Rachel Caine - Heat Stroke

What about David? I closed my eyes and reached for that silver link between us. It was faint and thin, but it was there. Unbroken.

Blue specks crawled up my arms.

“Joanne!” Jonathan’s voice again, too loud, ringing inside my head. I blinked away blue sparks to stare up at him. “Shit. I told you to stay back!”

Funny that this didn’t hurt. It had hurt Rahel, I’d felt it shaking the fabric of the world, it hurt her so much. I could still feel her agony resonating in waves across the room.

Jonathan reached out for me, but I just stepped away. Instinct, I guess.

Because it didn’t hurt.

I opened my eyes again and saw the most amazing thing.

Sparks. Blue swarmed out of the air, onto my skin, and vanished . The things that had eaten Rahel couldn’t hurt me.

Jonathan stopped, staring at me. I sighed, watched the last of the coldlight sizzle into emptiness, and wondered what had him looking so pale and confused.

“I’m okay,” I said. I thought he was worried about me.

Pallor faded to stretched white on his face and clenched fists. His eyes looked dark and blind.

“Jonathan?”

“Little trouble here,” he said.

I extended a hand toward him…

… and he lit up like a Christmas tree with crawling blue light. Oh God ! The other Djinn backed away, viscerally terrified, as he wavered and fell backwards against a wall. Closed his eyes. “Shit,” he said. “Guess I’m not immune after all.”

Instinct. I grabbed for him as he started to slide down.

The sparks whirled out, climbed my arms, circled me in a storm of blue. Rahel’s grisly dissolution ran red in front of my eyes, and I swore I wasn’t going to let that happen, not to him , not now…

I sucked the sparks in, laid them thick on my skin, and consciously opened myself to them. I opened my squeezed-shut eyes and watched the light show as the sparkles glittered, peaceful and serene on my skin, then faded out into nothing.

I’m made of this . That was why they couldn’t hurt me. I was just taking in more of what had formed me in the first place.

Jonathan sat where he was, watching, too. His dark eyes shifted to meet mine.

“Thanks,” he said.

I nodded. “Favor for a favor. We need to get David back. Now .”

“I know,” he said. He sounded tired. “You look like hell.”

“Funny, I don’t feel…” Oh. Yes I did, actually. There went gravity again, twisting all out of shape. This time, I didn’t mistake it for coldlight or anything but what it was: somebody trying to call me. That fishhook sensation pulled at me, painful and undeniable. Not Jonathan, this time. And this wasn’t a call to safety, either.

Jonathan held on to me while I fought the pull. I felt his will settle over me like a soft, smothering blanket, and the summoning pull was lost in the weight.

“Tired,” I whispered. He already knew that. He was lifting me again in his arms as all the other Djinn murmured to each other, as Ashan stared at me with those cold blue-green eyes.

Back to the bedroom.

The soft feather pillow.

The frosted-coal shadow of the Ifrit, watching.

I slept.

The next day—if days had any meaning here— dawned just as bright and sunny and peaceful as all days did in Jonathan’s little kingdom.

I woke up to find the man himself sitting in a chair watching me. The Ifrit was gone.

“Wow,” I said. “This is getting familiar.”

“Don’t wear it out.”

“The bed or my welcome?”

He ignored what was admittedly a pretty weak comeback. “So. How you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“Good.” I wasn’t sure what he wanted, and I had the impression he wasn’t either, really. He got up to walk around the room, long strides that didn’t quite rise to the level of pacing. More like a stroll, with purpose. “About the rift up there.”

“What about it?” All my fight drained away at the bare mention of it. I couldn’t help but remember the red, tearing agony of Rahel dissolving into mush, or the hundreds of others who were suffering somewhere out there, where I couldn’t see them.

“You think it’s your fault,” he said. “Crap. What happened was David’s choice, not yours… and he had no way of knowing this would happen. Hell, even I didn’t understand what was going on until too late to do anything about it. Once I did, he wanted to go fix things.”

“But?”

“But by then I knew it was too dangerous, and then he went tearing off after you when you got—” He waved a hand, didn’t bother to finish the sentence. “He’s not exactly what you might call big-picture when it comes to personal sacrifice.”

“Neither am I. Neither are you.” He gave me a slight nod to acknowledge the point. “You should’ve told me about the rift. Or at least about how badly things were screwed up because I was brought back.”

He shrugged, a simple economical straight-up-and-down movement of his shoulder blades. No particular emotion in it. “Things screw up all the time. Hey. You gotta love the excitement. Granted, this is a lot more exciting than usual… but you stay alive as long as I have, you learn to take these things in stride. The Djinn have faced worse.”

I stared up at the shadows on the ceiling. “How much worse?”

“Hard to tell until it’s over.”

I pulled in a deep breath. Funny, I didn’t need it, but it still seemed to calm me. Some human habits were persistent. “How’s everybody else?”

“Sleeping,” he said, and nodded toward the far wall. “Lots of guest rooms. We run a topflight refugee camp around here.” He gave me a thin, almost human smile, but it didn’t last. “ I never thought I’d like you, but you turned out okay. ‘Gut shortage.’ That was pretty good.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I got carried away.”

“No, you’re right. One thing Djinn are scared of, it’s death. Their own, not anybody else’s. It makes us cowards. Look at me! I’ve been sitting here in this house for so long I don’t even know what it’s like out there.”

“I do,” I said. “You’re better off in here.”

“Not for much longer,” he said. He held out his hand, palm up, as if he was offering something to me. I looked at it, puzzled, and felt a sudden stab of alarm as a single cool blue spark ignited in his aura. “They’re coming in. I can’t keep them out, I can only slow them down. It’s going to be one giant blue snow globe in here soon. And even though I’m resistant to them, I’m not immune.” He stood up, swiped imaginary dust from his pants, and gestured at me. “So, you gonna take the day off, or are you getting your ass out of bed?”

I had already formed clothes under the sheet—the same denim and boots as before. One nice thing about being a Djinn—dress and bounce out of bed, no rework on the hair or makeup necessary. Although the hair was still displaying that annoying tendency to curl. I straightened it again as I asked, “What now?”

“You said it. We need David.”

“I’ll go.”

“You’re in thrall,” he said. “If your little jerk of a master finds out you’re where he can reach you, he’ll get you back and dressed like a pinup fantasy girl in ten seconds flat.”

“Ugh. Don’t remind me.”

“Oh, I don’t know, the French Maid outfit was a little—” He held up a hand to forestall my protest. “Never mind. Point is, if you go outside of the barrier he’ll be able to get you back.”

“He’s probably still asleep.”

“He is.” Jonathan nodded. “Problem is that he was calling for you in his sleep. And if you go outside this house, you won’t be able to resist.”