Текст книги "Firestorm"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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Eamon, meanwhile, was moving—slowly, carefully, with a hand pressed hard to the place the knife had gone in as if he could hold his life in with it. He walked to a wooden cabinet and dragged a floral suitcase—clearly a woman's—from a narrow cubbyhole. He opened it and took out a bottle filled with clear liquid that he held up in one shaking hand. His hair was plastered to his face in wet sweaty points, and I could feel the rage and fear coming off him.

"I hope we understand each other," David said. "If Joanne dies, I take you apart. Slowly. I can show you things about pain that you've never even imagined. And I can make it last for an eternity."

Eamon, if possible, paled even further. He tossed him the vial. David effortlessly snatched it out of the air without moving his gaze from the other man's face, and held it out. Imara took it and looked uncertain.

"Syringe," Eamon said. Imara ripped open drawers in the cabinet by the sink and came up with a syringe, which she filled from the vial.

She crossed to me and hesitated again. "I—I don't know how to—" She did. I knew, and she knew everything I did, but it was comforting to know that there were still things that could make my daughter flinch.

"Vein or muscle?" I asked.

"Muscle," Eamon said.

I took the syringe out of Imara's hands, jammed it into my thigh, and depressed the plunger. Whatever it was in the hypo, it went in ice-cold, tingling, and then turned hot. It moved fast. I gasped for breath as I felt it move through my circulatory system. My lungs felt as if I'd sucked on liquid nitrogen, and I got an instant, mind-numbing flash of a headache.

Then it was done, and I felt… clearer. Not well, by any stretch. But better.

For the first time, David looked at me directly. I gave him a shaky nod as Imara helped me up. "I'm okay," I said. "Now, can you—help her? None of this is her fault. She doesn't deserve to suffer for it."

David looked baffled for a second, then turned his attention to the woman lying on the bed. He crossed to look down at her, and put his fingertips on her forehead.

And then he said, very quietly, "There's nothing there to help."

"No," Eamon said, and lunged forward over the bed, one hand still clutched to his side. "No. She opened her eyes—"

"Imara opened her eyes for her," David said. "The mind that was inside her is gone. She's been gone for years."

Eamon's face turned into a rigid mask, with a red angry flush across his cheekbones. "No. She's there. I told you, I need five minutes—"

"Her brain is dead, and her soul is gone." David looked up at him, then at me. "This is why you wanted a Djinn. To heal her."

Eamon said nothing. He'd taken the woman's limp hand in his, and he was holding it. For any normal person, it would have been horrible, coming here, holding her warm hand, knowing on some level that it was just a lie her body was telling. I wasn't sure what it was for Eamon. I wasn't even sure why he cared so much. Both his explanations had been lies, David said. So what was the truth?

"You said you had a time limit," I said.

"Her family's turning off the machines," he said. It was barely a whisper. "Tomorrow. Brings new meaning to the term deadline, doesn't it?"

He laughed. It was an awful laugh, something wild and dangerous and mad. Not a good man, Eamon. Not a sane man. But there was something in him, some overwhelming emotion driving all of it.

"How did it happen?" I asked.

"Why would you care?" he asked, and brushed the glossy, oddly healthy hair back from her pale, dry face. It had to be about money, didn't it? Cold, hard cash. Because I didn't want to believe he was capable of love and devotion—it made things far too complicated.

"You did it to her, didn't you?" Imara suddenly asked.

Eamon transferred that feverish stare from the woman to my daughter. "Bugger off."

"Imara's right. She was just another victim, wasn't she? Only this one up and died on you." My voice was shaking, and I could feel the rest of me trembling along with it. "You got carried away, playing your little games."

He laughed, and looked down at the woman. "You hear that, Liz? Funny. Just another victim." He shook his head. "Liz and I—let's just say we had a professional relationship. And she violated some professional rules. Things went wrong."

I was never going to understand him. Nothing he said matched to what his body language said. The slump of his shoulders, the trembling in those long, elegant hands—that all spoke of grief, real and bone-deep grief.

David hadn't said anything. He was watching Eamon with the same intensity, but the incandescent rage had died down a bit.

"You going to kill me now?" Eamon asked. "Give me a colorful end to a bad career?"

"No." David shrugged. "I healed the wound. You'll be fine so long as you don't make any sudden movemerits. Or come after my family again. If you do that again, I willkill you."

My family. That struck me deep.

"You can all go to hell for all I care," Eamon said, and reached across to rest his hand on top of the respirator that breathed for the woman on the bed. "I didn't poison your sister, by the way. She's the one bright thing in my life. I didn't—" He fell silent.

"If you really think that, then let her go," I said. "Just let her go."

"Oh, I already have. I left her a note. I told her I had to go back to England. She'll come crawling back to you any moment now. Now bugger off, all of you!" The last came with a viciousness like a thrown razor.

David looked down at the bloodstained knife he was still holding, and casually broke the blade of it in two with his fingers. He tossed the remains in the trash.

And then the three of us—Imara, David, and I—left the hospital room.

As the door hissed shut behind us, David took me in his arms, and I melted against him. Into him.

I didn't ask, but David knew what I wanted to say. "I really couldn't do anything for her. There are limits."

I kissed the side of his neck. "I know."

"I leave you alone for five minutes—"

"It was more like days."

He growled lightly into my shoulder. "You're impossible. And I have—"

"Responsibilities," I murmured. "I know you do."

He let go.

"What about him? Eamon?" Imara was standing straight and tall, hands folded, watching the two of us. My daughter's face was a mirror of mine, at least in form, and in this instance I suspected she was a mirror of my expression, too. Compassion mixed with wariness. Eamon was a wild animal, and there was no telling what he'd do. Or to whom.

"If that demonstration didn't frighten him off, then the next step is to kill him. Not that I'd mind that."

My thoughts were on other things. "The woman—Liz—was she his victim, or his partner?"

"I don't know," David said. "I only know that Eamon never once told the truth about her."

Imara said, "Yes, he did."

David turned to her, surprised.

"When he called her 'beloved Liz.' He meant that."

At the nurse's station, an alarm began to sound. The nurse jerked to attention, checked a screen, and hit a button, then rushed past us… into the room we'd just exited.

"Let's go," David said.

"Is she—?"

"Go."

"Did Eamon—?"

He held the door to the elevator for me, head down, staring at his shoes.

"Oh God, David, did you—?"

He didn't answer. Neither did Imara.

On the way to the lobby, I called Sarah's cell phone. She was crying when she answered. "Jo, oh my God—Eamon—Eamon left me a note—I thought—I thought he really loved me—"

So. He wasn't entirely a lying bastard, after all.

"Sarah?" I said gently. "Stay there. I'm coming."

He hadn't exactly stinted her on accommodations. Sarah was registered at a downtown Boston hotel in her own room, a luxurious suite that came with a panoramic view, a fabulous king-size bed, and its own monogrammed robes.

I knew about the bed and the robes because when we arrived, Sarah was curled up on the bed sporting the robe, clutching a tearstained note in one hand and a generous wad of tissues in the other. She looked like hell, but she didn't look sick. I still felt achy in places, but I knew that was a legitimate price to pay for what I'd avoided. Eamon really would have killed me.

And my sister was weeping herself sick over him.

After parsing some of the hitching, half-understood things she was mumbling, I came to the conclusion that she'd consulted the liquor cabinet for some comfort, too. Great. Drunk, maudlin, and irrational. Sarah's best day ever.

I rolled my eyes at David, who had the grace to turn to look out the windows at the rain streaking the glass. Imara grinned. Together, my daughter and I escorted Sarah to the bathroom, where I dumped a cold shower on her to help with the sobering up (and yes, it was more than a little fun, too), and helped her get herself together. Eamon had provided plenty of tools, from high-quality makeup to shopping bags from half the high-end clothiers in Boston.

My sister should have been a model. She had the rack for it, and the elegant bone structure. Where I was round, she was straight, flat, and lean. Her hair still retained the delicate cut and highlights that I'd helped her put in—God, had it only been a week ago? I decided to forgo the mascara. As much as Sarah continued to sniffle about her latest romantic disaster, it was bound to be a wasted effort.

"I was so worried," Sarah suddenly said as I applied blusher to her pale cheeks. I stopped, surprised. "I didn't want to leave you, Jo. Eamon said—he said you'd gone back to get your friend."

I nodded. "I did." He'd basically left me to fend for myself in a hurricane, but he'd cut me loose, at least. Had to give him points for that. "I'm sorry. It took me a while to catch up to you."

She studied me from bloodshot eyes, getting more sober by the minute. "Were you? Catching up to me? Or were you really looking for Eamon?"

I applied myself to the makeup with an effort. "Looking for you, of course."

"Jo." She stopped my hand with hers. "I know he's a bastard. But there was something about him—you understand?"

"I understand that you were married to one jerk, and you just fell for another one," I said. "But in this case, I can't really blame you. He put on a good show. Even I believed it for a while. So I think I'll have to forgive you for this one."

That was what she wanted to hear. I saw the flash of relief in her eyes, and then she hugged me. A warm cloud of Bvlgari Omnia embraced me, too. She'd put too much on. She always did.

I hugged her back fiercely. "Come on," I said. "Let's get packed up."

It didn't take long. Everything she owned, Eamon had bought for her; like me, she'd had to flee Fort Lauderdale with nothing but the clothes on her back. Even her suitcases were new.

And designer.

Some refugees just are born to land on their expensively manicured feet.

"What am I going to do with her?" I sighed to David as we leaned against the wall and watched Sarah fill the third Louis Vuitton bag with toiletries and shoes. I was considering knocking her over the head and stealing the suitcases. Eamon had excellent taste.

"She shouldn't stay here," David said. "If he comes back, I'm not sure she wouldn't—"

"Oh, I'm sure she would. Eagerly. Eamon could talk her into anything, and you know it."

"Then you'd better send her someplace safe."

"And where would safe be, exactly?" I asked. He folded his arms and stared at the carpet; there really wasn't a good answer to that, and he knew it. "I've used up my favors. I have no other family to ship her off to—"

"Actually," Imara interrupted, "you do."

We both stopped to look at her. A flash of lightning outside the windows illuminated the humor in her smile.

"I'll take care of her," she said. "If you're about to jump back into trouble, you can't keep her with you. She'd slow you down." Imara's golden eyes sought David's for a second. "So would I, as a matter of fact."

"Imara—"

"You have to take her," she said to her father. "You have to take her to see the Oracle, and you know you do. I can't go. I'd just be in the way."

He reached out and brushed her hair back from her face, a gesture I'd felt a thousand times from him. Tenderness incarnate. "I need you to go to the Ma'at," he said. "Take Sarah, and get on the first available plane to Las Vegas to make contact with them. Tell them that we'll meet them in Phoenix."

"Phoenix?" Imara and I blurted it together.

"I'm not taking you back to Seacasket," David said. "That way is—well, it's just not possible. We have to go to the other access point where you can reach the Oracle."

"Phoenix," I repeated. "David, that's a long, long way."

"Yes," he agreed blandly. "Imara, get Sarah on the plane. Jo—"

"You two should get some rest," Imara said with an utterly bland expression. "The room's paid up for the night."

There was a storm, of course. There's always a storm in my life, and this one was big and nasty and intent on harm. I did what I could, in concert with the other two Wardens still alive in the vicinity to help—two hours spent in front of the plate glass window, watching the clouds, reading the weather patterns and gently herding it where it needed to be. David didn't help me with the weatherwork. I think he knew I needed to do this myself, feel that I was at least being useful in some small way.

When I came back to myself fully, he was holding me from behind, arms around me, and I was leaning back against his chest.

"Why aren't you crazy?" I asked him wearily.

"Excuse me?"

"Crazy. Red-eyed, bugged-out crazy. Why isn't shecontrolling you?"

"She isn't awake."

"Could've fooled me."

David let out a slow breath that stirred my hair. "She's still dreaming, Jo. When she wakes up… it will be worse. A lot worse. Unless something happens to change her mind about humanity."

"Ashan took care of all that. He's been whispering sweet nothings in her ear for years, I'd be willing to bet. Maybe centuries. Nothing I can do or say will counteract that."

David kissed the top of my head where I was curled against him, and he stroked my hair. It was a familiar ritual. My curls relaxed under his touch and smoothed into a silk-soft curtain. I'd never realized how intimate that was, how… caring. He felt so strong when I leaned against him. So solid and immediate and real. "Don't underestimate yourself," he said. "You stopped me in my tracks the first time I saw you. She has to love you."

I was overwhelmed by how much I missed him. Such a girly thing to do, but I couldn't help it; I turned my face to his chest and began to sob. Abjectly, silently, near-hysterically. My whole body trembled with the force of it. I didn't want to be doing these things, risking these things; I wanted to forget the feeling of dread and terror and helplessness that Eamon had buried inside me like a broken-off knife. I wanted to take David home and live in peace. For heaven's sake, just live.

He understood why I was crying, I guess, because he didn't speak. He just held me, stroking my hair, and let me cry. There were advantages to having a lover older than recorded history. He knew when to be quiet and just let me get on with it.

Once the storm had passed, I felt weak, feverish, and not very much better. My eyes were scratchy and swollen, and I needed to lie down and curl up in a ball for about, oh, a week. Next to him. Holding him.

"I'm sorry," he said, and let me straighten up when I tried to pull away. "You didn't ask for any of this. You never did."

"Damn right." I took a handful of tissues from the box that Sarah had been using before me, and used them to wipe my face, blot my eyes, and blow my nose. David watched with nothing but compassion on his face. "I was going to ask why me, but I don't think there's really a very good answer for that."

"The stronger the shoulders, the larger the load," he said. It sounded like an aphorism, but I didn't know it. "You're strong, Jo. Stronger than most humans I've ever known."

"Great. My boyfriend thinks I'm a Clydesdale."

He smiled. "I think you're a goddess."

"Sweet," I said, and honked my nose, "but goddesses don't cry in their beer about crap like this, do they?"

"How many goddesses have you ever met?"

I didn't want to ask how many he'dmet. Sounded like a discussion of former girlfriends that I didn't want to have right now. "How long can you stay? With me?"

"I don't know." Oh, hell, I didn't want him to be honest about it. Men. Why don't they ever know when to slide in the comforting lie? "Like you, I'm doing this from moment to moment. On instinct."

"Yeah, but at least your instincts are honed by a few millennia of experience. Mine, they're finely calibrated by a few years of screwing up."

That got a cute little smile from him, with raised eyebrows, and nearly revealed a hidden dimple. Ooooh. I blotted my tears again, to keep him in focus.

"Close your eyes," David said.

"Why?"

His eyebrows quirked. "Don't you trust me?"

Unarguable. I closed them, although it deprived me of the sight of him, which was a big minus. The sandy itch of postcrying swelling was nearly unbearable… until I felt the light, silky stroke of his thumbs across the lids.

And then the itchy, swollen feeling was gone.

I sucked in a startled breath and discovered that my bloated sinus passages were fixed, too. Nice. The ache in my temple also vanished.

The vague heavy ache of the aftereffects of Eamon's drug were gone, as if it had never existed.

I opened my eyes again and looked straight at him. His smile kindled into the kind of fire you get at the heart of a nuclear power plant. The look melted me into a little radioactive puddle. Figuratively. But I wasn't entirely sure he couldn't do it literally, as well.

"You bastard," I breathed. "You could have just zapped Eamon's poison right out of me, couldn't you?"

"I wanted a hands-on approach. And I wanted him to clearly understand that we were not the people he should want to play with."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure you got it across to him." I put a hand on the warm plane of his cheek and let my fingers glide down the warm skin, rough with just a hint of beard. David might be wearing human form as a kind of disguise, but he was thorough about it. He understood the delight of textures.

"We can leave in the morning," he said. "Imara's right. You need the rest."

I didn't want rest. All I wanted was a bed, a lock on the door, and David. It was irresponsible, it was dumb, and I didn't care. I was exhausted with the strain of giving up what I wanted for the sake of… everyone else.

The weather was distracting me. I got up and yanked the cords on the curtains to whip them closed.

His hands slid around me from behind before I could turn around again. They wrapped hot around my stomach and pulled me back against his body. His head dropped forward, pressed against mine, and I felt the shuddering breath that went through him. As if he wanted to weep the way I had, but men—even male Djinn—didn't do that kind of thing. He pressed his lips to the back of my neck instead. His voice, when it came, was rusty and low. "I hate this," he said. "I hate seeing you hurt. I want to keep you safe, and I can't. I can't even keep you safe from me."

"You have."

"So far."

"You will."

"Maybe." He loosened his hold on me and let me turn around; his hands settled on my hips and pulled me closer against him. "I wish you'd never met me. You'd have been—"

"Dead," I finished for him. "You know, because you saved my life. A few times."

He shook his head. "You might not have been in danger if it hadn't been for me."

"Not everything's about you. Or the Djinn," I said, but I said it gently, because I hated to imply he wasn't the center of the universe, and kissed him to let him know not to take it personally. It was a nice, long, slow kiss, and it felt like we were melting into each other. Tension flowed down my back, out through my feet, and left me in a deliciously languorous state of bliss. Without breaking the kiss, David walked me back a step, then another, until the bends of my knees collided with the bed. I wavered, then let myself fall; David let go long enough for me to writhe fully onto the bed, and then he just stood there, looking down at me.

"What are you looking at?" I demanded. I got a beautiful smile that held just a tinge of sadness.

"You," he said. "I just want to remember this."

He shrugged off his olive drab coat and let it fall in a heavy thump to the carpet. Underneath, he was wearing a blue-and-white shirt and a pair of khaki cargo pants.

"Your turn," he said.

"We're taking turns?"

He shrugged. There was a sinful glint in his eyes. "One piece at a time."

I didn't have a coat. I considered, then kicked off my shoes. That got a raised eyebrow. He retaliated by stripping off his own, socks included. I loved his feet. Long, narrow feet with a high arch. Baby soft, because the Djinn had no use for mundane things like calluses. Every inch of him was perfect, I recalled. Warm and velvet-soft and perfect.

I was igniting inside like an oil-soaked rag on a bonfire.

"Shirt, please," he said. The word was almost a purr in his throat. "Slowly."

I made a production out of it, arching my back to slide it off over my head, shaking my newly straightened hair until it fell like black satin over the lace of my bra. David's expression was closed and mysterious, his eyes narrowly focused on the rise and swell of my breasts, the way the lace curved down and away from the skin.

I propped myself up on my elbows, making sure he got a good, long look, and gave him a slow smile. "Your turn," I said. "Shirt."

He went to it with a will. I watched the flicks of his fingers, the way the fabric slid away to reveal burnished skin, and swallowed hard. When the last button fell loose, I had a good view of his flat abdominals, and that sexy shadow of hair that was just barely visible at the waistband of his pants. They rode low on his hips, as if they wanted to come off.

Silence. He was watching me. I was watching him.

"You first," I murmured.

He gave me a slow, completely wicked smile, and unbuttoned his pants, then let down the zipper. As the fabric slipped down his legs to puddle on the floor, I let out a slow held breath. He was perfection and flame made flesh, and oh God, how I adored him.

"You cheated," I accused. "What happened to the underwear?"

"Got impatient," he said, and then my remaining clothes began to mist away, turning into cool wisps of smoke that made me shiver in delight. The bed creaked as he put one knee on it, looking down at me. "I do that sometimes, with you."

"Bet you say that to all the mortal girls."

His eyes met mine, and for a second they weren't Djinn eyes, they were David's, and I saw the man he'd once been all those millennia ago before the fires had turned him into something else entirely.

"No," he murmured. "I don't."

He had great hands. Incredible hands. They glided up my sides, skimmed over my breasts, cupped them in heat. Caressed my nipples until I was biting my lip and making whimpering noises of need.

And then his hand slid down between my legs, and my mind exploded in a haze of bliss so strong that it seemed to dissolve the world in opal swirls. Every muscle in my body convulsed, held, trembled and kept on going, and my thighs trapped his hand in place. It seemed to last forever, and just as I began to slip back into the mundane, he moved and did something else and oh God, it started again.

It felt like hours. Maybe it was hours, slow and hot and torturously wonderful, before he finally succumbed to temptation and slid inside me, melting us together into a mindless, perfect union. It felt so good, so right, and I wanted to move, wanted him to move… but he didn't. He stayed still, buried deep, and our eyes locked together in fascinated wonder. I could feel the energy running through him, hot and wild. The same energy that had overtaken him outside of New York, in the car, but he understood how to channel it better now. How to bend it to his will.

"Let go," I whispered, and his lips parted in a gasp, and the light in his eyes brightened. "There's such a thing as too much control."

He'd made love to me so many different ways, and this was yet another—frantic, wild, tender, dangerous, sweet, and utterly open. Like the weather pounding at the window and crackling in my nerves, he was unstoppable. When the pleasure peaked, it was like a tidal wave carrying me to the sky, where I shivered into stars and fog.

I clung to him, exhausted and shining with sweat.

Panting as it passed. He collapsed with me in a tangle of arms and legs. Our hands were clasped together, still trembling from the force of the aftershocks. David's eyes were closed, and his face was—momentarily, at least—relaxed and peaceful. I studied it with the intensity of someone planning to do a portrait, the way the shadows defined his angles, the way his eyelashes feathered, the way his cheekbones demanded to be caressed.

"I need to tell you something," he said with his eyes still closed. His voice was unsteady, his breath coming quickly.

I didn't feel any steadier. "So long as it's not goodbye."

His eyes flew open. "I'm not that cruel, am I?"

"No." I kissed the point of his chin. He made a lazy sound of pleasure, so I kept on, nuzzling his neck. He smelled clean and hot, with just a hint of musk. Lovely. "Well, sometimes. But believe me, I know when a guy's getting ready to hit the door. That was notgood-bye sex. That was whoa, hello! sex."

His arms went around me and rolled me on top of him. Breathtaking, the strength he had. The control. The precision. His skin was hot and damp and wonderful to touch. "Anyone who's ever said good-bye to you is a fool."

"Well, obviously. Your point?" I was playing, but some part of my brain was arguing with me. It had been shut up in the basement while the rest of me had gotten what it wanted, but now it was telling me that time continued its inexorable march, that I shouldn't be wasting this precious few seconds with banter.

I didn't care. Not now. Not with him.

David stroked my hair back from my face, but it kept sliding over my shoulders to rain down around us, a privacy curtain that made the world seem small and perfectly safe. Illusion. But a nice one.

"Most of the Djinn are gone," he said.

"What?" The illusion was thoroughly shattered. "What do you mean, gone?"

"Withdrawn from this plane. I sent them to the place where Jonathan kept his house—you remember?"

I remembered. Not precisely where it was, or how to get to it, because it wasn't exactly explicable to mortal brains, but the point was that it was sealed off from the regular plane of our reality. A pocket universe, of a sort. A retreat. A sanctuary, in a sense.

"While they're there, they'll be outside of anyone's control—mine, and hopefully, even the Mother's," he said. "It's the best way I know to keep things from escalating out of control between the Djinn and humans, if the worst should happen."

"If she decides to kill off the human race, you mean?" He didn't answer. He didn't have to. "You said most of the Djinn were withdrawing. Not all?"

"A few volunteered to stay with the Ma'at," he said. "Ten or so. Enough to help them complete their circle. The Ma'at are working to try to stabilize systems—they won't intervene directly, but they can provide a kind of ballast, settle things down." He paused for a second, and I could tell the next thing wasn't good. "About twenty Djinn are staying with Ashan. I can't stop them, not without a straight-out fight. The problem is that by withdrawing, I let him have the field of battle. But if I don't… Djinn get hurt. And humans get caught in the middle."

Not good news. Ashan was a force to be reckoned with, even by David's standards, much less by my own. And with a small army of immortal, arrogant, angry beings… twenty was more than enough to destroy everything in his path.

"I think Ashan's counting on you to give up, actually."

"I can't fight him."

"Can't—or won't? That was Jonathan's problem. I thought part of the reason he handed things to you was so that you'd be able to… act."

He looked so grave that it chilled the lingering warmth inside me. I slipped off to the side and curled against him; his arm went around me, holding me close.

"I need time," he said. "I need time, Jo. What you're talking about is the beginning of the end for us. It's what Jonathan was afraid of all along. War. Death. Destruction. I'm not…" He hesitated. "I'm not ready. I'm not sure I can be what he was. Ever."

"So you're willing to let humans take the heat for you in the meantime while you debate it?"

His hand, which had been stroking my hair, went still. His eyes closed.

"Yes," he said softly. "I have to be willing to do that. And so do you. Listen, Jo—you spoke to the Oracle. That's unprecedented. You might have succeeded if the Oracle hadn't been—prevented—"

"Infected."

"Yes," he said, and kissed my bare shoulder. "So we try again. We keep trying. And if it comes to a fight with Ashan, I'll do everything in my power to end it with a minimum of bloodshed."

I rolled up on my elbow, looking down at him. "Human bloodshed? Or are you talking about the Djinn?"

He regarded me with absolute steadiness, and there was that shadow in his eyes, the same one that had been in Jonathan's before him. Power. Vast and unknown power. "I have to be true to my responsibilities, Jo. But you're one of those responsibilities now."

"I know," I said, and put my hand on his chest, over his heart. Not really a heart, of course; not really flesh, except by his will. I was touching fire. Touching eternity. "We're just flying by the seat of our pants, aren't we? But then, we've done that from the first moment we saw each other."

"Yes." His burning lips pressed on my forehead for a brief second. "It's like your forest fire. The old world is burning. It's hard to see the new one that's coming, under all the destruction, but the green always comes, Jo. It always comes." He kissed my shoulder again, making a slow trail along my collarbone. "Imara and Sarah's flight touched down in Phoenix without incident, by the way. Safe and sound. Imara's taking Sarah to the Ma'at."