Rachel Caine: Ill Wind

It made me wonder about Lewis. He had a towering amount of ability, but I wasn't sure anymore about his soul.

I was no longer sure about mine, either.

Star whirled on David and snapped her fingers at him. "You. Get us out of here."

"Where?" he asked without moving his eyes away from me. Dark eyes, a stranger's eyes. But he was still watching me with that eerie focus, the way he had before. You don't own him completely, Star.

She growled in frustration, walked over to him, and grabbed him by the hair. She forced his head up and made him meet her eyes. "Hey. Look at me when I'm talking to you!"

He had no change of expression. If it hurt him at all, I couldn't tell. He didn't try to pull away. David, the poseable doll.

"I want to go to New York."

"Specify," he said.

She looked baffled. "Grand Central Station!"

"Specify."

He could, I sensed, play this game forever, down to making her identify the square inches of tile she wanted to plant her feet upon. Not only could she not do it, but she didn't even have the patience to try. She slammed his head backwards into the wall and let him go.

"Useless. Both of you. Unlimited power, my ass. I can't get either one of you to lift a finger." She nudged Lewis with her toe, but he didn't respond, except to close his eyes; I felt a cold shiver and wondered what she'd done to him down here, what kind of hell a man who wielded near-unlimited power could experience to break him like this.

"Hey, Star?" I asked. I sat up, pulling my back closer to the wall, and reached out to lay my hand on top of David's, squeezed it in warning. "Let's figure out how to get out of this alive. Both of us."

She turned away and stalked back to me, dropped into a crouch by my side. Her dark eyes glittered like razor-sharp obsidian. "What's your proposal?"

"Who says I have one?"

"Jo, I know you. You've always got an idea. It's usually crappy, but you always have one." For just a second, there was a flicker, a memory of what she'd been. Who we'd both once been. Oh, Star. "Remember when we built the anatomically correct snowman outside the dean's office? Not such a great plan, chica. But it had style."

I remembered. I didn't want to, because it made things harder, remembering the outrageous fun of that winter night, our breathless giggles fogging the air. She'd been so stupidly innocent back then, and I'd been such a bad influence…

I had to be a worse one now. To save whatever was left of the girl I still loved.

I sucked in a breath that tasted of tears and said, "Easy. Give Lewis up. Look, he's of no use to you, anyway. He's got the Mark, and he can't give it back to you. Even if he could, he wouldn't because he knows you're raving ape-shit crazy, and he'd rather die than see what you'd do with it. You're screwed, Star. Let him go, and you win points with the Wardens."

She blew a raspberry that lifted the fine dark bangs on her forehead. "Yeah, right. That's likely to happen."

"It is if I tell them it was all my fault. I killed Bad Bob. I have the Mark. And I've been running away from Marion's crew for more than a thousand miles. I tell them everything was my fault, not yours. They'll believe it."

She stared at me without blinking. "Yeah? And why do I believe you'll say it in the first place?"

I gave her a slow, painful smile. "Because you have something I want, Star." I looked over at David, then back to her. "Break his bottle and set him free. I'll go away like a good girl, Lewis is saved, everybody's happy."

"Not me," Star said. "Not unless I get back what I had."

I swallowed bile and said, "Then you live to scheme another day."

She frowned, grooving little lines between those fine black eyebrows, and studied me for so long, I thought she'd gone blind. "That's stupid," she finally said. "Even if I do free David, I still have the book. I can take him back any time I want. What's the point?"

"Well, that's the second part. You let him destroy the book."

She laughed. "Never happen. Let me tell you my scenario, Jo. The house burns. They find bodies. Nobody's ever sure who belongs to who, except that me and my new que lindo Djinn end up living the sweet life on a tropical island, with nobody to know it. I don't need both you and Lewis, you know. I need only one of you, for David to take the Mark and give it to me. After that, you're all better off dead." She smiled slightly, and it was bitter and ugly and hard. "Well, I'm better off."

She played with fire on her fingertips. She stared at it, then moved it closer to my face. Closer, as if she were trying to see by the light of it.

She set my hair on fire. I resisted the urge to scream and roll around, and beat it out with the palm of my hand. The smell of it lingered between us.

"Just a sample," she said. "How'd it feel?"

I froze the air around her, so cold, I saw frost form instantly on her skin. She cried out and jerked away in panic.

"About like that does," I said. "Don't push me. I'll give you freezer burn so deep, they'll have to microwave you to hear you scream. You start this, you know we'll both die. How does that help either one of us?"

Something wavered in her eyes. She reached out and pushed my burned hair back from my face, and for a second there wasn't a gulf of years and secrets. "You'd really do it? Tell them it was you?"

"Yeah," I said. "I will. Doesn't matter anymore— they won't let me keep my powers. I'm too far gone with this damn Mark. My life is over, Star. I know that. At least let me do something useful."

Star nodded, looked at David, and got up to go to the worktable. She took a small bottle out of a drawer and set it down next to the book. She paused for a few seconds, looking up as if she could hear through the floor above us. Maybe she could. "Company's here," she said. "Marion and her merry men, seven or eight at least. Enough to keep us busy, if we wanted to make a fight."

"But we're not going to," I said. "Right?"

"Right." Star lifted the bottle in her hand, looked at it from different angles. "Weird, how a Djinn always has to be sourced in glass. You'd think with all the advances, we'd be able to use plastic. Stupid fucking rules."

I didn't like her sudden change of focus. "Star, it won't work! If you order David to do this, he'll be destroyed. Even if he's not, you can't order him to give you the Mark. He can't do it. Once he takes it, it won't leave him until it wins and eats him." I was getting desperate—sweating, exhausted, scared. My head hurt. I could still smell the weirdly disorienting aroma of fresh-baked cookies wafting down from the kitchen. "Come on. Let's all walk out of here alive, at least."

She looked at me for a long, wordless few seconds, then cocked her head to the side. "Why?"

"What do you mean, why?"

"Why do you want to save me? First Lewis, now you. Why?"

I couldn't even believe she was asking. "Because I love you, Star. Don't you know?"

Her eyes filled up with tears, but none broke free. She blinked them away. They left a hard, unsettling shine behind. "Love you, too," she said. She turned the bottle, staring at the facets of glass. Held it up between us and let the light gleam through. "You know, there's one thing I could do."

I felt a cold surge of dread. "Yeah?"

"Last resort, I could have David take the Mark, seal him in the bottle, and then it's your word against mine. Or maybe you go crazy, try to kill Lewis, he has to kill you, everybody dies in a tragic accidental fire but me, very sad. And you know, I think I like that plan better."

She put the bottle back down and, without turning around, said, "David, go over to Lewis and take the Demon Mark out of him."

"No!" I screamed, and lunged for her back. She fell against the table, and the bottle trembled on wood but didn't fall. Her hand closed around it. "Dammit, Star, no, don't do this!"