Gale Force

completely consumed by the novelty of still being alive. Until he’d asked the question, the knowledge had been lurking somewhere in the back of my mind, waiting for the right moment. “I know where he is! The—the anchor, the leader, whatever! Well, where he was, anyway.”

“Where?” David was already up and on his feet, and looking more Djinn than he ought to. “Where?”

I picked up my fork and gobbled down mouthfuls of egg as fast as I could, grimly intent on getting my strength back. “The Florida Keys,” I said. “Key West, or somewhere close to it. The bastard is our neighbor.”

Chapter Nine

I rested for a couple of days. My appetite returned with a vengeance on the second day out from the attack, and David was at first amused, then a little appalled at my lust for calories. “Are you sure that’s wise?” he asked when I opened up the fourth bag of barbecue chips. “There’s such a thing as overdoing it. . . .”

I knew there was, but the food and the sleep were recharging my body, and I wanted to hasten the process. Impatient, that was me. And scared. I knew the Sentinels now, in aetheric form if not in actual physical shape. I knew how much power they were packing, and it was terrifying indeed. I wanted my body back and balanced, fast.

I knew that bags of chips weren’t the way to go, but they tasted so good.

David distracted me from the chips by proposing an outing: shopping. “You,” I said, gazing at him approvingly, “are getting to know me way too well.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I plan to research you in the biblical sense later.”

“Mmmmm, maybe shopping can wait.” Those words were a sign of just how much that invitation really meant. I hardly ever delayed shopping.

“No. I want us out and visible,” he said. “If the Sentinels are watching, I want them to see that you’re alive, well, and strong. I don’t think they’ll try that again. You surprised them, and you scared them.”

“I did?”

“If you hadn’t,” David said, “they’d have come back for you already.”

Dressing took on a whole girding-for-battle significance now that I knew my enemies were going to be watching me. I bathed, scrubbed, exfoliated, shampooed, shaved, tweezed, moisturized. I spent half an hour on my hair, and another half an hour on makeup. Choosing the right sundress required another long stretch of time. When I finally appeared in the doorway, David was stretched out on the couch, feet crossed at the ankles, reading a battered paperback, which he dropped on his chest at the sight of me.

“Yeah?” I twirled for him, just fast enough that the floating hem of the light floral sundress showed my thighs. “Healthy enough?”

He pressed his lips together and struggled to sit up. “That’s one word for it.”

“What’s another?”

“Seductive.” That note in his voice made me shiver, but I put my shoulders back and shook my finger at him anyway.

“You said we needed to get out. So out we get, Mister.”

He sighed, stood up, and slipped into his coat.

“David?” I hated to say it, because this was a kind of dividing line, and I wasn’t even sure why. “The coat. If you want to be taken for human, only flashers wear coats in Fort Lauderdale in the summer.”

He seemed honestly surprised. “But—ah. Yes. Right.” He took it off and put it back on the chair, petting its olive-drab surface as he did, like a favorite pet he was sorry to leave behind. “Everything else okay?”

I gave him the walkaround. “Not bad,” I said, “but we can do better.”

“Oh no,” he said.

“That’s right. We’re shopping for you, buster.”

I knew all the good places to shop, but if I hadn’t, even JCPenney would have been able to supply a decent alternative to the ever-present checked shirt that David seemed to think was the height of fashion. But I wasn’t going for better; I was going for make women stop and stare, though with David, that wasn’t exactly difficult.

He was made for Versace.

The salespeople thought so too; David was bemused by the whole affair, clearly wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into, but as always, he was willing to experiment with the most trivial of human pursuits. I conspired with the lead saleswoman to do before and after digital pictures. Going in, David was a good-looking man, a bit conservative with his blue-and-white checked shirt and jeans.

Going out, he was so attractive that he was a menace to passing traffic. He wore a black, skin-tight Versace knit shirt, long-sleeved to give him sleekness, and his black Diesel jeans that hugged his ass and thighs, and flared out at the ends just enough. Because we were in Florida, I gave him a bit of a surfer fashion sensibility, and it suited him brilliantly. The coppery tan could have been stoked by days paddling in the surf. I added a very fine Hugo Boss sports coat, in midnight blue, and when he put it on, the salespeople gave a collective sigh and snapped pictures. He turned toward me, eyebrows raised, a slight flush in his cheeks.

I’ve made a Djinn blush, I thought. There was a weird satisfaction in that. Also, I planned to try to make him blush more, in private, later.

Some part of me, during all this public playacting, kept monitoring the aetheric for any signs of Sentinel activity. Nothing. It was dead quiet, weirdly so. Maybe I really had given them a shock with not dying on cue.

I started to pay for the clothes, but David slipped a wallet from his pocket and pulled out a jet-black American Express card. I caught a look at the name as he handed it over.

DAVID CYRUS PRINCE.

David knew what I was thinking, and he met my eyes briefly, then smiled at the salesclerk and signed the credit card receipt. We left the store with his old clothes and shoes in a bag. I couldn’t stop stealing glances at him, darkly gorgeous as he was; every woman we passed, young or old, plain or model-in-training, gave him an involuntary stare.

“That,” he said, “was a waste of time. I could have just manifested the clothes, if you’d shown me what you wanted me to wear.”

“The point is to be seen,” I reminded him. “Besides, buying clothes is something humans do. You want to be human, right?”

“Right.” His lips quirked, and he tried to suppress a smile. “That’s the first time I’ve ever purchased clothing, you know. For myself.”

“It’s good to stretch,” I assured him. “Mr. Prince.”

The two of us strolled through the warm, humid morning. My dress rippled and flowed in the ocean breezes, my hair looked fantastic, my shoes were kicking ass, and I had the most beautiful man I’d ever seen on my arm.

Still, I was constantly looking for a knife headed for my back. Our backs.

Nothing.

We shopped all morning, then ate lunch in a café next to the ocean. I could see that David was settling into his new look, which pleased me; I had the feeling that Djinn changed styles reluctantly. He couldn’t help but notice the attention he was attracting, and unless Djinn were a whole lot less like humans than I suspected, attention wasn’t unwelcome.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t choose to be so gorgeous to start with.

Over chicken salad and iced teas, he asked me about our afternoon plans. I proposed more shopping. He counterproposed other things, which I confess sounded more interesting, but I’d pledged to keep to my timeline.

I really needed to find that wedding dress.

So after lunch, we went to Zola Keller, and I started the arduous task of trying on thousand-dollar-and-up couture. Which is not nearly as much of a hardship as you might think. I went through twelve styles, none of them