Ill Wind

She dumped the bowl on the counter between us. "You already did think of something. You brought the damn Wardens here. If they find us, they'll take him away, take you away . . . and you know what they'll do to me, Jo. Gut me and leave me like I was before. A freak. Worse. A powerless freak. I can't live like that, and you know it."



"Nothing you can do to stop it now," I said. "It's too late. I'm sorry. I really am."



"Oh, there is something I can do. Nobody knows where the hell Lewis is, anyway, so it's no big thing. He disappears, you disappear ... all I have to do is get rid of Maid Marion and her merry band of butchers out there. Maybe I'll get David to blow up their truck. I hate those damn SUVs, anyway, and they'll just blame it all on you." Star finished scraping cookies from the second sheet pan, dumped it, and held out the bowl to me. "Here. Have one."



"Thanks, I'd rather choke on a razor blade. Which I'm not so sure you didn't bake inside those."



She smiled, or tried to, and put the bowl down. "So. We gonna fight now, or what?"



I looked at her over the bowl of cookies. My friend. My sister. My ghostly reflection of what might have happened if I'd been the one in the fire that day, because I'd always known I wasn't cut out for normal human life any more than Star was.



"Guess so," I said. "Because I'm taking Lewis and David out of here."



"Thought you'd say that."



She took another bite of cookie.



Behind her, the oven exploded into a brilliant blue-white ball of flame, which raced my way.



I dropped to the floor in a crouch and tossed every oxygen molecule out of the air around me for three feet in any direction. Fire needs O2. It was an elementary tactic, but it worked; the fire blasted toward me, hit the shield of nonoxygenated air, and deflected around. The heat wasn't hard to control, either; after all, it was just molecules moving. I made them move slower.



When it was over, I wasn't even singed. I let go of the air bubble, stepped toward Star, and took a deep breath. "You know, I was feeling sorry for you," I said. "Poor little Star, all alone in that hospital, burned beyond recognition, boo-fucking-hoo. Did you ever stop to think about all those Wardens who died? Who never even made it out? Of course you didn't. Because it's just all about you."



She laughed. It was a crazy sound. She held out both hands in front of her, palms up, and intense blue-white flames danced on the skin and reflected in her dark eyes. "Yeah, like it ain't all about you, Jo. Bad Bob dumps a problem on you, and what do you do? Take off running like a scared rabbit to save your skin. You don't want to give up your powers any more than I do. You've put people in danger. Hell, for all I know, you killed some, too. So don't pretend we're not alike."



"Oh, we're alike," I agreed. "See, that's why I didn't use David like some piece of Kleenex to save my skin. Because we're so fucking alike."



"You gonna whine or fight?"



"I'm gonna win," I said. "Bank it."



She bared her teeth. "Yeah? Look behind you."



I did.



There was a man standing there in the open doorway that must have led to the cellar of the house-tall, lanky, his face almost hidden by a growth of shaggy dark hair. He was wearing an ancient stained tie-dyed shirt and sweatpants stiff with grime. His feet were filthy. If I'd passed him on the street, I'd have dropped a dollar in his will work for food cup.



It was Lewis.



I turned around, put my hands out to my sides in the universal no-danger-here pose, and said, "Lewis? Remember me? It's Jo."



He was staring at me with eyes so wide and dark that they looked to be all pupil. Drugged, or worse. Completely mad.



He was staring at my breasts. Which was, to put it mildly, more weird than flattering in the current circumstances.



He looked up into my face, and I felt my knees turn to water at the sight of all the torment and confusion in his eyes. If Star didn't get punished for anything else she did, ever, she should be punished for this.



"Jo?" he asked, and it was an entirely normal voice, which was entirely not normal, given the way he looked. "I'm really sorry about all this. I can't stop it."



And then he walked up and slugged me, right in the face.



Fire and Weather don't go to war. We don't go to war because it's too dangerous, and we have no decisive advantages. Our powers counter each other very nicely, all the way down the line.



But when Weather fights Weather . . . that's when it gets nasty.



And that was exactly why I'd declared a Code One general alert, because I wanted the mystical world of the aetheric locked down tighter than a drum. A Code One calls every Warden able to respond, everywhere, to action. Locking down their patterns, whether of weather or fire or earth, in the same way you'd anchor boats in a storm or plywood your windows in a hurricane. Basically, it meant everything came to a stop.



Over Oklahoma City, the air was clear, still, and dead. Nothing was moving. Nothing could without a massive push, one large enough to toss off the controls of at least a hundred Wardens and their Djinn.



That wasn't likely to happen. Not even for Lewis.



Which at the moment of my opening my eyes didn't help much, because I felt like I'd been hit by a Mack Truck. I'm mostly insulated against lightning, I can sling wind and rain and hail with the best of 'em, but boxing . . . not my specialty.



I groaned and rolled over on my side and touched my throbbing chin. My lip was split. I explored it with the tip of my tongue, tasted fresh blood, and tried to figure out exactly what was going on.



Ah. It all came back. Star, the cookies, Lewis smacking the crap out of me.



The Code One lockdown.



I might have robbed Star and Lewis of options, but I also hadn't left myself a whole lot of room to maneuver.



Something brushed my face, light as cobwebs, and where it touched pain faded. I knew that touch, that warming sensation.



"She's awake." David's voice, stripped of emotion. I opened my eyes and saw him sitting next to me. He didn't ask how I was, or say anything directly to me, but that touch-I had to believe that it had been David who'd done that, the real David. Was it possible for him to fight for control? To go against her? If Star knew . . .



"About time." Star, of course; she sounded freaked, which made her sound callous. "Jesus, girl, you're not exactly one of those TV kick-ass hero chicks, are you. One punch, you're down for ten minutes. My mama could have done better."



"Get her down here, we'll go," I mumbled. I wiped a trickle of blood away from my lips and sat up.



"It's over, Star. I've already spilled the beans. They're coming for all of us. Lewis'll probably get a Demonectomy, but you, you're toast, babe. They'll hoover you so dry, you won't be able to light a match with a nuclear weapon."



She kicked me. Right in the stomach. I'd never been kicked in the stomach before, and it was not a special treat. I rolled over, pulled my knees up, and gagged through the pain. I wondered if she'd ruptured anything I couldn't live without. It would be a real bitch to end up dead, ripped up by this damn Demon I hadn't chosen, setting destruction loose on the aetheric, just because I'd taken a pointy-toed boot in the spleen.



"Don't," Lewis said. He was sitting in the corner, resting his chin on his crossed forearms.



"Don't what?" Star shot back, and paced in front of me like a crack addict on a caffeine high. "She ruined it! She brought them here . . . and now they know. I can't let them take me. I can't."



Watching her, I realized David had been right when he'd warned me of the corrupting effects of living with the Demon Mark. Star had taken it; she'd lived with it in secret for a long time, and it had gnawed out her soul.



It made me wonder about Lewis. He had a towering amount of ability, but I wasn't sure anymore about his soul.



I was no longer sure about mine, either.



Star whirled on David and snapped her fingers at him. "You. Get us out of here."



"Where?" he asked without moving his eyes away from me. Dark eyes, a stranger's eyes. But he was still watching me with that eerie focus, the way he had before. You don't own him completely, Star.



She growled in frustration, walked over to him, and grabbed him by the hair. She forced his head up and made him meet her eyes. "Hey. Look at me when I'm talking to you!"



He had no change of expression. If it hurt him at all, I couldn't tell. He didn't try to pull away. David, the poseable doll.



"I want to go to New York."



"Specify," he said.



She looked baffled. "Grand Central Station!"



"Specify."



He could, I sensed, play this game forever, down to making her identify the square inches of tile she wanted to plant her feet upon. Not only could she not do it, but she didn't even have the patience to try. She slammed his head backwards into the wall and let him go.



"Useless. Both of you. Unlimited power, my ass. I can't get either one of you to lift a finger." She nudged Lewis with her toe, but he didn't respond, except to close his eyes; I felt a cold shiver and wondered what she'd done to him down here, what kind of hell a man who wielded near-unlimited power could experience to break him like this.



"Hey, Star?" I asked. I sat up, pulling my back closer to the wall, and reached out to lay my hand on top of David's, squeezed it in warning. "Let's figure out how to get out of this alive. Both of us."



She turned away and stalked back to me, dropped into a crouch by my side. Her dark eyes glittered like razor-sharp obsidian. "What's your proposal?"



"Who says I have one?"



"Jo, I know you. You've always got an idea. It's usually crappy, but you always have one." For just a second, there was a flicker, a memory of what she'd been. Who we'd both once been. Oh, Star. "Remember when we built the anatomically correct snowman outside the dean's office? Not such a great plan, chica. But it had style."



I remembered. I didn't want to, because it made things harder, remembering the outrageous fun of that winter night, our breathless giggles fogging the air. She'd been so stupidly innocent back then, and I'd been such a bad influence . . .



I had to be a worse one now. To save whatever was left of the girl I still loved.



I sucked in a breath that tasted of tears and said, "Easy. Give Lewis up. Look, he's of no use to you, anyway. He's got the Mark, and he can't give it back to you. Even if he could, he wouldn't because he knows you're raving ape-shit crazy, and he'd rather die than see what you'd do with it. You're screwed, Star. Let him go, and you win points with the Wardens."



She blew a raspberry that lifted the fine dark bangs on her forehead. "Yeah, right. That's likely to happen."



"It is if I tell them it was all my fault. I killed Bad Bob. I have the Mark. And I've been running away from Marion's crew for more than a thousand miles. I tell them everything was my fault, not yours. They'll believe it."



She stared at me without blinking. "Yeah? And why do I believe you'll say it in the first place?"



I gave her a slow, painful smile. "Because you have something I want, Star." I looked over at David, then back to her. "Break his bottle and set him free. I'll go away like a good girl, Lewis is saved, everybody's happy."



"Not me," Star said. "Not unless I get back what I had."



I swallowed bile and said, "Then you live to scheme another day."



She frowned, grooving little lines between those fine black eyebrows, and studied me for so long, I thought she'd gone blind. "That's stupid," she finally said. "Even if I do free David, I still have the book. I can take him back any time I want. What's the point?"



"Well, that's the second part. You let him destroy the book."



She laughed. "Never happen. Let me tell you my scenario, Jo. The house burns. They find bodies. Nobody's ever sure who belongs to who, except that me and my new que lindo Djinn end up living the sweet life on a tropical island, with nobody to know it. I don't need both you and Lewis, you know. I need only one of you, for David to take the Mark and give it to me. After that, you're all better off dead." She smiled slightly, and it was bitter and ugly and hard. "Well, I'm better off."



She played with fire on her fingertips. She stared at it, then moved it closer to my face. Closer, as if she were trying to see by the light of it.



She set my hair on fire. I resisted the urge to scream and roll around, and beat it out with the palm of my hand. The smell of it lingered between us.



"Just a sample," she said. "How'd it feel?"



I froze the air around her, so cold, I saw frost form instantly on her skin. She cried out and jerked away in panic.



"About like that does," I said. "Don't push me. I'll give you freezer burn so deep, they'll have to microwave you to hear you scream. You start this, you know we'll both die. How does that help either one of us?"



Something wavered in her eyes. She reached out and pushed my burned hair back from my face, and for a second there wasn't a gulf of years and secrets. "You'd really do it? Tell them it was you?"



"Yeah," I said. "I will. Doesn't matter anymore- they won't let me keep my powers. I'm too far gone with this damn Mark. My life is over, Star. I know that. At least let me do something useful."



Star nodded, looked at David, and got up to go to the worktable. She took a small bottle out of a drawer and set it down next to the book. She paused for a few seconds, looking up as if she could hear through the floor above us. Maybe she could. "Company's here," she said. "Marion and her merry men, seven or eight at least. Enough to keep us busy, if we wanted to make a fight."



"But we're not going to," I said. "Right?"



"Right." Star lifted the bottle in her hand, looked at it from different angles. "Weird, how a Djinn always has to be sourced in glass. You'd think with all the advances, we'd be able to use plastic. Stupid fucking rules."



I didn't like her sudden change of focus. "Star, it won't work! If you order David to do this, he'll be destroyed. Even if he's not, you can't order him to give you the Mark. He can't do it. Once he takes it, it won't leave him until it wins and eats him." I was getting desperate-sweating, exhausted, scared. My head hurt. I could still smell the weirdly disorienting aroma of fresh-baked cookies wafting down from the kitchen. "Come on. Let's all walk out of here alive, at least."



She looked at me for a long, wordless few seconds, then cocked her head to the side. "Why?"



"What do you mean, why?"



"Why do you want to save me? First Lewis, now you. Why?"



I couldn't even believe she was asking. "Because I love you, Star. Don't you know?"



Her eyes filled up with tears, but none broke free. She blinked them away. They left a hard, unsettling shine behind. "Love you, too," she said. She turned the bottle, staring at the facets of glass. Held it up between us and let the light gleam through. "You know, there's one thing I could do."



I felt a cold surge of dread. "Yeah?"



"Last resort, I could have David take the Mark, seal him in the bottle, and then it's your word against mine. Or maybe you go crazy, try to kill Lewis, he has to kill you, everybody dies in a tragic accidental fire but me, very sad. And you know, I think I like that plan better."



She put the bottle back down and, without turning around, said, "David, go over to Lewis and take the Demon Mark out of him."



"No!" I screamed, and lunged for her back. She fell against the table, and the bottle trembled on wood but didn't fall. Her hand closed around it. "Dammit, Star, no, don't do this!"



"Take the Mark!" she yelled. When I tried to pull away from her, she twisted around and held me back, and the burning sensation in my skin wasn't a Djinn illusion; it was the real deal. "Do it!"



David levitated up and slowly across the floor toward Lewis.



"David, don't! I'll say the words, please don't do this-" It was too late for that. He couldn't listen to me, couldn't obey me.



I ripped free of Star's grasp and threw myself at them just as David's hand reached down, into Lewis, and Lewis screamed.



Star threw fire at me. I dodged, but the fireball rolled under the stairs and flared up against dry wood. I didn't have time to spare to put it out; that was Star's specialty, let her deal with it. I reached out to grab hold of David and pull him away from Lewis.



My hand passed right through him-through both of them. Whatever was happening wasn't happening on this plane at all.



I threw myself up into Oversight and saw David the way he really was-a flaming angel, gilded and beautiful, with his hands deep inside the crystal perfection that made up the core of Lewis. Something black and horrible lashed out of Lewis, whipped tentacles around David's arms, crawled through the bridge and attacked. It was like seeing a butterfly being eaten by acid, and even though I couldn't hear David screaming, I could feel it. He'd suffer forever from this. It would never stop for him, until the end of time.