by Rachel Caine
"Not even me?"
He growled in the back of his throat and stalked off toward the convenience store, where Star was paying for a stack of bottled water and portable calories. She was laughing with the cashier about something, but when she turned to wave at me, I saw the cashier watching her, studying her scars. Everybody did. She had to know that, had to feel it all the time. She had to resent it, even if she never showed it on the surface. God. Could I have managed that? No. Never.
She hip-bopped the door open and came out with her armload of goodies. I grabbed some that were toppling and looked over her shoulder. The cashier was staring.
"Is he checking me out?" she asked.
"Uh-huh." I didn't tell her the look wasn't so much admiration as there-but-for-the-grace-of-God fascination.
Star gave me her two-sided comedy-tragedy smile. "I'm telling you, chica, guys dig scars. Makes 'em think I'm tough."
I opened the passenger door and dumped the load in David's seat. Let him sort it out. "News flash, babe, you are tough. Toughest girl I ever met."
"Damn straight." She offered me a fist. I tapped it. She raised her voice for David. "Yo, boy, let's motor!"
He was watching the horizon. Clouds were creeping out there, doing something stealthy that sounded like barely more than a low mutter in Oversight. Too far off to concern us yet, but it was definitely my old friend the storm, coming back for more. The wind belled out his coat and snapped it behind him. I walked over.
"When she says boy, I think she means you," I said. He squinted into the distance behind his glasses.
"I got the point."
"And?"
He gave me a long, wordless look, then went back to the Land Rover, picked up the water and fast food, and sat himself in the passenger side. I climbed into the back. As Star shut the door, she looked quickly at David, then at me.
"Don't mean to get in the middle, but is there something I should know?" she asked.
"No." We both said it instantly, simultaneously. It couldn't have been more obvious we were lying.
"O… kay." She put the Land Rover in gear and rolled the big boat out to the freeway. "You down with my plan?"
"Star, I have no idea what plan you're talking about."
She accelerated the truck and slid smoothly in between a red rollover-prone SUV and a station wagon held together with duct tape and baling wire. "The one where I save your ass, babe."
"I'm still waiting for a plan. That's an outcome."
"Picky, picky… Okay, here's the deal. I have a source in Norman who can put us in touch with an honest-to-God masterless Djinn. You know, the kind running around, ready to be claimed. Sound good to you?"
I didn't dare look at David. He handed me a water bottle, and I cracked the plastic ring and sucked down lukewarm liquid. It tasted like sweat, but my body was shiveringly grateful.
"Sure," I said. "Sounds fabulous."
Norman, Oklahoma, was just twenty miles from Oklahoma City proper, but Star was making caution her new religion; we drove just about every cowpath and haypicker road in the county, watching for any sign Marion or her folks were on to us. Nothing. By the time we exited I-35 and crossed into Norman's city limits, it was getting close to sundown, and the burritos and bottled water were just a fond, gut-rumbling memory.
Norman's an old town, a strange mixture of prewar buildings and hypernew neon. The local college ensured a steady parade of coffee shops, clothing boutiques, used CD emporiums, and bookstores.
"Who's your source?" David asked. He upended his water and drained the last few drops from blue plastic; I wondered if he was really thirsty, if he even really felt such mundane things as hunger and thirst. He'd eaten with me that first afternoon, I remembered. And in the diner. Maybe he was more flesh than spirit, after all. And hey, sex? Pretty much of the flesh.
"Excuse me?" Star asked.
"Your source. The one who told you about the Djinn."
"Friend," she said, which was no more illuminating than anything else she'd said for the past two hours. "Which is all you need to know, seeing as how you're not in the Wardens." She reached out and passed her hand over his. No glyphs lit up on his palms. "Speaking of which, Jo, you owe me an explanation about how you and this cutie got together."
She gave him a look that reminded me Star wasn't all fun and games; she'd once been a Warden, tough and very strong. Even if she didn't have full command of her power anymore, she could be dangerous. And focused.
"Joanne told me." David pointed a thumb back over the seat at me. "Not that I believe any of this, anyway. But it makes a good story."
"Yeah?" Star's trademark smile flashed. "You planning to write it up, print it in the newspaper?"
"More like the tabloids."
"Makes sense. So why do you care who told me about the Djinn?"
"I don't," he said, and shrugged, and pulled a book from the pocket of his coat. Nothing I recognized. The cover had a black-and-yellow road sign blazed on the cover; when I squinted, I saw it read BE CAREFUL.
Jesus, he was tempting fate, doing that in front of her.
The cover shifted again, into a Patricia Cornwell mystery, and he opened it to a dog-eared page and appeared to forget all about me.
Star was watching me in the rearview mirror. "You heard about Lewis taking the Djinn, right? Three of 'em? When he bugged out?"
"I heard."
"Well, rumor has it he let at least one of them go. It's just a matter of tracking him down, that's all. And I've got just the girl to do it." She hadn't looked away. It was a little eerie, actually. Dark, dark eyes, pupils fading into irises. "Once you have Lewis, what then?"
"Then he helps me figure out how to get this thing out of me."
Her eyebrows slowly rose. "Yeah? You really think he knows how?"
"Sure." I was lying my ass off, mostly to myself, but it felt better than the uncertainty of the truth. "If anybody does, he does."
"Okay, stupid question. What I meant to ask is, why would he? You got something special going with him?"
Oh, that was a subject I really didn't want to dig into, not with David sitting in the passenger seat, thumbing blandly through a book. Star didn't seem to care. She started to smile, but her eyes were going cold.
"Or you got something else going with him? You on some undercover mission, chica?"
"Yeah, sure," I shrugged. "Don't ask, don't tell."
I meant it as a joke, and I wasn't prepared for the flash of sheer fury in her eyes. "Fine," she said. "Keep your little secrets."
"I don't have any secrets." As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized I'd lied to her. Effortlessly. Without a second thought. And I didn't even know why, except that a yellow danger sign kept flashing into my head. I'd chosen to trust Star. I just…
… couldn't trust her.
She drove down Main Street, past shops just lightning up against the darkness… grocery stores… gas stations… incongruously, a condom shop. The Burger King on the corner was doing a brisk business in robbing college students of their lunch money. On the other side of the narrow street, gracious Plantation-style homes with Doric columns put on a brave front that the South would rise again.
She slowed and turned into a strip-mall parking lot pretty much identical to the six others we'd passed, and pulled the Land Rover into a parking space barely able to stretch to fit it. I squinted up at the sign, which hadn't yet been turned on against the falling darkness: ball's books.
It looked like exactly what it was: a used bookstore, and not the corporate, regimented kind—the kind that conformed to the whim of an owner. I liked it immediately, but there was still a cold cramp in my stomach, and I couldn't think exactly how I was going to get out of this. More important, how I'd get David out of this.
I grabbed his coat sleeve as Estrella limped away, pulled him down for a whisper. "Take a walk."
"Where?" he asked mildly.
"Why should I care? I don't want you anywhere near her if she's going to
—"
His hand covered mine, and some of his human disguise fell away; his eyes turned burning, swirling bronze, and I felt his heat pour into me and drive out the chill. His smile, though, was all guy. All David.
"It won't matter," he said. "If she can find me at all, it doesn't matter where I go. If you're so worried about me, there's something you can do to stop it."
I knew what he meant. "I'm not claiming you."
He shrugged and took his hand away. "Then I'll take my chances."
Stubborn, infuriating…
Star tapped on the store window and gestured. David moved to the door and held it open for me, head down. I fought an impulse to kick him in the shins. As I walked past, he murmured, "No matter what happens, you always have a choice."
We stepped into cool silence and the smell of old paper. To the right was a wall of corkboard packed with cards and papers of every description, no rhyme or reason to it that I could see; some advertised massages, some were photocopies of newspaper cartoons, some were just plain mystifying. David stepped around her and began to look through books—I thought at first he was stalling for time, but his interest in the contents of the racks seemed genuine. He really did love reading, after all. And I guess even Djinn need a hobby.
"Hey, Star," said a voice from behind me. I turned to see a youngish woman sitting behind a table— well away from the cash register and counter— surrounded by books, a coffeemaker, and a butterscotch calico cat. She had brown hair cut in a shag and watchful cool eyes that struck me as capable and observant. "New romances in—you want to look through the boxes?"
"Not today, thanks, Cathy." Star exchanged what appeared to be a significant look with the woman. "I need the book."
If that seemed odd, asking for «the» book in a store littered with them, the woman clearly didn't think so; she looked spooked, not confused. "I thought we were done with that."
"Almost," Star said. She held out her hand, half-plea, half-demand. "Come on, Cathy, just this once."
Cathy shook her head, got up, and walked to the back of the store. She opened a door marked NO ADMITTANCE.
"The book?" I asked Star. She shrugged, still watching the open door at the back.
"Took me years to track it down," she said. "Cathy finally bought it off the Internet for me. I told her she could have it when I was done with it."
"What is it?"
Star smiled that lopsided smile. It wasn't comforting this time. "It's a surprise. You'll see."
Things thumped, back there. Cathy returned carrying a limp cardboard box, top closed, that looked like it weighed a considerable amount. She dropped it down on the desk and folded back the stained box wings.
"You're sure?" she asked. That silent communication again between them was nothing I could interpret. I didn't know Cathy Ball, but I felt like I should; on an impulse, I reached out and passed my hand over hers.
Glyphs shimmered, blue and silver. A Weather Warden. She looked up sharply and met my eyes; I smiled and showed her my matching set. Nothing eased in her body language. "Star?" she said. "You know I don't like other Wardens around here."
I hadn't been expecting a hug, but this was a bit much; we're generally a pretty chummy group.
"Sorry," Star said, not sounding too sorry at all. "She's a friend. She needs our help."
Cathy shot a look toward David, clearly asking the question. "No," I said. "He's not. What've you got against other Wardens, anyway?"
"Nothing," Cathy said, which vibrated like a lie all along my nerves. "It's just that they're trouble. Bunch of power-hungry, crazy, egotistical jerks, generally. I like peace and quiet." Her eyes narrowed at me. "Take that business in Oklahoma City today. You wouldn't believe what a mess that was. The aetheric was screwed up from here to Kansas, all the way over to Phoenix. Took hours just to get the temperature variances back to normal."
I threw a save me! look at Star, who was busy taking a huge leather-bound book out of the cardboard box and shaking off white packing peanuts. She ignored me, shoved the box off to thump on the floor, and eased the book down to the desk on top of a mound of category romances.
The cat that had been slinking inquisitively around Cathy's plate of doughnuts hissed around and skittered away, shooting past David into the farthest corner of the store. David had paused with the new Stephen King novel in his hands, staring at the book that Star had laid out, and I saw cinders of gold and bronze catch fire in his eyes. It was the real deal; I could see that from the intensely blank expression on his face.
"Star," I said, "Look, maybe this isn't the right time. I'm really tired, I'm starved—let's take this thing with us, get something to eat, maybe have a good night's sleep and talk it over. I'm trashed. Really."
She flipped open pages that crackled like vellum. "This won't take long."
That was what I was afraid of. Cathy Ball sat back down in her chair, picked up a pen, and wrote something down in a ledger, but she couldn't take her eyes off Star for very long. I wondered what kind of history there was between them, because I could have sworn that the woman looked… scared. Of Star. Who didn't have a mean bone in her body.
"I'll need your Djinn," Star said without looking up.
Cathy put the pen down. "No," she said. "Not after last time."
"I won't hurt her."
"I said no, Star."
Star looked up, finally, and I wasn't in the right angle to see her face, but I did see Cathy's. It went pale.
"Chica," Star murmured, "don't make me get all cranky with you."
Cathy's lips pressed into a thin line, and a frown grooved between her brows, but she reached into the desk drawer and came out with a tiny little glass perfume bottle, one of those little sample sizes. She tossed it across the desk to Star, who caught it right-handed.
"I'll be in the back," Cathy said.
Star didn't watch her go; she unscrewed the lid of the perfume bottle. No visible result, but I felt a surge of something behind me.
"Can I help you?" the Djinn asked. I turned to see her standing at an angle between me and Star, watching us both with bright, neon-blue eyes.
She was a child. Or at least she looked like she was no older than fourteen—dressed in a pale blue dress with a white apron. Long, long blond hair, straight, held back with an Alice in Wonderland blue band. Her heart-shaped face was sweet and innocent and straight out of Lewis Carroll.
When she looked at me, she frowned and wrinkled her nose. I knew she could smell the Mark. She looked from me to David, still standing like a statue in the general fiction section, but there was nothing to show she recognized who or what he was. She focused back on Star.
"Hey, Alice," Star said, and held out the book. "Hold this."
Alice didn't move. She didn't resist, but she didn't comply. Star muttered Spanish curses under her breath and yelled Cathy's name. Twice. Cathy finally came to the no admittance door and looked out.
"Tell her to obey me," Star said. Cathy rubbed her forehead.
"Do what she wants," she said wearily. "Three times only."
Alice nodded. I was glad, for Alice's sake, that Cathy had put a limit on compliance.
"Hold this," Star said again. Alice extended her arms and took the book from Star's hands. There was something about it that the Djinn didn't like; I could see it in the widening of her eyes, but Alice didn't— couldn't—protest. Star flipped pages and found what she was looking for, then gestured to me. I took a step closer and stopped when the girl looked at me with those bright, empty, desolate eyes.
"Here," Star said as she grabbed my wrist and pulled me closer, next to her. "Read this out loud."
"What is it?" My legs were trembling, my heart pounding. The adrenaline was making my Demon Mark hiss and stretch inside me, and that only made my heart race faster, as if it wanted to escape.
"Hey, you want to fix this thing or not? 'Cause chica, the Demon Mark is nothing to screw around with. You let it get control of you, and you won't be the same."
&
nbsp; I looked down at the words, not words at all, some kind of symbols, and I started to tell her I didn't know what they meant, but something clicked in my head and I did know, I understood, I could hear the way the words were supposed to sound, taste the heavy flavor of them on my tongue. There was power in this thing. Earth power. Maybe fire. Certainly nothing I could control, though.
The words waited, wanted to be spoken. I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again and heard the first syllable whispering and gathering strength and echoing in the sounding bell of my mind.
"Say it," Star whispered. I felt her warm breath on my ear. "It has to be you, chica, I can't do it for you."
The Djinn, Alice. That was where this power was flowing from. She was holding the book, and the book drew power from her… I wondered if it hurt her. Her eyes were huge, doll-like, empty of emotion. Empty of fear. Her arms were shaking, as if the book were heavier than the world.
I hadn't heard him walk up to me, but now David was there, at the edge of my vision, almost glittering with intensity. He was still in human disguise, human form, but how much longer? How long until the words echoing in my head forced him to reveal himself?
I reached out, took the book from the Djinn's arms, and slammed it closed with a sound like thunder. The Djinn stumbled backwards, or floated; she looked drained and skeletal for a few seconds, then rebuilt herself into the sweet-faced little refugee from beyond the looking glass.
"No," I said. I looked at Star and saw she was staring at me as if she'd never seen me before, as if I'd grown two heads and goat feet. "This is wrong, Star. I can feel it."
"Wrong," she repeated slowly. She reached out and put her hand over the place the Demon Mark had left its black scorching tattoo on my breast. "And this isn't?"
"That wasn't my choice." I hefted the heavy book.
It smelled faintly rotten, felt damp and unclean. "This is. And I'm not doing it."
Her eyes went flat and opaque, like Mayan flint. "You can't keep it," she said, and there was something terrible in her voice, like blood and lightning. "I can't let you keep it, Jo."
Her face was changing. Melting. Becoming beautiful, the way she'd been back before Yellowstone. Taking on a kind of lush, lustrous glow that was too perfect, even for an airbrushed magazine model. An inhuman beauty.
