Текст книги "Ill Wind"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

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

We pulled off at a gas station about five miles down the road. Star went inside to pay for the gas and to grab beverages and whatever passed for food; I got out to walk around in the cooling wind, shivering. The storm that had been following me was still on my trail. I could feel it like a tingle at the edges of my mind.

I don't know if you've ever been in that part of the world, but it's flat, and it seems to go on forever. The land can't quite decide whether it's desert or scrub forest, so it sticks clumps of stubby, twisted bushes together and surrounds them with reddish dust. There's no elegance to it, but there is a certain toughness. It's land that will fight you for every drop of water, every green growing thing you want to take from it. Even though I wasn't an Earth Warden, I could feel that, feel the awesome sleeping power of it surrounding me.

I didn't expect David to touch me, so the heavy warmth of his hands on my shoulders made me tense up before I turned to face him. I was hoping that meant I was forgiven, but I could see in his eyes that I wasn't. He was fully in human mode, walled off from me, but I could sense the power in him, too.

"Why'd you tell her?" he asked me. His hands stayed on my shoulders for a few seconds, then traveled up to cup my face with heat.

I thought of Rahel. "Because it's the only choice I've had this whole trip that's really my own. I need to trust somebody."

"Then trust me."

"I do." I looked up into his eyes and wished hetrusted me—I could feel that reserve in him again, that doubt. "I need help, David. You know that. If I can't get to Lewis—if he can't or won't let me get to him—I need help to fight off whatever's after me. Whether that's Marion, or some other bastard I don't even know… I can't do it alone." And after it was out, I knew how that sounded.

"Is that what you are?" he asked. "Alone?"

I can be a real bitch sometimes, without even meaning to. He let me go, stepped back to minimum safe distance, and shoved his hands in the pockets of his long olive coat.

"So it's you and Star against the world," he said. "That how it's going to be? Maybe she can even provide a Djinn for you. One that you don't know, so it won't be like eating your own pet dog."

"Don't say that, dammit. I'm trying to change the rules of the game. I haveto. The deck's stacked against us."

"I already changed the rules. Look how much good it's done."

Apparently, Djinn were capable of morning-after regrets, too. "Fine. New rules. Rule number one: Let me do this my way. You've been herding me from one place to another ever since I left Westchester. You've been trying to tell me what to do, when to do it. And I can't live that way, David. I need to—"

"To what?" He glared at me, and I saw orange sparks flicker in his eyes. "To make yourself a target? Tell the world you have the Demon Mark? Trust your friendto protect you?"

I watched his eyes. "You don't like her."

He stepped toward me, intimate and aggressive. "I don't trusther. I don't trust anybodywith your life."

"Not even me?"

He growled in the back of his throat and stalked off toward the convenience store, where Star was paying for a stack of bottled water and portable calories. She was laughing with the cashier about something, but when she turned to wave at me, I saw the cashier watching her, studying her scars. Everybody did. She had to know that, had to feel it all the time. She had to resent it, even if she never showed it on the surface. God.Could I have managed that? No. Never.

She hip-bopped the door open and came out with her armload of goodies. I grabbed some that were toppling and looked over her shoulder. The cashier was staring.

"Is he checking me out?" she asked.

"Uh-huh." I didn't tell her the look wasn't so much admiration as there-but-for-the-grace-of-God fascination.

Star gave me her two-sided comedy-tragedy smile. "I'm telling you, chica,guys dig scars. Makes 'em think I'm tough."

I opened the passenger door and dumped the load in David's seat. Let him sort it out. "News flash, babe, you are tough. Toughest girl I ever met."

"Damn straight." She offered me a fist. I tapped it. She raised her voice for David. "Yo, boy, let's motor!"

He was watching the horizon. Clouds were creeping out there, doing something stealthy that sounded like barely more than a low mutter in Oversight. Too far off to concern us yet, but it was definitely my old friend the storm, coming back for more. The wind belled out his coat and snapped it behind him. I walked over.

"When she says boy,I think she means you," I said. He squinted into the distance behind his glasses.

"I got the point."

"And?"

He gave me a long, wordless look, then went back to the Land Rover, picked up the water and fast food, and sat himself in the passenger side. I climbed into the back. As Star shut the door, she looked quickly at David, then at me.

"Don't mean to get in the middle, but is there something I should know?" she asked.

"No." We both said it instantly, simultaneously. It couldn't have been more obvious we were lying.

"O… kay." She put the Land Rover in gear and rolled the big boat out to the freeway. "You down with my plan?"

"Star, I have no idea what plan you're talking about."

She accelerated the truck and slid smoothly in between a red rollover-prone SUV and a station wagon held together with duct tape and baling wire. "The one where I save your ass, babe."

"I'm still waiting for a plan. That's an outcome."

"Picky, picky… Okay, here's the deal. I have a source in Norman who can put us in touch with an honest-to-God masterless Djinn. You know, the kind running around, ready to be claimed. Sound good to you?"

I didn't dare look at David. He handed me a water bottle, and I cracked the plastic ring and sucked down lukewarm liquid. It tasted like sweat, but my body was shiveringly grateful.

"Sure," I said. "Sounds fabulous."

Norman, Oklahoma, was just twenty miles from Oklahoma City proper, but Star was making caution her new religion; we drove just about every cowpath and haypicker road in the county, watching for any sign Marion or her folks were on to us. Nothing. By the time we exited I-35 and crossed into Norman's city limits, it was getting close to sundown, and the burritos and bottled water were just a fond, gut-rumbling memory.

Norman's an old town, a strange mixture of prewar buildings and hypernew neon. The local college ensured a steady parade of coffee shops, clothing boutiques, used CD emporiums, and bookstores.

"Who's your source?" David asked. He upended his water and drained the last few drops from blue plastic; I wondered if he was really thirsty, if he even really felt such mundane things as hunger and thirst. He'd eaten with me that first afternoon, I remembered. And in the diner. Maybe he was more flesh than spirit, after all. And hey, sex? Pretty much of the flesh.

"Excuse me?" Star asked.

"Your source. The one who told you about the Djinn."

"Friend," she said, which was no more illuminating than anything else she'd said for the past two hours. "Which is all you need to know, seeing as how you're not in the Wardens." She reached out and passed her hand over his. No glyphs lit up on his palms. "Speaking of which, Jo, you oweme an explanation about how you and this cutie got together."

She gave him a look that reminded me Star wasn't all fun and games; she'd once been a Warden, tough and very strong. Even if she didn't have full command of her power anymore, she could be dangerous. And focused.

"Joanne told me." David pointed a thumb back over the seat at me. "Not that I believe any of this, anyway. But it makes a good story."

"Yeah?" Star's trademark smile flashed. "You planning to write it up, print it in the newspaper?"

"More like the tabloids."

"Makes sense. So why do you care who told me about the Djinn?"

"I don't," he said, and shrugged, and pulled a book from the pocket of his coat. Nothing I recognized. The cover had a black-and-yellow road sign blazed on the cover; when I squinted, I saw it read BE CAREFUL.

Jesus, he was tempting fate, doing that in front of her.

The cover shifted again, into a Patricia Cornwell mystery, and he opened it to a dog-eared page and appeared to forget all about me.

Star was watching me in the rearview mirror. "You heard about Lewis taking the Djinn, right? Three of 'em? When he bugged out?"

"I heard."

"Well, rumor has it he let at least one of them go. It's just a matter of tracking him down, that's all. And I've got just the girl to do it." She hadn't looked away. It was a little eerie, actually. Dark, dark eyes, pupils fading into irises. "Once you have Lewis, what then?"

"Then he helps me figure out how to get this thing out of me."

Her eyebrows slowly rose. "Yeah? You really think he knows how?"

"Sure." I was lying my ass off, mostly to myself, but it felt better than the uncertainty of the truth. "If anybody does, he does."

"Okay, stupid question. What I meant to ask is, why would he? You got something special going with him?"

Oh, that was a subject I really didn't want to dig into, not with David sitting in the passenger seat, thumbing blandly through a book. Star didn't seem to care. She started to smile, but her eyes were going cold.

"Or you got something elsegoing with him? You on some undercover mission, chica?"

"Yeah, sure," I shrugged. "Don't ask, don't tell."

I meant it as a joke, and I wasn't prepared for the flash of sheer fury in her eyes. "Fine," she said. "Keep your little secrets."

"I don't have any secrets." As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized I'd lied to her. Effortlessly. Without a second thought. And I didn't even know why, except that a yellow danger sign kept flashing into my head. I'd chosen to trust Star. I just…

… couldn't trust her.

She drove down Main Street, past shops just lightning up against the darkness… grocery stores… gas stations… incongruously, a condom shop. The Burger King on the corner was doing a brisk business in robbing college students of their lunch money. On the other side of the narrow street, gracious Plantation-style homes with Doric columns put on a brave front that the South would rise again.

She slowed and turned into a strip-mall parking lot pretty much identical to the six others we'd passed, and pulled the Land Rover into a parking space barely able to stretch to fit it. I squinted up at the sign, which hadn't yet been turned on against the falling darkness: ball's books.

It looked like exactly what it was: a used bookstore, and not the corporate, regimented kind—the kind that conformed to the whim of an owner. I liked it immediately, but there was still a cold cramp in my stomach, and I couldn't think exactly how I was going to get out of this. More important, how I'd get David out of this.

I grabbed his coat sleeve as Estrella limped away, pulled him down for a whisper. "Take a walk."

"Where?" he asked mildly.

"Why should I care? I don't want you anywhere near her if she's going to—"

His hand covered mine, and some of his human disguise fell away; his eyes turned burning, swirling bronze, and I felt his heat pour into me and drive out the chill. His smile, though, was all guy. All David.

"It won't matter," he said. "If she can find me at all, it doesn't matter where I go. If you're so worried about me, there's something you can do to stop it."

I knew what he meant. "I'm not claiming you."

He shrugged and took his hand away. "Then I'll take my chances."

Stubborn, infuriating…

Star tapped on the store window and gestured. David moved to the door and held it open for me, head down. I fought an impulse to kick him in the shins. As I walked past, he murmured, "No matter what happens, you always have a choice."

We stepped into cool silence and the smell of old paper. To the right was a wall of corkboard packed with cards and papers of every description, no rhyme or reason to it that I could see; some advertised massages, some were photocopies of newspaper cartoons, some were just plain mystifying. David stepped around her and began to look through books—I thought at first he was stalling for time, but his interest in the contents of the racks seemed genuine. He really did love reading, after all. And I guess even Djinn need a hobby.

"Hey, Star," said a voice from behind me. I turned to see a youngish woman sitting behind a table– well away from the cash register and counter– surrounded by books, a coffeemaker, and a butterscotch calico cat. She had brown hair cut in a shag and watchful cool eyes that struck me as capable and observant. "New romances in—you want to look through the boxes?"

"Not today, thanks, Cathy." Star exchanged what appeared to be a significant look with the woman. "I need the book."

If that seemed odd, asking for «the» book in a store littered with them, the woman clearly didn't think so; she looked spooked, not confused. "I thought we were done with that."

"Almost," Star said. She held out her hand, half-plea, half-demand. "Come on, Cathy, just this once."

Cathy shook her head, got up, and walked to the back of the store. She opened a door marked NO ADMITTANCE.

"The book?" I asked Star. She shrugged, still watching the open door at the back.

"Took me years to track it down," she said. "Cathy finally bought it off the Internet for me. I told her she could have it when I was done with it."

"What is it?"

Star smiled that lopsided smile. It wasn't comforting this time. "It's a surprise. You'll see."

Things thumped, back there. Cathy returned carrying a limp cardboard box, top closed, that looked like it weighed a considerable amount. She dropped it down on the desk and folded back the stained box wings.

"You're sure?" she asked. That silent communication again between them was nothing I could interpret. I didn't know Cathy Ball, but I felt like I should; on an impulse, I reached out and passed my hand over hers.

Glyphs shimmered, blue and silver. A Weather Warden. She looked up sharply and met my eyes; I smiled and showed her my matching set. Nothing eased in her body language. "Star?" she said. "You know I don't like other Wardens around here."

I hadn't been expecting a hug, but this was a bit much; we're generally a pretty chummy group.

"Sorry," Star said, not sounding too sorry at all. "She's a friend. She needs our help."

Cathy shot a look toward David, clearly asking the question. "No," I said. "He's not. What've you got against other Wardens, anyway?"

"Nothing," Cathy said, which vibrated like a lie all along my nerves. "It's just that they're trouble. Bunch of power-hungry, crazy, egotistical jerks, generally. I like peace and quiet." Her eyes narrowed at me. "Take that business in Oklahoma City today. You wouldn't believe what a mess that was. The aetheric was screwed up from here to Kansas, all the way over to Phoenix. Took hours just to get the temperature variances back to normal."

I threw a save me!look at Star, who was busy taking a huge leather-bound book out of the cardboard box and shaking off white packing peanuts. She ignored me, shoved the box off to thump on the floor, and eased the book down to the desk on top of a mound of category romances.

The cat that had been slinking inquisitively around Cathy's plate of doughnuts hissed around and skittered away, shooting past David into the farthest corner of the store. David had paused with the new Stephen King novel in his hands, staring at the book that Star had laid out, and I saw cinders of gold and bronze catch fire in his eyes. It was the real deal; I could see that from the intensely blank expression on his face.

"Star," I said, "Look, maybe this isn't the right time. I'm really tired, I'm starved—let's take this thing with us, get something to eat, maybe have a good night's sleep and talk it over. I'm trashed. Really."

She flipped open pages that crackled like vellum. "This won't take long."

That was what I was afraid of. Cathy Ball sat back down in her chair, picked up a pen, and wrote something down in a ledger, but she couldn't take her eyes off Star for very long. I wondered what kind of history there was between them, because I could have sworn that the woman looked… scared. Of Star. Who didn't have a mean bone in her body.

"I'll need your Djinn," Star said without looking up.

Cathy put the pen down. "No," she said. "Not after last time."

"I won't hurt her."

"I said no, Star."

Star looked up, finally, and I wasn't in the right angle to see her face, but I did see Cathy's. It went pale.

"Chica,"Star murmured, "don't make me get all cranky with you."

Cathy's lips pressed into a thin line, and a frown grooved between her brows, but she reached into the desk drawer and came out with a tiny little glass perfume bottle, one of those little sample sizes. She tossed it across the desk to Star, who caught it right-handed.

"I'll be in the back," Cathy said.

Star didn't watch her go; she unscrewed the lid of the perfume bottle. No visible result, but I felt a surge of somethingbehind me.

"Can I help you?" the Djinn asked. I turned to see her standing at an angle between me and Star, watching us both with bright, neon-blue eyes.

She was a child. Or at least she looked like she was no older than fourteen—dressed in a pale blue dress with a white apron. Long, long blond hair, straight, held back with an Alice in Wonderlandblue band. Her heart-shaped face was sweet and innocent and straight out of Lewis Carroll.

When she looked at me, she frowned and wrinkled her nose. I knew she could smell the Mark. She looked from me to David, still standing like a statue in the general fiction section, but there was nothing to show she recognized who or what he was. She focused back on Star.

"Hey, Alice," Star said, and held out the book. "Hold this."

Alice didn't move. She didn't resist, but she didn't comply. Star muttered Spanish curses under her breath and yelled Cathy's name. Twice. Cathy finally came to the no admittance door and looked out.

"Tell her to obey me," Star said. Cathy rubbed her forehead.

"Do what she wants," she said wearily. "Three times only."

Alice nodded. I was glad, for Alice's sake, that Cathy had put a limit on compliance.

"Hold this," Star said again. Alice extended her arms and took the book from Star's hands. There was something about it that the Djinn didn't like; I could see it in the widening of her eyes, but Alice didn't– couldn't—protest. Star flipped pages and found what she was looking for, then gestured to me. I took a step closer and stopped when the girl looked at me with those bright, empty, desolate eyes.

"Here," Star said as she grabbed my wrist and pulled me closer, next to her. "Read this out loud."

"What is it?" My legs were trembling, my heart pounding. The adrenaline was making my Demon Mark hiss and stretch inside me, and that only made my heart race faster, as if it wanted to escape.

"Hey, you want to fix this thing or not? 'Cause chica,the Demon Mark is nothing to screw around with. You let it get control of you, and you won't be the same."

I looked down at the words, not words at all, some kind of symbols, and I started to tell her I didn't know what they meant, but something clicked in my head and I didknow, I understood, I could hear the way the words were supposed to sound, taste the heavy flavor of them on my tongue. There was power in this thing. Earth power. Maybe fire. Certainly nothing I could control, though.

The words waited, wantedto be spoken. I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again and heard the first syllable whispering and gathering strength and echoing in the sounding bell of my mind.

"Say it," Star whispered. I felt her warm breath on my ear. "It has to be you, chica,I can't do it for you."

The Djinn, Alice. That was where this power was flowing from. She was holding the book, and the book drew power from her… I wondered if it hurt her. Her eyes were huge, doll-like, empty of emotion. Empty of fear. Her arms were shaking, as if the book were heavier than the world.

I hadn't heard him walk up to me, but now David was there, at the edge of my vision, almost glittering with intensity. He was still in human disguise, human form, but how much longer? How long until the words echoing in my head forced him to reveal himself?

I reached out, took the book from the Djinn's arms, and slammed it closed with a sound like thunder. The Djinn stumbled backwards, or floated; she looked drained and skeletal for a few seconds, then rebuilt herself into the sweet-faced little refugee from beyond the looking glass.

"No," I said. I looked at Star and saw she was staring at me as if she'd never seen me before, as if I'd grown two heads and goat feet. "This is wrong, Star. I can feel it."

"Wrong," she repeated slowly. She reached out and put her hand over the place the Demon Mark had left its black scorching tattoo on my breast. "And this isn't?"

"That wasn't my choice." I hefted the heavy book.

It smelled faintly rotten, felt damp and unclean. "Thisis. And I'm not doing it."

Her eyes went flat and opaque, like Mayan flint. "You can't keep it," she said, and there was something terrible in her voice, like blood and lightning. "I can't let you keep it, Jo."

Her face was changing. Melting. Becoming beautiful,the way she'd been back before Yellowstone. Taking on a kind of lush, lustrous glow that was too perfect, even for an airbrushed magazine model. An inhumanbeauty.

"You don't deserve it," she said. I could hear an echo in her voice now of something stirring inside me. "Ideserve it. It chose me.I can't let you have it, Jo, not again. You've always been prettier and smarter and more powerful, and you can't have this!"

Ah, God, no, no, no. Not Star.

I remembered something Lewis had told me. There's a Demon trying to come through. Trying to touch one of us.

It had tried to touch Star. It must have succeeded, in the end. That was how she repaired her fractured core, how she looked so lustrous and beautiful.

The Demon had given her what she wanted, just as mine had given Bad Bob everything he desired.

Except I couldn't sense a Mark on Star. I looked wildly at David, who was standing just a few feet away.

"She doesn't have one," he told me. "No Mark."

"No," she said. "Not anymore. Hetook it away from me." Star bared her teeth and didn't look so beautiful anymore. There was so much rage in her, so much despair. And yet, she was still Star. The same lovely, smart, smart-mouthed girl I loved.

She tore her gaze away from David and made an effort to pretend it was all normal again. "I tried to make you listen, but you just kept coming. You knew, didn't you? You knew all about what was happening here. Had to be the hero.Had to saveme." Her pretty mouth twisted into something bitter and ugly. "Barely saved yourself, back there in that stupid mall. Some great hero."

Star.All this time I'd been thinking it was someone else, some invisible enemy. But my enemy had been right in plain sight. Jesus, I told her I was coming.No wonder she'd known where I was, how to track me. I'd made it simple.

"Feeling betrayed?" she asked. She stepped closer. "Join the club, girlfriend. Not like you didn't betray me first."

"Life sucks," I said. Star took the book from my hands.

"Then you die," she finished gravely. She flicked her eyes at the blond-haired Djinn, standing quietly with her hands clasped like a good little schoolgirl. "When I give you the signal, I want you to transport me back to my house, understand? Me and whatever I'm holding in my hands."

The book was in Star's hands. I wondered how I was going to get it away from her. Star didn't give me time to figure it out. She gave me a funny little half-smile.

"Third request," she said. "Alice, take the Demon Mark from my friend."

I shouted a no, but Alice was already moving, reaching out for me and I couldn't move backwards fast enough. I tripped over a threadbare Persian carpet and fell against a table as her small pale hand reached out toward me…

… and David intercepted her, stiff-armed her back. Alice flinched from him and tried to come around the other side. David put himself in the middle and held her off. Star, standing off to the side, quietly watching, said nothing at all.

"Call her off!" I ordered. Star raised her hands and let them fall. "Star, dammit, call her off. This is crazy!"

"Can't," she said. "Three wishes. I'm out of here, babe. Better let it happen."

She waved to Alice, and instantly disappeared. With the book.

I yelled at David to hold Alice and I darted for the no admittance door at the back, where Cathy had gone. A blur streaked toward me, blue and white, and I slammed the door against it and stumbled back into boxes that tumbled over and spilled gaudy romance novels to the floor in a spray of heaving breasts and manly thews. I slipped on one and bruised my knee so hard, I saw red pulsing dots.

Alice blew through the door like it wasn't even there and reached out for me, and even while she did, I saw the terror in her eyes, the horror, the desperation. She knew what this meant. Eternal torment for her. And yet… she had no choice.

A blur of hot bronze collided with her and sent her off course, and I managed to clamber back to my feet and run down the narrow, dusty hallway. Pretty much useless, running, but I was out of options.

No. Wait. I wasn't. I sucked down gulps of air and tried to focus around the panic that was jackhammering my heart.

Alice got free of David again and flashed toward me. I stopped, turned, and put out my hands as if I might grab her in turn…… and called the wind.

It blew down the narrow corridor, swirling, ripping, tearing covers and ripping books into blizzards, hit Alice and tumbled her helplessly backwards. David, too. They both dropped from vapor into heavier flesh, but I just called more power, whipped the wind faster. The walls creaked around me, and the far door blew open with a splintering crash, spilling hurricane forces out into the bookstore where racks blew over and paperbacks were sent flying.

In my chest, something ignited. Sent feeders of blackness threading through my aching body.

I couldn't control it anymore. The wind ripped free of me, became wild and alive and dark, became a lover whispering over me, stroking my hair and pressing against me like a living thing.

David was screaming something into the wind at me. Telling me something I didn't want to hear. Something about the Demon Mark. It didn't matter. Not anymore. I could keep him away, could blow sweet little Alice back to Wonderland, could reduce this miserable little store to sticks and splinters. And I wanted to. God, I wanted all this filth to go away, quit clinging to me, quit holding me back from what I was becoming. Sticks and splinters, that was so easy. Bodies in the way? Hamburger. Gobbets of flesh, ground up between steel and stone.

Somebody was trying to stop me. They weren't doing very well, but they were trying. I opened my eyes and squinted through flying debris and saw someone standing against the wall, holding on to an iron bar for dear life. Her short brown hair blew out like a thistle, crackling with static and potential energy.

Cathy Ball. I blinked and went up into Oversight. She was scared, streaked in blacks and grays and hot liquid yellows, but she was fighting me.

I didn't have to stop. It would have been easy not to. But looking at her, so small against all the power burning in me, against the black writhing nest of the Demon Mark that was feeding and consuming and growing… I knew I hadto try.

I let the wind fall. Alice, single-minded as ritual demanded, lunged for me.

"Stop!" Cathy commanded her, and she did, as suddenly as if physics had no meaning for her. Frozen in time.

"Tell her not to take the Mark," I said. Cathy's face went pallid. "Tell her."

"Don't take the Mark," she whispered. Alice relaxed, and the blue eyes filled up with emotion again—resentment, fear, relief, anguish. All hidden the instant she turned back to her master.

It didn't take Cathy long to get a handle on what was going on, or what we were all risking. She glanced at David just once, then focused on me and said, "Get your Demon Marked ass out of my store."

I swallowed a spark of anger. "I'll pay for—"

"You won't do a goddamned thing except get the hell gone!"she shouted, and her face flushed red with the release of tension and fear. I didn't try to apologize. There was no apologizing for what I'd done, or what I'd almost done, or what had almost been done to her Djinn.

Cathy watched me walk to the splintered, gaping door, out into the ruined bookstore. As I stumbled over broken racks and scattered books, I heard her say to her Djinn in a disgusted, shaking voice, "Help me clean this mess up, will you?"

I made it outside before the panic attack hit me.

Well, this was about as low as I could go. On my hands and knees, shivering, gasping, crying like a baby. My whole body ached from the force of it, the need to get rid of the thinginside me and—worse– the horrible feeling of betrayal and grief.

Star wasn't who I thought. Maybe she hadn't everbeen the person I'd thought she was. All this time I'd been believing in her, in our strong and unshakable friendship, and for all I knew, that had all been a lie, too.

Star had made a deal, quite literally, with the Devil. Like Bad Bob, she'd opened herself, and something had crawled inside… and nobody, not even me, had known the difference.

I felt David's hands on my shoulders and leaned back against him. So much comfort in his touch, and I didn't even know why.Why I trusted him, when I knew better… They'd all betrayed me, even Lewis. He'd told me to come here, but where the hell was he when I needed him? I'd trusted Star. I'd trusted Bad Bob.

How could I ever trust David? I barely knewhim.

"Get up," he said, and helped me to my feet. "You have to go. Quickly."

I couldn't. It was done, it was over, there wasn't anything left in me.

He half pushed, half carried me to the Land Rover. As he did, the timer on the outside sign for Ball's Books clicked on and lit us up in a cool yellow glow. Amazingly, from the street, you couldn't tell a thing had happened inside the store. The plate glass windows were intact, and the front part of the store still looked normal.