The hair prickled on the back of my neck.
Something big… a white surge of power sweeping through, clearing out the fire, breaking the processes I’d set up inside the storm. It rolled like a glittering razor-edged sea.
It tasted familiar. No, it wasas familiar as the power humming inside my own body because it was the same damn thing.
It was David.
I raised my head slowly as the silence fell, that hot green silence like the one before the tornado’s freight-train rush… the fire at the bank building flared once, blue-white, and vanished into a hiss of smoke. The streamers of flame winked out.
David was standing across the street in front of the Starbucks, copper-brushed hair catching light like silk. He was in his traveling clothes—blue shirt, blue jeans, olive drab wool coat that belled with the wind.
He looked so tired. So horribly tired. And there were crawling blue sparks all over him, too. Glittering in a barely visible umbilical between us.
“Joanne,” he whispered. I felt his voice, even from so far away, like breath on my skin.
I didn’t say anything out loud—couldn’t—but I felt the compulsion rising up again, felt the fire sucking energy and pouring it into a manifestation that glittered and grew above my head. A snowball on fire. A boulder. A sun. The light from it was so bright it bleached the town to gray-white shadow.
Stop me, I begged him. I knew he could hear me, vibating through the connection between us. Kill me if you have to. Cut the cord.
He looked up, at the growing ball of destruction flaming in the sky, and then back at me. I didn’t have to tell him I couldn’t stop. He knew. He understood.
I looked at him in Oversight and saw him outlined in pale, shimmering orange, a color that felt like suffering, weakness, approaching death. When I extended my hand toward him, I could see the same color drifting around me.
This was killing both of us. I was draining my master Kevin at the same time, threeof us going down…
Stop me, I said again. The silver rope binding us together was pale now, pulsing in time with our shared heartbeats. God, David, please, I don’t know how…
I know, he said. She just wanted to get my attention.
I didn’t see him move, but he was suddenly there, tackling me violently backwards to the ground, away from the children and the wildly yapping beagle. Overhead, the sun exploded into a white-hot fury, but I didn’t see, couldn’t see, because we were falling through the ground and into the aetheric, racing back along the invisible path I’d taken to get here. No! I battered at him, tried to get free, tried to warn him that he was killing us both. He didn’t respond. Faster. Faster. The whole thing was a blur of lights, color, motion, whispers, screams…
… and the two of us fell with a hard thump onto the pale champagne carpet of Yvette Prentiss’s living room. Before I could even register where we were, David was already rolling away, reaching for the open perfume vial that lay on the table, but before he could reach it Kevin’s grubby hand snatched it up.
I felt the fury in David at the sight of her smug smile. He was going to rip her apart. There was no softness in him now, no consideration, no humanity. He was nothing but fire, ready to burn.
And then he shuddered, staggered, and collapsed to his knees. I could already feel it happening inside of him. Death. Coming fast. He’d poured so much out in stopping me that he had nothing left, nothing to draw on but me and he was refusing to do that…
I could feel it in myself, too. I turned and screamed at Kevin, “ Order me to heal him! Now!”
I had no idea I could produce a voice like that, so utterly sure of obedience. Kevin instantly complied. “Heal him.”
“No!” Yvette shrieked, but it was too late, and I was already pulling on Kevin’s store to replenish the failing energy levels in myself. David collapsed over on his back, fading into mist and reforming with every breath, and I poured life back into him with everything I had.
Close. So very close.
David groaned and rolled over to hands and knees, then managed to get to his feet. Swayed like a three-day drunk. His eyes flared bright orange, and he looked straight at Yvette Prentiss.
And then he lunged for her.
“Don’t let him hurt my mother! Hold him still!” Kevin yelled. Direct command, no equivocation. I had no choice.
I turned, grabbed David and held on as he tried to throw me off. I wasn’t stronger than he was, not normally, but with Kevin’s power pouring into me there was no stopping me. And he was weak, and tired, and hurting.
I pinned him against the wall of her house, rested my head against his and whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, David—” I felt the hand trying to shove me away change to a caress. No words. We didn’t need any. “You shouldn’t have done this. Oh God, please, please go, I can’t stop you if you go…”
Yvette had another bottle ready. This one was dark blue, oblong, some kind of fancy kitchen bottle built more for display than actual containment, but it had a rubber stopper and it would do the job. She uncorked it and put it on the coffee table next to my tiny open perfume vial.
Where her hand moved, I saw a flicker of blue, falsely cheerful glitter. It had followed us here, too. I could see it shimmering around us, darting like fireflies.
David’s eyes met mine. Still flecks of copper swirling in his irises, but he’d never looked so human to me, so precious, so vulnerable.
“I can’t go,” he said. His voice was soft, sweet, forgiving.
This was my fault, all my fault, oh God…
He put his hand on my cheek. I turned blindly into the warmth, wanted to cry but no longer knew how.
“Be thou bound to my service.” Yvette’s voice was low, seductive, and charged with triumph.
“No matter what happens…” David whispered against my skin.
“Be thou bound to my service.”
“… I love you. Remember that.”
“Be thou bound to my service.”
He kissed me, one last time, our lips meeting and burning, our souls mingling through the touch, and then I felt him torn apart, ripped away.
I felt him die.
I turned and watched the mist stream across the room, coil into the bottle, and watched Yvette slam the cork down in place.
The sense of David’s presence vanished instantly. Gone.
I lunged at Yvette, forming steel-hard claws from the fingers of my right hand, and I was halfway to her throat when Kevin screamed, “Stop!”
I did. Instantly. Fighting with every twitching nerve, but losing against the overwhelming force of his command.
“You can’t hurt my mother.” He sounded spooked. “Or me.”
I felt the claws misting away from my hand. Yvette raised her chin and exposed that fragile, perfect throat to me, and I wanted more than anything to wipe that smug, was-it-good-for-you smirk off her face.
And I couldn’t. Son of a bitch!
She said, “Don’t be a fool. You won’t be the first Djinn that I’ve had to teach a lesson.”
I remembered David’s near-pathological hatred of her, and felt it burning hot as acid in my stomach, too. Oh, this wasn’t going to end well. Not if I had anything at all to say about it.
She turned to her son. Kevin was staring at me, mesmerized. He licked his lips nervously and said, “Did you really destroy that town?”
I didn’t feel compelled to answer—Rule of Three— so I just stared at him with my burning silver eyes. Had I? I hoped to hell not. But I wasn’t really sure.
My rescue came from an unexpected source. Yvette said, “David stopped her. But then, he had good enough reason. Seacasket has something in it he’d kill to protect.” She got up off the sofa and walked around to face me, insinuated sharp-nailed fingers through my hair and arranged it to her liking around my shoulders. “You’re very striking, did you know that? He must feel something incredible for you, to have done that. Believe me, David’s long ago learned the value of self-preservation. The fact that he’s so devoted to you is truly amazing.”