Firestorm

have to choose between duty and child. He struck me as that kind of Djinn.

I wished, illogically, that Jonathan was still around. Lean, angular, sarcastic Jonathan, with his infinite eyes and shallow patience. David was my love, and he was half my soul, but I needed someone with more perspective. Someone who viewed me as a white knight on a chessboard, not the queen, to be protected.

Someone to move me to the right square.

I got out of the BMW and stretched. A couple of guys gassing up stared. Might have been the car they were lusting after, but I smiled wanly at them anyway and walked over to the telephones. After a futile and maddening search for change in my pockets, I went into the gas station and bought one of those phone card things, then came back and dialed the number of Lewis's cell phone from a telephone booth.

I got him on the first ring. 'Jo! I've been trying to find you—'

'Cell phone service is bad,' I said. 'I'm still saving the world for you. I need a favor, and it's a big one.'

Silence for a long few seconds. There was a steady, agitated sound of shouts in the background. All was not quiet on the Warden front. 'Go,' he said.

'First of all, if you've still got any clout with any Free Djinn, use it. Ashan's got Imara. He's trying to use her to stop me. I need help.'

I felt the sudden intake of breath on the other end of the line, as if I'd gut-punched him across the intervening miles. 'Ah, dammit, Jo, I'm sorry. I was trying to get hold of you to warn you. Rahel showed up in the New York offices about fifteen minutes ago.'

'What?' Oh, I had a bad feeling. Bad, bad, bad.

'It's happening again,' Lewis said. 'They're—turning. Be careful.'

I swallowed hard and angled my back to the rough adobe wall, so that I could squint through the glare at the parking lot. It looked calm. My BMW sat glittering in the sun, sleek and beautiful and just a touch arrogant; beyond it, two big-ass SUVs were drinking the pumps dry. A woman was tossing trash in the courtesy cans. Normal human life, nothing out of the ordinary.

'Did she kill anybody?'

'Let's just say it didn't go well.'

'How many—'

'Stay focused, Jo.' Lewis sounded grim and ragged, very unlike his usual cool self. 'You can't afford to worry about individuals right now. I can't do what you're doing, or I'd be knocking down the doors right now, believe me. I've tried. Even though I've got the right mix of powers, there's something missing in me. Something you've got.'

'Djinn,' I said. 'I have a little bit of Djinn.'

I heard someone yell his name in the background. 'I have to go,' he said. 'We've got wounded. Jo—about Imara—'

'I understand,' I said. The taste of ashes was back in my mouth. 'There's nothing you can do.'

'Nothing anybody can do,' he said. 'We're trying to stay alive—that's it and that's all. Keep as many people breathing as we're able.'

And that, ultimately, was the mission of the Wardens, wasn't it? The greater good.

'Wait,' I said. 'I'm in Sedona. Do you have any idea where to—'

'Find the Ma'at,' he said, and hung up.

Just… hung up.

I stared at the receiver in disbelief, because that wasn't exactly what I'd call a red-hot clue. The Ma'at weren't listed in the yellow pages under World, Saving Of… and I had no idea if there was even one single person, out of the several Ma'at I'd met, who lived in the Sedona area. As far as I knew, they were all strangers. How the hell was I supposed to find them, send up a flare?

A flare…

I was still thinking it through when one of the big SUVs pulled away from the pump and out onto the road, and revealed three figures standing there, watching me. Focused on me like hungry wolves.

Rahel. Alice. The male Djinn from back at the forest, the one with the long white ponytail.

Their eyes were crimson, burning like the forests up in Canada, and hell if I knew what I was supposed to do to save myself.

I swallowed and carefully replaced the receiver in the cradle on the pay phone. I briefly considered running, but that didn't seem so smart. I couldn't outrun Djinn.

So far, they hadn't moved, but I was deeply scared. The three of them together represented a huge amount of firepower—think China in a pissed-off mood—and I was trying to remember all the advice about what to do with wild animals. Move slowly. Avoid eye contact. Don't run.

They all moved together. I mean, together—not like one started and the others followed, they all just flowed into motion and began walking toward me. Slow steps. Alice had to walk faster, because she was so small, but they were identically eerie.

Clearly, moving slowly and avoiding eye contact wasn't getting me anywhere. I pressed myself against the wall and held up my hands, trying to appear as helpless and pathetic as possible while simultaneously grabbing and gathering up as much power as I could. Not that it would do any good, but I wasn't going down without a fight. Not now. Not after I'd come so far.

If I thought I'd been shaking before, well, this was like standing on a fault line. My heart was hammering. I remembered how many Wardens had already died, and I remembered my name, already carved on that marble wall of the fallen. I'd seen my funeral. It had been nice, but I had no great desire to schedule an encore. At least, not yet. I was fed up with the dying.

I focused on Rahel, looking for some sign—any sign—that she was still even partly in control. Nothing. She was a vessel: Rahel on the outside, and something else entirely on the inside. Did she know? Could she remember how it felt, later, to be so lost to herself? Would she remember killing me later?

Why was the Earth doing this now? What had I done to piss her off? Anything? Nothing? Who could tell?

They stopped moving just as suddenly as they'd started, facing me. Rahel was on the right side, and I kept watching her, willing her to recognize me. The madness hadn't lasted too long last time, had it? Maybe an hour? Lewis had said it had started fifteen minutes ago… that left me forty-five minutes to keep the tigers at bay…

Their mouths opened, and what came out was noise.

I clapped my hands over my ears and tried to keep it out, but it wasn't sound, really, and it didn't come in through my ears. It was something else, a kind of vibration that used the aetheric and the real world, was part of both, part of neither—it was awful and terrible and it was somehow sick, as if I was hearing a physical manifestation of a disease.

The Demon. The Demon had succeeded in getting to another Oracle—probably this one, in Sedona—and the Mother was horribly hurt and angry, unable to strike back in any effective way to protect herself. So she was striking out at anything and everything that moved.

I was like a bacteria trying to talk to Albert Einstein, but I had to try something. Anything. I pried my hands away from my ears and yelled, 'Shut up!'

They did.

Wow.

All three of them stared at me, and I blinked back; all three of their heads tilted slowly sideways, considering me. Crimson eyes flickering with flares of orange and yellow and a hot, pale blue.

'I know,' I said. My stomach was trying to contract itself into a tight little ball of terror, and my knees didn't want to stay firm. I braced myself against the adobe wall and thought madly that of all the hostage negotiations ever conducted, this had to be the biggest. No pressure. 'I know how much it hurts. Can you hear me? Can you understand me?'

Nothing. Their heads stayed tilted. They didn't move, not so much as an inch or a twitch. Frozen, like statues, except for the unsettling, alien furnace in their eyes.

'I can help,' I said. 'If there's a Demon Mark on the Oracle, I can help. Just take me there. Or at least show me the way.'

It wasn't working. They didn't understand me, although they certainly knew I was there—they'd sought me out, which meant she was aware of my existence. Dammit… David was the buffer. Imara said that she couldn't find