“I’m all right,” I said. “Seventy-five percent all right, anyway.”
He seemed to calculate me at about the same rate.
“If we succeed,” he said, “we will have another problem to consider.”
I hadn’t actually thought past the consequences of failure, which were fairly horrific. “Like what?”
“You may inherit his power. And you may be tempted to use it.”
“I could use it for good.”
“So did he. Once. It isn’t a power you can use, Jo. It’s a power you must destroy.”
I looked back at him. “So if I grab it from Bad Bob, you’re going to take it away from me. Or die trying.”
“Maybe,” David said. “But first we have to live to get there, don’t we?”
I turned to face him. The next lurching drop sent him into me. Our lips found each other, hot and hungry and damp, tasting of salt and desperation. For a moment even the storm seemed to stop, suspended between heartbeats.
I felt the darkness in me trying to reach out to him, and slapped it down hard. No. Not yet. David might be here, he might be with me, but he wasn’t with me. And I wasn’t going to be the one to enslave him yet again, not until I had no other choice.
I turned to face south, toward the empty horizon. “He’s not far now,” I said. “One thing at a time, right?”
David’s arms gripped the railing on either side of me, bracing me against the violent bucking of the ship as we plunged toward the darkness. “Right.”
Chapter Ten
The Wardens on the Grand Horizon had learned from our mistakes, it appeared; we saw them break through the storm, and they must have set up a series of Djinn/ Warden cooperative alliances to maintain their bubble shield, because I could see the glistening curve of it from the deck of our ship as the waves broke and foamed over the smooth round surface.
I wished them luck in keeping that up. It was brutal, soul-shredding work. “How long until they catch up?”
David handed me a plate. Our pirate cook had made some kind of meat, finely chopped and spiced, with spongy bread. It was delicious, and surprising; I’d somehow expected wormy crusts and rum. I gobbled down the lunch with gratitude.
“Good?” David asked, amused, and shook his head at my garbled reply. “They’re gaining. They’ll catch up to us by midday.”
“Can’t let that happen,” I mumbled. “Lewis was very clear. This needs to be me. Not them.”
“Bad Bob and his storm didn’t slow them down. How do you propose either of us stops them, short of destroying them?”
I chewed and swallowed. “Ask them.”
He evidently hadn’t thought of that. I winked and carried my plate to the wheelhouse, where Josue was dozing on a stained old cot at the back while his navigator did the hard work of steering the tough little vessel on the course I’d set. I asked about the radio and was pointed belowdecks, to a small, claustrophobic closet of a room with bad ventilation and a crew member who evidently liked beans and hated baths. I evicted him from his battered chair and rolled up to check out the radio. It was old, but highly complicated.
“Hey!” I yelled through the closed door. David opened it. “Help me out a little. I’m not Sparky the Wonder Horse.”
That earned me a full, warm smile. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“Watch it.” I meant that; he was looking at me like I was the old Joanne. The less demented one. “Keep your guard up. I mean it, David. Bad Bob can be funny, too. That doesn’t make him any less of a monster. Don’t you dare trust me. I can’t trust myself, not anymore.”
The smile faded, and the sparks in his eyes turned ash-dark. “Yes. I understand.” David looked at the radio, and the dials turned. “There. That should put you in touch with the Grand Horizon’s bridge.”
“Thanks.” I slipped on the headphones as he shut the door between us—less to provide me with privacy than to give me elbow room. There wasn’t enough space in here to breathe. “Merchant vessel—” Oh, hell, what was this ship’s name? “Merchant vessel Sparrow for the cruise vessel Grand Horizon. Please respond, over.” I expected I’d have to repeat myself, but instead I got an immediate crackle of connection.
“Sparrow, this is Grand Horizon.” I knew that voice. “You made it.”
“Lewis.” I kept my voice neutral, although I was glad he’d made it, too. Even if he had tried to kill me. “You’re lucky David hasn’t made a lampshade out of you.”
“Time will tell.” Lewis obviously knew all about how much trouble he was in on that front. “You’re heading straight for Bad Bob.”
“I have a plan. Obviously, it won’t be as good as yours,” I said, “but I make one hell of a good distraction, right? So I go in, do as much damage as possible, and you guys land for the cleanup.”
“That would be great—if I thought for a second we could actually trust you.” Lewis’s voice was bleak and dry, even through the distortion of the radio waves. “You brought us this close. That’s enough, Jo. Break it off. Whatever happens, don’t let him finish what he started in destroying you.”
“What makes you think he can’t do it from a distance?” I asked. “I’d rather go down fighting for you than against you.”
“Jo—”
“Maybe you didn’t get that I wasn’t asking your permission. I was informing you, that’s all. You can not love it all you want, but it’s what’s going to happen, and—” I felt the laboring engines of my little ship begin to struggle. “Don’t you even think about it, man. You start screwing with me and you are in a world of trouble.”
He covered the mike, presumably to warn off the Earth Warden or Djinn who was trying to shut me down. “I’m not interfering,” he said. “I’m just advising, and I advise you very strongly to break this off and run, Jo. Now.”
“You sent me out here,” I said. “You put me on the hook for bait. Let me do this.” No answer but static. “Fine. Joanne Baldwin Prince, signing off—”
“Wait,” he snapped. I did. “Don’t take David with you. We’re not allowing any of the Djinn to make landfall. Too dangerous for them.”
I was a bit unclear on the concept of how one stopped Djinn from doing something, if they weren’t bound to a bottle, but I didn’t bring it up. “And what do you suppose I’m going to do about stopping David?”
His sigh rattled the speaker. “You’re not going to love the idea.”
“Try me.”
He did. I heard him out, although my first impulse was to blow the radio up in a satisfying shower of sparks. I thought about it.
After a long, quiet moment, I agreed.
“Jo?” I was so deep in thought that Lewis’s voice startled me. “Still there?”
“More or less. Look, I can’t trust anyone on this ship, not with what you’re asking. Send me someone.” I thought about that for a second. “Send me someone who isn’t going to take shit from some fairly scary pirates.”
“I’ve got just the guy,” Lewis said. “We’re going to slow down, to give you time to get to the island ahead of us. But we’ll be coming when you need us.”
“I hope so,” I said. “Let’s not say our good-byes this time. Last time was a real bitch.”
He seemed to think so, too. “Grand Horizon, signing off.”
“Sparrow, signing off.” I put the old click-to-talk mike down and sat for a moment in silence, staring at the equipment.
Then I rummaged around in the desk drawers. It was a battered old thing, looked like it had seen service in the First World War, and I surprised a long-tailed rat in the top drawer, who stared at me with beady little eyes and an entire lack of alarm. A pet, maybe. Or maybe this was his ship, and I was the infestation.
I shut that drawer and tried the next one. The rats had made nests of the paperwork that had once been in there; it was nothing but shreds.