Rachel Caine: Heat Stroke

“Wouldn’t advise you to try. I may not look it, but I’m pretty tough to kill,” I said. “You can ask around. How many people you know survived having two Demon Marks?”

Jonathan half turned and gave me a sarcastic, onesided smile. “Half a Djinn, and she’s already giving me grief. Must be your influence.”

“Not my fault. Like this when I met her.” David’s smile was delighted, warm, proud. “You’ll like her, Jonathan. Trust me.”

The flickering response—so close to being love— died in Jonathan’s eyes. “I did trust you,” he said. “Look what it’s gotten me.” He turned back to face the window. “You broke the law, David. You brought a human into our world. That means you have to pay the price. If the price isn’t giving her up, then it has to be something else.”

The fire suddenly flared and died to dead, black ashes. Light faded outside to a cold gray. When Jonathan turned around, he was no longer masquerading as a regular guy. The house morphed around me. Couches disappeared. The homey wooden walls changed to unyielding marble.

And Jonathan became something so bright, so powerful that I turned away, eyes squeezed shut, and struggled to control a surge of pure fear.

He is the one true god of your new existence.

I didn’t realize that Rahel had meant it literally.

I felt David go down on his knees, and I followed, kept my head down and my mouth shut. This was what David had been warning me about. This was the Jonathan you didn’t argue with. I felt power surge through the room, as bright and vivid as lightning, and wanted to make myself very small. I couldn’t. Whatever powers I had were frozen in place, helpless. I couldn’t even get myself up off my knees.

“David, will you let this woman die?” It wasn’t a voice, not really. It was thunder, it was a dark, silky wind wrapping around us. Too big to be sound, to have ever come from anything like a human body.

“No.” David’s voice was just a raw rasp, barely audible. I couldn’t imagine how he was able to talk at all, given the pressure on us.

“Will you let her die?”

“No.”

“I ask a third time: Will you let this woman die?” He was asking it in the traditional Djinn way. The answer David gave now would be the truest one, the reflection of his heart and soul. He wouldn’t be able to lie, not even to himself.

From David, a hesitation. I couldn’t help it; I forced my eyes open and saw him struggling back to his feet. Standing tall, lonely, defiant.

“No,” he said. “Never.”

The light sighed. “Yeah,” it said. “Figures. Well, I had to ask.”

The incredible brilliance died and left me blind. I heard footsteps. As I blinked away darkness, I saw the temple morphing again, turning back to cabin walls, tapestries, overstuffed comfortable couches. No pressure now. I forced myself shakily back upright, holding on to the back of the couch for support. Fabric dragged at my fingers, real, so damn real. All of it, so real.

Jonathan stood in front of me, back to merely human again, shoulders strong and tensed under the black shirt, eyes as dark as space. He glared at us, locked his arms across his chest, and said, “If you won’t let go of her, the only way to get rid of her is to kill you, too. But you already know that.”

“Yeah. I know.”

The glare continued full force. “Crazy son of a bitch.”

David’s luminous smile warmed the air around all of us. “And you already knew that.”

Jonathan’s fierce look softened. “So I did.” They looked at each other for a few long seconds, and then Jonathan dragged himself back to dad mode with a visible effort. “Here’s what I’ve decided. I’ll give her a week to learn to live on her own. One week, counting from now. Then I cut the cord. If she can’t draw power on her own, she’ll go the way of the dinosaurs. Maybe you’ll die with her, maybe you won’t. I’m not making that decision for you. I’m making one about her. Got it?”

He did, and he didn’t like it. David frowned. “Jonathan, a week’s not long enough—”

“It’s what she’s got,” he interrupted. “Be grateful. I don’t even have to do that much.” He turned to me, and I found myself standing straighter. “You. You understand what I just said?”

“I have a week to figure this out or I die. Got it.”

“No, you don’t,” Jonathan corrected. Those dark, cold eyes weighed me and found me wanting, again. “David’s just said that he won’t let go. If I cut the cord and he doesn’t release the hold, you both bleed to death up there on the aetheric, and nobody can help you. Not me, not anybody. Get it?”

I swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

“This is on you now. You fix this, or you might take him with you.”

David, dying for me because I dropped the ball? No way in hell. “I will,” I said. “I promise.”

“Good. Glad we’re in agreement.”

I wasn’t prepared for it, so when hands closed around me from behind and yanked me into an iron-hard embrace, I squeaked like a field mouse instead of fighting back. The hands that held me were feminine, perfectly groomed, with fingernails glossed in bright neon yellow.

“Don’t fight me,” Rahel’s voice whispered in my ear. “Neither one of us has a choice in this.”

David whirled to face us, but Jonathan held out a hand and instantly David was frozen, unable to move. His face was chalky and strained, his eyes molten, but he was helpless.

“Here’s the deal,” Jonathan continued. “I need David with me right now, Djinn business that can’t wait. So you’re going to have to go to boarding school. No boyfriends to coddle you, no special favors, you get to earn your place with us the hard way. Understand?”

I didn’t, but I discovered that I couldn’t say a word, anyway. I threw a desperate look at David, and found him just as horrified, if not more. I could practically feel the no ! vibrating the air between us.

“Master,” Rahel said. “Where do I take her?”

Jonathan’s narrow dark eyes swept over me one last time. Judging me like a drill sergeant assessing a particularly scrawny new recruit.

“Patrick,” he said. “Take her to Patrick.”

David let out a strangled cry of protest, but it was too late. The world—Jonathan, David, the cabin— disappeared around me as Rahel took me out of the world.

And then, with no sense of transition at all, we were standing in an alley in Manhattan. Well, Rahel was standing in an alley in Manhattan; I was drifting around like Pigpen’s dirt cloud trying to figure out how to put my skin on again. Crap . I’d never get the lime green Manolos right.

Rahel crossed her arms and stared at the not-space where I was. Amused. She inspected her flawless fingernails and evidently decided that neon yellow was no longer the color of the day; her pantsuit morphed to a hot tangerine, and her nails took on a rich sunset blend of orange, gold, and blue. Even the beads in her hair changed to amber and carnelian.

“Still waiting,” she said, and wiggled her fingers to inspect the effect. Evidently it wasn’t impressive enough; she added some rings, nothing too flashy, then turned her attention back to me. “Come on, Snow White, we don’t have all week.”

Keep your pants on , I thought at her. She must have heard it, because she raised one eyebrow in a very Spock-like gesture of amusement.

“The issue, I think, is your pants, not mine.”

I slowly formed myself, inside out. Faster than before. By the time the skin came on, I was already moving on to the clothing, adding it rapidly from the templates I’d created earlier. Zip, zoom. Maybe five seconds. Not so bad.

The shoes looked good. I leaned over and admired them, decided I really needed toenail polish, and went for matching lime green.