and twisted, hard, to the right. I lost my grip. The wheels lost the road, bounced over ruts, lost purchase…

We rolled over. All the way over, in torturously slow increments, as the world spun in a complete 360. The Jeep bounced and groaned as it settled back upright on its springs again.

So much for Emily's SUV being good as new.

"You idiot!" I yelled, and cranked the key. Nothing. Whether it was the crash, or the Djinn, the truck wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't hurt, but I was scared, and my personal terror level got elevated as the driver's side door was wrenched open.

Angel Djinn stood there, staring at me with pure white eyes. Her skin was a delicate, inhuman silver, and her robes like alabaster silk blowing in an unfelt breeze. She had dark, waving hair that cascaded in luxurious waves over her shoulders, past her hips, down to trail the ground and her bare feet.

She reached in, grabbed my seat belt, and ripped it loose with a single tug, then grabbed my arm and dragged me out. Slammed me up against the fender of the Jeep in a flurry of dust and held me there, with her hand poised over my heart.

We froze that way. I didn't dare breathe. She didn't need to. Her head slowly tilted to one side, then came back upright again. I was reminded of the deliberate targeting movements of praying mantises.

"You stink of it," she whispered. I could hardly understand her; her accent sounded odd, antique, as if she hadn't bothered to speak to a human in hundreds of years. "Filth. Reeking filth."

Next to her shining perfection, that's pretty much what I felt like, too. But I knew what she was sensing—the two Demon Marks I'd had on me in the past twenty-four hours. Not to mention the Demon that had been chasing after me like a freight train back in the forest, lighting trees on fire as it came.

But I'm not one to take that kind of thing lying down.

"Do I havea Demon Mark?" I demanded. Not that you should demand anything from a Djinn who's just participating in the slaughter of about—my brain whited out at an attempt at the number. Upwards of fifteen people, at least.

"No," she said, and did the head-tilt back and forth again. Maybe I was like a Magic Eye poster, and she was trying to see the Statue of Liberty hidden inside me. She dropped her hand back to her side. "You may go."

She abruptly turned and glided around the Jeep, over to the other side, where Emily was leaning against the door. Emily promptly scooted over to my side of the car and rattled the handle. Stuck. Stay there, I mouthed. She ignored me, of course. But to be fair, maybe she couldn't see me. The window was fractured into a fine latticework of cracked safety glass.

"Excuse me," a polite voice said, and before I could flinch, much less grant pardon, I was picked up and set gently off to the side by the big male Djinn, who had dark cocoa skin and black eyes, and a whole lot of long pale hair that was tied into a ponytail at his back. He was dressed in more conventional styles than Angel Djinn—blue jeans, a chambray work shirt in fashionable (and daring) light purple. He misted out at the knees. It didn't seem to bother him.

I stumbled on gravel when he let go of me. He reached over, grabbed the handle of the back door of the SUV, and removed the door, handle and all. He set it gently aside, next to the one Angel had dismembered, and leaned in to grab Emily by the scruff of her shirt. She screamed and fought, but it was a little like a puppy fighting a wolfhound, only not so equal. "Shhhhh," he told her, and held a finger to her lips. She went instantly still, and white as bleached paper. "Good girl." He set her on the ground and stepped back, still holding her by one arm in case she might decide to sprint for it.

Angel glided back, barely touching the ground. Her feet looked as if they'd never encountered dust, much less rocky, tough ground.

She held her hand over Emily's heart.

Head-tilt. It stayed frozen in one spot for longer than I liked, and then slowly came back upright.

She moved quick as a tiger, fingernails forming into silver claws, and ripped Emily's shirt open over her heart. Not just the shirt. The jog bra was a casualty, and Angel hadn't been too careful about the skin, either.

Under the pale flesh and the claw marks and the vivid red blood, I glimpsed a tangle of black racing out of sight under her skin.

"No," I whispered. "Oh, no. How—? When—?" Because I knew for a factthat Emily hadn't been infected when we'd left her house. It had to have happened in the woods, when we'd been separated.

The damn Demon Mark was still following me, and when it hadn't cornered me, it had gone for Emily.

Emily's jaw worked nervously, and she looked at me as she fumbled the shreds of her shirt back together.

"It is early," Angel said. She was unquestionably the Djinn in charge here. The two who looked like kids—a matched set, boy and girl twins dressed in identical T-shirts and sloppy corduroy pants, with tangled brown hair—looked at her with a kind of unquestioning worship. The polite male Djinn, too. "Do you want this one?"

She was talking to me. To me. "Do I—uh—what?"

"Do you want this one?" she asked slowly, sounding out each word with heavy care. When I looked blank, Angel turned to the male Djinn holding Emily's elbow.

"Do you want us to take the Demon out of her," he translated. "It's still early. We can do it."

"Um… will it hurt her?" Stupid question. Of course it would. But it would hurt her a lot worse to keep it. "Never mind. Yes. If you can."

He nodded, took a glass bottle from a leather bag at his side, and handed it to Angel. She opened it carefully and held it in her left hand.

"Don't move," she said to Emily, and plunged her right hand into her chest.

Emily shrieked. I think I must have, too. I know I lunged forward, or tried to, but suddenly there were arms around me from behind, although all the Djinn were in front of me.

"No, love." David's whisper in my ear. "This has to be done."

I spun to look at him. Emily was making terrible, agonizing noises, and there were dead people on the ground, dead people… "You killed these people?"

He looked tired. Shadows in those normally bright eyes. "It had to be done."

" Youkilled them?"

He shook his head. "Let's not do this. Not now."

"Why didn't you want me to stop, if you didn't know this was going on?" But I knew. He must have sensed the lingering presence of my encounters with Demon Marks on me, just as Angel had. He'd been afraid that they'd just assume I was one of the infected. "God, David, how could you do this? These were Wardens."

"Wardens have always passed their infections on to Djinn, and we could never fight back. Now we can."

"So it was them or you. Is that it?"

His eyes held mine, steady. Flecked with amber and full of regret. "Yes. Them or us. And don't tell me the Wardens haven't done the same. Don't tell me that youwouldn't if it came to it."

"Slaughter fifteen people like sheep? No, David, I—" Emily's tortured moans suddenly cut off with the sound of flesh hitting the ground. I spun back toward her, and saw her being picked up from her faint by the big male Djinn, who placed her back in the SUV's passenger side. He removed that door, too, and the back one, as well. Evidently, he liked symmetry.

I rushed to her side and pressed my fingers to her throat. A nice, steady pulse. She moaned weakly and opened her eyes. Bloodshot and unfocused, but it looked like she'd live.

"They were on their way to the fire," David said grimly. "Fire that would have accelerated the Demon Marks and hatched out more than we could handle at one time. We had to stop them before the Demons emerged, and it was too late to remove them safely. We didn't have a choice."

"We could have done something!" I shouted, rounding on him. He didn't back up. "We could have put them in a cell, in a hospital, anything but killing them and tossing them out like yesterday's trash! You don't have the right, David!"

"No!" he shouted back. "I have the responsibility! Now, if we've taken enough of a guilt trip, I have a fire to stop."

He whirled and stalked away, coat flapping in the hot wind behind him. I scrambled after, heart pounding in a bloody, loud fury in my ears. I grabbed his arm, felt heavy wool and the flex of muscles, and dragged him to a stop.

"David!"

He turned, and his expression… Ah, God. The agony was heartrending. "There's nobody else to make these choices. You know."

I did. I remembered all the times that I'd run screaming from the burden of hard choices. Even this time, I'd let myself get distracted from the mission by the opportunity to earn myself a little feel-good glory. It was Emily's job. It hadn't been mine. I'd come out here with good intentions, and hell lay at the end.

"This whole thing won't stop," I said. "It won't stop until we're all dead. Right?"

For answer, he reached out and folded his arms around me, holding me. He smelled of smoke and sweat, real and human, and I wanted nothing but to be somewhere else with him, somewhere free of chaos and responsibility. Somewhere I could hold him against my skin, and we could wash each other clean.

If we could ever be clean again.

"I know you didn't kill them," I whispered against his neck.

"I'm responsible," he said again, and his lips touched the sensitive skin below my ear, a delicate benediction. "That's all you need to know."

Lewis and Paul would shrug it off; fifteen more dead Wardens? A tragedy, sure, but we'd already lost more than we could count. And Demon-infected Wardens weren't an asset to anyone. I knew all the logical reasons, and none of them touched the black, oily guilt that continued to seep into my heart.

I took a deep breath and pulled back enough to look him in the eyes. "Where are these things coming from? What do they want?"

For a second he didn't react, and then his pupils narrowed as he comprehended what I was asking. "The Demon Marks? They're destined to produce adult Demons. They reproduce at will, once they hatch. The Marks—the eggs—are drawn through rips in the aetheric, and they're pulled to the nearest source of power. Djinn or Warden."

"Is that all?"

"No. They're drawn to us because we're part of her, in greater or lesser measure. What they want—especially the adults—is to get to the Mother."

"Like I do." Oh, the irony.

"Not… like you do," David said slowly. "If they can get to a place where she's vulnerable, they could kill her. Demons are a disease, Jo. And we have to fight them however we can, especially now. She's vulnerable. And she's hurting."

"The Oracle. The one in Seacasket. He was infected with a Demon Mark—"

"What?" He pulled back, completely back, eyes wide. "No. That isn't possible."

"I—I think it might have been my fault. I got it off him, but I don't know how much damage it did first."

His face went stiff and blank. "I have to go," he said carefully, with exquisite care. "Don't—don't go back to the Oracle. Don't try."

"But—"

"If you go back," he said tonelessly, "I'll have to kill you. Don't even think about it."

I swallowed hard. He'd shifted from the warm, comforting lover to the leader of the Djinn, and the change was terrifying. "Then what do I do? David, you're the one who said—"

"I know what I said. But it's out of my hands now. And yours. Go home, Jo."

I stood there, stunned. He walked away, toward the fire.

One of the other Djinn was standing next to me—the big one, his pale white ponytail fluttering in the wind. He raised an expressive eyebrow.

"You can go," he said.

Something occurred to me, late and hard. "I forgot—there's a Demon down in the fire—"

"We know, love," he said. "That's why we're here. Go."

When I didn't move, he just picked me up and effortlessly carried me back to the SUV, and plumped me into the driver's side. This time, the engine started with a throaty roar. I looked over at Emily, who was firmly buckled in, and fingered the shredded remains of my own seat belt.

"Oh, sorry," he said, and reached in to touch it with a fingertip. It knitted together with dizzying speed. Good as new. He solicitously buckled me in and patted my shoulder. "You do what he says, now. You go home."

I hardly even remembered driving away. I remember staring into the rearview mirror, at the smoke and flame and the battlefield of dead Wardens, until the next hill hid it all from view.

I cried for a while. Tears of fury and anguish and bitter, bitter disappointment. Disappointment in myself, mostly. If I'd stayed in Seacasket… if I'd gone back instead of going into the fire with Emily, maybe things would be different. Maybe those fifteen Wardens wouldn't be dead. Maybe…

Maybe it would all be the same, only I'd be dead, too. No way to second-guess it. I knew only that the path I was on wasn't the right one, not at all.

Emily continued to sleep, and snore, as I piloted the broke-down Jeep back down dirt roads, heading for civilization.

The first sign of which was a paved road, black and level, at right angles to the road I was on. I turned left.

It's so strange, how quickly you can go back to normal life. The first shock came as the tires of the SUV hit blacktop. The sudden lack of vibration felt weird and unnatural, and for a second I had a nightmarish vision of myself as a backwoods four-wheeling fanatic like Emily, wearing oversize work shirts and thick-waisted jeans and clunky steel-toed boots. With a collection of trucker gimme caps.

Behind us, the forest fire was a lurid red fury, pouring blackness into the clouds. I felt sick, remembering how I'd left things with David. It already seemed more dream than reality.

I wiped tears from my grimy cheeks and thought longingly of a shower. A long, hot shower, followed by a deep, drug-induced sleep.

Paved road or not, I still had a half mile or so to go before we reached the actual highway. Not out of the woods yet. The fire had turned back, consolidated itself—fighting the Djinn now, instead of the Wardens. It might give us just enough breathing space.

Home. Where was home? Sure, I'd drop Emily off at her house, but where did I belong? Back at Warden HQ, helping Lewis oversee the end of the world? Back in Florida, salvaging whatever was left of my apartment after the big storm, and waiting for the next one to hit?

My home was David, and I couldn't be with him.

I fought the tears again—self-pitying bullshit tears, and I wasn't going to give in—and decided to go with the one-crisis-at-a-time theory. First, get Emily home. I'd saved her, at least. That was something. Not much, but something.

From the backseat, Imara said, "Where are you going?"

I yelped and flinched, and the Jeep veered wildly, tires squealing. I got it under control again and looked behind me in the rearview. Imara was sitting there, black hair blowing liquidly in the wind.

"Isn't this supposed to have doors?" she asked.

"Upgrade," I said hoarsely. "Where were you?"

"Trying to get help." She closed her eyes and rested her head against the upholstery. "I ran into Ashan. I wasn't very successful."

"Help," I repeated. "Wait, Ashan!…"

"I'm fine. It doesn't matter," she said. "But at least you're safe."

I laughed. It turned into a racking, smoky cough and ended up in a sob that I controlled with an effort. "Yeah. Safe," I said. "How's the fire doing back there?"

She didn't even open her eyes. "Father and some of the other Djinn are there, trying to hold it, but it's hard. The Mother's… I suppose the closest description is that she's having a nightmare. He's trying to shelter the Djinn from it, but it's getting stronger. He won't be able to keep it from them indefinitely."

"A nightmare," I said. "About what?"

Her eyes opened. Amber-brown. Very human. "About humanity."

Sorry I asked. I remembered the dead Wardens, the suffering on David's face. My responsibility, he'd said. If he'd been trying to hold the Djinn back from whatever bad vibes the earth was trying to send out, maybe he'd slipped. Lost himself.

Maybe I was still trying to make excuses for him, and it had been a cold-blooded choice. Lewis had warned me, not so very long ago, not to underestimate the alien nature of the Djinn. Even the ones I loved.

Of course, the same could be said for people…

"You're thinking about Father," she said. "Right?"

"Why do you say that?"

"You look sad," she said quietly. "He'd hate that he makes you sad."

Oh, dammit. I was going to cry, wasn't I? No. I wasn't. I gulped enough air to make myself belch instead. "Are they going to be able to contain the fire?"

"Yeah," she said, and looked away. "But there's something else in there. Something bad."

Tell me about it. "Don't worry about your father—he's fought bad things most of his life."

"I know," she whispered. "But it's all falling apart, Mom. Why does it have to happen just when I—?"

The second she's born, the world starts to collapse. I bit my lip, furious with Jonathan suddenly; this was too big a burden to give any kid. Even a Djinn-born one. "It's going to be okay," I told her.

"I know," she said. Wind whipped her hair over her face and hid her expression. "I trust you."

I didn't answer. Couldn't. My throat had locked up tight, fighting the tears. Deep breathing helped, and concentrating on the flashing yellow center stripe. Freeway up ahead, and a battalion of flashing emergency lights. I slowed for a barricade. Since there was an exodus from the fire, it didn't appear passports would be an issue. The Mountie manning it nodded to me and moved it aside, and then we were out, racing into the clear day.

Free.

I dropped Emily at her house. She woke up halfway home and subjected me to a foul-mouthed inquisition; she didn't remember anything past her collapse at the ranger station, as it turned out. Convenient, that. I didn't have to answer questions about the Djinn, or the Demon Mark, or any of that crap. She looked ill, but intact, and when I offered to keep her company, she brushed me off as rudely as ever.

The fire was down to normal size, up north, according to the radio, which blamed it on a lightning strike and credited the brave Canadian fire patrols for containing the blaze. No mention of fifteen dead bodies littering the landscape. I wondered if David had cleaned up after his hit squad.

"Where now?" Imara asked. She was behind the wheel of the Camaro when I arrived, and I was too tired and too sore to argue with her.

"Back toward Seacasket," I said. She gave me a long, frowning look. "I know. I said toward, not to. I just need to think for a while."

"I'm not taking you back there," she warned, and put the Camaro in gear. "Father doesn't want you near the Oracle."

Having a Djinn driver was pretty damn sweet, I decided. For one thing, she was fully capable of opening up the car to its fullest potential, and simultaneously hiding it from any observant highway patrol cars. The Camaro loved to run, and some of its joy bled off into me, easing the ache in my guts. I closed my eyes and let the road vibration shake some of the despair away.

I must have dozed off; when I opened my eyes again, the car was downshifting, and Imara was making a turn into a parking lot in front of a roadside motel. "What's this?" I asked.

"You could use a shower," she said.

I winced. "Tact, Imara. We'll discuss it later."

"I'm sorry to be blunt, but you need a shower, and real sleep. Also, this is as close as I can take you to Seacasket without attracting Father's attention."

I hated to admit it, but the kid wasn't wrong. I sniffed at myself. Ugh. I did reek.

I sent Imara in to get the room—one look at me, and they'd promptly light up the no vacancy sign—and lounged against the dusty hood of the car, waiting. She came out dangling a clunky-looking key, the old-fashioned metal kind with a diamond-shaped holder blazoned with the room number. Four was my lucky number, at least today.

While I was in the shower, shampooing for the third time, Imara knocked on the door and shouted, "I'm going to get you some clothes!"

By the time I'd rinsed off and strolled out of the heat-fogged bathroom, she was gone. I curled up under the covers and flipped channels on the TV. The news was full of bad stuff: fires, earthquakes, storms, volcanoes. Europe was locked in a sudden, unexpected deep freeze. India was facing floods. So was South America.

I turned it off and remembered the Oracle. I'd come so close… so close. Wasn't there anything I could do, anything at all? I remembered the rich, dizzying, overwhelming sensation that had come over me when I'd been holding his hand. It reminded me of the on-rushing music of my dream, when Jonathan had told me to leave.

I could almost hear it again, washing through me. Wiping every thought from my mind in a white, overwhelming rush. Floating…

There was someone with me in the room. I hadn't heard the door open, but I sensed a presence. Imara was back, I thought, and opened my eyes.

Even in the dark, I knew that wasn't Imara.

"Hello, love," Eamon said. He was right next to the bed, leaning over me. Even as I tried to roll, he grabbed me by the shoulders and pinned me down.