Текст книги "Heat Stroke"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

We tumbled down, fast, still locked together. She was still feeding off of me.

We slammed down onto something hard and unyielding, and I realized I’d been made flesh again, sans tacky French Maid getup; I was wearing a long pale robe instead, something soft and cool and with a texture like silk.

It was the mirror image of what the woman kneeling astride me was wearing, only hers was a blinding white where mine was a soft cream.

Sara had regained her form. At least for the moment. She was breathing hard, eyes wide and a little wild, and the dull flush in her cheeks could have been exhilaration or post-traumatic stress. Her claws were still sunk deep into my chest, and I could see the pale steady fire of my lifeforce running up through them, into her.

“Get off!” I managed to say, and batted at her weakly. She pulled the claws out, looking stunned and still maniacally excited, and stood up as I rolled over on my side. Oh God. I felt a wave of pure nausea and spat out blue sparks. They were sparkling all over Sara, too, but she didn’t seem to feel any ill effects from them. In fact, the sparks were going intoher, not being rejected.

I’d never felt so frail and sick in my life—human or Djinn. I lay full length on the cool, silky wood floor, struggling to keep myself together, and heard footsteps from the other room.

Ah, perfect. Jonathan. She’d brought me to Jonathan.

He looked down at me with those cool, dark, judging eyes, then bent over and picked me up. Paused when he saw Sara standing there, looking unearthly and beautiful and unhealthily stuffed with energy.

“You,” he said. Not welcoming, not unwelcoming, and not surprised. “Stay here.”

I liked being held in a man’s arms again, feeling the strength against me. It made me feel safe, for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. I tried to pay attention, but it was all just flashes and impressions—a hallway, a glimpse of a kitchen, what looked like photos on the wall, an open darkened doorway. Lights flipped on as he carried me in. The softness of a bed sucked me down.

Jonathan looked down at me, and I was surprised to see something in his eyes that might have been respect. “You made it,” he said. “How’d you know where to go?”

“Didn’t,” I murmured. “Ifrit.”

He nodded. “Yeah, she would.” He took hold of my arm and ran both hands down it, like a coach giving a therapeutic massage; warmth cascaded back into me, silent and luminous. Life, coursing through me.

His hands moved on to my left arm, squeezed in energy. Then my legs, right, then left. The steady warm pressure of his hands lulled me into a half-dream.

Over on my back. Somehow my clothes were gone. Hands on my back, working down the muscles, healing.

“What are you?” I whispered. I felt Jonathan’s presence like the sun behind me. His fingers were no longer pressing my skin, then were inside of me, touching deep.

He never answered.

I woke up warm and comfortable, with a soft feather pillow under my head and no memory at all of going to sleep. No dreams, either. The sheets smelled faintly of sandalwood, and they were crisp and cool on my bare skin. The room didn’t look familiar. It featured a honey-warm wooden chest of drawers, massively carved, and a couple of paintings of space and the stars that looked vivid enough to be windows into infinity. A bookcase, loaded with hardbacks of all shapes, sizes, and colors. A bedside table with another lamp, currently off.

Lying on the rug next to the side of the bed, like a dog curled up for the night, was an Ifrit. It gleamed black in the shadows, and as I stared down at it, it raised its head and grinned at me with black needle teeth. I felt a wave of horror, a flash of dream come to life. Sara?

If it was, what I’d given her hadn’t been enough to keep her in Djinn form for long. And I’d given her so much—almost everything I had. The Ifrit put its head back down again, curled its long, vaguely human form into a tighter coil, and relaxed. Guard dog? If so, I had no idea how to call her off. Or even if I should.

“Hello?” I tried a tentative whisper, and slid up to a sitting position in the bed. The Ifrit didn’t twitch. I kept an eye on it and cranked the volume up a notch. “Anybody?”

The bedroom door framed a moving shadow. Light silhouetted a tall male figure, and for a frozen, relieved second I thought David! but then he moved into the warm glow of the table lamp and it was Jonathan. He had his hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans, looking casual in pose but not in body language. His dark eyes were too bright and too focused.

He didn’t so much as glance at the Ifrit. I found that interesting. The Ifrit raised its head and sniffed at him, climbed to its feet and stalked around him in a circle.

Jonathan kept watching me, though he reached over and patted the Ifrit on the head. It flopped down, elegance etched in darkness, and I felt it watching him with something like adoration.

“So?” he asked me. I rubbed one bare arm and found gooseflesh popping up, courtesy of a slight chill in the air, or maybe his presence.

“Well, I’m not coming apart,” I said. “Gotta be an improvement.”

He nodded. “Came close, though.”

“I figured.” I cleared my throat. “Um… how many others made it here?” He just looked at me for a long few seconds, and I asked the question I dreaded. “Rahel? Did she make it?”

He dropped into a crouch next to the bed. I held the sheet up as a modesty cover, but didn’t particularly worry about it if he decided to check the side view. He didn’t. Quite. “No. How much do you know?”

“Not too damn much.”

“Okay.” He put his bare hand on my bare shoulder, drawing a fresh shiver out of me, but once again I got the therapeutic touch, nothing personal. “You’re clear. You can get up now.”

He turned his back, not as if he was intent on giving me some kind of personal space, more as if he deeply didn’t care whether or not I was naked; I formed clothes as I got up, anyway. Blue denim jeans, work shirt, sturdy boots. They seemed appropriate, here.

“What about David?” I asked.

“You tell me.” His back was still turned; he was pulling things out of the bookcase, restlessly flipping pages. Something to do with his hands. There was so much repressed energy in him, I wondered how he survived here, stuck in this house, unable to leave. He didn’t seem to be someone with a peaceful interior life. “He enjoying himself? Having a good old time with the Widder Prentiss?”

Sarcasm thick enough to spread like manure. I heard the pain underneath, though. And remembered the dream. “I didn’t want him to do that. I would have stoppedit if I could have.”

“Yeah, well, not always about what youwant. Or any of us, for that matter.” He shoved the book back in place with unnecessary violence and turned to face me, arms folded across his chest. Forbidding, that was the word for the expression on his face. Flint-hard eyes. Lips in a straight, unsympathetic line. Anything I said would sound whiny and self-pitying, so I said nothing. Just looked at him. He finally transferred the stare down to his black Doc Martens. “I notice you managed to get away. Maybe you’ll be of some use. We can always use some good solid cannon fodder.”

“No wonder humans don’t become Djinn very often,” I replied. “What with your incredible recruitment efforts.”

Jonathan’s lips twitched. It might have been a smile, but he didn’t let me see it to be sure. “Yeah, well, you get set in your ways after the first couple of millennia or so. Sorry if we haven’t made you feel like one of the boys.”

I elected not to get into the gender-specific arguments. “Does she still have him?”

“Madame de Sade? Oh yeah.” He rocked back and forth on his heels, arms still folded.

“And…”

He looked up. “You want details?” The tone could have frozen mercury. “Should’ve stuck around. Could’ve been part of the whole experience. I’m sure he would’ve lovedfor you to see it.”

Oh, he was so angry… showing none of it in his blank expression, but the raw cutting edges of it came through.

“Rahel is on her way,” he said. “She went to run an errand for me.”

“But you know how dangerous—”

He held up a cautioning finger. “Don’t. Don’t do that. You want to stay on my good side, Jo, let’s get something straight. Neverremind me of the obvious. And neverassume I didn’t notice it.”

He turned and started for the door. I called a question after him. “How bad is it? Out there in the aetheric?”

“Come with me,” he said, and disappeared down the hall. I followed. “While you were sleeping, you’ve missed the party.”

I was unprepared for a living room full of people. There were at least thirty or forty crowded in. Djinn of every size, shape, description, color, and dressed in every conceivable style. Some evidently had a whole god complex going; the silks and satins were way over the top, not to mention the jewelry. It made Rahel’s traditionally neon color scheme look positively corporate.

Jonathan carved an easy path through the crowd and stood next to the fireplace, watching the jockeying for position; when he caught sight of me standing at the back, he jerked his head in a come heregesture that had nothing to do with concern. More like he wanted to keep his enemies close. I grabbed wall space at his shoulder and tried to look insignificant, which turned out to be difficult, since I was drawing stares and whispers. Jonathan held up his hands for quiet. Instant obedience.

“This is Joanne,” he said, and pointed a thumb in my direction.

A tanned, fit-looking guy in what looked like a hand-tailored suit and iron gray tie looked me over with eyes of a pure, unsettling teal color. “She doesn’t belong here.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Jonathan said, but in a tone that didn’t invite anyone to actually try. “Right. Here’s the thing. We’re what’s left.”

A short, pregnant silence. “What?” someone in the back ventured, looking around. Adding up numbers. “So few?”

“So many lost?” An alarmed, high-pitched voice from up front, I didn’t see who. “Impossible!”

“I didn’t say they were lost. I know right where they are,” Jonathan said. “Just can’t get to them right now. Most are in their bottles, waiting it out. Some… some got trapped on the aetheric. Some can’t hold themselves together anymore because of the—what’d you call it?” He turned to me.

“Coldlight. Sparklies. Fairy dust.”

“Right. That stuff.” He looked back at the audience, face bland and notably free of panic. “Which is coming out of the rift.”

Gray Suit said, “Then someone must go up and close the rift.”

If the previous silence had been pregnant, this one was stillborn. They all looked at each other. Jonathan waited. I finally raised my hand, very slowly. “Um… can I say something?”

He looked over his shoulder at me, did a double take, and half turned my way. “I don’t know, can you?”

Great. A grammar teacher, on top of everything else. “Sorry. May I?”

“Sure.”

“Lewis sent me to seal the rift. I tried, but it didn’t hold.”

Nobody spoke, but a ripple went through the room, like an electric charge rolling between contact points. Polarizing. Jonathan broke the silence in a deliberately soft voice. “You tried? Great. Amateur hour. Lewis should have known better. Probably made things a hundred times worse.”

“He tried to get some of youto help,” I shot back. “But I understand you had a gut shortage around here that day.”

Yeah, that wasn’t smart, but I was tired and cranky and Jonathan was pissing me off, what with all the sarcasm. The room seemed to shudder with disapproval.

Surprisingly, Jonathan didn’t seem to take offense. He swept me from head to toe, giving me a new appraisal.

“That the new you?” he asked.

“Old me,” I said. “Getting sick of being politically correct.”

“I like it. Now shut up.” He turned back to the assembled Djinn, who were agitated enough that I was surprised we didn’t have spontaneous firestarting. “The ones who are trapped out on the aetheric are in trouble. The ones who can’t hold themselves together anymore may be dead. We need to do this fast, do it well, and then make sure the Wardens don’t screw it up even worse than they usually do.”

“Which means what, exactly?” Gray Suit again.

“That we clean up after them, as we always do? Let the humans stand responsible for their crimes. Let them clear the aetheric.”

He wasn’t much impressed by Jonathan, which I thought was interesting, given the extreme respect the rest of them seemed to accord him. Gray Suit had a pale complexion, sharp hatchet-faced bones, and gave off a sense of ruthless energy. I’d still put my money on Jonathan, if it came to a showdown, but I wouldn’t have given generous odds, either.

“Yeah. We’ll just hang out here, watching our own people die. That’s a hell of a plan, Ashan. Right up there with your best.” He punctuated it with a friendly I have an idea! gesture. “Tell you what. Yougo out and tell them we’re going to let them die.”

“More of us die if we go out there,” Ashan said without blinking. He had the no-blinking thing down. “But then you seem not to worry about that. Since you, of course, never leave the safety of your nest.”

Silence. Most of the Djinn were studying Jonathan. Jonathan stared at Ashan.

“Um…” I tried to make it sound deferential, but I wasn’t sure I succeeded. “Shouldn’t we find out who opened the rip in the first place?” Jonathan fixed me with a look dire enough to qualify as neurosur-gery without anesthetic. Naturally, it didn’t stop me. “Well, isn’t it a good question? I mean, somebodyripped it open. Somebody with a lot of power and not enough conscience. Was it a Djinn?”

“What part of shut upwas unclear to you?”

I returned the stare, full force. Since last he’d intimidated me, I’d had the hard-core lesson in How To Be A Djinn, and the whole god-of-your-new-existence routine wasn’t going to cut it anymore. “Answer the question. Was it a Djinn who did it?”

“Oh, we are sogoing to talk about this later,” he said.

“I’ll take that as a yes. I’m just going on magical theory, here…” Because unlike the Djinn, I’d actually had class time learning about all of the physics of the stuff, the rules, and the various consequences. “… but it seems to me that whoever ripped it open would have a pretty good idea of how to close it. Since he must have known what he was doing. I mean, the thing was pretty well camouflaged when I got there. Discreet, you know?”

I had him. He blinked.

“Or was that stating the obvious?” I asked, and tilted my head to the side.

Neurosurgery. Without anesthetic. With a dull butter knife.

“We can’t ask the one who opened it,” he said.

“Because?”

The argument had taken on a tennis-match quality. The room full of Djinn was just watching us, shifting from one to the other, eyes avid. Rooting against me, no doubt. I didn’t care. There was only one opponent who mattered.

“Because he’s not here.” Jonathan’s fierce eyes were absolutely fiery. “Drop it already.”

I might have been slow on the uptake, but I finally got it. David. I know it registered on my face, because I felt it like an earthquake inside. David opened the rift…

“Why?” I whispered. “Why in God’s name would he…”

Jonathan gave me a pitying look, like I was the stupidest creature in the universe. Which, at that moment, I supposed I was. “For love,” he said. “Why else?”

David had opened the rift when he’d made me a Djinn. You’ve broken laws. Rahel had said that, and I hadn’t listened. Jonathan himself had tried to tell me how serious it was, what we’d done.

David had opened the rift, and drawn on something on the other side when he brought me back to life.

It was our fault the Djinn were dying.

Three

Nobody had much to say, after Jonathan made it clear the tennis match was over and the subject was closed. Neither of us had come right out and said what we were thinking, which was good; I wasn’t sure I wanted all of these extremely powerful and extremely arrogant creatures to take offense at me. Especially not Ashan, who looked like he could bore a hole in titanium with a sideways glance. There was already an overload of mumbling and fiercely predatory looks toward me. I wished Rahel would show up; she was at least marginally congenial to me. Even Patrick would be welcome right about now, and not because I wanted to body-slam him into the wall; he’d been through this process before me, and survived it. The world had survived. The Djinn had survived. I needed to find out how, and I was pretty sure I couldn’t.

My fault. This is my fault. I couldn’t keep it from running through my head. Why hadn’t David told me? Why had he never even let on? Had he even known?

Of course he knew. It occurred to me, late and cruelly, that the reason Jonathan had kept him here had been to try to find a way to close the rift without killing him, or me. I’d thought it was a punishment, but it had been Jonathan’s way of trying save us both. He and David had been working on a way to stop it.

Oh, God. I’d misunderstood so much.

Something changed in the room, a kind of stillness. Jonathan waved people away from the center space, turned, and glanced at me. Apparently, I was the only one who didn’t get it. “Incoming,” he said.

Rahel materialized in the space left open.

She was covered in roiling blue specks. Djinn shouted and stampeded backwards as the sparks began to fly up and out, looking for other hosts; Jonathan moved forward.

Before he got there, Rahel’s yellow eyes went blank, and she collapsed in slow motion down to the rug. She was closest to me; I didn’t think, I just reached down for her.

My hands sank into her, wrist deep. Not that she was misted—that would have been better, oh God, far better. No, what I sunk into was flesh the consistency of warm butter, bathed in blood and melting muscle. I hit the relative hardness of bone but it was melting, too, dissolving like wax in the sun.

She was trying to say something to me. Her lips were whispering, anyway. I yanked my hands back, trembling, and stared at the smeared warm mess clinging to my skin. Her open eyes flared from a violent storm-black to a pallid blue, shifting colors like a wildly spinning prism.

“Joanne!” Jonathan snapped. He dropped to his knees next to her, extended one hand over her body, and reached out to me with the other. “Get your ass back. She’s contaminated.”

I could see the energy spilling out of his outstretched hand, golden white and so intense that it seemed to warp space around it. Pure life energy, keyed to the magic of the earth. Healing energy. David had said that Jonathan was the strongest of the Djinn; I hadn’t quite believed it, until now. He was doing this even here, cut off from everything… That was the legacy of his birth, his connection to the Mother. Of all the Djinn, he was the only one with power of his own.

And it didn’t matter. The damage just kept getting worse—flesh slipping from muscle, muscle dissolving to mush. The soft-focus gleam of bone beneath.

She cried out, once, and I felt her agony vibrating through the aetheric. I forced myself to look at her in Oversight; she was crawling with those blue specks, and they were alive, moving, eating.

She was being devoured. But they’d been all over me, all over David, they hadn’t hurt us, God, what the hell…

“Stop it,” Ashan said. His voice was raw, colorless. “It’s done. You can’t save her.”

Jonathan ignored him, ignored everything. He was focused on Rahel, fiercely intense, and the power flowing out of him just kept increasing. I felt it like a pressure against my skin, saw others shying away from it.

Rahel’s skin continued to slough away, revealing soft wet masses of tissue. The skin misted as it fell away. Slowly, layer by layer, the muscle began to peel back as well. Jonathan kept trying, uselessly and furiously, to keep her together.

“Stop,” I said, feeling the words turn in my throat like razors. “Please. He’s right, you’re just making it worse. Let go.”

His face was pallid and damp with strain, and his eyes were glittering with frustration, but he released the energy and dropped his hand back to his side. He didn’t move, though. I don’t even know if he couldmove, by then. I felt the energy flow shut down and watched as Rahel’s body melted away into a fetid, oily mist.

Gone.

She was still screaming when she vanished.

“Is she dead?” I blurted. Nobody answered. I don’t think they could. I had a cold flash of certainty that it was worse than that, far worse, out there on the aetheric. It was a horrible way to go. No wonder Jonathan had shut Ashan down so hard on the very idea of just letting Djinn stay trapped there. It was unforgivable.

What about David? I closed my eyes and reached for that silver link between us. It was faint and thin, but it was there. Unbroken.

Blue specks crawled up my arms.

“Joanne!” Jonathan’s voice again, too loud, ringing inside my head. I blinked away blue sparks to stare up at him. “Shit. I toldyou to stay back!”

Funny that this didn’t hurt. It had hurt Rahel, I’d felt it shaking the fabric of the world, it hurt her so much. I could still feel her agony resonating in waves across the room.

Jonathan reached out for me, but I just stepped away. Instinct, I guess.

Because it didn’t hurt.

I opened my eyes again and saw the most amazing thing.

Sparks. Blue swarmed out of the air, onto my skin, and vanished. The things that had eaten Rahel couldn’t hurt me.

Jonathan stopped, staring at me. I sighed, watched the last of the coldlight sizzle into emptiness, and wondered what had him looking so pale and confused.

“I’m okay,” I said. I thought he was worried about me.

Pallor faded to stretched white on his face and clenched fists. His eyes looked dark and blind.

“Jonathan?”

“Little trouble here,” he said.

I extended a hand toward him…

… and he lit up like a Christmas tree with crawling blue light. Oh God! The other Djinn backed away, viscerally terrified, as he wavered and fell backwards against a wall. Closed his eyes. “Shit,” he said. “Guess I’m not immune after all.”

Instinct. I grabbed for him as he started to slide down.

The sparks whirled out, climbed my arms, circled me in a storm of blue. Rahel’s grisly dissolution ran red in front of my eyes, and I swore I wasn’t going to let that happen, not to him, not now…

I sucked the sparks in, laid them thick on my skin, and consciously opened myself to them. I opened my squeezed-shut eyes and watched the light show as the sparkles glittered, peaceful and serene on my skin, then faded out into nothing.

I’m made of this. That was why they couldn’t hurt me. I was just taking in more of what had formed me in the first place.

Jonathan sat where he was, watching, too. His dark eyes shifted to meet mine.

“Thanks,” he said.

I nodded. “Favor for a favor. We need to get David back. Now.”

“I know,” he said. He sounded tired. “You look like hell.”

“Funny, I don’t feel…” Oh. Yes I did, actually. There went gravity again, twisting all out of shape. This time, I didn’t mistake it for coldlight or anything but what it was: somebody trying to call me. That fishhook sensation pulled at me, painful and undeniable. Not Jonathan, this time. And this wasn’t a call to safety, either.

Jonathan held on to me while I fought the pull. I felt his will settle over me like a soft, smothering blanket, and the summoning pull was lost in the weight.

“Tired,” I whispered. He already knew that. He was lifting me again in his arms as all the other Djinn murmured to each other, as Ashan stared at me with those cold blue-green eyes.

Back to the bedroom.

The soft feather pillow.

The frosted-coal shadow of the Ifrit, watching.

I slept.

* * *

The next day—if days had any meaning here– dawned just as bright and sunny and peaceful as all days did in Jonathan’s little kingdom.

I woke up to find the man himself sitting in a chair watching me. The Ifrit was gone.

“Wow,” I said. “This is getting familiar.”

“Don’t wear it out.”

“The bed or my welcome?”

He ignored what was admittedly a pretty weak comeback. “So. How you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“Good.” I wasn’t sure what he wanted, and I had the impression he wasn’t either, really. He got up to walk around the room, long strides that didn’t quite rise to the level of pacing. More like a stroll, with purpose. “About the rift up there.”

“What about it?” All my fight drained away at the bare mention of it. I couldn’t help but remember the red, tearing agony of Rahel dissolving into mush, or the hundreds of others who were suffering somewhere out there, where I couldn’t see them.

“You think it’s your fault,” he said. “Crap. What happened was David’s choice, not yours… and he had no way of knowing this would happen. Hell, even I didn’t understand what was going on until too late to do anything about it. Once I did, he wanted to go fix things.”

“But?”

“But by then I knew it was too dangerous, and then he went tearing off after you when you got—” He waved a hand, didn’t bother to finish the sentence. “He’s not exactly what you might call big-picture when it comes to personal sacrifice.”

“Neither am I. Neither are you.” He gave me a slight nod to acknowledge the point. “You should’ve told me about the rift. Or at least about how badly things were screwed up because I was brought back.”

He shrugged, a simple economical straight-up-and-down movement of his shoulder blades. No particular emotion in it. “Things screw up all the time. Hey. You gotta love the excitement. Granted, this is a lot more exciting than usual… but you stay alive as long as I have, you learn to take these things in stride. The Djinn have faced worse.”

I stared up at the shadows on the ceiling. “How much worse?”

“Hard to tell until it’s over.”

I pulled in a deep breath. Funny, I didn’t need it, but it still seemed to calm me. Some human habits were persistent. “How’s everybody else?”

“Sleeping,” he said, and nodded toward the far wall. “Lots of guest rooms. We run a topflight refugee camp around here.” He gave me a thin, almost human smile, but it didn’t last. “ Inever thought I’d like you, but you turned out okay. ‘Gut shortage.’ That was pretty good.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I got carried away.”

“No, you’re right. One thing Djinn are scared of, it’s death. Their own, not anybody else’s. It makes us cowards. Look at me! I’ve been sitting here in this house for so long I don’t even know what it’s like out there.”

“I do,” I said. “You’re better off in here.”

“Not for much longer,” he said. He held out his hand, palm up, as if he was offering something to me. I looked at it, puzzled, and felt a sudden stab of alarm as a single cool blue spark ignited in his aura. “They’re coming in. I can’t keep them out, I can only slow them down. It’s going to be one giant blue snow globe in here soon. And even though I’m resistant to them, I’m not immune.” He stood up, swiped imaginary dust from his pants, and gestured at me. “So, you gonna take the day off, or are you getting your ass out of bed?”

I had already formed clothes under the sheet—the same denim and boots as before. One nice thing about being a Djinn—dress and bounce out of bed, no rework on the hair or makeup necessary. Although the hair was still displaying that annoying tendency to curl. I straightened it again as I asked, “What now?”

“You said it. We need David.”

“I’ll go.”

“You’re in thrall,” he said. “If your little jerk of a master finds out you’re where he can reach you, he’ll get you back and dressed like a pinup fantasy girl in ten seconds flat.”

“Ugh. Don’t remind me.”

“Oh, I don’t know, the French Maid outfit was a little—” He held up a hand to forestall my protest. “Never mind. Point is, if you go outside of the barrier he’ll be able to get you back.”

“He’s probably still asleep.”

“He is.” Jonathan nodded. “Problem is that he was calling for you in his sleep. And if you go outside this house, you won’t be able to resist.”

“I still want to go. If I get taken, so be it. I manipulated the kid once, I can do it again.”

“You’d better hope so. Well, you’re not going alone. This is too important to screw up.” He folded his hands together behind his back, stopped pacing, and faced me in a parade rest posture. “I’m going with you.”

I managed a weak smile. “Yay, Team Us?”

“Yeah, well, I could have patches made, but it seems excessive.” We exchanged another long few seconds of eye-locked silence. I was worrying about how many Djinn had already told me that Jonathan never left his house. David had seemed pretty adamant about it. This wasn’t any little excursion, and suddenly I didn’t think I was ready to be bodyguard to the God of My Existence. Plus, what had he just said? Resistant, not immune. I didn’t want the responsibility for ending a life with the length and depth of Jonathan’s.

Jonathan must have read my mind. “This is going to be hard, you know. Getting David back. She wants him bad.”

No answer to that except the obvious. “So do I.” I saw the flash in his eyes, and amended it. “We.”

His ghost-smile manifested again. “Then let’s go get him.”

The cord binding me to David had shrunk to a thin, barely perceptible thread. Worse, it was shaking. I could feel the tension in it. No telling how strong it was, how much strain it could stand, but I had the distinct feeling that it was close to the breaking point.

And my time was almost up, anyway. On so many levels.

“You understand what we have to do,” Jonathan said. “Travel in the aetheric’s too damn dangerous. Just skim the surface, stay as close as you can to the thread. I’ll be right behind you.”

We hadn’t told anybody else except—at Jonathan’s insistence—that creepy gray-suited Ashan. “You’re sure about him?” I’d asked out of the side of my mouth, as the door shut behind him and locked me and Jonathan in what looked like a study. He liked fishing, I gathered. Lots of books on the subject, and some big mounted piscine specimens frozen in midthrash on the walls.

“Ashan?” Jonathan finished writing something down, reached in a desk drawer and took out a seal that looked massive and antique. He brought it gently down on the paper. When he took it away, there was a glowing design in the paper, nothing I could read or even vaguely recognize. “Kind of an asshole, I know, but he’s reliable. Anything ever happens to me, he gets the big chair.”