Rachel Caine: Chicks Kick Butt

That was not the way it worked for the New Djinn (or the Old Djinn, for that matter). Djinn could make the leap from human to superhuman only when there had been enough lives lost to trigger some kind of energy exchange … people dying alone, or even in small groups, wouldn’t do it. David had made me a Djinn once, but he’d cheated, using his own power to sustain me. That hadn’t gone over well, and it hadn’t been sustainable, for either of us.

“She didn’t have another Djinn helping her?”

“Nothing. She just … died, under traumatic circumstances, and then transformed. Jonathan was studying her to find out why, but she’s difficult to control, and I don’t think he got very far with it before—” He didn’t need to continue. We both knew that Jonathan had given his life so that David could live, after our disastrous attempt to keep me Djinn. “She’s extremely powerful. More than any other New Djinn, except me, and that’s only because I’m the Conduit.” David was the direct plug-in for the New Djinn to the powers of the Earth—the center of the spiral. Whatever his normal power level might be, he could draw on the strength of the Mother, and that trumped Whitney or any other New Djinn.

It didn’t look to me like Whitney was the type to accept that without pushing the issue, though.

“She’s—not like the other Djinn I’ve met.”

“More human? She is that. In human life, she was savagely ambitious, and she’s carried that over to life as a Djinn. Whitney’s never seen a challenge she didn’t want to take, or believed she couldn’t win.” He sounded as if he almost admired that—from a distance. “She was a thief and a con artist as a human. She’s carried that over as well. No matter how many times I tell her being Djinn isn’t a license to cause chaos…”

The primping apparently had concluded, and now the still photographer was having his day, having Whitney pout, pose, and lounge with the backdrop of the sports car. She was, I had to admit, good at it. I wished my best friend, Cherise, was at my side; surely she would have had some good, snarky asides to make me feel better.

Especially since Whitney kept glancing at David between shots, as if all her pouting, sexy posing was personal.

If it affected him, he wasn’t showing it. He watched her with a cool, intense stare, arms folded, clear warning in his body language.

The photos went on for a while, but they were finally done, and a round of applause sounded around the crew.

“Get her set for the video,” the director ordered, and ran over to check focus on his two high-definition rigs, much to the bored chagrin of the camera operators. “Come on, people, the light’s going to go soon!”

“Well, this is exciting,” I said. “And our champagne is getting warm in the car, you know.”

“I know,” David said. “But she’s not here for the chance to look pretty.”

“Then why is she here?”

“She’s a sociopath and a thief, and as far as I know it could be anything. The thing is, if I leave, there’s nothing to stop her.”

Whitney must have heard him, because she straightened from a casual lounging position against the shiny Bugatti, smiled with blinding intensity, and said, “Oh, honey, please. There’s nothing to stop me now !”

In between one breath and the next, she opened the Bugatti’s door, slipped inside, and fired up the engine, which caught with a full-throated, intimidating roar. The director jerked upright, staring, utterly astonished, and dug in his pockets. He came out with a set of keys—the car keys, presumably—and stared from that to Whitney, who was playfully gunning the engine. “How—”

Whitney held up a finger. Her middle one. White bolts of electricity sizzled around it and reflected in her purple eyes. “Greed is bad,” she said. “I’m just helping save all those people who’d see this ad and feel all inadequate about the size of their cars, that’s all.”

And then she put the Bugatti in gear, and arrowed it straight for the cameras.

Somehow, the people managed to scramble out of the way—David probably helped propel them, actually, from the way they were tossed around—and one of the cameras was blown into junk by a leading wave of invisible force before the car’s bumper could touch it. The other was just knocked over like a big, ungainly insect. There was screaming. Some of it, I realized, was coming from a suited man who’d been sitting off to the side. From the horror on his face, he was the owner of either the Bugatti or the diamond bikini, and his insurance had just lapsed.

“Crap,” David sighed, and turned to me. “Would you mind…?”

“Do you really have to ask? Of course I’ll do it.”

I raced for the car, and David took the faster route, blipping directly through the aetheric from where he stood into the passenger seat. Fast as I was getting settled and the engine started, I knew that seconds were ticking. I didn’t think the car I was driving, sweet as it was, had a hope in hell of chasing down a Bugatti with a Djinn driver, but what the hell.

I like a challenge too, Whitney. Let’s play.

I wasn’t the only one on the trail of the fleeing Bugatti. Behind me, the state troopers had finally gotten their act together and were blaring a siren in the distance, trying to make up distance. They’d never make it. Even their fastest car wasn’t going to catch me, much less Whitney.

“They’ll block her in,” I said as I shifted, pushing the car faster around the next turn. The curves would get worse, and I knew I’d have to shed speed soon, but for now I had to try to make up as much road as I could. “She’ll never make it past the first crossroads.”

“That’s a long way, and she can do a lot of damage before she gets there.”

“Can’t you just—you know—blip over and stop her?”

“Not without destroying the car,” he said. “I thought you wouldn’t want me to do that. I’m trying to disable the engine, but she’s already put a shield around everything I’ve tried.”

He was frowning, and I could see something was bothering him. “What?”

“Whitney’s crazy, but she’s not stupid. She knows this is a no-win chase. The police will block her in, or I’ll find a way to stop her without hurting anyone.”

“Maybe it’s just a joyride.”

“She’s a thief. Not a joyrider. She has a reason for doing this—watch out!”

I saw it just as he did—an alligator, charging out of the swamp and onto the road. A gigantic one, ancient, and definitely nothing to be messed with under the best of circumstances. I didn’t think for a second that the poor gator was doing this of his own accord, though—she’d thrown him in front of us as a living speed bump, with armor and teeth. We’d kill him if we hit him. We’d also damage the car, probably so badly that we’d have to abandon the chase.

“Hang on,” I said, and reached out with Earth powers to literally drag the gator off the road to the other side. Earth powers are not my strong suit, and it felt like picking up a safe with one hand—painful, and all but impossible, but I’m not one to let a little thing like pain and impossibility stop me, and the confused reptile waddled/slid safely out of our path just in time, with his scaly tail flicking to boom against David’s door as we whizzed past. I’d gone as far over to the left as I’d dared to leave plenty of room, and even then, it had been close. Very close.

I looked back. The gator was already disappearing into the muddy swampland, grateful to be out of our affairs, I suspected.

I caught a flash of metal up ahead. The Bugatti was still just barely in sight, which meant that even Whitney couldn’t—or didn’t want to—violate the laws of physics. We still had a chance.