Rachel Caine: Ill Wind

Into the path of an eighteen-wheel tractor-trailer, which was barreling down the cross street. Nobody was driving it, and the load on the back looked suspiciously like a propane tank.

I went weirdly calm. The Viper was fast, but she wasn't supernatural, and I didn't have enough speed to make it, enough road to stop, or enough luck to avoid it this time.

Sorry, Mona. It was fun while it lasted.

Something flashed into the way. Someone—small, golden haired, dressed in blue and white like a fairytale heroine.

A Djinn had come to my rescue, but it wasn't Paul's; it was, instead, Alice in Wonderland.

She held up one small, delicate hand and brought the truck to a stop. Perfect control. She looked over her shoulder at me as I arrowed through the intersection, and I saw a smile on her lips, a neon-blue spark of life in her eyes that I hadn't seen before.

A whisper came through my car radio. Go. I'll keep him back.

Apparently, she was itching for a rematch from the game of keep-away at Cathy's bookstore. I made a mental note to thank Cathy later—preferably with chocolates and really fine booze—and felt the tension in my shoulders loosen just a little. At least I didn't have to fight David. Not directly.

No, I only had to fight Star. And myself.

I checked addresses when grimy industrial sections gave way to grimy lower-middle-class houses. Universally small, mostly of clapboard and in need of paint and new fences, they were crammed together like sardines with postage-stamp front yards mostly filled with weeds and rusting junk.

Estrella's house shone like a diamond in a sack of coal. Larger, well proportioned, gleaming with fresh paint and a neat white-painted fence. No weeds in the new spring grass, the only concession to lawn ornaments a heavy concrete birdbath with a cherub on top. It didn't look like the place to find somebody willing to kill in order to keep secrets.

I pulled the Viper to a halt at the curb and got out. Lights were on in the house, warm behind the window shades. The muted blue flicker of a TV screen made shadows in one of the bedroom windows.

All too normal. And I'd never expected to reach it this easily. That made it harder, somehow, bringing all my anger and fury had seemed easier when I didn't have to knock politely to do it.

I went up the steps and rang the doorbell.

"It's open," Star's voice rang out. I swallowed hard, looked up and down the street, hoping to see Marion's yellow Xterra, but I was all alone. "Come on in, Jo."

I turned the knob and stepped inside.

The hallway was burnished wood, lovingly polished; a side table had faded photographs lined up, starting with two stiff-looking people in the formal dress of the mid-1800s, progressing by decades through Star's family. Hers was the last photo on the table. High school graduation, a beautiful girl, a winning smile, the devil's own laughter in her dark eyes.

I closed the door behind me and waited.

"In the kitchen!" she called. I smelled the mouthwatering aroma of fresh-baking peanut butter cookies.

Something very wrong about contemplating murder with the smell of baking in the air. As maybe she intended.

I walked down the hallway past a darkened formal living room, a brightly lit family room filled with warm colors and gleaming wood. The kitchen was at the back of the house, an old design, and I stopped in the doorway. Star was standing next to the oven, mitt on her hand, taking cookie sheets off the racks.

"Just a sec," she said, and deposited the last gray pan on top of the bulky avocado-green stove. "Ah. There. Now."

She stripped off the oven mitt, turned off the oven. No more fake scars, not this time. She was showing me her true face. Untouched. Beautiful. False.

"You're wondering how this happened." She touched the smooth bronze skin of her cheek. "I was rotting to death in that hospital, and they couldn't— no, they wouldn't —help me."

"Star—"

"Let me finish. All they had to do was give me a fucking Djinn, but no, they wouldn't do that. I hadn't earned it. They said I didn't have the temperament to handle the responsibility." She glared at me. How had I missed all that hatred in her eyes before? All that bitterness? Had she covered that up, too? "They left me with a face like a melted hockey mask. You remember?"

Of course I remembered. I couldn't move, couldn't speak. She reached for the oven mitt again, grabbed a tray of cookies, and began to savagely shovel the peanut butter rounds off into a white china bowl.

"Well, I didn't have to take that." She finished scraping cookies off and dumped the pan in the sink. "I could feel it out there. Waiting for me. All I had to do was accept it."

She reached into the refrigerator and took out a jug of milk. She lifted it in my direction. When I didn't reach for it, she shrugged and put it on the counter, got out a glass, and poured.

"It felt like I was dying," she said, and took a sip. "Like my soul was burning out. But then it stopped hurting, and it became something else. Something real. Something with a purpose."

"It's not purpose, Star. It's just suicide with a longer fuse."

She picked up a cookie and bit into it.

"Also a really big bang," she agreed. "You think that bothers me? I've been dying a long damn time."

"Looks like you're feeling pretty good to me."

"This?" She stroked her unmarked face. "Yeah. It healed me. But it doesn't stay, not unless I find a way to get the Mark back inside me. I can already feel myself getting slower. Older. Twisting inside."

"So why get rid of it?"

She slammed down the china bowl. "I didn't! All I tried to do was feed the Mark. I needed a Djinn."

Rahel had told me the truth, for once. "The book. Free-range Djinn, yours for the taking. You claim them, feed them to the Demon."

"Yeah." She gave me a bleak smile. "Should have been easy, you know? Only it wasn't. Because the minute I grabbed one, there was Lewis, showing up to smack my ass, and girl, he is one strong Warden. I thought he was gonna kill me."

I'd moved a step closer to her without even realizing it. I came to a stop, haunted by the fact that I'd always let my fondness for her blind me to just how selfish she really was.

"How'd he get the Mark?"

She glared. "He took it. I didn't give it to him. The stupid bastard said he was trying to help me. I didn't want his help!"

Her belligerent tone didn't go with the too-bright shine in her eyes. Pain in there. Deep, anguished self-loathing. She went back to scraping cookies off sheet pans, dumping them into a bowl with quick, nervous motions.

"Then let him go," I said. "You can't get the Mark back from him, you said so yourself. It goes from weaker to stronger. Nobody's stronger than Lewis. It's finished."

"No!" She almost screamed it at me, a raw physical outburst that sounded as if it scraped her throat bloody. "I'll get it back. I have to!"

"How?" I sounded so logical all of a sudden. So calm. Maybe it was just shock, but all I really felt for her in that moment was sheer, sad pity. She'd been so glorious, once. So selfless. Seeing the ruin of that… ached in ways that I'd never expected.

Her dark eyes looked blind behind the glitter of fury, but this time her voice came out soft, nearly controlled. "You gave me a way," she said. "I can't take the Mark from him, but your hot boyfriend Djinn can. And then I can order him to give it back to me. I can't make Lewis do shit, all he does is sits there and meditates, like he's thinking the damn thing to death. But I can make David do it."

Fear went solid and slick as glass in my throat. I tried to swallow the lump. "No, it doesn't work that way. If David takes the Mark he can't get rid of it. He'll be infested. Or worse." If her Mark was as mature as it sounded, it might just devour him instead. I'd seen a Demon hatch, before. I didn't want to ever see it again. "Give it up, Star. Please. Let me try to help, try to think of something…"