Thin Air

THIRTEEN

“Guys,” I said, and held out my hands, palms open and out, showing that I had nothing up my tattered, smoking sleeves. “There’s no need for this. I was coming to you, okay? I wasn’t running. I’m not going to run. And by the way, you owe me for a really nice car.”

I was standing up to them because, hey, not like I had a choice, anyway. There were four Wardens and one Djinn, and any one of them could have probably taken me down without breaking a nail, even if I hadn’t been knocked half-silly by the crash and the lightning bolt.

“Down on your knees,” Lewis said. “Do it. If I have to ask again, we’ll kill you and get it over with.”

Lewis had a gun in his hand. Not one to neglect the merely mortal advantages, apparently, and that just gave them another way to bring me down if all the mystical mojo failed to work. If Venna was biding her time, she was biding a little too long. I had to choose.

I held up my hands in an attitude of surrender and, wincing, got down on my knees. I laced my hands behind my head.

Lewis exchanged a glance with David. Clearly they were the two alphas in the pack; the other Wardens were along for the ride. Although it wouldn’t do me any favors to assume they weren’t capable in their own right, especially since they’d taken up positions surrounding me. “Facedown,” Lewis said. “Hands behind your back.”

“Dammit, road oil is never coming out of these pants,” I said. “Lewis, it’s me. Joanne. What the hell are you doing?”

“Correcting a mistake,” he said. “Down or die. Your choice.”

Well, when he put it that way…I pitched forward to my hands and knees, lowered myself to the gritty, oily road, and put my hands behind my back.

Somebody-not Lewis and not David-was on me instantly, digging a sharp knee into the small of my back and ignoring my yelp of protest. Plastic zip-ties slipped around my wrists and hissed tight.

“You didn’t make a mistake,” I said. I couldn’t see Lewis or David. I couldn’t see anybody, since my hair had fallen across my eyes. I was blind and helpless, and I could feel something closing in around me on the aetheric, something like a smothering coating of plastic, sealing me off from access to the powers that I was about to be driven to use. “No! Wait, listen to me! You didn’t make a mistake, Lewis; it’s me! She’s lying to you; don’t you understand? She’s…”

The wind blew my hair away from my eyes, and I saw her. The other me. She’d left the SUV, and she was standing next to David like she belonged there.

It was a good thing I’d had a lot of recent experience seeing myself from the outside, because it allowed me to get over the shock fast. Yeah, that was me, down to the last well-dressed detail. David, or someone who’d cared, had gotten her a nice flare-legged pantsuit with a fitted jacket, something that hugged her body and made her look tall, lean, elegant, and businesslike. In short, she looked like she belonged. Like she was more than capable of handling whatever needed to be handled.

Me, I was a cheap fax copy, grubby and soiled with road dirt and smoke. And I’d lost a shoe.

“I can’t believe you got her,” she said. “She must be planning something. She shouldn’t be this easy to catch.”

David took her hand. The Demon exchanged a look with him and smiled. It was my smile, dammit. And my love in her eyes. She’d taken it. She was using me just as much as she was using him.

“We got lucky,” David said. “We’re even luckier that Venna decided to cut her losses. Although why she’d be helping a Demon…”

“She wasn’t!” I yelled. They ignored me.

“I want you out of here,” David said to the other me. “I’m not taking any chances. Not again.” I hated the way he leaned into her space, the way his lips brushed the shining curtain of her hair. The way his hands curled around hers, so gently and protectively. “Take the truck back to the lodge and wait there.”

“David, she’s a liar!” I said. “So, Fake Joanne, what’s next? You can’t control David, can you? He’s too powerful. So maybe you find a way to hurt him so badly one of the other Djinn has to take over, one you can subvert. Got to be a weak one in the bunch, right?”

She watched me with steady, familiar eyes. She looked completely real. Completely me. “I’d never hurt David. The fact you think I would just proves who you are.”

“You’d never hurt David unless you know you could get away with it.” I panted. “Look, what do you really want? My life? Well, you can’t have it, so just hand over the clothes and stop using my face and move on.” Toward the end I sounded-and felt-savage. Like I could rip her head off with my bare hands for what she was doing to me. All I wanted to do was live, and she’d taken that away.

She stared at me for a few more seconds, and there was something like pity in her face. There but for the grace of God… I knew what she was thinking. It made my stomach hurt with the intensity of my fury. “Say something,” I said.

“Why?” she asked. “What’s to say? You tried to steal my life away, and you’ve failed. Game over.”

I turned to David, willing him to believe me. “David, if you kill me, she wins. The Demon wins.”

She laughed. “Nice. I was waiting when she’d pull the old ‘You’re the bad twin’ on us. Come on. Who do you think’s going to believe you this time? I’ve got my memories back. You’re nothing but a cheap copy.”

That was an echo of what I’d been thinking. I blinked, startled. Either she could read my thoughts-icky, but possible-or her mind simply worked the same way. If she’d taken on my memories, my experiences that completely, if she could fool David and Lewis, then maybe she really had become me, as much as a Demon could.

That made my job a hell of a lot harder, because she wasn’t faking. As Venna had warned, she really was me, in all the ways that would count.

I looked desperately at Lewis, at David. “Guys. What if you’ve got the evil twin standing right there? What if I’m the one she stole everything away from? Kill me, and you’ll never be able to fix that; it’ll be too late-”

Evil Twin snorted, exchanged a wry look with David, and walked away, arms folded. Heading calmly back for the SUV.

“Wait!” I yelled. “David, you know me! You have to know that’s not me!”

That earned me nothing. Evil Twin opened the passenger-side door of the truck and climbed in, then slammed the door. Lewis and David exchanged another one of those unreadable looks. God, I’d never realized how scary it was from this end, faced with these extremely competent people. How desperate it was to be on the losing side.

She’s going to pull it off. She’s going to have David, live my life, and be happy until she pulls off whatever evil plan she’s concocted, and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.

I hated losing.

Wind whipped across me, blinding me with grit and a mouthful of black smoke from the still-smoldering wreck of my car. “Then just get it over with,” I choked. “If you’ve got the guts, just do it.”

The SUV’s engine started up, and it drove away, slowly winding around the trees. Taking my future with it.

“We’re not going to kill you,” Lewis said with an eerie amount of calm. “We couldn’t, could we? If you’re a Demon, you’d just assume another form. The only way to destroy a Demon without sacrificing a Djinn is with another Demon.”

“Guess you don’t have one of those handy,” I said, and closed my eyes in exhausted relief.

When I opened them, David, expressionless, was taking a sealed bottle out of his coat. There was red wax around the stopper, and an ancient-looking seal dangling from a complicated knot of ribbons.

The knee in my back dug in harder when I tried to raise up, driving me flat and helpless. I struggled to reach for power, but whatever they’d done to me up on the aetheric was holding fast. I couldn’t move the weather, or fire, and when I tried to grab for the slow throb of energy in the earth, something slapped me back with stunning force.

Lewis. I’d recognized the handprint of the slap.

“No,” I said quietly. “You can’t. David, you can’t. I’m not a Demon! David, no!”

He walked toward me, put a hand in between my shoulder blades, and nodded to Lewis to let go. The relief of the pressure coming off my back didn’t last, because David’s hand might not have been as heavy, but it was just as effective in restraining me.

“This bottle contains a Djinn,” he said. “A Djinn infected with a Demon. Under normal circumstances the Demon wouldn’t migrate back to a human, but you’re different. Demons will destroy each other by preference. If there’s any good news, it’s that by destroying you, we’re going to save a Djinn’s life.”

“David, no! I’m not a Demon!”

It was no good. He was going to do it. I could see it in his eyes, in the fierce, focused determination on his face. “Please,” I said. I dropped all my defenses, and let him see me as vulnerable as I really was. “Please don’t do this to us.”

His lips thinned, and he flinched a little. “I wish you didn’t look so much like her.”

“I am her, and if you open that bottle you’re going to find that out, because the Demon won’t migrate, and then you’ll have a much bigger problem! David!” He wasn’t listening to me. I heard the crackle of the wax seal breaking. “David, God, stop it! Our daughter isn’t dead!”

It seemed like, for one second, time stopped. Even the wind ceased to blow. Then it all snapped back with a vengeance, as David snarled and grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked it painfully back, staring into my face with terrifying fury.

“You,” he said, “don’t talk about my daughter. Ever.”

It hurt to talk, but I had no choice. “David, if you open that bottle, you’re making a huge mistake. Imara’s alive. She’s become the Earth Oracle. Go check if you don’t believe me.” I tried to swallow, but the painful angle at which he was holding my head made it almost impossible. “Go on. I’m not going anywhere.”

He was about one second from killing me. Or popping the cork on that sealed bottle. I didn’t know what that would do, but it wouldn’t be good.

I got support from an entirely unexpected quarter: Lewis. He said quietly, “It couldn’t hurt to check.”

“Stay out of it,” David hissed at him.

“What if we’re wrong? Look, I’m the first one to want to believe in miracles, but Joanne’s memories came back too fast; we both said so. What if…” Lewis looked at me, then at David. “What if this one’s telling the truth? If you’re wrong and you open that bottle, we can’t make that right without a lot of death and destruction.”

“She’s lying!” David’s grip on my hair tightened. I squeaked faintly, sure my neck was on the verge of separating from my shoulders. That would be a real mess.

“Then go and check.” Lewis sounded awfully calm. Almost offhand about it. “She’s not going anywhere. It’s a short trip for you to Sedona and back.”

The pressure on my head relaxed so suddenly it was all I could do to keep my face from bouncing off the road. The push of his hand on my back went away at the same time. I struggled up to my knees, trying to put my shoulders at some angle that didn’t hurt like hell, trying to ignore the cutting ache of the zip-ties on my wrists, and looked around. The other Wardens were standing silently around. Nobody was shifting attention, including Lewis.

David vanished with an audible pop of air.

I let my head drop. Sweat ran down my cheeks, funneled to the point of my chin, and pattered on the stained fabric of my blue jeans.

I had no idea what he was going to find, or believe. But at least I had five minutes.

“If you try anything-” Lewis began.

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll kill me,” I finished in a tired mumble. “Save your breath.” What if Imara didn’t appear to David? I hadn’t even considered that maybe he wouldn’t be able to see her, or that she might not want to see him. It had seemed like my only shot, and now that I thought about it, it was thinner than a Hollywood starlet on diuretics. “I am so kicking your ass later, Lewis.”

He smiled. Cynically. “Always possible,” he said. “Shut up before I seal your mouth.”

He could do it, too. I shut up and concentrated on breathing, and wondering where the hell my Djinn cavalry had ridden off to. Venna had just left me. Cut her losses and skipped. I didn’t know if Ashan was dead in the wreck, or if she’d taken him with her; either way, nobody was stepping up for me when I needed it.

My fingers were tingling. I tried adjusting my wrists, and to my shock I found that the zip-ties were softening. Stretching like rubber bands. I stopped moving after the first second, holding my breath and praying that Lewis-or the other Wardens-hadn’t noticed. It didn’t look like they had. “How’s Marion?” I asked. “I didn’t hurt her, did I?”

“Marion’s fine.” Lewis’s tone said the subject was not only closed but locked. “Last warning. Shut up.”

I’d blurted out the question only to keep him from noticing that I was working my hands free, but the Warden behind me, some young brown-haired surfer dude, yelled a warning. “She’s getting loose!”

Narc.

I abandoned any pretense of trying to keep it low-key, snapped the zip-ties, pushed myself up from the road, and ran for the nearest fallen tree. I dove behind it just as a firebolt zipped toward me, and the wood exploded into splinters and flame. I didn’t stop. I crawled, frantic to find some way, any way, to defend myself, but it was a useless effort. Lewis was blocking me on the aetheric. The other Wardens weren’t as powerful, but they were competent enough, and when I rolled for the shelter of another pile of brush it went up in flame, driving me back. A gust of wind hit me full in the chest and knocked me back, staggering, and I tripped over a sudden profusion of wildly growing tree roots erupting out of the ground to wrap around my feet.

It was over that fast.

The Earth Warden-the young girl of Chinese ancestry, I guessed, who was standing nearest to me-fastened me down with more whipping roots, saw-edged grasses, vines…anything that would hold. I wrestled futilely, then relaxed as a vine wrapped three times around my throat and squeezed.

“Right,” I choked out, and shut my eyes. “I’ll wait here, then.”

The minutes ticked by, each one both torturously slow and unbelievably fast. I could almost see the sand running out in the hourglass-or, more appropriately, the blood dripping out of my veins.

I wondered whether I was going to end up dead at David’s hands, or some crazed, Demon-infected Djinn’s. Either way, my prospects looked none too shiny.

I sensed the disturbance of air that accompanied David’s arrival, and opened my eyes as he formed, already striding out of the air. He was wearing his coat again, the long olive-drab military coat, and under it his shirt was black, as were his pants. He looked ready for battle, and the look on his face was fierce and focused.

Shit. I’d thrown my last set of dice, and I’d lost.

“Well?” Lewis asked. David didn’t pause, and he didn’t answer. He kept walking, past Lewis, right to me.

Then he ripped the roots out of the ground that held me down, unwrapped the vine from around my neck, and collapsed to a kneeling position to gather me in his arms and rock me slowly back and forth. His hands stroked my back, up and down, then moved up to cup the back of my head. I felt a burst of heat move through me, sealing cuts, healing strained and herniated muscles, infusing me with a warm glow of safety.

He felt so incredibly warm, real, and solid against me.

“Oh,” I said faintly, and met his eyes. “You found her, right?”

He didn’t speak at all. He traced his thumbs down the line of my chin, and there was a light in him that made me kindle in response. I kissed him, breathless with relief, and he responded so ardently I felt faintly embarrassed to be doing this in public view. The kiss was a promise, intimate and gentle, of a lot more to come. When I pulled back his hands continued to move over me, restless and frantic, silently assuring me that he knew. He knew.

The Wardens were all looking at Lewis. Lewis, in turn, was staring at the two of us with a stone-hard expression and dark, impenetrable eyes.

And then he smiled, and there was a trace of bitterness in it, but just a trace. The rest was pure satisfaction. “Well, that was close,” Lewis said, and jerked his head at the other Wardens. “Glad to be right. Back off. Give them some air.”

The Wardens clustered together, murmuring in low voices. Lewis didn’t join them. He took a cell phone out of his pocket and dialed, said a few words, and sat down on a log to wait.

I focused back on David. “You really thought that bitch was me?” He flinched. “Oh, come on. You didn’t.”

His hands stroked through my hair, combing out tangles and curls. It fell in a shining black silk curtain over my shoulders and his hands. “I love your hair,” he whispered. “Did I ever tell you that?”

“Can’t remember,” I said, and smiled just a little. “Sorry. Nothing personal. The other one’s got my memories. I’m still brain-damaged.”

He sighed and rested his forehead against mine, a gesture of trust more intimate than a kiss. “The morning after we got you to the clinic, you-went crazy. Tried to kill the staff and escape,” he said. “We found you and restrained you, and when you woke up, you…remembered. You were all right again.” Shadows flickered in his eyes. “Except you weren’t. And it wasn’t you. It was her.” He swallowed hard. “But she remembered, Jo. She remembered Imara. She knew your past, she knew me-I had no reason to doubt it. She felt…”

“Real,” I supplied soberly. “I know. It’s not your fault. She knew what you wanted, what you needed, and she played right to it. I can’t blame you. I wouldn’t have believed me, either. She set me up good. Pretty stiff competition.”

“She’s not competition,” he said, and kissed me, fast and hard. “She’s been voted off the island.”

I didn’t know why that was funny, but it was, and I felt giggles bubbling up inside me, hot and giddy. “Speaking of islands, I’d really like to be on one. A deserted one, with sandy beaches and warm breezes and-”

“And clothing optional?” he murmured. “I’d like that, too.”

“Well? Get to it, Magic Man.” I wasn’t serious, and he wasn’t taking me seriously. Man, being responsible was a huge pain in the ass. “David-I still don’t remember. What memories I have, they’re borrowed, they’re not mine. But my feelings…those are mine. And they’re real.”

His hands went still, waiting.

“I have these feelings for you that I really can’t-God. David, look, if you want to go find Joanne Number Two, go ahead. She’s a ready-made girlfriend, I’m kind of a DIY project, at best.”

He gave me a slow, wicked smile. “But I like working with my hands.”

I fought the urge to melt against him. “What are we going to do about her?”

His eyes, which had faded to a warm human brown, flared back to bronze. “She tried to convince me to kill you,” he said. “I don’t know what she’ll do next.”

“Well, Venna had a plan-”

“Venna. I thought she’d been deceived.” David smiled crookedly, well aware how ironic that was now. “She was protecting you. From me.”

“I’m not so shortsighted,” Venna said, out of nowhere. I jumped. Five feet away, the air shimmered, shifted, and revealed Venna’s tiny, tidy figure-spotless, composed, back in her Alice-themed dress and pinafore. She smiled slightly. Nothing innocent about it.

At her feet lay Ashan, unconscious.

“I wasn’t just protecting her,” Venna continued, as if she’d been part of the conversation all along. “What Ashan did caused an imbalance, and the Demon took advantage. We have to right the balance-you know that. Joanne is a means to an end.”

David’s eyes were fixed on Ashan. “What about him?”

“All locks have keys.”

“You can make duplicate keys,” David said, “when you break one.”

To his credit, David didn’t rip Ashan in half on sight. I suspected that was because of what he’d found in Sedona, and because-maybe-of what Imara had conveyed to him. He hadn’t said a word about it, but there was a deep-seated peace in him that hadn’t been there before. Apparently he was willing to let bygones be…

Well, maybe not. After staying still for several long seconds, David flashed across the intervening space, grabbed Ashan by the back of the neck, and dangled him off the ground like a toy. His lips were drawn back from his teeth, and those teeth were pointed. I remembered Rahel giving me the shark grin when we’d met after the helicopter ride; that was nothing compared to the savage expression on David’s face at that moment. Even predators can be pets, Venna had said, but David was more like a T. rex, and I wasn’t so sure he’d ever been tamed.

“If you kill him,” Venna said, tense, “the Demon wins, and this Joanne dies. Is this what you want, David?”

I was afraid he hadn’t heard her for a second, but then he threw Ashan down-hard-and crouched to converse eye-to-eye with Venna. “What game are you playing, Venna?”

“The same as you,” she said. “I found her here. I kept her alive. I found Ashan.”

“You kept Ashan from me. Didn’t you?”

“Well, yes, I expected you’d try to destroy him,” she said. “Confess. Aren’t you glad I did? Really?”

“You didn’t do it to help me or Joanne. You did it for your own reasons.”

She shrugged.

David looked grim, and almost angry. “Venna, if you’re thinking about standing against me, don’t. I don’t want a fight. Back off.”

“I can’t,” she said. “It’s not my choice, David; it’s just practical. You may be in charge now, but you won’t be for long, because the old ones aren’t listening to you, and they won’t ever listen. You may be the conduit, but you’re not Jonathan. They won’t obey you. Somebody needs to be able to control them, and it can’t be one of the New Djinn this time.” She looked down at Ashan. “He might have been wrong, but he was right in one way: The fight’s coming, whether he ends up in charge or not. You can’t stay where you are, David. I’m just trying to give you a chance to consider your options and control how it occurs.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about, but it sounded ominous. Worse, it sounded ominous for David. Personally.

“You didn’t save Ashan for me or for Joanne,” David said. “I’m not stupid enough to think you like either of us that much. You protected Ashan because he’s a symbol of the Old Ones. You’re trying to restore him to what he was.”

She didn’t even try to deny it. “Yes,” she said. “He deserved punishment, and he was punished. But he doesn’t deserve destruction.” She met his eyes. “He’s my brother, David. He’s your brother, too, in a lesser way. But I wouldn’t expect a human-born to understand what that means to one of us.”

David’s face tightened. “She wasn’t your daughter, Venna. Joanne isn’t your lover.”

“More loss doesn’t balance the scales. It’s enough, David. Enough.”

He let out a slow, unsteady breath. “You want me to help restore his powers? And trust him?”

Venna said, quite simply, “Yes.”

“Excuse me,” I said, and stepped forward. “Could you speak in the kind of English that makes sense? Because it sure as hell sounds like you’re planning to give Ashan back his powers, and just from what I know about him, I am not voting yes.”

Venna looked at me like I was a bug on her bathroom floor. “I thought you wanted to live.”

“Venna.” David was making a real effort to keep his tone even and calm. “It’s impossible.”

Venna’s stare was predator-steady. “Oh, it’s possible,” she said. “It comes down to what you really want, David. And you don’t know, do you? You want everything. You want to be Djinn and carry on Jonathan’s work. You want to be human and live a human life. You want your lover; you want your daughter; you’re nothing but wants, as infantile as any human. But you can’t have these things. Not all of them. You’re going to have to choose.”

“Shut up,” he said, and took a step toward her. Venna, small as she was, fragile as she seemed, suddenly looked much more dangerous.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she said. “I’m not your toy. And you’re not Jonathan.” She reached down, grabbed Ashan by the collar of his shirt, and dragged him up to a sitting position. He remained limp as a puppet. “When you decide to be sensible, let us know. Until then, he remains with me.”

“Venna, wait-”

She disappeared with a faint shimmer and a pop.

Lewis walked over, hands in the pockets of his jeans, casual and laconic as ever. “That went well,” he said to David. David just glared at him. “Right. Well. I tried intercepting our impostor’s SUV. It was empty. We have no idea where she’s going.”

I cleared my throat. “Actually,” I said, “I think I might be able to find that one out.”

It wasn’t flattering that they both looked so damn surprised about it.

“Hang on,” Paul Giancarlo said. “What do you mean, this is the real Joanne?” He gave me a look that rivaled Venna’s for its ability to reduce me to the status of a small crawling thing. “No offense, but I think you’ve both been smoking something. Joanne left here in the SUV with you guys, and you come back with this and tell me she’s the real deal? Are you fucking crazy?”

We were in the lodge, which was a nice, woodsy sort of place, privately owned by the Wardens, halfway up the slope of a decent-sized foothill to a more-than-decent-sized mountain. Blanketed by a light covering of snow, surrounded by the fresh green towering trees, it looked like a Christmas card. There was even a fire snapping and roaring in the hearth, bathing my right side in heat where I sat on the couch. Lewis had a wing chair across from me, booted feet up on a primitive-style coffee table built out of uneven round logs. David was pacing. The other Wardens had come with us, but they’d stayed in other rooms. Reporting to HDQ, presumably, or doing whatever it was that Wardens did, generally.

The other two in the room had been waiting for us at the lodge: Marion and Paul. Marion looked tired, but I couldn’t see any long-term effects from our last encounter. I was glad, because I had the feeling that damaging Marion would be a very bad move on many different levels.

Paul looked pissed. He was scary when he was pissed.

“The other one convinced all of us,” Lewis said. “She told us what we wanted to hear, and we all bought in. But it wasn’t real. She wasn’t real. And now she’s out there, and we need to stop her.”

“This is bullshit!” Paul spit, and stalked away, arms folded, to stare out the big picture window at the gorgeous view. I exchanged a look with Lewis, then got up and went to stand next to Paul, my hands folded on the windowsill. “Don’t try to slick me, chickie. I got zero reason to believe you, either.”

“That’s true,” I said, and turned to look him right in the eyes, then jerked my head to the door. “Can we talk in private? Please?”

He glanced at the others, suspicion grooved so deep into his face it looked like tribal tattoos. “I got nothing to say to you.”

“Paul.” I kept watching him, then turned and walked to the door. I didn’t look back, but after a few seconds of silence I heard his heavy footsteps coming after me. The next room over was a small library. No fires lit in this room; it was cool and smelled of old paper, spiced with a hint of pumpkin from a bowl of potpourri. The curtains were drawn over the single window, and I shut the door after Paul followed me inside, and leaned against it with the knob digging into my back.

He folded his arms and glared. “What? And don’t even think about touching me, bitch.”

“You seem pretty angry about being fooled. Just what did she do to get you on her side?”

He went white, then mottled red. He didn’t answer.

“Paul,” I said. “Look, I don’t remember you, okay? All I have is memories from a few people-”

“Yeah.” He snorted. “Heard what you did to Marion and the folks at the clinic. Sounds like you’re the menace, not the other one.”

“-and a whole lot of guesses. You and me, we were never…?” I was keeping my voice very low, although I wasn’t stupid enough to assume that the rest of them couldn’t hear me if they wanted to eavesdrop. Especially David.

Paul shrugged, looking extremely uncomfortable. “None of your business.”

“I’ll take that as a no. Then why am I thinking you’re looking at me in a whole different way than you were the last time I met you?”

He gave me a miserable look and scrubbed his hands over his dark five-o’clock shadow. “Jesus fucking Christ, don’t go there.” His voice had dropped to an urgent whisper. I matched it.

“Did she? Go there?”

Of course she had. He looked helplessly at me, and I understood. Evil Twin had set out to win over every single person that I could count on, and Paul had an Achilles’ heel…he wanted me. So…she gave him what he wanted. And somehow she’d kept David from knowing it. (Because otherwise Paul wouldn’t be standing here intact and unharmed. I knew that without the benefit of any memories.)

I shook my head. “Paul, that wasn’t me. She wasn’t me.”

“So you say. Sorry, but I’m not buying the next load of crap to get trucked by.” He was looking a little ill now. “That was you. Joanne. Christ, I’ve known her-you-half your life. I’d know the difference!”

The scariest thing about it? Maybe he was right about that. Maybe the Demon really had become more me than me.

“She showed you what she wanted you to see,” I said. “She showed David the faithful lover. She showed each of you exactly what would get her the maximum mileage…” God, what had she shown Lewis? One hell of a good time. I tried hard not to even consider it. “She wanted you on her side. Against me.”

“I repeat: I got zero reason to believe you. And I’m not hearing anything to convince me.”

I spread my arms. “I’m not a Demon. You can check.”

“How do you think we do that? It’s not the fucking Inquisition around here.”

“Ask Marion. She’d know. She can see Demon Marks.” Which begged the question…“Why didn’t she recognize Evil Twin?” I asked it aloud, not expecting an answer, but surprisingly Paul actually had one.

“She wasn’t awake,” he said. “After you pulled your stunt that night in the clinic, she was in a coma. She came out of it this morning.”

“When the person you thought of as me left,” I said. He frowned and nodded. “Well, that’s a coincidence. Lucky E.T. didn’t just kill her.”

He looked suddenly ill.

“What?”

Paul’s mouth opened and closed, then opened again to say, “Marion’s breathing stopped three times in the night. If there hadn’t been an Earth Warden with her…”

Evil Twin didn’t dare act directly, then, not if she was trying to carry on her campaign to become the one true Joanne. That had saved Marion’s life. No doubt E.T. would have been delighted to have dispatched one of the only people in the world who could see her true, unpleasant nature. But Faux Joanne probably would have managed to keep her in a coma indefinitely, until an opportunity came around to quietly shuffle her offstage.

Paul’s gaze, which had unfocused to mull things over, sharpened back on me. “How do I know you weren’t behind that?”

“We could play this game all day, Paul, but the point is, I’m here, Marion’s awake, and she’s not pointing at me and screaming, ‘Demon,’ now, is she? So you’re going to have to take something on faith.” My turn to fold my arms and frown. “Paul, if I was in love with David, I’d never have slipped off with you. Not that you aren’t studly, but…”

He looked deeply uncomfortable. Shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. Adjusted the limp tie at the collar of his much-rumpled business shirt, which was finely tailored but not up to the rigors of a Joanne Baldwin crisis. “Yeah,” he mumbled to the floor. “I guess I knew that. I’ve known you a long time. You’re a tease, but-”

“Tease?”

“Flirt,” he amended hastily. “Jesus. Touchy, ain’t ya? Look, whatever happened, the point is, she didn’t get what she wanted, right?”

I wasn’t so sure of that. “What did she want?” I pushed away from the door and paced a little, nervous and chilly. “She wanted to cut me off from any support, sure, but it was more than that. She went out of her way to enlist people. She wanted to be part of the Wardens. Why?”

“Because you were?”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t just that she wanted a life. It’s more than that.” I remembered the way she’d felt in the clinic when she’d been about to kill me. And even back in the forest before the helicopter rescue. She’d refined her methods, but what she wanted wasn’t just to be me. “Before she came after me, she took over Kevin. She wanted something, and it wasn’t just about finding me, because she took him over when he was fighting the California fire-when was that?”

Paul pulled a handheld computer from his pocket and booted it up with a press of his thumb. He had big hands, but he was good with them, tapping out commands with effortless speed. “Same day,” he said. “Same day you disappeared in Sedona.”

I nodded. “Then I need to talk to Kevin. Now.”

Summoning Kevin for a personal chat took about an hour, during which somebody provided lunch; I’d forgotten how good food could taste, and devoured two sandwiches without pausing for much beyond swigs of bottled water. Oh, it was good. I’d been willing to settle for some of Lewis’s stale trail bars.

When he arrived Kevin wasn’t alone; he screeched up the drive in a black Warden-issue SUV, the kind with the sun symbol aetherically embossed on the side, and for a second I was afraid that Evil Twin had come home for a High Noon-style showdown.

But when the passenger door opened, it was Cherise who got out. I was unreasonably cheered to see her, because she looked a hell of a lot better than she had-fresh, scrubbed, cute as a button in her snowflake-patterned tight sweater and blue jeans.

She had to be feeling better. Her nail polish matched the outfit.

“Jo!” Cherise was the only person I didn’t need to win over; she flew across the room and hugged me like a sister. Well, from what I’d been through with Sarah, more like the sister I wished I had. “God, you look like hell! Hygiene, honey! Look into it!”

“Been busy,” I said.

“Too busy to comb the crap out of your hair?” But she was kidding, and her grin faded fast. “What’s going on? I thought you were better.”

“Was I?” I gave her a long look as we stood at arm’s length, and she slowly shook her head.

“Oh, man, that wasn’t you, was it? Dammit. I knew something was wrong; I knew.” If she had, Cherise had been the only one. Ironic, since she was also the only one of the entire group without some superpower or other, beyond looking fabulous under difficult circumstances. “You didn’t seem like…you.”

“But I remembered you.”

“Sure.” She shrugged. “But still. So. Evil twin?”

“Evil twin.”

“That’s hot.”

“Not so much, from this side.”

“Oh, come on, I’d kill for an evil twin. How cool would that be?”

I reached out and put a hand on Cherise’s shoulder. “Cher, I think she’s the one who hurt you. And Kevin.”

I felt her flinch, but somehow she managed to hold on to her smile. “Okay. I take it back. Wouldn’t kill for an evil twin, but I might kill her.”

Kevin had come in sometime during our conversation, stomping snow off his heavy Doc Martens and shooting distrustful looks around the room. He wasn’t judgmental about it. He didn’t like anybody, except, of course, Cherise. He unzipped his black jacket-it was a Raiders down jacket, with the pirate logo on it-as if he were intending to pull out an Uzi and mow us all down, but that was just his normal urban ’tude.

“You yanked my leash?” he said to Lewis, who was sitting next to the fire with a cup of coffee. Lewis lifted his mug in my direction. “Great. Not her again.”

I ignored his hostility. Seemed the best way to deal with him, all the way around. “Kitchen,” I said. “Let’s do the inquisition over some lunch.”

It was a pretty strategic move, seeing as how it put me within reach of a plateful of chocolate-chip cookies someone had left behind, and Kevin was too busy shoving turkey on rye into his mouth to give me much grief. Cherise quizzed me on ingredients, natural versus processed, organic versus pesticides, and other questions that I cheerfully lied my way through to get her plate filled. She even nibbled her way through a quarter of a cookie, looking mortified the whole time that she was doing it.

“You ask us here just to feed us?” Kevin mumbled around a mashed-up mouthful of sandwich. I resisted the urge to tell him not to chew and talk.

“I need to ask you about what you remember,” I said. “When you were taken over that day.”

He stopped chewing, swallowed, and put the sandwich down, growing fascinated by the pattern of the tablecloth. I felt for him, but I couldn’t let it go this time. “Kevin,” I said. “She was in your head. That means you know things that can help me now.”

He shook his head. His hair looked lank and oily, and I wondered if he ever washed it. I marveled at my urge to mother him, considering how much he disliked me. And how generally unlikable the kid was.

“She’s still out there,” I said. “She could do to other people what she did to you. For all I know she’s already doing it. You can’t seriously be okay with that.”

Another mute shake of his head. I didn’t know what it meant, but it was at least a response.

“You don’t want to remember,” I said. “I know. I get that. But we don’t have a lot of choices now. We have to find her.”

“What’s this ‘we’?” He looked up, and his eyes were dark with resentment. “It’s never about the ‘we’ with you. When you say ‘we,’ you just want something. And then you’ll leave me behind.”

“I won’t. Not this time.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“No idea. But I’m telling you the truth. If you want to go with me, I’ve got no issues with that. You’ve got more motivation than most people out there to take her down, right? I could use that.”

He frowned. “What if Lewis says no?”

“You think Lewis is the boss of me?”

He chewed another bite of sandwich while he thought about it, then gave me a grudging nod of acceptance. “Okay. What do you want me to do?”

I took in a deep breath and looked at Cherise, who’d put down her barely nibbled cookie and was watching, wide-eyed. “It’s what I did to Cherise before. I want to look at your memories and-”

I didn’t get to finish, because Kevin slammed his chair back with a screech of wood on wood, and headed for the door. I summoned a blast of wind to slam it shut in his face-too much wind, too clumsy, and I had to bleed off the resulting energy into a surge of static that made sparks flare in the light fixtures.

“Screw you! You’re not touching me!” Kevin yelled, and grabbed the doorknob. Another unintended consequence of my ham-fisted use of power: It was hot enough to burn. He yelped, cradled his hand, and backed away.

I got up and took his hand in mine, palm up, and smoothed my fingers over the burn. This was easier, somehow. There was a rich, quiet flow of power coming up from my feet, channeled up from the ground, and it spilled like golden light through my body and out of my stroking fingers, to coat his wound and sink in deep.

In seconds the burn was gone.

“Shit,” Kevin said, and pulled his hand back to stare at it. Then he looked at me. “Thought you were Weather.”

“Well, you know, I joined one of those Power-of-the-Month clubs, and it looks like I’ve completed the set.”

His fingers curled in over the palm, hiding it. “I don’t care what you are. I still don’t want you in my head.”

Kevin had issues, with a capital I. “I’ll limit it to just what I need to know,” I said.

“And what, I’m supposed to trust you?” He gave me a scorching look of contempt. “Please.”

“Kevin.”

“What?”

“I’m asking,” I said. “I’m just asking. I won’t force you to do it. I won’t take it from you. But without you I don’t know how we’re going to do this; I really don’t. You’re important.”

I kept it simple, and straightforward, and he frowned at me, looking for the trick. For the spin.

There wasn’t any. I meant exactly what I said.

He looked away, to Cherise. She was uncharacteristically quiet and sober, and she slowly nodded.

“I’ll be right here,” she said. “Right here.”

Kevin sank down in his chair, hands scrubbing his knees in agitation, and gave me one quick, jerky nod of acceptance.

I didn’t wait for him to have second thoughts. Sometimes it’s better to pull the Band-Aid off quickly.

I put my hand on his head and dropped into the world according to Kevin.