The glass exploded like a bomb. David misted and was gone before the first glittering shards fell.
Jonathan, left behind, closed his eyes and sank down against one wall of the prison—the refuge? — and braced his forehead against his hands.
The bottle sealed itself without a sound, walling him in.
The dream faded into a gray, sick, constant light, sparked with cold blue flashes.
Don’t, I murmured in my sleep. Don’t do this for me.
But I knew him better.
The next time I got poured out of the bottle, things were different. For one thing, I was in another room—clean, this one, scrupulously Martha Stewarted, from the stacked pyramid of oranges in a low green tray to the matching rug and throw pillows.
The place was so coordinated it could have joined the Ballet Russe. I felt claustrophobic. Patrick’s digs had been louche and tacky, but at least they’d been bursting with energy.
There was only one word for this room. Soulless.
When I put on flesh, I was standing on champagne-pale carpet in my spike-heeled pumps, looking like a hooker at a Suzy Homemaker convention. The expression on Yvette Prentiss’s face was almost worth the incredible embarrassment of the outfit.
“Kevin!” Yvette said sharply. She was sitting on a vanilla cream satin-striped sofa, looking gorgeously, deliberately casual, much like the room. Nothing casual about it—you don’t get that artless elegance by just tossing on some jeans and touching up the lipstick. Hours of prep had been involved.
Kevin, on the other hand, looked like he’d just been rousted out of bed. Wrinkled, unkempt, wearing a faded-out gray T-shirt with a tear in the sleeve and a pair of jeans so wide-legged they flared like gauchos. Naturally, the jeans were about three sizes too big, so they could ride fashionably low on his hips and display at least two inches of not-very-clean BVDs. I didn’t think his hair had ever been visited by either the Comb or Shampoo Fairy.
He had a three-second delay to her angry snap, probably because he was still in awe of the Magenta outfit he’d managed to stick me with. “Um, what?”
“Did you open the bottle before?”
“No!” Patently a lie. He was terrible at it. “I might’ve, ah, peeked. Just a little.”
She just gave him a scorching look of disgust, stood up and came to walk around me. I waited for her to kick the tires and ask how much mileage was on me. Oh, I so wanted to tell her to kiss my French-maid-costumed ass, but naturally, I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything but stand there, simmering. What did you do with Lewis, you incredible bitch?
“Get rid of that,” she said to Kevin.
“What?”
“The outfit. Obviously.”
“Oh.” Kevin seized the opportunity. “Take off your clothes,” he said to me. It was a direct, unequivocal order. I thought fast, and removed the apron with a flicker of consciousness. He waited, in vain, for me to do the rest. “All your clothes,” he amended. Crap. I shut my eyes and did it, shedding stockings, shoes, skirt, corset, thong—everything. Standing in bare feet on carpet, feeling air conditioning breathe its way across my skin.
Yvette groaned. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, put her in something decent. Conduct your perversions on your own time.”
Never thought I’d be grateful to her, but I opened my eyes and stared at Kevin again, waiting for the order. He was too busy drooling. Yvette reached over and smacked him on the back of the head, hard, and he winced and ducked and said, “Okay! Put something on. Something, you know, nice.”
I went for a severe black pantsuit in peachskin, a form-hugging pale silver shirt, and some discreet low-heeled Stuart Weitzman shoes, with tassels. I reached in the vest pocket of the jacket and fished out a nice pair of Ray·Ban sunglasses to finish it off.
“Better,” Yvette approved. “You have good taste.”
“Thank you,” I said. Pretty much meaning fuck you, but without the actual words.
“What’s your name?”
Since she wasn’t my master, and it wasn’t a Rule-of-Three question anyway, there was no reason for me to tell the truth. “Lilith,” I said. Sounded exotic and faintly evil. Hi, I’m Lilith, I’ll be your evil servant today. Yeah, I liked it.
“Lilith,” she repeated. She did the walking-around thing again, checking me out. “You’ll do.”
“For what, exactly?” I asked. She looked shocked. Apparently, Djinn were not quite so aggressive in her experience. “Who are you?”
She wasn’t going to answer questions from the help. She glared at Kevin, evidently blaming him for my bad attitude, and said, “You understand what to do?”
“Yeah,” he said, and looked as resentful as I felt. “I get it.”
“Don’t screw it up.”
“I won’t.”
“You know how important this is.” God, she was picking at him like a scab. She’d probably say that she was just reinforcing the point, but I saw the light in her eyes. She just plain enjoyed making him squirm. It was an uncomfortable sort of fascination.
Kevin, of course, got defensive. “I got it, already! Jeez, Mom! Take a pill!” I almost felt sorry for the kid. Messy, hormonally overloaded, unattractive, burdened with a stepmom from Hell…
And then I remembered him checking me out like some fifty-year-old drunk in a strip club, and the impulse toward sympathy went away.
“Okay.” Kevin took a deep breath, clenched his fists, and said, “Yo. I want you to do something.”
I was unimpressed by the buildup.
“ Iwant you to cause a really big fire in—” He shot a look at mom, who was staring at him like a harpy ready to pounce. “—in a town called Seacasket, Maine.”
What the hell…? Didn’t matter. I could already feel the circuits kicking in, the Djinn hardwiring powering up. “Yeah, sure, okay.” I was already figuring all the ways I could stretch that one. A really big, pretty, contained fire that didn’t burn anything. Spectacular, not dangerous.
Yvette made a frustrated sound in the back of her throat that sounded like a purr, and addressed herself directly to him. “The whole town. Destroy everything and everyone in it.”
“Uh, yeah. What she said,” he said to me. He didn’t sound enthusiastic. “Big fire. Destroy the town and everybody in it. Now. Uh, and you can do that misty thing to get there.”
The part of me that couldn’t be controlled was already reaching out for power, tapping into Kevin’s potential, drawing it down into me in a rich blood-tide flood. God, it was so strong… I’d thought it was just Lewis that had this much power, but to find it in someone like Kevin… it was incredible. Immeasurable.
And I was about to use it to roast an entire town alive. Oh God, no.
“Go,” Kevin said, and waved his hand around awkwardly. “Do what I told you.”
To my utter horror, I found I couldn’t stop myself.
I was already misting out. Kevin, the Martha-Stewart-perfect room, Yvette… all fading into nothing.
He hadn’t told me to travel the aetheric, so I stayed in mist form, moving as slowly as real-world physics would allow. I was a hot storm rolling through clouds and sky, burning with purpose, out of control, and lives were going to be lost when I arrived, no question about it.
I had to think of a way to stop this. How? I wasn’t in control of it, not at all. It was controlling me, I was just the conduit through which the power would flow. Fine, if I was a circuit, maybe there was a way to insulate myself. Muffle the damage I was going to do. How? Think, dammit! All that training in weather, and none of it was any help at all now…
Or was it?
I reached out and grabbed a spangled net of storm energy from the sea and dragged it behind me like a train on a wedding dress as I arrowed past, heading for Seacasket, Maine.
I knew, without having to ask why, that there were 1,372 people in Seacasket. Not to mention pets, farm animals, birds, insects, plants, all the things that made up the ecosphere, that made life possible and desirable.