Oh, I had a pretty good idea, too. Or thought I did.
He proved me wrong.
I watched, sickened, as he reached out for her….. grabbed her by the hair, and slammed her face down on the carpet.
Still no change in him. Controlled, calm, utterly emotionless.
Oh God.
He rolled her over, and the flushed, breathless excitement on her face said it all. No wonder this place reeked of sickness. Yvette was one verysick lady.
I dropped the concealment. She spotted me instantly over David’s shoulder as I walked slowly forward, and the insane glee in her eyes was almost as nauseating as what she was about to force David to do. I remembered the dream, David’s desperate attempt to make Jonathan understand. It’s rape.
“I thought you were there,” she said. “Excellent. Maybe I’ll have you join us.”
“David,” I said calmly. “Would you like for me to do something about this?”
He couldn’t speak, of course. Couldn’t do anything. He was fixed on her, and I thought I read utter despair in those dark, alien eyes.
“What do you imagine you can do?” Yvette asked me, sugar sweet, looking ravishingly beautiful spread out on the floor. So very pretty. So very twisted. “Other than admire his technique.”
I crossed my arms and maintained my cool. “Well, I could do what your son suggested and kill you. What do you think?”
She froze, staring up at me, and her face was for a few seconds comically surprised. “You’re lying.”
“Well, yes, we Djinn do that. Believe me or not.”
I shrugged to show the depth of my not-caring. “Suit yourself.”
I looked at David, who was still frozen, waiting for her command. Leashed, but far from tame. She got up, still watching me, and put her hand on his shoulder to bring him up with her. Slid it in a proprietary way along the warm glory of his skin, up his neck, over a well-shaped ear, to dig her fingers luxuriously into his hair. No protest from him, and no flinch. I knew he had more latitude than that—didn’t he? — but he wasn’t refusing anything from her. Maybe she’d already given that command before I came on the scene. Or maybe he was drawing her in, making her careless.
I hoped.
“Did he used to be yours?” she asked me, and made the hand into a fist, jerking his head sideways toward her. Still no change of expression from him. I tried to listen, to see if he was sending me any whispers along the shared bond between us, but all I heard was silence. He’d gone deep, and far away from me. What was left might be something I didn’t know and couldn’t count on.
“I don’t own people,” I said. God, I sounded self-righteous. I decided that was okay, because I felt pretty self-righteous, too. “We freed the slaves in this country, or did you flunk history along with your sanity test?”
She turned and looked at David, pulled his head closer to hers and whispered something in his ear, then turned back to me, cheek pressed against his.
They both smiled. I felt a cold streak form along my spine, felt goosebumps rising under it, because those smiles were soulless, and dead, and dreaming of something awful. I remembered David smiling at me, the day I’d met him on the road after I’d spun the car out in a cloud of dust. I remembered the sharp, intelligent wit in those beautiful eyes. I remembered his skin, waking and shivering at my touch.
She couldn’t own any of that. What she did own was a shell. Skin. A ghost.
I kept telling myself that, but I couldn’t stop the sick, awful horror of this from threatening to choke me. Her hands were still moving on David. I wanted to rip them off at the wrists.
“My little Kevin finally grew some balls? You’re bluffing, sweetie pie. He couldn’t.”
I looked around the room. “He’s been in here, hasn’t he?” No answer. Yvette sat up. Her blouse had popped a couple of buttons, but the view didn’t impress me. “You and little Kevin, playing games. How heartwarming. And you think he wouldn’t want you dead? Honey, I just met you and I sowant you dead.”
“So you come here and warn me?” She was regaining her composure. “Not likely.”
“I’m not all that eager to be Kevin’s little love slave, either,” I said. Everything I was saying had the ring of truth, because, well, it was. “I’m here to offer you a deal.”
She blinked. Deals were made from positions of power. We both knew I didn’t have any. “Don’t be ridiculous. You were entertaining for a few seconds, but you’re getting boring. I hurt things that bore me.”
When I smiled, I borrowed a trick from Rahel. Shark teeth. The flinch was well worth the discomfort. “There’s something you want more than David,” I said. I was guessing, of course, but with someone like her there was always something else. Toys got old the instant she had them in her hands, and besides, she’d had David before. No thrill of corruption there. “I can give it to you.”
She actually froze for a few seconds, considering me, and I saw the hot light of greed flicker in those green eyes. “And what exactly would that be?”
I shrugged. “You know well enough.” Ah, the Djinn talent for misdirection. Still serving me well, thank God. “If you want to waste me on a fool like your stepson, that’s your right. But think how much more you could accomplish, if you had me.”
She didn’t know. To her mind, I was already assuming legendary powers and proportions… a human reborn as a Djinn. She couldn’t have any idea of how much of a handicap that was. In fact, she probably thought that was what I was offering her. Life as a Djinn.
Over my dead body. Spirit. Whatever.
“Not very loyal to him, are you?” she asked. “Why should I think you’d be any more loyal to me?”
I shrugged. “The kid’s weak. You know that.” So was she, in a totally different way. Weak and greedy and sick. “You want to use David as some kind of cheap toy, that’s your prerogative. I just thought you should expand your horizons a little. The world’s a little wider than your bedroom.”
“You think I’m not ambitious?”
I didn’t have to fake the cynical smile. People like her were always ambitious.
“You made a mistake,” I said. “You could have had Lewis on your side. Now you’ve made a bad enemy. You’re going to need help to stay alive once he gets back on his feet.”
“Lewis?” she asked blankly, and let go of David. She’d completely forgotten about him.
“Lewis Levander Orwell? Yeah. That guy. The one you were rubbing like a magic charm to get your hands on me. You traded down, honey. Having Lewis would have been quite a feather in your cap. Talk about advancement… Only now, of course, you’re just the bimbo who bashed his head in, not the one who brought him back to the Wardens.”
That shook her. She’d had victory in her hands and walked away, and that had to hurt.
“You’re a lying, treacherous bitch,” she said, low in her throat, and wrapped her hand around David’s bare arm. “You really think you’re going to make a dealwith me? I don’t deal with the likes of you. Ever. You serve me, or you suffer. Your choice.”
Kevin’s instructions to kill her were starting to look really, really tempting. Maybe if I just hurt her a lot… no, I’d seen the look on her face as David threw her down to the floor. She’d probably think it was foreplay.
“Serve me or suffer.”
“Already got a boss,” I said, and spread my hands. “Such as he is.”
She didn’t like being denied. “Take her,” she said, and released her hold on David.
He lunged for me, and God, he was strong. I yelped and tried to break free but his hands were crushing my arms, holding me still, shoving me back against that wall that, in Oversight, still dripped psychic blood. I wanted to mist away, but Kevin’s command earlier effectively prevented that. Trapped. Blue sparks zipped and swirled around me, thicker now, thick as a bag of glitter dropped from the ceiling. I blinked to clear my eyes. The things were swarming over David, too, clustering on his skin.