Rachel Caine: Firestorm

Another smile, this one stronger and warmer. "You never could, you know. Always in motion."

"Damn straight. Basic principles of physics. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest. Things in motion require less effort to overcome resistance."

"I love your mind."

"Is that all?" I arched my eyebrows back at him, and his eyes sparked bronze.

He smiled, and then the smile slowly faded. "We can't do this."

Damn. The warmth inside me, barely felt, began to fade. "Why not?"

"Because it's dangerous. You begin to trust me; I begin to think you can trust me. That's a very bad idea." He stood up. "I shouldn't have come here."

"Then why did you?" I demanded, out of patience. "Dammit, don't come here and look—look all perfectly hot and good enough to lick—don't just show up and tell me that I can't trust you, because I do trust you, I always have, even when I didn't have any reason to do it! Don't do this to us ! It hurts!"

My vehemence shook him. He honestly didn't expect that outburst—I could see it in the way he drew back inside himself, watching me. The bronze glints died in his eyes, forced back. He looked like a man. A tired, vulnerable, sorrowful man. "I want to help," he said.

"Well, pony up, cowboy! Now's the time!"

"All right." He closed his eyes, as if he couldn't stand to look at me while he said it. "You can't cut the Djinn off from the Mother. Oh, there's a way, but if you do, you only guarantee your own destruction. The Earth would go mad. It wouldn't just be humanity being wiped away, it would be every living thing in the world. She would just—reset the game and start over. What you have to do is become… Jonathan. Become the conduit for humanity, to her ."

Finally, we were getting somewhere. "And how exactly do I do that?" He opened his mouth, then shut it again. No answer. "David, half an answer is worse than none. Tell me."

"I hate putting you at risk like this."

"Dammit, how could I be more at risk? I saw—" I stopped, because I intuitively knew I shouldn't tell David about the dream. At best, he'd dismiss it. At worst, it would raise false hopes that Jonathan was… somewhere out there. "I'm a Warden, and I'm on the front lines already. At least give me the tools to get the job done."

His head jerked up, and he fixed on me with such intensity that I flinched, a little. "I'm not sure it won't kill you."

"Well," I said after a shaky second of a pause, "that's a 'been there, done that' situation, and anyway it's not your choice to make, is it?"

And that was a long second of pause, from both of us. Precarious and painful.

"No," he finally admitted, and squeezed his eyes closed as he thought about it. "All right. I can't tell you how to do it—I'm not even sure how Jonathan did it, in the first place. But I can tell you where ." He made a visible decision and opened his eyes. They were glowing now, Djinn-bronze flecked with ruddy amber. "You've been there once already. Seacasket."

"Seacasket?" I tried to remember… and then I did, with a chilling rush of pain and panic.

Once upon a time, I had been a Djinn, and I had been sent to Seacasket by my master (if you could call a punk like Kevin a master, which was a stretch) to destroy the town. In fire.

David had stopped me that time. And somehow, Kevin's stepmonster Yvette had known that he would. It had been the trap she set for him, to get him back in her power.

"Seacasket's special," I said. "Yvette knew."

He nodded. "It's a—thin space in the aetheric. One of two or three places in this country where a human might be able to reach one of the Oracles."

"Oracles?" I'd never heard of Oracles, other than the ancient Greek kind. Or the software company. From the regretful look that flashed across his face, it wasn't something any human had probably heard before. Or that the Djinn ever intended we would.

"They don't exist here, on this plane. They're—different. And Jo, they're dangerous. Very dangerous, even to Djinn. I—can't imagine how dangerous they'd be to a human, even if you can get one to allow you contact. Which isn't likely."

"Can't you—I don't know, introduce me?"

"It doesn't work that way," he said. "I wish to heaven it did, because this would already be finished and I'd have done this for you. The way I'm connected is subordinate. The Djinn are part of the body, not apart from it. Oracles…" He was out of words, and he shrugged. "There's no way to describe this, really. It's not a human thing."

I let out a slow breath. "Okay. Leaving all that on the table, is there anything you can do about all of the—the chaos out there? Weather, fire, earthquakes?…"

"I'll do what I can." David leaned forward and extended his hand again. This time, I took it. His skin was firm and hot and smooth, and my skin remembered it all too vividly. He was astonishingly tactile, always touching, and even as I thought it his fingers moved to my wrist, tracing my pulse. "I want to protect you. I want that with everything in me. The idea of sending you into danger without me… it terrifies me. You know that, right?"

My heart began to pound. I wanted to forget all of this. The wreckage outside of the infirmary door, the dead Wardens, the destroyed agreement with the Djinn, the upcoming end of the world. The future of bones .

I wanted him to keep on touching me, always.

"Jonathan always thought it was a kind of insanity, Djinn loving humans," David murmured. "Maybe he was right. We have to face losing what we love so often, and the urge to keep you out of danger is… overpowering, sometimes. But now I'm the danger. And the truth is, you can't really trust me, from this point on. Promise me you'll be careful of me."

"David—"

"I mean it, Jo. Promise me. I love you, I adore you, and you really can't trust me right now."

His hand tightened on mine. Our fingers twined, and he leaned closer and fitted his lips to mine.

Hot and sweet and damp, anguished and wonderful. I let go of his hand and wrapped my arms around his neck, buried my fingers in the warm living fire of his hair, and deepened the kiss. Willing him to be with me, to make this world be something it wasn't.

He made a sound in his throat, torture and despair and arousal all at once, and his hands fitted themselves around my waist and slid me off the bed and onto his lap. My chest pressed to his, every point of contact a bonfire. Our bodies, beyond our control, moved against each other, sliding, pressing, sweet wonderful friction that reminded us what we wanted, what we needed . For the first time in months, we were both healthy, both whole, both…

… both too aware of what this might cost us in the end.

I don't know which of us broke the kiss, but it ended, and we pressed our foreheads together and breathed each other's air without speaking for a long time, our bodies tensed and trembling, on the edge of burning.

"You're right," I finally whispered. My lips tasted of him. "I can't trust you. I damn sure can't trust myself when I'm with you."

He smoothed my hair back with both hands. "Good girl." He kissed me again, softly. "Smart girl. Remember that."

And then he lifted me, effortlessly, and set me on my feet. I got the impression he was about to leave, and panicked just a little. "Wait! Um… Seacasket. I'm not sure I can find it again."

"MapQuest," he said. "The modern world is full of conveniences even the Djinn can't match."

"Do I—?" I bit my lip, and then continued. "Do I go alone? Or am I going to have to fight my way through some kind of honor guard?"

"Take Imara," he said. His smile turned breathtakingly sweet. "She's astonishing, isn't she? Our child? I wish you could see her the way I do, Jo, she's—a miracle."