Cape Storm

Kevin held up his hands in surrender, a sour look on his face. “Dude, like I want to spend time coddling your self-involved evil-turning ass.” His glance at Cherise said something different, though. “Be careful.”

“I’m going to hurt her? I’m not the one with the body count, Kevin,” I said. He flinched, just a little. “Why don’t you loiter out here looking menacing while you wait? Maybe you can beat up cabin stewards, just to keep in practice.”

He flipped me off, but that wasn’t original for him. I took Cherise’s arm, and we headed back to the cabin.

She locked the door behind us. I raised my eyebrows as I settled on my unmade bed. “Oooh,” I said. “Is this going to be hot girl-on-girl action, or what?”

“Shut up.” Cherise hugged herself and stayed where she was, between me and the door. “Something’s really wrong with you.”

“Oh yeah? You think?” I leaned back against the hard cabin wall and crossed my arms. “You’ve been drinking Lewis’s Kool-Aid about how bad I am, boo-hoo. But I understand why you’d go that way. He’s still got an open position for girlfriend-slash-wife, so hold out for the brass ring, kid.” She gave me an uncomprehending stare. “Wouldn’t be the first man you’ve screwed for fun and profit.”

“Would you shut up? God, you can be such a bitch! Since—since your back thing happened, you’ve been changing. Slowly at first, but then it got worse, and now you’re—” Cherise made a helpless gesture that encompassed everything about me, from head to toe. “Look at you.”

I looked down. “What?” Granted, the clothes might be a bit sluttier than my usual, but I liked them, and besides, it was a cruise ship. South Beach rules of conduct and dress.

“It’s not the outfit, Jo. It’s you. It’s the look in your eyes, the kind of smile you give people. The way you think about them.” Cherise swallowed and ducked her chin to avoid eye contact. “When you think they’re not looking, it’s like you’re examining pieces of meat—like they’re not people at all. You never did that before.”

I deliberately relaxed again.“Yeah? You’re sure about that? Maybe you just never caught me at it before.”

“No. I know you, and this—this isn’t you. Looks like you, feels like you, sounds like you. It’s in your skin, but it’s not the Joanne Baldwin I’m friends with.”

I didn’t know why this should wake a feeling of anxiety in me. Pale and faint, yes, but still . . . I wanted to make her feel better. “People change,” I offered.

“Not this much. Not this fast. You let something inside you.”

I tried to explain—again, I wasn’t sure why I bothered, except that the genuine warm concern in Cherise’s eyes actually reached something in me, something I’d thought long drowned in darkness. “It’s just giving me access to power. Like having a Djinn at my command, only—better. Faster. You’re going to have to get used to the fact that I can’t be Miss Congeniality anymore. This is war.”

“Jo, the war’s over. You lost. You’re a casualty.”

I came up from the bed in one sinuous motion and took a step into her space. “You know what’s really over? This conversation. I’m leaving.”

“You have to go through me first.”

“Can do.”

“What? You’re going to hurt me?” Cherise—tiny little Cherise, with her perfect tan and perfect teeth and glistening hair. Funny and sexy and quirky. “Go ahead.”

Frustration erupted inside me. It burned from the torch on my back under my skin, traveling lines and ladders of nerves, and I felt fire tingle at the ends of my fingers. “Move.”

“Make me, bitch.”

I wanted to, oh God, I did. Instead, I bared my teeth. “You know what you are?” I asked, low in my throat.

“You’re nothing. Even among human beings, you’re a worthless failure. Model? A model is just some girl who strips for cash—a body for hire. A walking mannequin with a shelf life of about five minutes. Take away your looks and you’ve got nothing to sell. Who’s going to love you then, the Human Torch out there? Face it, without tagging along to somebody better, you’re nothing, peach. You used to be entourage. Now you’re not even that.”

The color faded out of Cherise’s face, leaving the tan like some eerie overlay, and I saw a real spark of fear in her clear blue eyes.

It turned hot.

“Why’d you just call me peach?”

Of all the things she could have said, that was the one that stopped me in my tracks. Peach. Sweetness. Bad Bob liked expressions like those, mockingly sentimental, used to wound. He’d used them on me all the time.

I took a step back. My hands locked into fists, and I felt the fire from the torch on my back flare hotter. It didn’t like me doubting myself.

It didn’t like me thinking.

“It’s just another kind of Demon Mark,” Cherise said. “Remember? Remember how that felt? You told me about it, how it made you feel so powerful, so free—”

“Shut up.” My voice didn’t have much force to it.

“He’s using it to destroy you. You’ve got to stop. You’re going to destroy everyone and everything you love.”

I closed my eyes. Images flashed across the darkness—David, the first time I’d seen him, a dusty stranger on the road. David, naked in morning light, looking at me as if I was the most glorious thing he had ever seen.

Lewis, standing against the storm, and compromising himself and his beliefs to find the strength. Not asking for my praise or my applause. Knowing I might kill him for it.

Cherise, without the power to light a match, signing on because it was the right thing to do.

Everything I loved was right here, on this ship, and I was destroying it.

And I still couldn’t care.

“You understand,” said a little-girl voice from behind me. “That’s good. I wouldn’t want you to die without understanding that it had to be done.”

Venna stood behind me in her Alice pinafore, perfect and shining and eerie. I looked from her to Cherise.

“How the hell did you hook up with the Djinn?”

She shrugged. “Diplomacy. Ain’t it a bitch?”

“And so am I.” But I didn’t strike at either one of them. Instead, I sat down on the bed and crossed my legs into the lotus position. It was a bit of a tight fit, in the jeans.

I stared idly at the far side of the cabin—Cherise’s side—where she had beauty products lined up in thick clusters on the shelf. All kinds of things—tubes of makeup, lipsticks, eye shadow compacts.

Bottles of expensive perfume, just the right size to hold a Djinn.

Venna smiled. “I’d kill you first,” she said, and there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that she meant it. “There wouldn’t be enough of you to summon the sharks.”

I held up my hands. “Can’t blame me for thinking about it.”

“Oh, I can,” she said. “I most certainly can. But it would be amusing to see you make the attempt. Your vows with David gave humans access to the New Djinn, not my kind.” She was studying me with alien, utterly cold intensity. “But I think I understand you. If someone offered you poisoned water in the desert, would you rather die of thirst, or take longer to die of poison?”

She really did understand. “If I hadn’t taken the poison, I’d be dead already. None of you were offering anything else,” I said. “Alive, I can always turn myself around, right? Go to rehab, some twelve-step thing?”

Venna’s eyes turned black. “I’ve heard this excuse from others,” she said. “Most recently from Lewis, as he violated our most basic trust. There will be an accounting, when this is done. No Djinn—not even our younger cousins—will be imprisoned by your kind again. Expedience is not excuse.”

I shrugged. “So? Are we throwing down, MiniMe, or are we done now? Because I don’t really think even you can stop me now. Or that you’re allowed to try.” Venna’s presence was waking a kind of utterly unsettling hunger