Текст книги "Heat Stroke"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

The elevator doors cranked open. I don’t know what I was expecting—some cheesy B-movie interpretation of Hell, maybe—but what I saw was nothing but a clean white hallway stretching off into the distance.

Rahel said, “You willdo as Jonathan requests. Your choice, David. If you do force me to fight, you know the outcome.”

“Do I?” His intensity was scary. So was the little half-smile on his lips. “Maybe I could surprise you.”

She tilted her head to one side. The beads in her dreadlocks clicked and whispered. No other answer.

David pushed away from the wall and stepped out of the elevator into the hallway. I followed, pulled even with him, and felt a bubble of panic threatening to rise somewhere in my not-entirely-solid throat.

“We’re in trouble, right?” I asked. I glanced back. The elevator doors were sliding closed. Rahel was nowhere in sight.

“Not—exactly.” He stopped, put his hands on my shoulders and turned me to face him. “Jo, you have to listen to me now. It’s important. When we get in there, don’t say anything. Not even if he asks you directly. Keep your eyes down, and your mouth shut, no matter what happens. Got it?”

“Sure.” He didn’t look convinced. I searched his face for clues. “So how bad is this for you?”

Instead of answering, he ran his fingers slowly through my hair. Weirdest sensation: I could literally feelit relax, the curls falling out of it into soft waves. His touch moved down, an inch at a time, teasing it straight. It felt so warmly intimate it made me feel weak inside.

“David—” I whispered. He put a finger on my lips to hush me.

“Your eyes,” he said, leaning closer. “They’re too bright. Dim them down.”

“I don’t know how.” His lips were about three inches from mine, close enough that I could taste them. “What color are they now?”

“Silver. They’ll always be silver unless you change them.” He had autumn brown firmly in place, looking human and mild as could be. “Try gray.”

I thought of it in my head, a kind of smoky soft gray, gentle as doves. “Now?”

“Better. Focus on that color. Hold it there.” His hands moved out of my hair and caressed my face, thumbs gently skimming my cheekbones. “Remember what I said.”

“Eyes down. Mouth shut,” I confirmed.

His lips quirked. “Why am I not convinced?”

“Because you know me.” I put my hands over his, felt the burning power coursing under his skin. Light like blood, pumping inside him. “Seriously. How bad is this?”

He pulled in a deep breath and let go of me. “Just do what I told you, and we’ll both be fine.”

There was a door at the end of the hall marked with a red exit sign. David stiff-armed it without slowing down, and I followed him into a sudden feeling of pressure, motion, intense cold, disorientation…

… and somebody’s house. A nice house, actually, lots of wood, high ceilings, a kind of cabinish feel while still maintaining that urban cachet. Big, soaring raw stone fireplace, complete with wrought iron tools and a big stack of logs that looked fresh-chopped. The living room—which was where we were—was spacious, comfortable, full of overstuffed furniture in masculine shades. Paintings on the walls—astronomy, stars, planets. I caught my breath and braced myself with my hand on the back of a sofa.

The place smelled of a strange combination of gun oil and aftershave, a peculiarly masculine kind of odor that comforted me in places that I hadn’t known were nervous.

There was a clatter from what must have been the kitchen, down the hall and to the left, and a man came around the corner carrying three dark brown bottles of Killian’s Irish Red.

“Hey,” he said, and tossed one to David. David caught it out of the air. “Sit your ass down. We’re gonna be here a while.”

I stared. Couldn’t quite help it. I mean, with all the buildup, I’d been expecting a three-headed Satan breathing fire and picking his teeth with a human rib. This was just—a guy. Tall, lean, with a built-in grace that reminded me of animals that run for a living. He looked older—forty-five? fifty? – and his short hair was a kind of sandy brown, thickly salted with gray. An angular face, one that bypassed handsome for something far more interesting. Lived-in. Strong. Utterly self-assured.

He was wearing a black T-shirt, khaki cargo pants, some kind of efficient-looking boots, maybe Doc Martens. He settled himself down in a sprawl on the couch, all arms and legs and attitude, and finally held out the other beer toward me. I leaned forward to take it, and his eyes flicked over and fixed on mine.

I froze. Just… whited out. I thought nothing, felt nothing until the cold sweating bottle slapped my palm, and then I looked down and focused on it, blinking. I couldn’t have said what color his eyes were, but they were incredible. Dark. Intense. And verydangerous.

David had eased himself down to a sitting position on the edge of a brown sofa with worn spots on the arms. He held the beer between his palms, rolling the bottle slowly back and forth, and now he glanced at me and I saw something unsettling in his eyes.

It might have been fear.

“Jonathan,” David said.

“David. Glad we’re still on a first-name basis,” Jonathan replied, with a half-inch nod that conveyed nothing. His eyes flicked to me, then away, so brief you couldn’t even call it a look. “You. Sit your ass down.”

I did, feeling gawkish and stupid and so much like an intruder it stung. There was something between these two; it was so powerful that it warped space around them, tingled in my skin like electric shock. Love? Hate? Bitterness? Maybe it was all that. Certainly it wasn’t a passing acquaintance. It had the ancient feel of something long-term and deep as the ocean.

Jonathan took a swig of beer. “Well, she’s pretty,” he said to David, and jerked his head at me. “You always did like the dark-haired ones.”

David raised his eyebrows. “Is this the part where you try to embarrass me in front of her?”

“Enjoy it. This is as fun as it’s likely to get.”

The fire popped like a gunshot. Neither of them flinched. They were locked into a staring contest. David finally said, “Okay. I’m only here as a courtesy. Tell me what was important enough to send Rahel around after me like your personal sheepdog.”

“Well, you don’t call, you don’t write… and you’re offended on Rahel’s behalf? That’s new.” Jonathan waved it away, tipped his bottle again and swallowed. “You know what’s so important. I’ve never seen you do anything so… incredibly, brainlessly stupid. And hey. That’s saying something.”

God, it all looked so real. I knew that the room around me had to be stage dressing, built out of Jonathan’s power, but it felt utterly right. The pop and shimmer of the fire in the hearth. The woodsy smell of smoke and aftershave. The texture of the slightly rough couch fabric under my fingers. There was even frost on the windowpanes, and a localized chill from that direction—it was winter here, deep winter. I wondered if that was any indication of his mood.

David said lightly, “You’re keeping score of my screwups? Must get boring for you down here, all by yourself. But then that’s your choice, isn’t it? Being alone.”

A flash came and went fast in Jonathan’s eyes, and sparked something in response in David. Silent communication, and very powerful. Ah. Whatever was between these two wasn’t hate. It looked a lot– uncomfortably—like love.

Jonathan let that flash of emotion fade into a still, empty silence, set his beer aside, and leaned forward with his hands clasped. “Don’t try to change the subject. What you did wasn’t just selfish, it was nuts. You put us in danger.” Jonathan’s eyes were changing color, and I looked down, fast. I knew, without anybody telling me, that it wasn’t safe to be facing that particular stare. His voice went quiet and iron hard. “Do I really have to tell you how serious this is?”

“No,” David said. “Let’s just get on with it.”

“You want to at least explain to me why you did it?”

David’s voice was warm, intimate, almost compassionate. “Jonathan, I don’t have to explain a damn thing. You already know everything I’m going to say. You always have.”

“Not true. You were always full of surprises.”

“Good ones, occasionally. Maybe this will be one of them.”

“Oh, you’d sobetter hope.”

It was a very heavy silence that followed. I listened to the crack and pop of logs on the fire and focused on the smooth pebbled leather of my skirt. Eyes down. Mouth shut. I could do that.

Jonathan sighed and stirred. “You gonna drink that beer or what?”

“No. You know I hate the stuff.” David held out the untouched bottle.

Jonathan leaned across the empty space and took it. “How about you, Snow White? You drinking?” He was talking to me. I’d almost forgotten about the sweating cold Killian’s in my hand, except as something to hold on to; I took a fast, mute sip and glanced up.

Mistake. He was staring at me. I fell into those eyes, like Jonathan had his own dark gravity, and for a few seconds I knewhim. Old. Wise. Limitlessly powerful. Funny. Sarcastic. Cold. Merciless. Sentimental. Sad. Lonely. I could see history stretching back to a dizzying distance, just a blur of days…

But the door swung both ways.

I knew him.

He knew me, too.

There was nothing, nothinghe didn’t touch inside of me, and yet it wasn’t like the raping intrusion you’d think. I had the sense of compassion, of amusement, and a kind of strange gentleness as he gathered me in, learned me, lived in me.

“Jonathan! Dammit, stop!” I heard David’s shout, but it was too far, too far to travel to answer. Was it possible to be consumed like that, and still be whole? I felt like I was unraveling, spreading thinner, thinner… there was no pain, but a vast sense of becoming…

Something sliced across that connection like the blade of a knife, and I felt the bottle in my fingers sliding free, out of control, heading in frozen ticks of time for the floor.

David caught me as I fell. I heard the bottle hit the floor. Every nerve in my body fired as if a bolt of lightning hissed up from the ground, down from the clouds, caught me in its current and burned me into nothing.

The bottle shouldn’t have broken, but it did, it shattered into a million glittering pieces. I felt myself breaking, too.

I heard Jonathan say, “You should know better, David.” He was still sitting on the couch at ease, watching the two of us. “They’re too fragile. You’re working with flawed material. Talk about your lost causes—”

“Leave her alone!” David yelled. He lifted me in his arms, and I felt the solid weight of him, the flaring pale beauty of fire reaching out to wrap me close. “Jonathan, please stop!”

“No. Youstop me.” Jonathan wasn’t just a guy on a couch now, he was more than that, he was a vast power moving through the aetheric, a shadow on the wind, a storm on the air. “C’mon, David. Stop me. It’s easy, you’ve done it a thousand times. No big deal.”

I was… unraveling. Breaking apart. Being subsumed into something vast and unknown and deep as space, sweet as pure cold mountain air…

I felt David grabbing for me on the aetheric, struggling to hang on, but it was like trying to hold sand in the wind.

Stop me, Jonathan said, in the aetheric, in the world, in that other place I couldn’t even name yet. Come on, David. Just do it.

“I can’t!” David’s raw scream of rage sounded torn out of him with pliers. “Jonathan, I’m begging you, please stop!”

And Jonathan let go. I fell back into flesh, into David’s arms, into pain. Oh, God, that hurt. Everything too bright, too sharp, too cold, too hot. For a few aching seconds I wanted to go back to that place where Jonathan had taken me, the place on the edge of nothing. I wanted oblivion with an intensity that scared me.

Jonathan picked up a beer bottle and took a long, throat-working gulp, put the empty down, and sat back with his arms crossed. Looking at the two of us. I couldn’t tell anything at all from his expression. Had all of that, all of memeant anything to him at all?

“So, did you tell her?” he asked. No answer from David, but I could feel the trembling of his muscles. “Of course you didn’t. Look—what’s your name? Joanne? – Djinn live by rules, and one of the rules is that humans die while we go on. Like it or not, there’s nothing we can do about that.” His dark, dark eyes moved to David’s face. “We can’t create energy, all we can do is translate it from one form to another. The demons that killed you ate the energy that kept you alive, and you died. So David stole life energy from another source to bring you back.”

David let me slide down to stand on my feet, but he kept a hand on my arm, steadying me. I felt sick, lightheaded. “What?” I whispered.

Jonathan sighed. “He stole life energy and gave it to you.”

“Stole it?” Oh, God, don’t tell me he killed someone else. Don’t tell me that.

Jonathan’s eyes flicked past me to David, who said, “I didn’t steal it. I took it. From myself.”

Jonathan nodded. “Yeah. David ripped out half of his life and gave it to you. Which means… what exactly does that mean, David? Enlighten us.”

“Nothing.”

Jonathan rolled his eyes, reached for David’s untouched beer, and took a swig. “You know, you’ve got one hell of a martyr thing going, maybe you ought to drop by and try it out on the pope. Nothing. Bullshit. You’re committing suicide by girl.”

David cut in, sounding very reasonable. Too reasonable; I could feel the wire-fine tension still singing in his muscles. “You’re overstating things, Jonathan. I’m not committing suicide. So I went from the second most powerful free Djinn to a middle-ranked spear-carrier. So what?”

“Oh, for crying out loud… so what?” Jonathan squinted, rubbed his forehead, and stood up to pace. Back and forth, restless energy crackling like the fire that wasn’t really burning in the fireplace, on creaky floorboards that didn’t really exist in any way that humans could understand. “That’s like saying giving Albert Einstein a lobotomy wouldn’t matter because he still had a pulse. We need you. And we need you full strength. We’re at war, David! I have to remind you of that?”

David didn’t answer. His hand on my arm was tight enough to hurt.

Jonathan stopped pacing to stand right in front of me, glaring. “What David did was about as smart as ripping his heart out with his bare hands and calling it organ donation. It’s possibleto do what he did. It’s just pathetically stupid.”

“I’m fine,” David said.

“You’re not!” He rounded on him and leveled a finger at David’s face. “Don’t even start with me. You’re bleeding energy all the hell over the place. You tell me… can you stop it? Or are you just going to bleed yourself dry to keep her alive? It’s like trying to fill a dry lake with a teaspoon, David. You can’t do it. You can’t make a human into a Djinn because they don’t goddamn well work that way!”

David didn’t answer. Jonathan’s face tightened up.

“And you don’t give a crap what I say,” he said, resigned. “Well, that’s kind of what I thought.”

He turned away, walked to the fireplace and picked up a vicious-looking black poker that he used to jab at inoffensive logs. Flames crackled, popped, and swirled. I looked back over my shoulder at David, who was quiet, steady, focused.

“Is he right?” I asked.

“No,” David said. “I’ve been losing some energy, the same way a human might lose blood from an injury before it heals. It’s nothing.”

Jonathan whirled and tossed the poker back in the wrought-iron holder with a sharp clang of metal. “It’s been seven days.” Jonathan’s dark eyes were fierce with emotion. “I’ve sat here and watched you bleed into the aetheric for seven damn days! I’m not sitting on my all-powerful ass while you die.”

“Not your business.”

“David—”

“ Not your business, Jonathan!” David’s copper eyes were blazing, furious, molten. Jonathan’s were as black and cold as space. Neither one of them moved, but I felt defenses snapping into place, and my whole essence screamed at me to get the hell out of the middle.

Not that I ever listened to sensible advice anyway.

I rounded on David. “What cheap-ass archetype hero myth did you step out of? I didn’t ask you to kill yourself for me! I would neverask for that! You can’t just make me a Djinn and die, dammit! Hear me? You can’t!”

Jonathan laughed. “Please. He didn’t make you a Djinn, don’t you get it? He made both of you halfa Djinn.”

I felt my hair start to curl again as my concentration slipped. I lost that dove gray focus David had tried to get me to keep, and felt my eyes change– flare—go silver. “Half?”

“Half. As in, two halves make a whole.” Jonathan’s mouth twisted into bitterness. “A whole what, I have no idea. Probably an idiot.”

“Fine. Then fix it,” I said. “Undo it.”

“No!” David again, and this time he moved, took me by the shoulders and physically moved me out of the way. Sat me down on the couch with a decisive shove. “You don’t understand. I toldyou to keep quiet.”

“Hey, she asked nicely,” Jonathan said, and pointed at me.

“No!” David flung out a hand, palm out, pushing Jonathan away even though Jonathan hadn’t taken a step in our direction. He stepped forward, sank down on one knee in a puddle of olive drab wool coat, and took my hand in his. Warm skin on skin, truth shining in his eyes. “Joanne, this is between me and him. Let us solve it.”

Jonathan upended his beer, drained it, and tossed the bottle into the fireplace. The crash of glass was lost in the roar of flames as the fire leaped up, eager as a pet. “ Fuck. Heartwarming as this is, David, it’s totally screwed. You can’t make her one of us. You can keep her alive, you can give her power, but the price is too damn high. You really think I’m going to stand by and let you do this?”

David smiled, but I could tell he wasn’t smiling at me. This was bitter, private, and painful. “ ‘Behold, thou art fair, my love, behold, thou art fair…’”

“Hey! Don’tquote that to me. You know I hate that.” Jonathan stalked back over, stared down at the two of us. After a long, silent moment, something melted out of him. The anger, maybe. Or the determination. “You’d really do this.”

David’s fingers tightened around mine. “It’s already done.”

“You’d die to give her life.”

“I don’t think I’ll have to, but if it comes to that, yes, I’m not afraid.”

Something inside me went still. Very, very still. Focused on him, on his eyes, on the power pouring out of him into me.

Power I now understood was sustaining me.

“Please.” David’s voice had gone soft, low, resonant in the back of his throat. “ Jonathan. Please. It’s my choice.”

He put emphasis on the last word, and I saw it hit home in the other Djinn, who folded his arms across his chest and looked away. Covering up pain.

So much between these two I didn’t understand, and knew I never could. I hadn’t even known him a week; they’d had half of eternity together. No wonder Jonathan had that hard, hurting edge to him. And no wonder he wanted me dead. I’d have the same impulse, if somebody showed up to rip apart a friendship that had that kind of history.

“Your choice,” Jonathan repeated. “Oh, you’re good. If I take away your choices, I’m no better than the last asshole who held your soul in a bottle. Is that what you’re getting at?”

He was staring out the windows of his house. Before, it had showed a frosted white landscape, a washed blue sky. Now it looked out on a city street, masses of humanity moving like corpuscles in a concrete artery, every one of them alone. Gray sky, gray buildings, gray exhaust belching from the tailpipes of passing taxicabs.

He said, “You know how I feel about them. They’re like a plague of locusts out there, consuming everything. And now you want to open up our world to them, too.”

“Not them. She’s a person. One person.”

“One mortal,” Jonathan corrected. “And there are days when every single one of them deserves to be wiped off the face of the earth.”

It didn’t sound like idle conversation. Jonathan turned back to face us, looking at the two of us. “But you’re not going to listen to me. You never do. Even if this works, one of themwill find you, just like last time, stick you in some damn bottle and make you a slave. You won your freedom, David. It’s a precious gift. Don’t waste it like this.”

“I’m not wasting it,” David said. “I’m spending it on what really matters.”

Jonathan took that like a knife, with a soft grunt of breath and a flinch. He went back to the window, staring out, and suddenly I had a sense of something I’d missed before. All this power, all this massive ability—and he was trapped. Trapped here, in this house, in whatever reality he’d created for himself. Staring out at the world through those safe, distancing panes of glass.

And maybe, being what he was, being as powerful as he was, he didn’t have a choice, either. He is the one true god of your new existence, little butterfly, Rahel had said.

A god who didn’t dare leave his heaven.

“What if I die?” I asked. I must have surprised both of them; I felt David’s reaction, saw Jonathan’s as his shoulders bunched up, then relaxed.

“You’re Djinn,” David said. “You won’t.”

“According to him, I’m only half. So I can, what, half die?” I cleared my throat. “If something happens to me, does David get his energy back?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” David murmured.

“Not talking to you right now.”

“Yeah, well, you shouldn’t be talking to him.”

Jonathan answered my question. “Depends on whether or not he’s stupid enough to die with you, or let you go. But yeah, if he let go… he’d be himself again.”

“So what you’re talking about, when you say you want to fix him, is that you want to kill me.”

Silence, from both quarters. Jonathan didn’t deny it.

“Wouldn’t advise you to try. I may not look it, but I’m pretty tough to kill,” I said. “You can ask around. How many people you know survived having two Demon Marks?”

Jonathan half turned and gave me a sarcastic, onesided smile. “Half a Djinn, and she’s already giving me grief. Must be your influence.”

“Not my fault. Like this when I met her.” David’s smile was delighted, warm, proud. “You’ll like her, Jonathan. Trust me.”

The flickering response—so close to being love– died in Jonathan’s eyes. “I did trust you,” he said. “Look what it’s gotten me.” He turned back to face the window. “You broke the law, David. You brought a human into our world. That means you have to pay the price. If the price isn’t giving her up, then it has to be something else.”

The fire suddenly flared and died to dead, black ashes. Light faded outside to a cold gray. When Jonathan turned around, he was no longer masquerading as a regular guy. The house morphed around me. Couches disappeared. The homey wooden walls changed to unyielding marble.

And Jonathan became something so bright, so powerful that I turned away, eyes squeezed shut, and struggled to control a surge of pure fear.

He is the one true god of your new existence.

I didn’t realize that Rahel had meant it literally.

I felt David go down on his knees, and I followed, kept my head down and my mouth shut. Thiswas what David had been warning me about. This was the Jonathan you didn’t argue with. I felt power surge through the room, as bright and vivid as lightning, and wanted to make myself very small. I couldn’t. Whatever powers I had were frozen in place, helpless. I couldn’t even get myself up off my knees.

“David, will you let this woman die?” It wasn’t a voice, not really. It was thunder, it was a dark, silky wind wrapping around us. Too big to be sound, to have ever come from anything like a human body.

“No.” David’s voice was just a raw rasp, barely audible. I couldn’t imagine how he was able to talk at all, given the pressure on us.

“Will you let her die?”

“No.”

“I ask a third time: Will you let this woman die?” He was asking it in the traditional Djinn way. The answer David gave now would be the truest one, the reflection of his heart and soul. He wouldn’t be able to lie, not even to himself.

From David, a hesitation. I couldn’t help it; I forced my eyes open and saw him struggling back to his feet. Standing tall, lonely, defiant.

“No,” he said. “Never.”

The light sighed. “Yeah,” it said. “Figures. Well, I had to ask.”

The incredible brilliance died and left me blind. I heard footsteps. As I blinked away darkness, I saw the temple morphing again, turning back to cabin walls, tapestries, overstuffed comfortable couches. No pressure now. I forced myself shakily back upright, holding on to the back of the couch for support. Fabric dragged at my fingers, real, so damn real. All of it, so real.

Jonathan stood in front of me, back to merely human again, shoulders strong and tensed under the black shirt, eyes as dark as space. He glared at us, locked his arms across his chest, and said, “If you won’t let go of her, the only way to get rid of her is to kill you, too. But you already know that.”

“Yeah. I know.”

The glare continued full force. “Crazy son of a bitch.”

David’s luminous smile warmed the air around all of us. “And you already knew that.”

Jonathan’s fierce look softened. “So I did.” They looked at each other for a few long seconds, and then Jonathan dragged himself back to dad mode with a visible effort. “Here’s what I’ve decided. I’ll give her a week to learn to live on her own. One week, counting from now. Then I cut the cord. If she can’t draw power on her own, she’ll go the way of the dinosaurs. Maybe you’ll die with her, maybe you won’t. I’m not making that decision for you. I’m making one about her. Got it?”

He did, and he didn’t like it. David frowned. “Jonathan, a week’s not long enough—”

“It’s what she’s got,” he interrupted. “Be grateful. I don’t even have to do that much.” He turned to me, and I found myself standing straighter. “You. You understand what I just said?”

“I have a week to figure this out or I die. Got it.”

“No, you don’t,” Jonathan corrected. Those dark, cold eyes weighed me and found me wanting, again. “David’s just said that he won’t let go. If I cut the cord and he doesn’t release the hold, you both bleed to death up there on the aetheric, and nobody can help you. Not me, not anybody. Get it?”

I swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

“This is on you now. You fix this, or you might take him with you.”

David, dying for me because I dropped the ball? No way in hell. “I will,” I said. “I promise.”

“Good. Glad we’re in agreement.”

I wasn’t prepared for it, so when hands closed around me from behind and yanked me into an iron-hard embrace, I squeaked like a field mouse instead of fighting back. The hands that held me were feminine, perfectly groomed, with fingernails glossed in bright neon yellow.

“Don’t fight me,” Rahel’s voice whispered in my ear. “Neither one of us has a choice in this.”

David whirled to face us, but Jonathan held out a hand and instantly David was frozen, unable to move. His face was chalky and strained, his eyes molten, but he was helpless.

“Here’s the deal,” Jonathan continued. “I need David with me right now, Djinn business that can’t wait. So you’re going to have to go to boarding school. No boyfriends to coddle you, no special favors, you get to earn your place with us the hard way. Understand?”

I didn’t, but I discovered that I couldn’t say a word, anyway. I threw a desperate look at David, and found him just as horrified, if not more. I could practically feel the no! vibrating the air between us.

“Master,” Rahel said. “Where do I take her?”

Jonathan’s narrow dark eyes swept over me one last time. Judging me like a drill sergeant assessing a particularly scrawny new recruit.

“Patrick,” he said. “Take her to Patrick.”

David let out a strangled cry of protest, but it was too late. The world—Jonathan, David, the cabin– disappeared around me as Rahel took me out of the world.

And then, with no sense of transition at all, we were standing in an alley in Manhattan. Well, Rahel was standing in an alley in Manhattan; I was drifting around like Pigpen’s dirt cloud trying to figure out how to put my skin on again. Crap. I’d never get the lime green Manolos right.

Rahel crossed her arms and stared at the not-space where I was. Amused. She inspected her flawless fingernails and evidently decided that neon yellow was no longer the color of the day; her pantsuit morphed to a hot tangerine, and her nails took on a rich sunset blend of orange, gold, and blue. Even the beads in her hair changed to amber and carnelian.

“Still waiting,” she said, and wiggled her fingers to inspect the effect. Evidently it wasn’t impressive enough; she added some rings, nothing too flashy, then turned her attention back to me. “Come on, Snow White, we don’t have all week.”

Keep your pants on, I thought at her. She must have heard it, because she raised one eyebrow in a very Spock-like gesture of amusement.

“The issue, I think, is yourpants, not mine.”

I slowly formed myself, inside out. Faster than before. By the time the skin came on, I was already moving on to the clothing, adding it rapidly from the templates I’d created earlier. Zip, zoom. Maybe five seconds. Not so bad.

The shoes looked good. I leaned over and admired them, decided I really needed toenail polish, and went for matching lime green.

When I looked back up, Rahel was smiling. The friendly expression disappeared as soon as I noticed it. “What?” I asked.

She shook her head, beads tinkling in her braids. “Nothing. It’s just that your personal style might even be more untraditional than mine. Quite a feat, little one.”

“We going to stand in a stinky alley all day talking fashion?”

“Not that we couldn’t, but perhaps it isn’t the best plan.” She started walking toward the mouth of the long brick tunnel, where a bright New York morning flowed past in the form of anxious-looking pedestrians, none of whom looked our way. “Do try to keep up.”

I clumped along after her—if one could be said to clump in shoes this fabulous. I picked my footing carefully, avoiding the puddles of God-knew-what and the shapeless heaps of God-didn’t-even-want-to-know-what. Rahel reached the end of the alley, took a sharp right and fell into the traffic flow. I hurried to keep up with her long-legged strides. It really was a beautiful day; the sun caressed my skin, covered me in a sweet warm blanket of energy that I sucked in greedily. Around us, a constant symphony of honking cars, sirens, loud voices—energy to spare. You gotta love New York City. Kick the crap out of it, and it just rolls over and comes back for more. Me and the Big Apple had that in common. That and a certain brash, trashy style.