Firestorm

'About seven more hours,' Imara said. 'I'll stay with you. There are things you can't do on your own. You'll need help. Father said—' She shut up, fast. Father. I wondered if David was as frightened by that as I was by the Mom thing. Or as delighted. Or both. 'Is this still strange for you?'

'What?'

'Me,' she said softly, and turned her attention back to the road. 'Human mothers carry their children inside them. They hold them as infants; they teach and guide them. I was born as I am. That's strange, isn't it?'

She sounded wistful, even sad. I'd been so busy thinking of myself and my reactions to her that I hadn't considered how odd this might be for her, too. That maybe she felt lost in a maze of human feelings she didn't understand. Wasn't even supposed to have, perhaps.

'Imara,' I said. 'Pull over.'

'What?'

'Please.'

She coasted the car to a stop on the gravel shoulder, not far from a sign that warned of curves up ahead, and twisted around to face me. It was like looking in a faerie mirror—so similar that it made me shiver somewhere deep inside. There was an indefinable connection between us that I loved and feared in equal parts.

'You look so much like me,' I murmured, and took her hands in mine. They felt warm, real, and solidly familiar.

'I am you,' she said. 'Most of me. I'm not so much your child as your clone—Djinn DNA doesn't mix well with human. So my flesh is mostly the same as yours, and my—my spirit is Father's.'

I shivered a little. How was I supposed to feel about that? And what was I supposed to say? 'I—'

'I'm not really Djinn,' she said. 'You know that, don't you? I can't do the things Father can do. I can't protect you.'

'Mothers protect children. Not the other way around.'

She tilted her head a little to the side, regarding me with a tiny little frown. 'How can you protect me?'

Great question. 'I won't know until I get there,' I said, and impulsively reached up to touch her cheek. 'Sweetheart, I'm not going to pretend that you're not stronger than I am, or faster, or smarter, or—anything else that the Djinn part of you can give. But the point is that I'll protect you when I can, and I do not want you to put yourself at risk for me. All right?'

The frown grooved deeper. 'That's not what Father said to do.'

'Then your dad and I need to have a talk.' What she'd said was making me curious. 'When you say you're not fully Djinn—'

'What are my limits, do you mean?' she asked. I nodded. 'Where you're strong—in weather and fire, particularly—I'm strong. I can move the way the Djinn do. But I'm bound to my body in ways they aren't. I can't change my form. I can't use other elements that you can't control, as well.' She continued to watch me carefully. Her voice was matter-of-fact, but I couldn't help but think that David and Jonathan and I had done something terrible, bringing Imara into the world. I couldn't tell if she resented the restrictions her half-blood birth had given her. If she did, that would be one hell of a case of adolescent angst.

'But,' she continued when I didn't jump in, 'even so, I am one of the Djinn. They all felt it when I was born. I'm still a part of them, if a small one.'

I stayed quiet, thinking. She might not have been able to read my mind, but she could easily read my expressions—something I couldn't do to her.

'You're worried that if you keep me with you, they could trace you through me. A weak link.'

'A little. With the Djinn so unreliable…' I'd seen the Djinn turn on a dime, when the Earth called; even though Imara might seem immune to that, she was clearly a lot more vulnerable than I'd like. And I couldn't hold my own against a full-on Djinn assault, not for more than a few seconds. No human could, if the Djinn unleashed their full potential.

She inclined her head, just once. A Djinn sort of acknowledgement, fraught with dignity. 'I don't think I could protect you against them if they came in force. Do you want me to leave you?'

'And go where?' I asked.

'Anywhere. I only just arrived. I haven't even begun to learn about the world for myself.' She smiled, but it felt like bravado to me. My kid was trying to make me feel better about rejecting her.

'Imara—'

'No, please don't. I want to help you, but I understand if you can't trust me—you only just met me. You'd be crazy not to be concerned.'

I wasn't about to break my daughter's heart. Not yet. 'Let's take it slow on the assumption of mistrust, okay? I just don't—know you.'

'But I know you,' she replied quietly. 'And I can see that it makes you… uncomfortable.'

I let that one pass. 'If David can always locate you, I'm guessing you can always locate me, no matter where you are. Right? So it really doesn't matter if you're here, or learning how to spin prayer wheels in Tibet. And I'd rather have you here. Getting to know you.'

She smiled again. 'What if you don't like me?'

It was a sad, self-mocking smile, and suddenly I wasn't seeing the metallic Djinn eyes, or the eerie copy of my own face; I was seeing a child, and that child hungered for everything that children do: Love, acceptance, protection. A place in the world.

She took my breath away, made my heart fill up and spill over. 'Not like you? Not a chance in hell,' I said. My voice was unsteady. 'I love you. You're one hell of a great kid. And you're my kid.'

Her eyes glittered fiercely, and it took me a second to realize that it wasn't magic, only tears.

'We'd better keep moving,' she said, and turned back to start the car. 'So what do you think? Breakfast first, or apocalypse?'

She was starting to inherit my sense of humor, too. Hmmm. Breakfast sounded pretty tempting. Lots more tempting than an apocalypse, anyway.

Those hardly ever came with coffee.

Chapter Four

I spent part of the drive napping, and dreaming. Not good dreams. Why couldn't my out-of-body experiences take me to a nice spa, with David giving me oil massages? Why did my brain have to punish me? I was fairly sure that I really didn't deserve it, at least not on a regular basis.

Unsettled by the nightmares, I kicked Imara out of the driver's seat as soon as I was sure I wasn't going to drop off into dreamland without warning. I always felt better driving, and the Camaro had a silky, powerful purr that welcomed me with vibrations through my entire body as I cranked her up. She needed a name, I decided. Something intimidating yet sexy. Nothing was coming to mind, though.

As we cruised along, switching highways about every hour because heaven forbid travel on the East Coast should be easy, I found myself longing for the endless straight roads in the West and South. Maine was beautiful, no doubt about it, but I wanted to drive fast. Responsibility and panic had that effect on me. Being behind the wheel gave me time to think, and there was a lot to think about, none of it good. All of it frightening.

I couldn't stop scrubbing my hand against my skirt, trying to get the phantom feel of the Demon Mark off me. I hadn't been infected. I knew that, intellectually, but it still made my stomach lurch when I thought about how close I'd come.

We stopped for breakfast at a truck stop, and I bought a couple of pairs of blue jeans and tight-fitting T- shirts. My shoes were missing altogether, so I added a sturdy pair of hiking boots and some feminine-looking flip- flops. Best to be prepared.

I paid extra to use the showers, rinsing off grime and mud and exhaustion under the warm beat of the massaging showerhead. Luxury. I wanted to curl up in the warmth and sleep for days, but instead I toweled off, blow-dried my hair into a relatively straight, shimmering curtain, and dressed in the jeans, T-shirt, and hiking boots.