Rachel Caine - Thin Air

Me, I was a cheap fax copy, grubby and soiled with road dirt and smoke. And I’d lost a shoe.

“I can’t believe you got her,” she said. “She must be planning something. She shouldn’t be this easy to catch.”

David took her hand. The Demon exchanged a look with him and smiled. It was my smile, dammit. And my love in her eyes. She’d taken it. She was using me just as much as she was using him.

“We got lucky,” David said. “We’re even luckier that Venna decided to cut her losses. Although why she’d be helping a Demon…”

“She wasn’t!” I yelled. They ignored me.

“I want you out of here,” David said to the other me. “I’m not taking any chances. Not again.” I hated the way he leaned into her space, the way his lips brushed the shining curtain of her hair. The way his hands curled around hers, so gently and protectively. “Take the truck back to the lodge and wait there.”

“David, she’s a liar !” I said. “So, Fake Joanne, what’s next? You can’t control David, can you? He’s too powerful. So maybe you find a way to hurt him so badly one of the other Djinn has to take over, one you can subvert. Got to be a weak one in the bunch, right?”

She watched me with steady, familiar eyes. She looked completely real. Completely me . “I’d never hurt David. The fact you think I would just proves who you are.”

“You’d never hurt David unless you know you could get away with it.” I panted. “Look, what do you really want? My life? Well, you can’t have it, so just hand over the clothes and stop using my face and move on. ” Toward the end I sounded-and felt-savage. Like I could rip her head off with my bare hands for what she was doing to me. All I wanted to do was live , and she’d taken that away.

She stared at me for a few more seconds, and there was something like pity in her face. There but for the grace of God… I knew what she was thinking. It made my stomach hurt with the intensity of my fury. “Say something,” I said.

“Why?” she asked. “What’s to say? You tried to steal my life away, and you’ve failed. Game over.”

I turned to David, willing him to believe me. “David, if you kill me, she wins. The Demon wins.”

She laughed. “Nice. I was waiting when she’d pull the old ‘You’re the bad twin’ on us. Come on. Who do you think’s going to believe you this time? I’ve got my memories back. You’re nothing but a cheap copy.”

That was an echo of what I’d been thinking. I blinked, startled. Either she could read my thoughts-icky, but possible-or her mind simply worked the same way. If she’d taken on my memories, my experiences that completely, if she could fool David and Lewis, then maybe she really had become me, as much as a Demon could.

That made my job a hell of a lot harder, because she wasn’t faking. As Venna had warned, she really was me, in all the ways that would count.

I looked desperately at Lewis, at David. “Guys. What if you’ve got the evil twin standing right there? What if I’m the one she stole everything away from? Kill me, and you’ll never be able to fix that; it’ll be too late-”

Evil Twin snorted, exchanged a wry look with David, and walked away, arms folded. Heading calmly back for the SUV.

“Wait!” I yelled. “David, you know me ! You have to know that’s not me!”

That earned me nothing. Evil Twin opened the passenger-side door of the truck and climbed in, then slammed the door. Lewis and David exchanged another one of those unreadable looks. God, I’d never realized how scary it was from this end, faced with these extremely competent people. How desperate it was to be on the losing side.

She’s going to pull it off. She’s going to have David, live my life, and be happy until she pulls off whatever evil plan she’s concocted, and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.

I hated losing.

Wind whipped across me, blinding me with grit and a mouthful of black smoke from the still-smoldering wreck of my car. “Then just get it over with,” I choked. “If you’ve got the guts, just do it.”

The SUV’s engine started up, and it drove away, slowly winding around the trees. Taking my future with it.

“We’re not going to kill you,” Lewis said with an eerie amount of calm. “We couldn’t, could we? If you’re a Demon, you’d just assume another form. The only way to destroy a Demon without sacrificing a Djinn is with another Demon.”

“Guess you don’t have one of those handy,” I said, and closed my eyes in exhausted relief.

When I opened them, David, expressionless, was taking a sealed bottle out of his coat. There was red wax around the stopper, and an ancient-looking seal dangling from a complicated knot of ribbons.

The knee in my back dug in harder when I tried to raise up, driving me flat and helpless. I struggled to reach for power, but whatever they’d done to me up on the aetheric was holding fast. I couldn’t move the weather, or fire, and when I tried to grab for the slow throb of energy in the earth, something slapped me back with stunning force.

Lewis. I’d recognized the handprint of the slap.

“No,” I said quietly. “You can’t. David, you can’t. I’m not a Demon! David, no! ”

He walked toward me, put a hand in between my shoulder blades, and nodded to Lewis to let go. The relief of the pressure coming off my back didn’t last, because David’s hand might not have been as heavy, but it was just as effective in restraining me.

“This bottle contains a Djinn,” he said. “A Djinn infected with a Demon. Under normal circumstances the Demon wouldn’t migrate back to a human, but you’re different. Demons will destroy each other by preference. If there’s any good news, it’s that by destroying you, we’re going to save a Djinn’s life.”

“David, no ! I’m not a Demon! ”

It was no good. He was going to do it. I could see it in his eyes, in the fierce, focused determination on his face. “Please,” I said. I dropped all my defenses, and let him see me as vulnerable as I really was. “Please don’t do this to us.”

His lips thinned, and he flinched a little. “I wish you didn’t look so much like her.”

“I am her, and if you open that bottle you’re going to find that out, because the Demon won’t migrate, and then you’ll have a much bigger problem! David! ” He wasn’t listening to me. I heard the crackle of the wax seal breaking. “David, God, stop it ! Our daughter isn’t dead! ”

It seemed like, for one second, time stopped. Even the wind ceased to blow. Then it all snapped back with a vengeance, as David snarled and grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked it painfully back, staring into my face with terrifying fury.

“You,” he said, “don’t talk about my daughter. Ever .”

It hurt to talk, but I had no choice. “David, if you open that bottle, you’re making a huge mistake. Imara’s alive. She’s become the Earth Oracle. Go check if you don’t believe me.” I tried to swallow, but the painful angle at which he was holding my head made it almost impossible. “Go on. I’m not going anywhere.”

He was about one second from killing me. Or popping the cork on that sealed bottle. I didn’t know what that would do, but it wouldn’t be good.

I got support from an entirely unexpected quarter: Lewis. He said quietly, “It couldn’t hurt to check.”

“Stay out of it,” David hissed at him.

“What if we’re wrong? Look, I’m the first one to want to believe in miracles, but Joanne’s memories came back too fast; we both said so. What if…” Lewis looked at me, then at David. “What if this one’s telling the truth? If you’re wrong and you open that bottle, we can’t make that right without a lot of death and destruction.”