that; most of them had reason to be gun-shy.
What bothered me was the significant number who seemed to be huddled together whispering in the halls, who fell silent when I came near. I felt stares on me all the time. A few nodded, but it didn’t feel like support. None of them were my friends, and most of them were people I knew only by reputation. Were they Sentinels? Potential recruits? No way I could tell, but it made the back of my neck itch.
Lewis escorted me to the elevators, staying protectivelyclose. We’d agreed that David should stay away for this part; it would have been harder with him in the room. So Lewis was taking his bodyguarding duties seriously, even in the relatively secure confines of the Warden’s own halls.
“You really think somebody’s going to try to take me out here, with all these Wardens around?” I asked, as we waited for the elevator to arrive. He had his hand on my arm, and he didn’t smile.
“Let’s just say I’m not counting on anything right now. Where’s David meeting you?”
“Downstairs in the parking garage.” I shook free of Lewis’s grip. “Honestly, back off, would you? I’m not glass, and I can take care of myself. I’d have thought I’d proven it by now. I’m a big girl. I can ride the elevator all by myself.”
I could tell he was just itching to go all macho and protective on me again, but he managed to hold himself back, raising both hands in surrender and stepping away. “Fine. Just don’t come crying to me if you end up dead. Again.”
The elevator’s arrival saved me from having to make a snappy reply. I got in, a few other Wardens crowded after, and I saw Lewis make a visible effort to stay where he was.
I wished I were as confident as I appeared to be.
Still, nobody tried to kill me on the way down, although a few unfriendly looks were thrown my way by one or two of my fellow vertical travelers. One made up for it by delivering a cordial congratulations on the upcoming wedding, although he politely called it a “celebration,” as if he wasn’t quite sure of the legality of the whole event. Well, neither was I, actually.
We made a couple of stops, including one at the lobby level, where half the passengers disembarked.
Next stop was the secured parking area, and as the doors opened, I was relieved to see the familiar form of David leaning against a support pillar, looking deceptively casual. He was wearing his full-on normal guy disguise— jeans, checked shirt, slightly mussed hair. Glasses to distract from his eyes, although at the moment they were solidly unremarkable. And the coat, of course. He hardly ever showed up without the coat, even in the humidly close heat of late summer in New York City.
“You know, you’re going to have to start learning how to dress for the seasons,” I said without preamble, taking his offered arm as we headed for the car. “No more of this one-outfit-fits-all thing.”
He smiled. “Are you threatening to take me shopping again?”
“Threatening? No. It’s an absolute certainty. Besides, we’re supposed to stay public, aren’t we? Present a distraction?”
“Shopping is a distraction?”
“It is the way I do it,” I said. “By the way—what’s my new last name?”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, I’d like to know how I’ll be signing checks in the future. Mrs. Joanne . . . ?”
“What’s wrong with Baldwin?”
“Nothing. In fact, I may hang on to it, but if you’re planning to do the normal-life thing, you need to have an identity other than David, King of All Djinn.”
He shot me one of those amused half smiles. “Seriously, King of All Djinn? That’s funny.”
“Answer the question. What’s your last name?”
“Whatever you want it to be.”
I remembered that he’d used a credit card at a hotel early on in our relationship. “What about David Prince?”
He sighed. “If you like.”
“You don’t?”
“Jo, I don’t
“Cyrus? Your father’s name was
“It was a very honored name at the time.”
“Then your name ought to be David Cyrus.”
He looked thoughtful. There was something going on behind his eyes, something I couldn’t guess and probably had no context to understand even if I could. He’d never mentioned his human father, or his human mother, or anything about that period of his life before it had come to a cataclysmic end on a battlefield, with thousands of men pouring out their life energy. His best friend, Jonathan, had been like Lewis, a Warden with all three powers, and deeply beloved of Mother Earth; David hadn’t been able to let go when Jonathan had passed over and been reborn as a Djinn. David had been reborn as well.
I wondered how much real memory he had of those early, fragile years of his human life. Of his birth parents, before that rebirth. He’d seemed surprised that he’d remembered his father’s name . . . and seemed affected by it, too.
At length, as we passed rows of parked cars, David said, “Cyrus sounds . . . fine.”
We arrived at the parked, sleek form of the Mustang, which was in perfect, gleaming condition, for having had its windows blown out less than a day before. David opened the passenger door and gracefully handed me in, like a princess into a carriage. He shut the door and headed around to the driver’s side, and we didn’t speak again until we’d exited the garage and were already on the road, heading for the bridge.
“You haven’t said how it went,” he said.
“It was harder than I’d thought,” I confessed. “Not the we’re-getting-married part. The Kevin part.”
David nodded. “I was concerned about that. He’s . . . fragile, in some ways. And he has good reason for a lot of his anger. Putting him in this kind of position is a risk, at best.”
“He said—David, he said that his mother used Djinn against him.” I couldn’t even really bring myself to articulate the implications. “Did she?”
He was silent for a moment, apparently focused on steering around the traffic and increasing speed as the road opened up in front of us. The steel structure of the bridge flashed past in a blur, and I wondered if the speed wasn’t more about David channeling anxiety than wanting us to get back home quickly. “You know she did,” he said. His face was smooth, expressionless, and he’d changed his glasses now, darkened them to hide his eyes. “In many different ways.”
I couldn’t ask. I knew I should; I knew he’d tell me and it would be a relief if he did, maybe for us both, but I just . . . couldn’t. I closed my eyes, rested my head against the window, and tried not to imagine David as Yvette Prentiss’s slave.
As her weapon.
“Sleep,” he murmured, and whether it was his influence or my own weariness, the steady roar of the tires and throb of the engine lured me down into the dark.
When I woke up, David was carrying me in his arms. I hadn’t been carried like that by him, except when I was in danger or injured, in a long time, and it felt . . . wonderful. Hard not to appreciate the strength and surety of his body against mine, and his smile was gentle and deadly at such close range. “Good nap?” He set me down, and my feet sank into sand. I hastily stripped off the Manolos. Sacrilege, to walk on the beach in those. Also, awkward. It was night, and the surf curled in from the horizon in sweetly regular silver lines. It broke into lace and foam on the beach, and we were close enough to the water to feel the breath of spray.
“Where are we?” It wasn’t Fort Lauderdale. The beach was too quiet, too secluded. It felt as if it had never been touched by humanity.
“Nowhere,” he said. “In a sense, anyway. It’s a place I come sometimes to be alone, when I’m troubled.”
He was telling me something. I looked around. No lights on the horizon, no roads, no airplanes buzzing overhead. Just the beach, the surf, the breeze, the moon bright as a star overhead.
