Thin Air (27 page)

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.