Before I could suggest any anatomically impossible sexual actions to him, a figure came walking out of the billowing chaos of the side fire escape door.
Lewis looked smoke-stained, but fine. I took a few steps toward him, winced at the bite of broken glass on my bare feet, and paused to brush them more or less clean and jam on my shoes. When my balance wavered, Lewis was there, a hand steadying my elbow even while his attention was fixed on Ashworth.
Overhead, the rain slacked off noticeably. Lewis again, setting balances. He wouldn’t just get rid of it, he’d let it wind itself down. I couldn’t feel the energy currents, but I imagined he was grounding it seamlessly through every available safe avenue. He was thorough that way.
“I couldn’t get to them in time,” he said. “Foster was already dead.”
“And the Djinn?” Ashworth asked.
Lewis shook his head. “I don’t know. At best, he was badly wounded. But I don’t think he’s joining Ashan.” Ashworth’s lips tightened and he turned away, cane tapping, to join a knot of umbrellas standing near the fire engine. The Ma’at had come in force, looked like. Not that they’d be a lot of help in a fight.
None of them were Wardens, per se, except Lewis; they had power, but it wasn’t on the level of someone like John Foster, or even me. Training, not talent.
Well, maybe today, they were on the level with little old whipped-puppy me.
Which didn’t make me feel any better.
“All right?” Lewis was asking me. I looked up to see his dark eyes focused on me.
“Peachy,” I assured him. There was a quaver in my voice. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Trying to stop the war,” he said, and took advantage of his hold on my elbow to steer me out of the way of some firefighters unrolling more hose. The building was still burning, but not nearly as briskly. I could sense a distant, low thrum of power—Lewis was keeping the blaze tamped down, making it manageable. He could have killed it, I was sure, but Lewis was a subscriber to the philosophy of Ma’at. Everything in balance. He would be working to put all of the power that had just been expended back into some kind of order.
“What? You’re going to stop the war singlehandedly?”
“Obviously not.” Lewis got me into a neutral territory, somewhere between the firefighters, the cops, and the Ma’at, and turned me to face him. “Jo, I need you to promise me that you’ll go back to your apartment, pack your bags, and get out of here. Today.”
“I can’t promise that.” Even though I’d been thinking about it, before my car had been blown up.
“I need you to do this for me.” His eyes searched my face. “I can’t be worrying about where you are, what’s happening to you.”
And that lit a fuse on my temper. “I didn’t ask you to be my babysitter, Lewis! I can take care of myself, I always have!”
“And if you weren’t drained so far that you barely register as a Warden on the aetheric, I’d accept that,” he shot back. “Did David do this to you?”
I met his eyes and didn’t answer. He shook his head, anger sparking in his eyes, and deliberately looked away.
“Fine,” he said. “But you can’t let him feed off you like this. He’ll kill both of you.”
“I know.”
“I’m serious. You need to let him go. You need to break the bottle.”
“I know! Jonathan already made it clear, believe me.” I didn’t mention Rahel’s counterargument. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know I hadn’t decided. “I’m fine, dammit. Don’t worry about me.”
He let go, reluctantly, and turned away to talk to the Ma’at, who were already signaling him impatiently for a confab.
That’s when I saw Jonathan standing at the fringes of the crowd, arms folded.
Jonathan himself, Master of the Djinn Universe, in the flesh. Commander in chief of one side of what might turn out to be a world-ending civil war.
He was disguised as a regular guy, dressed in black jeans and heavy boots and a brown leather jacket, ball cap pulled down low over his eyes. As with Ashan, the rain bent around him. I didn’t think anybody but me would notice; I doubted anybody but me could see him.
He was a hundred feet away, and there were dozens of people between us, but I felt the shock as his eyes locked onto me. I felt a burn inside, nothing comfortable, nothing like the connection I felt with David, or the purely heat-driven fizz between me and Lewis.
It was as if Jonathan owned me, the way I owned David. Was this how it felt for David? Invasive and sickening? As if his every breath depended on mine?
“I warned you,” Jonathan said, and the bill of that ball cap dipped just a fraction.
Time stopped. Raindrops froze into glittering silver threads around me.
I was in Jonathan’s world now.
He walked through the silent landscape, moving around statues of humans in his way, breaking rain into fragments against that invisible shield he carried with him.
“I can’t do what you want,” I said when he stopped just three steps away. My words sounded weirdly flat in the still, dead air. “If I let him go, he’ll come after you, and that’ll be the end, won’t it? The end of everything. You’re important. That’s what Rahel’s been trying to tell me from the first time I met you. You’re the key to everything. Without you—”
He cut me off by sticking an accusatory finger in my face. “I told you what would happen. I told you, Joanne. Is this a habit with you, courting death? Because it’s getting old. You’re carrying around a kid, you know. Could devote a little thought to that while you’re walking over the cliff and mooning about your undying love.”
“It’s not about me. It’s you. I can’t let David come after you, and he will if I break the bottle.”
“Dammit!” His flare of fury was scary. It evaporated rain in a pulsing circle for about fifty feet in every direction. I felt my skin take on an instant burn. “Are you always this stupid, or is it a special feature just for me? Break the damn bottle, Joanne!”
“No.”
“Not even to save yourself and the kid.”
“No.”
“Not even to save David.”
Because that’s what all this was about, I suddenly realized. Not the world, not the war, not me. David. His constant and pure devotion to David, who’d been his friend since the world was younger than I could even imagine.
Who’d died in his arms, as a human.
“Because I can save him,” Jonathan said. “I know how.”
“Yeah,” I said, and locked stares with him. “I know, too. You die, he lives. And where does that leave the rest of us?”
Galaxies in his eyes. A vast and endless power, but it wasn’t his own. He was a conduit. A window to something larger than any of us, Djinn or human.
“He takes my place,” Jonathan said. “He lives. You live. The baby lives. He’s strong enough to take Ashan. I’m too damn tired for this; I’ve been running the show for too long. I’ve made too many mistakes, and we need a fresh start.”
Oh, God. It wasn’t Ashan suddenly deciding to rebel on his own… Ashan had just picked up on something else: Jonathan’s weakness, if you could describe somebody like him as weak. He just didn’t want to go on anymore.
“No,” I said again. “You can’t do this. I’m sorry, but you’re just going to have to gut it out and stop Ashan and put everything back the way it was. I’m not helping you commit suicide by David.”
He looked at me for a long time, in that still silent place where time didn’t exist. And I felt something like a shiver run through the world.
He raised his head toward the sky for a second, listening, and then shook his head again.
“That your final answer?” he asked.
Something about his expression almost made me change my mind, but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t let his need and his despair drive the game. This was too important.
“That’s it,” I said. “I’m not letting David go.”
“You’ll kill him. And he’ll destroy you.”
“So be it. Now go do your job and get things done. The world’s more important than me and David, and dammit, it’s more important than your death wish!”