Well, it’s all about you, isn’t it?
No, it wasn’t, but I had a stake in it. And I couldn’t shake that off.
Jonathan had taken my Djinn-child. I’d thought that was just because he was a cruel bastard, but thinking back on it, maybe he’d just been trying to preserve something of David. Even something of me. He’d known that if I refused to give up David’s bottle, I’d die, and David would be lost to him.
Please, let her be with him. Existing, somehow. Not just…
Not just gone.
In the shelter of the minivan, where nobody could see it happen, I fell apart.
All the fury, all the fear, all the pain came out in sudden, wrenching sobs, in pounding on the steering wheel, in outright screams of rage. This wasn’t right, and it shouldn’t be this way—I hadn’t come this far just to see the world die around me. Or to let David slip into darkness.
Or to lose a child I barely knew.
There’s an answer, I told myself, hands pressing hard enough against my eyes to create white sparks, tears slicking my cheeks in cold sheets. There’s a goddamn answer to this, there has to be.
Lightning shivered overhead, raw and uncontrolled. It hit a transformer across the city and blew it into a blue-white shower of sparks. Several square blocks of lights went out, and overhead, the clouds swirled in from the ocean, carrying the smell of rain and the promise of worse.
I had to get home.
By the time I trudged up the steps to my apartment I was exhausted, stinky, smoke-stained, and dispirited. Now that I was full of borrowed power again, I could sense the incredible roiling of the aetheric, mirrored by the wild fury of the sky overhead. The rain was the least of what was coming. I wondered what Marvelous Marvin would be making of it. Probably churning out revised predictions and ordering Ella to make it happen—not that Ella could, at this stage. Things were far too chaotic for any one Warden to try to influence them.
With John Foster dead, and Ella’s loyalties questionable at best, it left this part of Florida lightly protected. The same was probably true up and down the Eastern seaboard. The Wardens were falling apart, and the Djinn didn’t care about the consequences. And the regular people, the ones the Wardens were sworn to protect? No clue what was coming.
At least I could protect Sarah. That was something, anyway.
I dug my key out of my purse, unlocked the front door, and walked into…
… a stranger’s apartment.
For a brief, surreal moment, I thought I really had walked into the wrong apartment, proving that urban legend that apartment keys work on every lock in the building… but then I recognized little, familiar things. The ding on the wall next to the TV—which was now plasma flat-screen, and the size of a small theater. The pictures on the coffee table of Mom, Sarah, an ancient one of our grandparents—although they were encased in new silver frames, all matching.
One of the rugs on the floor looked familiar. It even had a coffee stain on it from when I’d tripped one morning, half-asleep.
Apart from those touchstones, it was a whole new place.
I stood frozen in shock, eyes wide, and Sarah came bustling breathlessly around the corner, wiping her hands on a towel.
“There you are!” she cried, and threw her arms around me. Then immediately withdrew. “Ugh! You smell awful; where have you been?”
“In a fire,” I said absently. “What the hell… ?”
In typical Sarah fashion, she skipped right over that, whirled away and did an honest-to-God Mary Tyler Moore pirouette in the middle of the living room. “You like it? Tell me you like it!”
I stared at her, trying to work out what she was talking about. None of this was making sense. “Um—”
She beamed. “I had to do something to make up for the burden I’ve been on you. Honestly, you’ve been such a saint these past few days, and I’ve done nothing but mooch off of you.” She looked so bright and shiny, so thrilled. “Chrêtien finally came through with an alimony check; it showed up this morning—of course, the stupid bank won’t cash it, they have to hold it until it clears, but Eamon let me have the cash in the meantime. So I decided to give you a makeover!”
Makeover? I blinked. Not that I was unwilling to go be pampered somewhere, but in the middle of an approaching apocalypse probably wasn’t the best possible time…
Oh. She was talking about the furniture.
“Isn’t it gorgeous? Look, there’s a new sofa, and chairs, and the TV of course, Eamon helped pick that one out—” She grabbed my hand and pulled me through to the bedrooms. Threw open her door. “I got rid of that terrible French Provincial and went for a nice maple… You know, I’ve been watching those home improvement shows on BBC America, they have all the best ideas, don’t you think?
It’s just so much fun. Look, see how the maroon pillows complement the sponging on the wall…”
It was all dissolving into nonsense word balloons. Obviously, Sarah had gotten in money, and obviously, she’d been shopping. Her bedroom looked like a showroom in a furniture store, with gleaming, highly polished wood and a lace bedspread over some kind of silky throw. Every detail excruciatingly precise. She must have spent hours with a Feng Shui manual.
“Nice,” I said numbly. “Right, it’s great. Look, I just need to take a shower and lie down for a while…”
“Wait! I’m not done!”
She towed me next door.
My room was… gone. Gutted. There was a new bed, sleek black lacquer and inlaid mother-of-pearl on the headboard in geometric designs. The dumpy dresser was MIA, replaced by something that looked like a giant Chinese apothecary cabinet in the same black lacquer with brass accents. My knickknacks—not that there had been many—were gone, replaced by red temple dogs and jade goddesses.
Very elegant and expensive-looking.
I took it in slowly. My brain had handled too many shocks today. I wasn’t prepared for being the victim on the guerilla warfare version of Trading Spaces. I’d just been nearly killed twice, for God’s sake. I wasn’t ready for redecorating.
“Well?” Sarah asked anxiously. “I know the walls still look plain, but I thought later this week we could go to one of those home stores and get something to sponge-paint with in here—maybe metallic gold, what do you think? And some throw pillows. I didn’t get enough throw pillows.”
My eyes wandered to the bedside table.
It was gone.
Gone.
In its place was a black lacquer stand with one delicate-looking drawer instead of the two large ones I’d had before.
My paralysis broke. I yanked free of Sarah’s hold and lunged for the nightstand, pulled open the drawer and found the familiar collection of junk that tended to congregate in such places. Books. Magazines. A zippered cosmetic case I sincerely hoped she hadn’t opened.
A few things were missing. Some half-empty tubes of hand lotion, for instance.
Some out-of-date sale catalogs.
The case containing David’s bottle.
I turned and looked at her, and whatever was in my expression caused her to fall back a step.
“Where’s the padded case?” I asked.
“What?” She took another step back. I followed, well aware I must have looked dangerous and not caring at all.
“Sarah, I’m not going to ask you again. Where’s the padded case with the damn bottle in it?”I screamed it, lunged at her and shoved her back against the apothecary cabinet. Temple dogs and goddesses rattled nervously behind her.
Sarah’s eyes went wide with panic.