Total Eclipse

Chapter Four

“Hold on!” I screamed, and tried to change lanes. It was deadly at this speed, on wet roads, but I didn’t have much choice; I had the distinct impression that hitting this particular Djinn would be like slamming full speed into the side of a mountain. Car versus mountain: never a good thing.

Unfortunately, physics was not my friend on either side of the choice just now, and as soon as I changed direction, the seal broke between the tires and the road, and we began to hydroplane. No antilock brakes on a vintage Mustang—it was all up to me, and it was happening in hypertime, speeded by adrenaline and sheer, massive momentum. I acted on ingrained training, turning the wheel gently into the skid, letting off the gas, staying off the brake. I kept us out of a spin and managed to keep us on the road, but we’d gone into a Tokyo drift sideways, sliding past the motionless Djinn at better than eighty miles per hour.

It turned, tracking to follow us.

“David!” I yelled.

“Old Djinn!” he said back. “Not one of mine!” Not good news under the best of circumstances, and these were far from the best.

The Djinn suddenly turned as we slid along, leaving it behind, and ran after us. In only three long strides it had hold of the bumper of the car, and I felt the slamming jerk of it stopping our skid. We were all thrown forward, hard enough to make my head feel a little fuzzy. Before I could blink, my driver’s-side door was open, and the Djinn was leaning over me, close enough to bite my throat out. Which they had been known to do.

I yelped and flailed, but the Djinn put a hand flat on my chest and shoved me firmly against the seat. I thought for sure he was going to lean in and smash me like a bug, but the pressure seemed just enough to keep me still, not enough to shatter bone.

He unhooked my seat belt, picked me up like I weighed no more than a bulky bag of feathers, and came around to David’s side of the Mustang. David was fumbling for the door latch, just about as out of it as I felt. The Djinn got there first, dumping me unceremoniously on my husband’s lap. I pulled my legs in as he started to close the door again, and put my arms around David’s neck.

“What the hell is going on?” David asked. I shook my head, mystified, as the unknown Djinn got in on the driver’s side, ignored seat belt laws, and slammed the car into gear.

Whoever he was, he could drive like the proverbial devil. The Boss roared like a lion as he opened the engine up, and no matter how fast I’d gone, this was faster, wet roads be damned. I tried not to look. It was way too scary.

“Hey,” Cherise said, in an out-of-it kind of voice that gained strength as she went along. “Who’s driving this thing?” By the end, she sounded positively paranoid, which was a very bad thing. A scared Cherise was a dangerous one right now. I shook away my lingering bleariness and looked at her over the seat.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Everything’s fine. We’re in good hands.” I dropped back down on David’s lap and looked him in the eyes as I moderated my tone to a whisper. “We are, right?”

David cleared his throat and addressed himself to our new driver. “I don’t know you.” That was a neutral opening gambit, neither aggressive nor friendly. Considering the dude had just supernaturally carjacked us, I thought it was quite thoughtful. It was also quite useless, though. The Djinn didn’t even glance at us. He just drove like a machine—like some extension of the car itself. He didn’t even blink. His eyes were glowing, an unsettling color that hovered somewhere between green and gold, and—like most Djinn—he was striking in features. His were prominent and blunt, not handsome as most chose to be. A face of strength and immovable power, and a body to match. Greek sculptors would have adored him.

“Chatty,” I said. “So what do we do?”

David shrugged very slightly. “He’s taking us in the direction we were going anyway,” he said. “He’s better protection than we could ask against whatever might want to get in our way, including bad drivers. I suppose we wait and see just what he wants.” He shifted a little, settling my weight better on his lap.

“Sorry,” I said. “I know I’m not that light.”

“You’re fine,” he said, and dropped his voice to an intimate whisper by my ear. “This is going to be a very enjoyable ride for me, you know. But frustrating.”

I smiled and touched my lips gently to the pulse point below his jaw, where I knew he was especially sensitive, and felt him shiver. His hands tightened around me. “Well,” I whispered back, “we’ll just have to see about that once we have some privacy.”

“Time was I could make our privacy.”

I didn’t say anything to that, just put my hand flat on his cheek and looked into his eyes. He was tired, and still, on some level, quite sick. Lewis had done his best, but David’s nature had been Djinn for a long, long time, and being human wasn’t something he was good at dealing with long term. Some essential core of him couldn’t deal with it. I could no longer feel the slow, inevitable drain of energy inside of him, but I knew very well that it was there.

Nice as it was to pretend that everything was going to be fine, we needed to get David’s powers back where they belonged. That was much more important than recovering mine, at the moment. I could live without them for now. Not well. But . . . live.

“I’m okay,” he said, and kissed my palm. I rested my head against his shoulder, content for the moment to be cuddled in his warmth as we hurtled at Djinn- inspired speed toward . . . what?

I couldn’t begin to guess.

And somehow, with him, that was okay.

I fell asleep, and when I woke up the sun was blazing in the window like the fiery wrath of God. I winced and groaned, shifted my weight, and felt uncomfortably locked muscles protest. David woke up, too, and must have felt identically horrible, because he winced and tried to stretch out his legs.

The Djinn at the wheel hadn’t blinked, moved, or otherwise communicated, as far as I could tell. I looked over David’s shoulder. Cherise and Kevin were tangled together on the backseat. Kevin was snoring. Cherise was drooling on the knee of his blue jeans.

“Where are we?” I mumbled, and swiped hair out of my eyes. How the hell did my hair get messed up when I had nowhere to move? Mystery of the universe. I didn’t seriously expect anyone to answer—Kevin and Cherise were obviously in La-La Land, and David wouldn’t have any more of a clue than me—but I got a response.

The Djinn who was driving opened his mouth, and said, “I’m taking you to the Oracle.” He had a very odd voice—almost a chorus of voices, as if some group was speaking through him. Chilling, in fact. “We’ll arrive in a few moments.”

I felt a bolt of pure adrenaline that sent my heart racing at uncomfortable speeds. “Which Oracle?” There were three to choose from, and only one of them could be said to be on our side, even a little. The Earth Oracle was my daughter, Imara. . . . But we hadn’t magically sped across half the country overnight, either. This still looked like eastern seaboard, to me, not the desert around Sedona. Which meant one of the other two Oracles, most likely . . . Air, or Fire.

God, I hoped it was Fire. Please.

David was looking . . . odd. I guessed he didn’t know how to feel, considering that he used to have every right to talk to the Oracles, and now—being busted back to human—he wasn’t sure whether he’d even be allowed to enter their presence. Or survive the experience.

“Relax,” I said. “If whichever one it is hired us a driver, I’m guessing they’re not going to just kill us on sight.”

But it was a guess, pure and simple, and he knew it. I turned to Cherise and Kevin, who were waking up, yawning, stretching, and groaning just like David and I had done. “Before you ask,” I said, “we’re almost there. Wherever that is. And when we get there, the two of you are going to stay in the car. I don’t want you anywhere near this.”

“This what?” Cherise mumbled around a jaw-cracking yawn. “Ow.”

“You don’t need to know,” I said. “And you don’t need to do anything stupid, like try to rescue us, no matter what happens. Understand?”

Kevin nodded, not looking overly concerned one way or the other. Comforting. Cherise, at least, frowned and looked cutely annoyed, but she finally agreed.

Me, I was just hoping that wherever our newfound chauffeur was taking us had a bathroom, because I was in need. Badly. And my throat was parched, too.

It only took another five minutes or so after that for our driver to pull off the freeway, expertly whip in and out of traffic (which he could do with impunity, being Djinn and therefore beyond the reach of human law enforcement), and pull to a stop in front of a . . .

A mall.

He shut off the engine and sat there like a marble statue. David and I exchanged looks. I finally said, “Uh, hello? Instructions? Are we supposed to go shopping?”

His head turned. Well, it was more of an Exorcist twist, really—like it was on a swivel, not connected to the rest of his body. Creepy. Also creepy were his eyes, which continued to blaze an unearthly fire in a color that defied description.

“Out,” he said. Just that. And the passenger-side door flung itself open, David’s seat belt snapped back, and I felt a supernatural shove that sent me stumbling out onto the pavement. David collided with me a second later, and we steadied ourselves as the Mustang’s door slammed shut again.

Cherise and Kevin goggled at us from the backseat. Cherise tried the door. Locked. She held up her hands in defeat and mouthed, Sorry!

That was fine. The last thing I wanted was for Cherise to try her hand at slinging some power around. It wouldn’t end well for anyone concerned. She was so far overmatched right now that the Djinn in that car wouldn’t even have left a smoke trail in destroying her. Not that she didn’t have the potential inside of her—she did, in spades—but she had zero ability to channel and control it. She’d be more likely to blow herself, the mall, and whatever major metropolitan area we were in off the face of the Earth instead.

“Right,” I said, and steadied myself on my cramping legs. “I guess we go in?”

“Seems like it,” David said, and took my hand. He smiled. “Remember the first time you took me to a mall?”

“Yeah, that ended well. I almost got suffocated.”

“And you drove off and left me behind,” he said. “Don’t try it again.”

“Not a chance.”

We looked at the glass doors of the entrance like it was the gates of Hell, and after a second to gather our composure—well, I was gathering mine, at least—we moved forward and into the mall.

I don’t know what I expected to happen—maybe that we’d be transported to some other, intimidating supernatural place?—but on the other side of the doors was a busy food court, full of cheap tables and flashing neon and the smells of a dozen different kinds of food. Families with crying kids in tow. Teens traveling in packs, for whom nothing existed outside of their own insulated circle of friends. Seniors in walking shoes making the rounds. It was a bustling indoor community, with snacks and shopping bags and a life of its own.

“I love a good mall,” I said to David, “but I really have no idea what we’re supposed to do here. I mean, I could use a pair of shoes. . . .”

“If you’re going to shop, you’d better get Cherise, or she’ll kill you,” he pointed out. “But I think we’re supposed to do something else.”

“Well, it’d be nice if someone gave us a sign. . . .”

At the far end of the food court was the neon- lit entrance to a multiplex theater. The NOW SHOWING signs were giant TV screens, which I supposed was easier than the old stick-up letters.

One of them was flashing text in the biggest possible letters. It said ENTER HERE.

I cleared my throat and pointed. “Would you call that a sign?”

The letters immediately changed to read ENTER NOW OR DIE.

“I’d say so,” David said. “And not a welcome-to-the-neighborhood sign, either.”

Didn’t seem so. I tried to control the twisting of my stomach as we moved off toward the theater, threading past baby strollers and people just standing in the way. When we were still twenty feet away, the lettering changed again.

It said, in red flashing letters, FASTER.

“Crap,” I said, and dropped David’s hand to race him to the entrance. That drew stares. I wondered why nobody could see the sign, but then decided that the Oracle wanted it that way. It was meant for us. And it was meant to scare us.

It was working.

I plunged through the door under the flashing sign, just a step ahead of David, and stumbled into . . . fog. White, featureless fog, cool and damp and cloying on my skin. It felt thick and heavy and alive, pressing down on me as I stumbled to a stop, unable to see anything in the thick white mist.

I reached back and flailed for David’s hand.

He wasn’t there.

I spun around and scissored my arms wildly, trying to find him, sure he had to be right there . . . but he wasn’t. He was nowhere within reach. “David!” I shouted. “David, can you hear me?”

Nothing. It felt as if my words were swallowed up, as if the fog around me was so thick and heavy it was suffocating sound. It was like drowning in a cloud, and my breath came faster as the feeling of claustrophobia intensified. I held out my hands and took a step, hoping for something—anything—to tell me where I was. This was worse than being blind, somehow. It felt like I should be able to see, and my eyes constantly strained, trying to focus on nothing.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Oracle? You wanted me, here I am!”

The mist around me suddenly thickened, choking me, trapping me in a gelatinous blanket, and I struggled to get a breath that didn’t feel like a ball was being shoved down my throat.

A shape appeared out of the mist—but only a shape. A shadow, like glass filled with the same mist that surrounded me. No features, no face, nothing but a chilly kind of menace. It was terrifying, and I realized that I was seconds away from dying if I couldn’t get the Air Oracle to stop tormenting me.

I did the only thing I could.

I gave up.

I stopped struggling, stopped trying to choke in a breath, and relaxed. The mist supported me, flowing like syrup through my clothes, along my skin, caressing me in intimate and cold ways that felt repulsively invasive.

I let it happen.

The pressure of mist inside my lungs let up, and I whooped in a breath of air just as the edge of my vision started to go dark and sparkly from oxygen deprivation.

Human.

It wasn’t a voice, exactly, or a thought either. It was more of a vibration that didn’t register in my ears, but in my flesh. As if the Oracle was speaking through my bones.

It hurt.

I gasped, and suddenly the mist holding me up let go, dropping me to my hands and knees on the featureless white floor—except that it still felt like more insubstantial fog. I had the dizzying sensation that I was standing on a cloud, that only the Oracle’s whim kept me from hurtling through the vapor tens of thousands of feet down to my death. . . .

Weak, the thought vibration came, this time rich with overtones of contempt. Useless. As I thought.

I coughed and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I tasted blood, but it seemed to be confined to my throat. “The Mother’s waking up,” I said. “Isn’t she?”

No answer. The ghostly form of the Air Oracle wavered, changing in fluid, subtle ways.

“You don’t want her to wake up,” I said, filling in the blanks. “It will take away all your power. All your individuality.” The Oracles weren’t necessary if Mother Earth, the consciousness of the planet itself, took direct command of her Djinn. They’d be blown out of existence, burned away—or reduced to Djinn, no more or less. The Air Oracle, of all three that I’d met, was by far the most haughty and power- mad. No wonder it had taken action. “Look, it’s not in the interest of the Wardens or humanity for her to wake up, either. Or even the Djinn. They lose their individuality to her, their ability to think for themselves. They don’t want that. Not even the Old Djinn.”

No answer. The Air Oracle just hovered.

“David and I both lost our powers,” I said. “If you help us get them back I may be able to stop this. I can try, at least. The Wardens need every bit of help they can get.”

You ask a favor, came the reply, in slow, measured throbs through my body.

“No. I’m asking you to act in your own interests,” I said. “It’s in your interest to put back what I lost, and restore David’s powers.”

That was risky. The Air Oracle had never been on the side of humanity. If anything, it was on its own side, only paying lip service to the other Oracles. There were a few times when it had intervened, but not many, and never from altruistic motives.

Mercenary little sexless bastard.

The Air Oracle was silent. I hated dealing with eternal beings. No sense of urgency. “At least restore David’s powers,” I said. “He is a Conduit. He can reach the Mother. Maybe he can stop her.”

No, the Oracle said immediately, and the single word, the concept, was rich with contempt. He cannot. It is a waste of energy.

Great. David hadn’t made a fan out of this Oracle, any more than I had.

Once humans are gone, the Mother will release us, the Oracle continued, with cold and inexorable logic. The world will be ours. As it should be.

I swallowed hard. “If you really believed that, why bring us here?”

There were no features on that misty face, but I had the impression of a shark’s smile, something hungry and merciless. To be sure you don’t stop it.

The mist closed in, and this time, it wasn’t just suffocating, it was crushing. I had time to gasp in one inadequate breath before the weight slammed into me from back and front, squeezing. When I opened my mouth, the mist jammed itself in, choking me.

No! I’m a Weather Warden! This can’t happen! But it was happening, no matter how much I wanted to deny it. I had no power to fight an Oracle, no tricks, nothing but the sheer panicked will to live.

And that wasn’t enough. Not here.

I felt hot sparks of pain through my body as muscles strained, joints began to fail, bones bent. It was going to smash me flat and leave me a leaking carcass, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. . . .

All of a sudden, a hurricane wind whipped through the mist, cold and clear and edged with ice. It tattered the forces holding me, revealing the Air Oracle looming over me in its faceless, sexless menace. Suddenly, I could breathe. I dropped to my hands and knees, gasping in ragged gulps, and looked around to see what the hell had just happened.

Oh crap.

Cherise stood there, tiny and cute in her flirty dress and perfect tan. She was showing teeth. It wasn’t a smile. Maybe it had started out being a confident grin, but as the Air Oracle focused its attention on her instead of me, it became more of a demented, if terrified, snarl. Her blond hair was streaming in the wind, and as I watched, she extended a hand out toward the Air Oracle and pushed force at it.

“No!” I yelled, and dropped flat on the white, slightly spongy floor, pressing myself as low as I could go. Cherise’s attack rolled over me, and even as small a target as I’d made, I felt it freeze my back as it glanced over me.

Cold air is heavy, and Cherise wielded it like a bat, slamming it into the fragile Air Oracle and scoring a home run. The Air Oracle broke apart into streams of white-hot energy, and its scream echoed through my bones with such force I actually thought something would break inside me.

“Cher, stop!” I screamed. “You can’t win this! Stop!”

“Shut up,” she said, and grabbed me by the ankle with both small hands as she backpedaled through featureless white space. “What the hell did you get me into this time? Stop kicking!”

“Stop pulling me like a toy pony!” She let go, and I rolled up to my knees and bounced to my feet, driven by adrenaline and sheer terror. “We have to leave. Right now.”

“Yeah, about that, how?”

I made a helpless flailing motion with my hands, frustrated beyond any measure. “Just—I don’t know—do it! Gah! This is not the time for on-the-job training, because that Oracle is going to be—”

Really pissed, I was going to say, but honestly, that fell far short of what was happening about fifteen feet away, where the Air Oracle was reforming in a black, roiling cloud that glittered with icy edges. It was lit from within by flashes like swallowed lightning, and even as paranormally blind as I was right now to subtle forces, I could feel the menace in the air. It was going to kill us really, really dead, and it wasn’t going to screw around doing it.

“Out!” I yelled, and grabbed Cherise’s hand. “Think about the mall!”

Cherise said, in a plaintive little voice, “But I don’t know what’s in this mall. . . .”

Oh fuck, we were going to die.

The Air Oracle roared toward us, and the mist closed in, and hope vanished with the open space. I felt Cherise’s hand in mine but I could no longer see her, couldn’t see anything but white, as if the mist had entered my eyeballs and filled them up.

Cherise let out a shriek of pure, full-throated terror, and suddenly we were falling through the floor, as if those imagined white clouds had given way. Ten thousand feet to the killing ground . . .

. . . but we landed on carpet in about six inches, just enough to jolt and send us both staggering a couple of steps. Mist curled off of both of us in thick, milky wisps, and as Cherise dropped my hands and frantically batted at her clothes, it leaked out in streams, sliding down her legs to pool on the carpet and disappear.

“Oh my God, that is creepy!” she said. “Is it in my hair? Tell me it’s not in my hair!”

I couldn’t, because it was rolling down in waves down her back. From her hair. She was right; it was creepy and it felt wrong, like some kind of ectoplasmic slime instead of just an innocent water vapor. Ugh. I shook my hands and arms and watched it fly off me to melt in the air.

Then I took a look around. We were in a store. A shoe store, to be precise, and it was empty except for one store clerk who’d apparently been in the back, and now came around the counter, having missed the whole appearing-out-of-nowhere-dripping-with-ectoplasm floor show. “Hi, can I help you?”

“Sorry,” I said, recovering whatever remained of my composure. “Give us a second.”

He looked doubtful, but nodded and backed off. I turned to Cherise and dragged her off to admire a rack of shoes neither one of us wanted, at least right at the moment. “I have to find David!” I hissed. “We were together, but we got separated!”

“Oh my God, he’s not still in there . . . ?”

If he was, I’d just lost him forever. The enormity of it slammed in on me so hard that I literally lost my balance, and Cherise had to grab my arm to keep me from toppling into the size sevens. If you hurt him, I thought to the Air Oracle, if you kill him, I will destroy you. I don’t know how, but I will.

“It couldn’t,” I said aloud, and tried to make myself believe it. “David’s not just anybody. It can’t just kill him. Even Ashan wouldn’t ignore that.”

Presuming anything made sense anymore. Presuming Ashan, the leader of the Old Djinn, had an identity of his own, still, and was capable of making his own decisions. If the Mother was waking up, the Djinn were lost to us as individuals, and while she might notice and care about the Djinn David, the human David might not even be noticed.

“I’ll go back,” Cherise said.

“Are you mental? You’re not going anywhere!”

“Well, you’d go back. And I’m kind of you, now.”

“No, Cher, you’re not! Just—I told you to stay in the car!”

“You’d be dead if I had!”

Well, she did have a point there. “I have to find David,” I said.

“Yeah, what’s your plan for that? Mall intercom?”

“No,” I said. “Movies.”

We headed out of the shoe store, which was inexplicably halfway across the mall, and made the best possible time back to the multiplex cinema outside the food court. The sign was no longer flashing ENTER HERE, or making dire threats. It was advertising a Disney film.

I turned a slow circle, taking in the standard mall view—tiled floors, towering indoor plants, escalators, elevators, stores, shoppers, food vendors with all their flashing neon. Crying children and harassed clerks.

Someone in a black windbreaker and cheap uniform pants moved past us, walking fast. Mall security, talking on a brick of a walkie-talkie. She sounded tense, although she was keeping her voice down.

I zeroed in on her and followed.

“Where are we going?” Cherise asked. I didn’t answer. “Because we really need to get out of here. This Oracle person wasn’t fooling around, you know.”

“The Air Oracle has no set space,” I said. “It can go anywhere it wants. If it wants to get to us, it will.”

“Oh, that’s comforting. You could have told me that before I pissed it off.”

Despite everything, I smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “I could have. But it wouldn’t have been as much fun.”

“Bitch.” Cherise fell silent, because the mall security lady was hurrying even more now, heading for a figure slumped on a bench with two more security guards around it. One pale hand was resting on the tiled floor, and I could see blood dripping.

As the security guards turned to look at the new-comer, I saw a glimpse of auburn hair.

“David!” I shrieked it, couldn’t stop myself, and plunged for the knot of people without any regard for my own safety, or theirs. They sensibly got out of my way, and oh God, I was right. It was him.

David was lying on the bench, curled on his side, breathing shallowly. His face was shockingly pale, and he looked . . . fragile. Terribly . . . human. There was blood, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

He opened his eyes when I touched his face, and it took a few seconds for him to focus on me. When he did, relief flooded through him, and he tried to sit up. “No!” I said, and made him stop. “What happened?”

“I was right behind you,” he said. “But you were gone. You were gone, and I was running—”

“You know this man?” one of the officers said. “Miss?”

“He’s my husband,” I said. My voice was shaking. “David, are you okay?”

“He ran into a plate glass window,” the guard said. “He’s got a nasty cut on his side. Paramedics are on the way. Sir, have you been drinking?”

“What?” I sat back on my heels, staring up at him. I couldn’t honestly understand what he was talking about. “Drinking?”

“He came out of nowhere and ran face- first into the glass,” the guard said. “Usually that means alcohol or drugs. Maybe both.”

“No. No, he just—he was looking for me.” I looked down at David’s pale face, at the red, human blood soaking his shirt. “He was afraid for me.”

“Guess I had no reason to be,” he said, and tried to smile, but it turned into a wince. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar,” he whispered. His eyes closed for a few seconds, then opened again. “Cherise? I thought we told you to stay in the car.”

She shrugged, back to her old self. “It’s the mall,” she pointed out, blankly mystified. “I thought you were kidding. Hey, and I saved your girl, so there.”

He looked at me a little doubtfully, so I smiled. “She did,” I said. “Although to be fair she almost got us both smashed, too.”

“Sounds right. Help me up.”

“Nope. You’re staying down.”

The security guards didn’t quite know what to make of us now. . . . They’d pegged us as drunken troublemakers, but we weren’t acting that way. A little giddy with relief, maybe but not intoxicated—though I admit, if somebody had passed me a bottle, I’d have taken a generous swig right about then.

All three of the guards’ radios suddenly crackled, and a voice on the other end brayed, “Get over here, guys, right now! South entrance, in front of the—”

It broke up into static. The three security guards exchanged a what now? look, and then the most senior of them looked down at me. “Miss, you stay right here. Paramedics will be here in a couple of minutes.”

I nodded, and the three windbreakers hustled off into the milling crowd, heading for whatever trouble was brewing. I started to return my attention to David, but I heard something.

Screaming.

Coming from the south entrance, which was all the way at the other end of the mall. The screaming was dopplering our way, and as I stood up to look, I saw that at the long straight end of the hall, people had rounded the corner and were stampeding in full flight in our direction. Some were still carrying shopping bags, but I had the impression that it was only because it hadn’t occurred to them to drop everything. They certainly weren’t slowing down as they ran, and I wondered exactly what could have put a full hundred dedicated shoppers to flight. Terrorism? Fire? Ebola?

I felt a tremor through the floor, and felt a sick twisting in my stomach. “Change of plans,” I said. “David, up. We’ll help you get back to the car. “Cher—where’s Kevin?”

“In the car.”

“He let you go by yourself?”

“I told him I had to use the bathroom.”

Well, that wouldn’t hold him for long, if I knew Kevin. As I looked around, I saw that most of the mall crowd had taken alarm and was streaming for the exits—not yet running at this end, but certainly moving with purpose.

One tall, lanky, skinny figure was pushing through upstream, heading for us. “Jesus,” he said, taking us in as he arrived. “When you chicks go to the mall, you really tear the place up.”

He was looking toward the south, where the screaming crowd originated, and I said, “What do you see?” I felt frustratingly handicapped, as I helped David to sit up and got his hand firmly placed over the wound in his side. “Kev?”

“No idea,” he admitted. “It’s just a mass of— something. I can’t see what it is, except it’s heading this way, and I think all these people running might have a real good idea.”

He grabbed David’s arm and hoisted him to his feet, taking most of David’s weight, and we blended with the general exodus.

Behind us, something exploded. Kevin turned, staring back, and extended a hand to snuff out a ball of fire that was rolling through the broad tiled hall in a hellish, orange-black rush. He stopped it before it did more than singe the lagging runners. Before he could turn around again, another explosion rocked the building, prompting more screams and a mob of panicked, running people through the food court, sending tables and chairs flying.

“Let go,” David said. “Go do what you need to do.”

Kevin glanced at him, nodded, and spun away to plunge toward the danger. I quickly braced David as he wavered, and Cherise bit her lip and looked indecisive. “Should I . . . ?”

“No,” I said firmly. “Cher, if you want to help, look out for people who can’t get out on their own.” There were plenty of them—people in wheelchairs struggling to make headway through the sudden minefield of debris, people on walkers shuffling along at their best speed, a few who’d tripped and were trying to get up but kept getting knocked down. Situations like this, people would get trampled.

I took a deep breath. “David, can you stay up?”

“Go,” he said, nodding. His face was ghostly, but his eyes burned with determination. “I’ll make it. You two help.”

I headed for a grandmotherly type in a power scooter, who was stranded by a drift of fallen chairs, and kicked them out of the way as I offered a bracing arm to an older gentleman with a cane who’d been knocked off his feet. “Here,” I said, and put them together. “Buddy system. Make sure you both get out, okay?”

They nodded, too scared to do anything but obey whatever order sounded official at the moment. It was a good partnership. The old guy shoved things out of the way, and kept one hand on her scooter for stability as they moved along.

I grabbed up a couple of screaming kids who were missing their parents and flagged down a lady with a stroller, who took the toddlers on. There was a teenage girl down near the Subway counter—out cold, with a swelling bruise on her head from where she’d fallen and knocked herself out on the tile. I dragged two teen boys to a stop and put them in charge of her. They looked shocked. It was probably the first time anybody had asked them to be in charge of anything. They grabbed her and towed her out.

By the time I’d made it close to the north exit, most of those able-bodied shoppers had cleared out, leaving a few injured, and one asthma sufferer who needed her inhaler, dropped somewhere back in the panic. Nothing I could do for her but send her on her way, and appoint yet another unwilling Samaritan to make sure she got to emergency help.

“Jo!” Cherise yelled from the other side of the food court. “Get out!”

I wasn’t about to, because not only was Cherise still inside, so was David. He’d stopped moving, in fact, and turned to face the south entrance. The food court was unnaturally empty and full of discarded bags, purses, coats, and spilled food and drink. Neon buzzed and blinked. I smelled acrid smoke and burning food on a grill somewhere.

Then there was a sound like nothing I’d ever heard, and Kevin came flying from around the corner, driven back like a limp rag doll. He hit the ground unconscious, or dead, and rolled to a flopping, boneless stop against the far wall. Cherise screamed and did some broken-field running through the maze of debris, heading for him.

I headed for David. He was very still, tense, gasping in shallow breaths that told me he probably had cracked ribs. Or, God forbid, internal injuries. Blood was a thick, dark stain spilling down the side of his pants, dripping over his shoes, and spreading on the floor.

“Djinn,” he said. “It’s the Djinn.”

“That’s not possible.”

Except it was.

A Djinn walked out of the smoke and darkness, and where she walked, flames broke out, concrete shattered, glass powdered, water gushed. She was the touch of destruction, neatly packed in an almost human form.

Tall, strong, dark-skinned, with a multitude of thick black cornrows that shifted like snakes on her head. She was wearing bright blood red, and her eyes had taken on a pure white shine.

Rahel.

But she was no friend of mine. Not anymore.

Cherise made it to Kevin’s side and tried to drag him out of the way. A fireball blasted out of Rahel’s hand, heading straight for them. Cherise screamed and shook Kevin to try to wake him, but he was out completely. . . .

Sheer instinct guided her, and desperation, and—I strongly suspected—love. She flung out her hand, and the fireball smashed down on them—and flared around them in a white- hot glowing blast, diverted to gouge steaming chunks out of the wall on either side.

Rahel stopped, cocked her head, and considered Cherise for a second before renewing the attack. Again, Cherise blocked it. Barely. When Rahel ended the fire stream, I saw Cherise collapse back against the wall, weeping, shaking, unable to summon up the energy to even put a brave face on it.

Rahel raised both hands.

“No!” I screamed, and flung myself forward, swinging my arms over my head and jumping up and down. “Over here! Fresh meat!”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” David hissed. Rahel turned her head and locked on us with those white, blind, shimmering eyes, and I felt panic well up in my throat, strong enough to choke me.

I had no idea what I was doing. Except buying time for my friends to live another moment. And maybe that was enough. Right now, in this one instant, I had a kind of shining clarity of purpose that I didn’t understand, and really couldn’t have said was sane, exactly.

David took my hand in his, and Rahel turned to face us. Pieces of the mall were falling apart behind her, smashing and shattering. Choking dust and smoke flooded the hall, and the neon lights—no, all the lights—went out.

We were going to die in the dark.

I could still see Rahel’s eyes in the dim glow of the distant skylights overhead—unblinking and predatory, the eyes of something with no purpose but destruction.

She’d lost herself to the madness of Mother Earth, who was lashing out against what had hurt her, with no rational thought. There was nothing David or I could do to reach her. I thought about Rahel lying in the hospital bunk on board the ship, and I felt tears burn in my eyes that weren’t due to the smoke and dust. I’d thought we’d lose her then, but at least she would have died as herself.

I wished I was dying as myself. My old self. That would have been . . . better.

Rahel’s lambent eyes blinked.

She didn’t fry us.

“David?” I whispered. “Is that her, or—?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered back.

Whatever internal battle went on, Rahel lost it. She raised her hand, palm out, and I knew we were going out not in a blaze of glory, but just in a blaze.

Fire streaked at her from her left and slammed into her with overwhelming force, knocking her sideways and to the floor. In the sudden lurid light, I saw that Kevin was turned on his stomach, still flat on the floor, but holding up a hand and burning the holy hell out of the Djinn. She flailed, trying to get up; he kept up the attack, not letting her get her balance or counterattack.

“He can’t,” David said. “He can’t do that!”

“What, act like a flipping idiot? He does it all the time!” I yanked on David’s arm, trying to get him to move with me. “We need cover—come on!”

“No, he can’t do that,” David said, and I watched as Kevin continued to pour more and more power through his body, crushing Rahel down. “Jo—”

I knew, in a blinding flash, what he meant. Oh crap. No freaking way. It made a weird kind of sense, but . . .

Kevin surged to his feet, and his eyes flared into colors that shouldn’t have been possible in a human. Hot, fluorescent green. He bared his teeth and walked toward Rahel, pummeling her now with massive pieces of concrete he levitated up from the wreckage.

“You think you can take me, bitch?” he said, and laughed. It rolled through the devastation like thunder. “You think you can hurt us? Think again!”

Something in Kevin had woken up. Something terrible and powerful and raw.

And it wasn’t just Warden powers, no matter how powerful; there was something else inside him.

Djinn powers. David’s powers.

“Can he kill her?” I asked. David was shuddering slightly now, taking in the full extent of what had happened. “David! Can he?”

“Yes,” he said, in a faint, distant voice. “If he doesn’t stop.”

I let go of David’s hand and lunged forward, vaulting over the debris, ignoring the resulting scrapes and bruises and cuts as I scrambled toward Kevin.

And when I got there, I slapped him across the face. Hard.

Kevin blinked, shocked, and turned those eerie Djinn-green eyes on me.

Then he backhanded me ten feet across the floor.

“Hey!” Cherise yelped, and stepped in front of him as he tried to come after me. “Enough! What are you doing?”

Cherise brought him back to himself, enough that he dropped his attack against me and looked back at Rahel, who was buried under a mess of rubble, motionless. When he blinked this time, his eyes faded back to their normal color, and he staggered and almost fell. I rolled slowly to my feet, feeling every twinge myself. I’d been lucky he hadn’t shattered bones. If there had been a wall in the way, I’d be drowning in blood.

David was picking his way slowly toward me. I motioned for him to stop, and looked at Kevin and Cherise. “We have to go,” I said. “Now.”

They both nodded, clearly not sure what the hell was going on anyway.

We left Rahel where she lay—alive, I presumed, though she wasn’t stirring—and our bruised little band of heroes limped out into the parking lot of the mall.

Which no longer looked like a parking lot.

Cars were twisted and smashed, rolled over on their sides and tops, some torn into scrap. People wandered helplessly, looking shell-shocked and confused. One woman, clearly not thinking at all, kept pointing her key-chain remote at one wreck after another, trying to identify her own car, as if it would matter.

Shivering clumps of people were huddling for comfort. Nobody was screaming now. It was too overwhelming, and there was nowhere to go. The woods beyond us were on fire, and smoke darkened the sky. So did roiling black clouds, streaming in from the south.

“My God,” Kevin breathed. It sounded like a prayer—which was new, coming from him. “It’s really happening, isn’t it?”

The Mustang was sitting right where we’d left it. The Djinn was sitting motionless behind the wheel, like some crash test dummy. His head swiveled to regard us as we got near. “Get in,” he said.

I didn’t. I didn’t trust the Djinn anymore, after what I’d seen of the Air Oracle, not to mention Rahel. Still . . . his eyes weren’t that tell-tale shining white, and he’d managed to keep the car safe in the middle of a truly world-class disaster scene.

“Get in,” he repeated, and I heard that odd chorusing effect in his voice again, as if more than one person was speaking through him. “Lord, you people are so hard to save.”

The voice had shifted again, one taking prominence—a honey-dark voice with a Southern accent. Female. I knew it, but I couldn’t exactly place it. “Who—who am I talking to?”

“Who did you think you’d be talking to, sugar?” the Djinn mouthpiece said, and all of the doors blew open on the car, inviting us inside. “Who’s still locked up like that damn genie in a bottle that all the stories talk about?”

David smiled in pure, wild relief. “Whitney,” he said. “It’s Whitney.”

Kevin and Cherise looked at us both like we’d gone insane. “That guy is talking like a girl,” Kevin pointed out. “Like a Southern belle.”

“More like down-South trailer—”

“Hey,” the Djinn said, annoyance curdling the honey in her voice. “This is my long-distance call, children. Don’t waste my minutes. Now get in the car, please.”

“She’s okay,” David said. “Get in.”

And we did, although none of us except David felt a hundred percent good about it, I thought. As soon as we were strapped in, the Djinn’s out-of-character voice said, “Y’all hold on now. This is going to get real interesting.” She said it with all the vowels. Int-er-est-ing.

I gulped as I felt the car lurch, and then it rocketed straight up, twenty feet in the air, and zoomed like a jet over the wrecks in the parking lot. Well, more like a sustained, long jump, maybe, because as we reached the road the trajectory sharpened, and we thumped down on the pavement in the first open space available.

The Djinn hit the gas and started his Jeff Gordon impersonation again.

“Whitney is the Djinn I left behind as insurance when we sailed out,” David said. “Sealed up in a pocket universe at Jonathan’s house, away from everything. She was my backup as Conduit.”

“Still am, sugar,” Whitney said. This time, her voice came out of the radio, which was only about half as weird as when it was coming out of the male Djinn. “And I’m just about the only damn help you’ve got, so be grateful. I can’t believe you stuck me with this job.”

“Not intentionally,” David said, and winced as I prodded his wounded side. “Believe me, I’d rather have my powers back.”

Neither of us mentioned the big, stinky elephant in the car, which was Kevin, sitting in the backseat, looking shaken and deeply disturbed. Kevin, who had somehow acquired powers he shouldn’t have had.

Like Cherise.

Surprisingly, it was Kevin who interrupted the pregnant pause. “I don’t want it,” he blurted. He looked green, and I wondered if he was about to get sick all over us. He swallowed twice, and finally seemed to get himself together. “I want to give it back to you. Whatever the hell that is.”

“Don’t think it works that way,” Whitney’s voice said, briefly snowed by static midway through. The tuner slid to another station, and she came through more clearly. “If it wasn’t you, it’d be somebody else. Maybe somebody not as ready.”

“What are you talking about? And where are you taking us?”

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” Whitney said. “Told you, you were going to regret making me do this, boss man.”

“Whitney, just—” David made a frustrated little gesture. “Get on with it. I’m bleeding.”

“Bet that’s new for you,” she said, about as sympathetic as a shark. Talk about your steel magnolias. “Making you just a little irritable?”

“Whitney, I’m going to climb through that radio and kick your ass,” I snapped. “He’s not the one you ought to be worried about.”

She laughed, a rich, whiskey-dark sort of sound. The least likely Djinn I’d ever met, and I’d met some doozies. I guessed that was why she’d made such an impression on David in the first place. Choosing Whitney for his backup as Conduit had been unorthodox, to say the least, and (I suspected) not exactly popular with the few thousand others who probably felt they had a better shot.

But she had qualities; I’d give her that. For one thing, none of the other Djinn would ever be able to get the better of her, because none of them could understand her. There was such a thing as being too human, and Whitney was the poster child.

“You are just full of it, Joanne,” she purred. “Nice to know some things just never change. Now, what were we talking about?”

“You said if it wasn’t Kevin . . .”

“Of course. Ain’t that obvious? If it isn’t Kevin, it’s whoever’s standing closest to you two. You didn’t really think the law of averages worked that way, that the two people you picked to tag along just happened to end up with your lost powers?”

When she put it like that, I had to admit, it did seem unlikely. There had been lots of people on board the ship, and any one of them could have received the power that had been ripped out of us in the formation of the black corner. . . . So why had it been the two people closest to us now?

“It’s not them,” I said slowly, working my way through it. “It’s us.”

“You’re not nearly as silly as you look,” Whitney said. “Fact is, whatever happened to you out there, it blew you apart and put you back together again, but somehow your power got left out. It’s like a ghost, trailing you around. It’ll settle into anybody you spend time with, including those two.”

David straightened up, which probably wasn’t smart; more blood darkened his shirt, and he pressed a hand to the wound. “Then we can get it back.”

“Can’t get it back,” Whitney said crisply. “Not like you are. You’re all locked off, and I have to tell you, you ain’t looking too good. Never mind that hole in your side. . . . You’re drying up like a water hole in the Sahara, running out of power. Won’t make it all that much farther, you know.”

I looked over at David in alarm. His face was set and pale, giving away nothing, but I knew it was true. Whitney wasn’t known for her tact, but she wouldn’t lie, not about that. “Nothing I can do about it,” he said. “If I can’t get my powers back . . .”

“Not on your own. But that’s why I’m taking you to someplace you can get some help.”

“Whitney, you can do it,” I said. “You’ve got the Conduit to the Earth now. You could fix this.”

“Could,” she agreed blandly. “But my orders were to stay right here, in this cozy little house with the roaring fire where nobody can get at me. And I like it here. You seen what’s going on out there? It’s messy.”

She was hiding out in Jonathan’s house, a peculiar little bubble of the aetheric that seemed to float apart from everything else. Time and space didn’t really exist there—or at least, they existed only as Jonathan had first created them to be. Which wasn’t like anywhere else. The advantage was that anything in that house was protected from the chaos here on Earth.

The downside was that the protection was very specific. Humans couldn’t reach the refuge, only Djinn, and only Djinn who were allowed in. David and I were completely out of luck.

“You have to come here,” I repeated. “Whitney, he’s . . .” Dying. I couldn’t really say it. Saying it would make it terrifyingly real. “Please come.”

Her radio-wave voice gentled, turned warm and compassionate. “I know,” she said. “I know how scared you are. But if I leave here, I’m gone, and you know it. Every Djinn out there is hers now, no thoughts, no personality. They’re just lashing out at whatever hurts her. You don’t want me out there. I wouldn’t help, and I’d be just as lost as the rest of them.”

Except, curiously, for the Djinn driving the car. I frowned, staring at him. He turned his head and stared back, not bothering to watch the blurring road. Djinn—they’re really not like us. And sometimes it’s really, really creepy.

“He’s empty,” Whitney said. “Something bad happened to him, a long time ago, poor thing. Mother Earth can’t lay a finger on him.”

“But you can.”

“Well, yeah.” Whitney sounded surprised. “You got to know how to do it, that’s all.”

I decided I really didn’t want to know. I was tired, beaten up, filthy, and David was . . . was really in need of help. “Where are you taking us?”

I must have sounded so miserable that even Whitney was moved, very slightly, toward pity. “Someplace safe,” she said. “You rest, now.”

I didn’t want to, but the Djinn reached out and past me, putting a hand over David’s shoulder. David let out a sigh and slumped against the car door. The bleeding from his side slowed, and I saw his color start to return to normal. Whitney, working her magic through her supernatural surrogate.

The Djinn let go and reached for me. I knocked his hand away. “No,” I said sharply. “I’ll stay awake.”

“Suit yourself,” Whitney said, back to her old bad attitude. “Want me to pinch you if you drop off?”

“Bite me, Whit.”

The Djinn made an unsettling teeth-snapping noise, and I looked sideways at him, scooting a couple of inches closer to David. When I was sure I was safe- ish, I looked back at Kevin and Cherise.

“You two okay?” I left it an open-ended question, and it was up to them whether that applied to injuries, mental instability, shock, or just plain hating the world.

“I don’t want this,” Kevin said, again. “I didn’t ask for this. It feels—wrong.” He licked his lips, his eyes haunted under the emo flop of hair. “It hurts when it comes out. I don’t think it’s safe.”

That made sense. In fact, I thought it was a credit to Kevin’s strength that it only hurt, because using the power of a Djinn Conduit would probably have torn apart most normal people. Even many Wardens. I wasn’t sure what it had done to him, but Kevin didn’t scare easily, and I felt for him.

“Sorry,” I told him, and reached over to touch his arm. He jerked away. “We’ll find a way to do this. I swear.”

“Well, I don’t mind,” Cherise said. “Because controlling the weather is awesome. I want to do more.”

“Well, you’re not going to,” I said, which sounded sternly authoritative but was a wet paper sack, so far as enforcement might go. “Cher, you need to stay away from it as much as possible. It may not seem like it’s hurting you, but it probably is. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

She normally would have smiled in response to that, but instead she just looked away out the window. “You say that until you need me. Then it’s all ‘bring it.’ ” That didn’t sound much like Cher, and it bothered me.

“Hey.” I tried to catch her eyes, but she kept looking away. “Cher, you know I care about you. You know I don’t want you hurt.”

This time she did look at me, squarely and calmly. “I know,” she said. “Until you don’t have a choice, and then you’ll do anything you have to do. It’s what I always like about you, Jo. That ruthless streak under all the girly polish.”

We had that in common, I realized. Cherise was sweet and compassionate, funny and talented . . . but she was also, deep down, a survivor, with a broad streak of ambition and a little bit of larceny baked right in. In another age, she might have been a charming criminal, holding up coaches at midnight on deserted roads and kissing all the pretty young men.

“We do what we’ve gotta do,” she said. “Right?”

“Right,” I said softly. “But until we’ve got to do it, don’t. Please.”

That won a smile, finally. “Sure,” she said. “Have all the fun yourself, then. Now—” She yawned broadly and bundled herself more comfortably against Kevin. “Now I need some beauty sleep. And a shower. But I’ll settle for sleep.”

The experience must have been overpowering, I realized, because both she and Kevin dropped off in under a minute, dragged down by exhaustion. Made sense. Their bodies weren’t made to take that kind of strain. I remembered how it had felt in the beginning, when my powers first began to surface—it was like hormones on crack. I’d been hungry and tired and bitchy all the time, prone to mood swings and fits of pouting, complaining about how hard everything was when I wasn’t griping about how nobody ever trusted me enough to do things myself.

Cherise had a lot to handle. Kevin, even more.

I checked David’s side. His wound was healed, but still red and inflamed; bruises were forming, and evidently Whitney had decided that bruises weren’t anything requiring first aid. He was sleeping peacefully. Ahead of us, the road unspooled, lit by furious stabs of lightning and the glow of the headlights. The Djinn kept a machinelike precise grip on the wheel and a foot on the pedal.

And before I knew it, I’d joined the rest of them in sleep.