Gale Force

“This isn’t real,” I said.

“It’s as real as we want it to be. Like Jonathan’s house, beyond the aetheric.” David shrugged slightly. “One of the benefits of being the Conduit is you can create your own realities if you feel the need.”

“And . . . you feel the need.”

He took my hand, and we walked a bit in the moonlight. It felt as if we were the first people to walk here, and I supposed we were. I didn’t ask. He didn’t volunteer. After a while, we rounded an irregular curve and I saw a low-burning fire ahead, warm and inviting. I knew, without a word being said, that we were supposed to sit down, and I settled into the cool sand without complaining about the damage to my dress. Besides, my dress was still on my sleeping body, somewhere out there.

David took a seat beside me. The fire snapped and popped and flared like a real flame, and it warmed like one, too. I stretched out my hands toward it. As real as we want it to be, he’d said.

Like the two of us, together.

“The question you won’t ask me is, did Yvette ever force me to abuse her stepson,” David said. “The answer is no. Not in the way you’re thinking.”

I have to admit, a weight of dread rolled away, and I must have given an audible sigh of relief. But David wasn’t finished.

“What she did force me to do was to bring him to her, and watch,” he said. “Yvette always did like an audience. Kevin avoids me because I’m part of those memories. I’m bound up with all the sex and pain and horror of it. So yes, I was part of it, even though I never—I never hurt him. I wanted to destroy her for it. I wanted to rip her apart into so many pieces not even God could find a trace.”

I heard the ring of hate in his voice, real as what I’d heard from Kevin. He meant it, and I ached for him, too. “But you didn’t, because you couldn’t. You were as powerless as Kevin to stop her.”

He said nothing to that. The Djinn were not comfortable with the idea of powerlessness; in a sense, it was worse now than ever, because they had thousands of years of slavery to try to put into some kind of context. He hurt, and I couldn’t help him. Not with that.

“I’m telling you this because Kevin doesn’t trust me,” he said. “And that’s part of the reason I sent Rahel with him. He’s a bit fascinated with her, like most humans seem to be, and she’s got no history for him to fix on. If he can trust any Djinn, he’ll trust her. But he’ll never truly trust me.”

This felt so intimate that it frightened me. He came here to face his fears, face his history, and there was a lot of that to get through—more than I’d ever be able to understand. He could read my life at a glance, if he chose, and that more than anything else made me feel disadvantaged.

David put his arm around me, and I leaned against him. We both stared at the fire for a long time before he said, “My birth mother was like you. Strong, like you. Beautiful. Willful, which gave my father plenty of heartaches; it was a time when women were more constrained by society, or at least had fewer choices in how to misbehave. She taught me many things, but one of the things she gave me was a love of learning, and that was rare then. Not even the sons of kings were learned; it wasn’t considered manly.”

I closed my eyes and breathed in the night, the peace. Maybe this wasn’t real, but it had a kind of solemnity to it that we couldn’t get out there, in the daily whirl of life.

“Tell me about her,” I said, and snuggled closer to his warmth. “Tell me everything.”

And he did.

Chapter Eight

When I actually did wake up, we were still driving, and I wasn’t sure that I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing until David looked over at me. He had an expression, open and vulnerable, unlike any he’d ever really shown me before. I’d never even realized how armored he was before, until the armor was removed.

“I wanted to tell you all that,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t before, but there never seemed to be time. Always something happening with you. And it usually involves explosions.”

“That’s an exaggeration,” I replied with great dignity. “Things hardly ever explode. They burn, they shake, and occasionally they break, but explosions aren’t my thing.”

“Point taken.” He gave me an assessing look, and took the next exit. “You need a break.”

“Buster, you need to learn how to take them, too. If you intend—”

“To live like a human, yes, I know. I’ll start tomorrow. First thing. For tonight, I just want to get you safely home.”

Home. I imagined the soft bed, imagined waking up with him, and imagined that it would be like that every day for the rest of my life.

It seemed too precious to be true.

The truck stop where we pulled off the freeway was one of those open-all-night places that specialized in everything, from deli sandwiches to wind chimes. After investigating the facilities, which were scrupulously clean, I browsed the snack aisles and stocked up on road food, looked over the DVDs, rummaged through the books, thought about purchasing those wind chimes, and finally ended up with nothing but a bag of chips and a cold soft drink at the register. No sign of David. I wondered where he’d gone off to; maybe he was still in the car.

I collected my purchases and went outside. No, the Mustang was empty. I went back inside, strolled the aisles, saw nobody I recognized. Somewhere inside, a slight tightening started in the vicinity of my stomach. I walked faster, looked harder.

Nothing.

“Excuse me,” I said to the guy behind the counter. “I came in with a guy, a little taller than you, brownish hair, kind of long—”

“He left,” the guy said. “Said he’d be right back. I figured he’d just gone out to the car or something. He’s not out there?”

I checked again. No sign of David anywhere. I waited out in the darkness, indecisive, and paced. Manolo Blahniks weren’t meant to be paced in, but I wasn’t taking off my shoes on the stained concrete of Moe’s All-Niter, either.

I finally stopped and said, “David?” Just in case he was there and watching, though why he’d do that I couldn’t imagine.

Someone answered me, but it wasn’t David. “He’s gone,” said a little girl, standing in the shadows at the edge of the building. She didn’t move, but she emerged from the darkness, as though the lights had brightened around her, and I saw that it was Venna. Venna was one of the most puzzling Djinn I’d ever met, and that was saying a lot; she was the only one I’d ever seen who preferred the form of a child, and she usually liked to dress in Alice in Wonderland-style blue, with a white pinafore. Long blond hair, held back by a simple band, and big china blue eyes.

There was absolutely nothing human about her right now. The clothes—the body—were a disguise.

I took a long step toward her. “What the hell did you do to him?” I blurted. “Where is he?” Showing aggression probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do in this situation; Venna could be deadly, although she’d also been my friend more often than not, and saved my life a few times. Putting her on my bad side wasn’t a good career move.

But I couldn’t stop myself.

She didn’t react. Her hands stayed folded, but her eyes flashed a more intense blue, just for a second, and I found myself unable to advance. My heart raced, and I shuddered in every muscle, trying to fight, but it was useless. She had me shut down.

“Ready to listen now?” she asked mildly. “I’m sorry, but you’re angry. I’m just trying to be sure you don’t hurt yourself.”

I hadn’t known Venna was capable of doing this. I hadn’t known any Djinn could do this, not so easily. Not against someone of my strength level.

As if she were reading my mind, too, she smiled. “Don’t be scared,” she said. “It’s only because you have so much power, so many ways to get inside you. If you were any other Warden, I couldn’t do it at all.”

“Except for Lewis,” I managed to say, and her smile took on dimples.