Rachel Caine - Thin Air

“So with a little planning, you could really secure your future,” Sarah continued, clearly not seeing the stop sign Cherise’s expression had to be flashing. “Girls like Jo, they don’t really understand the world. In the end, she’s going to end up with some loser, if she can get a guy at all, and she’ll never be happy. Strong women end up alone, that’s just the way things are. I, on the other hand, plan to end up in the Diamond Club surrounded by a huge circle of friends.”

“Yeah, well, didn’t you already try that?” Cherise asked blandly. “You know, marrying for money. Wasn’t your ex loaded?”

“My ex was a bastard,” Sarah said. “And he was a criminal, too.”

“But you stayed married.”

Sarah shrugged. “Until I didn’t.”

Cherise was busy foreseeing a future for Sarah, one of bitter martini-fed binges, debt, and multiple divorce. She was kind of having fun at it, too.

“I don’t think you know Joanne at all. Your sister kind of rules,” Cherise said. “And the next time you say anything bad about her, I’m going to smack you so hard the rocks in your head will rattle.”

Sarah’s mouth opened, then closed.

Then she laughed, because she assumed that Cherise was kidding.

Only I knew Cherise hadn’t been, really, and that warmed my heart.

Blur.

Things flashed through my mind faster and faster, memories that didn’t belong, things I didn’t want to know, things I never wanted to know, and I needed it to just stop, stop, stop .

Cherise and Not-me in a car, racing ahead of a storm. A fight on a deserted road. Kevin holding Cherise while Lewis and I fought off enemies. Cherise behind the wheel, whispering prayers under her breath as we drove into a storm.

I couldn’t take it all in. Overload. Stop!

I tried to pull out, and somehow the connection began to fail, but in the last instant I saw a face.

My own face, with eyes that weren’t human-incandescent, glowing eyes. Eyes like David’s. I watched her lips part and heard her say, “Mom?”

I screamed and sat up, lost my balance, fell, and ended up sobbing and gasping for breath. The air around me was still and cool, and there was grit under my palms where we’d tracked snow and dirt into the tent from outside. It smelled like unwashed blankets and sweat and fear.

Back to reality.

I felt an overwhelming surge of sickness, fought it down, and slowly sat up. My breath came hot and ragged, and I wasn’t sure if my head would ever stop throbbing. Oh, God, it hurt.

Lewis’s hand pressed warmly and silently on my shoulder, and then he went past me to kneel beside Cherise. Her eyes were closed, and she was very still.

Too still.

“Is she okay?” I asked. My voice sounded raw and ragged, and I didn’t like the way it seemed to quaver at the edges. My head felt as if someone had stuffed it, mounted it, and used it for batting practice.

Mom , the image in Cherise’s memory had said. Mom. David had said that we had a child. I hadn’t expected her to be…adult. And look so much like me.

Imara.

“She’s alive,” he said, and for a crazy second I thought he meant Imara, but he was focused on Cherise. “Christ, Jo. How did you do that? How could you do it? You’re not an Earth Warden; you’ve never…” He turned to me, and I saw his eyes flare into colors, like the Djinn, but no, that was on the aetheric; I was seeing it superimposed over the real world and it was disorienting, sickening. I tried to get up, and fell down. Hard.

“Jo!” He grabbed me and held me, and I could feel his whole body trembling, a wire-fine vibration. He was so bright, I couldn’t see. I squeezed my eyes shut. “ Focus. God, what did you do to yourself?”

I could barely breathe. Nothing was right. Too much color, too much sound, every heartbeat thundering from him was like a roar, his voice echoed in my head and deafened me, even the smells were too raw and immediate…

His touch was the only thing that soothed me, stroking through my sweaty hair, over my skin, grounding me gently back in the world.

“Shhhh,” he whispered in my ear, barely a breath. “Shhhh, now. Breathe. Breathe.”

He was rocking me in his arms, and I could feel my heart hammering wildly. My body felt too tight to contain me; I was bursting out of it; I was…I was…

Oh, God.

I exploded with light, convulsing in his embrace, trying to scream but my throat was locked tight, sealing in sound.

And Lewis held me until the waves subsided and left me empty and broken, trembling with reaction.

I’d dug my fingernails into his skin, and when I let go I saw blood welling up in the wounds.

He didn’t speak. I don’t know if he could. His face…his face was full of an indescribable mixture of wonder and horror.

Cherise sat up as suddenly as if somebody had jerked her upright by the hair, and blinked at the two of us in surprise. “What just happened?” she asked. “I feel better. Am I better?”

Lewis let out a slow, unsteady breath. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re better.” And he looked at me. Wordless, again.

“And me?” I whispered. “What am I?”

He was looking at me with unfocused eyes. With the eyes of a Warden.

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “But whatever you are now, you’re damn strong.”

“Yeah, like that’s news,” Cherise said, then blinked and stretched. “Man, I’m hungry. What’s for dinner?”

I was looking into Lewis’s face, and he was staring right back at me. It felt intimate, but not in a sexual kind of way-this was something else. Frank and appraising and a little frightening. My heart rate was slowing, not speeding up. My body was cooling down from overdrive.

“Prime rib,” Lewis said, and broke the stare to turn to smile at her. “Baked potato. Fresh hot bread with whipped butter.”

“Food tease,” she said, and unzipped herself from the sleeping bag. “What’s really for dinner?”

“Trail bar.” He fished in his backpack, found one, and handed it over.

“Comes with champagne, right?” Cherise’s smile was brave, but still scared. He offered a bottle of water with the gravity of a sommelier.

“Only the finest vintage,” he said, and cast another wary, strangely impartial glance at me. “You’d better eat something, too.”

I didn’t want to. The trail bar tasted like…trail dust. Even the chocolate chips seemed bitter and wrong, but I doggedly chewed and swallowed. The water seemed all right, and I chugged it until I burped. It all stayed down, and after I’d finished the brief meal I felt full and more than a little exhausted. Lewis watched me without seeming to, looking for any sign I was about to come apart at the seams, I guessed, but he didn’t ask me any questions. He quizzed Cherise lightly about what she remembered-which was very little, just what she’d told me before-and how she was feeling, which was apparently great. And sleepy, because she kept yawning and finally curled up into the warm nest of the sleeping bag and fell asleep.

I was just as tired, if not even more so, and gravity dragged my eyelids down one remorseless fraction of an inch at a time. Lewis didn’t say anything, just took my empty bottle and set it aside and helped me climb into my own sleeping bag. It felt amazing being warm and horizontal.

Lewis’s hand smoothed hair back from my brow, and his eyes were at once wary and concerned. “Do you know what you did?” he asked.

I mutely shook my head.

He leaned over and kissed me very gently. “You did the impossible,” he said. “And that worries me.”

It worried me, too.