“I wasn’t talking to her, and anyway, I don’t give a shit whose fault it was, you’re both fired! Look, I can get pretty girls twelve to a dollar out there on a beach; I don’t need you two with your prima donna attitudes…”
“Hold up,” said the director, who was watching a portable TV in the shadow of a minivan with the channel logo painted on the side. “Come here, Jo.”
I came. Cherise came with.
The director—Rob—pointed at the screen as he took a bite of his cheese sandwich.
“Is that you?” He looked up at me as his finger touched a tiny, foreshortened figure on the screen.
“Yeah, that’s her,” Cherise jumped in when I stayed quiet. On the screen, the Djinn didn’t show up—just us humans. The Warden on the railing fought for his life, flailing against the air. “God, Rob, she tried to save that guy. She really did.”
He turned his attention back to the footage. I closed my eyes when I saw the Warden’s feet slip off the railing for the fatal plunge, but not before I saw myself lunge forward. Didn’t seem like I’d reacted all that quickly, but there it was, in grainy news footage. It looked as if I’d been trying to grab his hands or something.
“Jesus,” Rob said quietly. “Joanne, I’m sorry. This is terrible.” He thought about it for a few seconds, then raised his voice. “Yo! Doug! Change of plans! Let’s get back to the station right now. Get on the phone to—what channel is this?—Channel Four—and get whatever raw footage they have. Feature story. Get Joanne and Cherise on camera with—who’s up?—yeah, Flint, and do the standup with them on the bridge, if you can. If not, studio. We need to get this now.”
Marvin had followed us. He ripped the makeup napkin theatrically out of his collar. “What are you talking about?” he thundered.
Rob glanced up at him, then back down at the screen. “Sorry, Marvin. I’m scrubbing the promo.”
“You can’t do that!”
Rob tapped his baseball cap. It was dark blue, and it said in big, white, embroidered letters, NEWS DIRECTOR. “I believe I can, actually.”
Marvin turned and stalked away, tossing the balled-up napkin at his intern, who fumbled it and had to chase it under a freshly polished Toyota.
“You want me to get into the Sunny Suit for the interview?” I asked bitterly.
Rob looked up and met my eyes. His were gray, sharply intelligent, and utterly calculating.
“From now on, you don’t wear the Sunny Suit. Somebody else does,” he said. “Maybe Marvin.”
In spite of everything—even the crushing uncertainty and grief of not knowing where David was, what was happening to him, the guilt and shock and horror—that made me smile.
Cherise cocked an eyebrow. “What about me?” she asked. Rob gave her a more guarded look. “I’m not fired, right? So, are you going to need me today?”
“Just for the interview, Cherise. But you’ll get the full appearance fee for the promo.”
She nodded soberly, took a long look at me, and reached behind Rob and took his navy blue windbreaker off the back of his chair to drape it around my shoulders.
I was shivering. Delayed shock. Outright fear.
I needed to get home.
The interview took hours.
By the time I staggered in, it was late afternoon, and I was absolutely exhausted. No sign of Sarah, which was lucky; the last thing I wanted to do was put up with my sister’s cheery enthusiasm about her new beau right now.
I shed purse and shoes and stripped off clothes as soon as I’d slammed the bedroom door shut, threw on my warmest and most comfortable bathrobe, and curled up on my bed, pillow in my lap.
I opened the bedside drawer and took David’s bottle from its case. It gleamed blue and solid and cold to the touch, but it was just a bottle, no sense of him in it or around it. I didn’t know if he was in there. Didn’t know if he was suffering. Didn’t know if he even remembered who I was.
I took hold of it and thought about how easy it would be, really. A quick, hard swing at the wooden nightstand.
I’d promised Jonathan that I’d set David free, but if I did that, it was like giving up hope. Giving up everything. I didn’t think Jonathan could save him, and while I might not be able to either, at least David wouldn’t get any worse inside the bottle. If I did set him free, he might complete the transformation to Ifrit. He’d almost certainly start preying on the most powerful source around—and that meant Jonathan.
But most importantly, I might lose him for good this time.
Jonathan’s artificial life support was still going strong. I had time left.
I couldn’t do it. Not yet.
I curled up with his bottle held close and cried until I fell into an exhausted gray twilight sleep.
Dreaming.
The mountaintop was familiar. I’d been here before… a small, flat space of empty rock, surrounded by the sky. Far below, canyons cut deep into the earth.
Dry, for the moment, but I knew how fast they could fill and flood. Water was the most treacherous of the elements.
I was sitting cross-legged, warmed by the sun, wearing something white and sheer that barely qualified as fabric, much less cover… ceremonial more than functional.
There was no sound in my dream but the dull whispering rush of the wind. The breathing of the world.
I felt a warm hand touch my hair and fingers sink deep into the soft mass. Where they touched, curls straightened and fell into silk-smooth order.
“Don’t turn around,” David’s voice whispered in my ear. I shivered and felt him hot against my back, hard muscle and soft flesh. As real and honest and desirable as anything I’d ever known. “You have to be careful now, Jo. I can’t protect you—”
“Just stay with me,” I said. “You can do that, can’t you? Just stay.”
His hands moved down to my shoulders and bunched gauze-thin fabric, then slid it free to drift away from my skin. “If I do that, you’ll die.”
“I’ll find a way.”
His kiss burned hot on the side of my neck. “I know you’ll try. But you have to promise me that when the time comes, you’ll make the right choice. You’ll let go.”
I had a nightmarishly slow vision of David’s hands opening, of the Warden sliding loose and falling to his death. Only this time it was me falling, screaming, reaching out.
I was toppling over the edge of the mountain, toward the currents below.
David grabbed me around the waist and held on.
“Don’t let me hurt you,” he whispered, and his voice was shaking with strain, vulnerable with need. “Stop me. Please, Jo, you have to stop me, I can’t do it myself…”
I looked down to where his arms were around me, his hands touching me.
Black, twisted Ifrit hands. Angles and claws and hunger.
“Please,” he whispered against my skin, and he sounded so desperate, so lost.
“Please, Jo. Let me go.”
“I can’t,” I said numbly.
“Let me go or let me have what I need! I can’t—I can’t—” He exploded into a black, oily mist, howling, and was gone.
I collapsed forward, the white gauze drifting over me in the relentless, murmuring wind, and screamed out loud, until I woke up.
My sister was home. I could hear her moving around out there in the living room, humming something bright and happy. Probably something classical; Sarah always had been more cultured than I was, from the early days when she’d looked forward to piano lessons and I’d cut them to go chase baseballs out on the corner lot. I didn’t hear Eamon’s voice. I realized I was still holding David’s bottle in a death grip, in both hands, and put it back in the padded case in the nightstand.
You promised, a little voice whispered in the back of my mind.
I had. But I wasn’t ready.
I closed the nightstand drawer, shuffled into the bathroom, and winced at the glare of the bright, unflattering Hollywood lighting. I looked like crap… swollen eyes and bedhead. I struggled through combing the tangles out, got my hair more or less straight, and decided to leave the eyes as is, except for a quick application of Visine. I tossed on a crop top and tight low-rise jeans (artfully, though not intentionally, bleached in a random pattern, thanks to an accident with the Clorox Fairy) and walked out barefooted into the rest of my world.