I didn’t know her. She was younger than I was, which surprised me—a lovely young girl with fair skin and full lips and a head of thick, lustrous red hair that glinted gold in its highlights.
She held the bottle up to Bad Bob as if seeking his approval on a choice to serve with dinner. He nodded.
Her eyes were the same blue as Bad Bob’s. “Hey, Da,” she said. “What can I do to help?”
He pecked a kiss onto her perfect milkmaid’s cheek. “Oh, just stand there and look pretty.”
I felt a step or two behind the curve. “Da?” I said. “Unless she’s speaking Russian, you’ve got to be kidding me. You’ve got a kid? Wait—more importantly, some woman actually slept with you? Without a condom?”
“Shut up,” the girl said, and temper blazed up in her like magma. That, more than anything else, convinced me of the paternal bloodline.
“Wow,” I said. “I don’t know whether to say congratulations or condolences. That probably goes for both of you.”
“Moira, meet Joanne,” Bob said. “Moira’s my pride and joy, the fruit of my powerful loins. Isn’t she beautiful?”
Moira, like daughters everywhere, looked annoyed. “Oh, can it, Da.”
“I’m very proud of her. But you know how that feels, don’t you, Jo? You’re a mother. More or less.”
That made me flinch, as he’d known it would. I wanted to demand that he leave my own child out of this—a half-human/half-Djinn hybrid who’d become one of the three Djinn Oracles. The Earth Oracle, in fact, which was how I’d gained access to that particular set of powers—through her.
Imara had been born full-grown, and she was a lot like me—she could, and did, take care of herself. Besides, the Djinn would have closed ranks around their Oracles, protecting them at all costs.
Imara was safe. I was the one at risk. He wanted me to fear for her, but I just stared him down.
“Nothing?” Bad Bob watched my face. “Huh. Well, okay then. Cross that one off my list.” And he pulled the cork on the bottle. “Oh, wait. Let’s revisit that.”
A ghost misted out of the air. My own body, mirrored. My own dark hair. Everything the same, except her golden eyes, and the brick-red layered dress that swirled around her body like smoke.
No. It couldn’t be.
“Damn,” Bad Bob said, and turned to Moira. “I thought I told you to bring the white.”
She smirked. “Sorry.”
I didn’t pay any attention to their playacting. My brain seemed stuck, unable to move past the word No to any kind of possible outcome to this moment.
My daughter Imara was here. And she couldn’t possibly be here. There was no way Bad Bob or any of his minions could have captured her, stolen her from her chapel in Sedona, without triggering an all-out war with the Djinn. They’d fight to the last of them for her, no matter whose daughter she’d been in the beginning. Not only that, but David would have known. There was no way that he and Ashan couldn’t have known, if something happened to Imara. The Earth Herself would have fought back to protect an Oracle.
My daughter looked at me with desperate fear in her eyes, and I couldn’t stop a pulse of maternal anguish from traveling like lightning through my body.
And then I pushed it away. “Nice try,” I said. “But no sale. That’s not my daughter.”
Moira gave her father a harassed look. “Told you she’d never buy that malarkey,” she said, and grabbed the bottle back from him. The form of the Djinn shifted away from Imara’s reflection of my face, took on darker shades and harsher angles. Long, cornrowed hair with gleaming bits of gold beaded in. This was a Djinn I knew.
Rahel.
The Djinn had fought to keep that part of her appearance the same—at what cost, I couldn’t quite imagine—but she’d lost the war on clothing. Moira dressed her like a Barbie, and the effects were ridiculous. Rahel was wearing a wine-colored evening gown, sleeveless, with a plunging neckline and a slit up the side. White opera gloves. Dangling diamond earrings.
Rahel was a beautiful creature, but this looked wrong on her. Deeply, stupidly insane.
“Wait,” Moira said, and giggled. She added a tiara on top of Rahel’s head, a ridiculously ornate confection of chrome and fake diamonds. “Wave to the adoring crowds, Miss America.”
Rahel’s right hand came up and did a mechanical, empty wave.
Her eyes were locked on mine, and I hated what I saw in them, because it was a very close cousin to the madness that I’d recently seen in David, when he thought I was gone. A desire to crush and destroy and kill everything in her path. She’d been tormented, forced to do horrible things. And she, like David, was not inclined to forgive.
“Hey,” I said to Moira. “Seriously, is that the best you can do? Because that’s not even original. Honestly, I used to be a Djinn. I had a teenage boy for a master. Now, he had an imagination. You’re just—sad. But then again, like father, like daughter . . .”
I got that pulse of fury out of her again. “You shut your whore mouth!”
“Wow. Like I said. Sad. When you have to quote a MySpace graphic, you’ve just given up.” I ignored Moira and looked at her father. “What’s the point of having the kid here? Were you just lonely for somebody who had an extra helping of crazy in the veins?”
The girl smirked at me, turned, and skinned up the edge of her thin white shirt.
She didn’t have a torch mark. Instead, her back was a mass of writhing fire, moving just below the skin—worse than mine had ever gotten, even at its most painful. “I’m one of the chosen,” she said, and dropped the fabric. “Like you used to be, before you gave it all up.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Just when I thought you’d hit rock bottom, Bob. Congratulations on tunneling down.”
“It’s the family business,” he said. “Bringing an end to this travesty we call humanity.”
I checked the horizon. No ships breaking the smooth outline of the sea.
I was starting to sweat.
“So what now?” I asked. “Not that this isn’t fun, but my leg’s falling asleep. Can we move the end of the world along a little? Or at least work in a nap?”
Moira laughed. Bad Bob shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “For you, sweetness, I’ll kick it into high gear. But you know that means you’re going to suffer, don’t you?”
“I figured,” I said, and shrugged. “I’m already suffering. These rocks are really uncomfortable.”
He laughed. “What a girl,” he said, and elbowed his daughter. “Right?”
By her expression, she found me a good deal less charming. “She’s nothing,” she said. “You never needed her, Da. You always had me.” Oooooh, jealous. Very jealous. I could use it.
“That’s true.” He kissed her forehead, but his eyes never left me. “That’s very true. I’ve been taking out her bones, one at a time. What do you think, princess?”
“Too boring.” She wasn’t even looking at me; she pulled free of Bad Bob and walked a slow circle around Rahel, inspecting her Miss America impersonation. “Make her work for it.”
“Hmmmm. There’s an idea. Two birds and one very big stone.” Bad Bob slammed the book closed and put it under his arm. “All right, then. Let’s see what you can do, my child. Impress me.”
Moira sat down on a handy boulder, open wine bottle in both hands on her lap, and tossed glossy red hair back over her shoulders. “Rahel,” she said. “I want you to break Joanne Baldwin’s right leg in two. Use your hands. Do it now.”
She knew the rules of commanding a Djinn—be specific about intent, method, and time frame. And I could see that they’d had plenty of practice with Rahel—she hadn’t gained that traumatized fury without cause.
“Do it slowly,” Moira said. “Make her feel every second of it.”