Thin Air

“Yeah. Christ, I strangled her before I drowned her. What is she, a goddamn superhero?”

If she was, Eamon thought, they were in for a great deal of trouble. “Anything else?”

“Such as?” Orry was poker-faced, but Eamon knew his weaknesses too well.

“Have a little fun before you did her in? Or tried?”

Orry didn’t answer, which was answer enough. Perfect, Eamon thought in disgust. Probably DNA evidence as well. “Did she see you? See your face?”

“No.”

“You’re certain.”

“Yes, dammit, I’m sure. She can’t identify me.”

“Even if that’s so, we have very little time,” Eamon said. “We need to clear everything out and clean up as much of the forensic evidence as possible, in case she’s able to lead them back here.”

“Eamon…” Orry turned toward him, looking at him oddly. It took Eamon a second to realize that it was an expression of apology. “I really thought she was dead.”

Murder would be such an easy answer. But in all his travels, Eamon had met only two other people in the world who could match him for ferocity and ruthlessness, and it would be a shame to lose a partner over something so essentially trivial. If she couldn’t identify him, they could simply avoid the entire issue.

Still. Killing Orry sounded very tempting, and for an unblinking moment Eamon imagined how he’d do it. The knife concealed in his jacket, most likely, driven up under the ribs and twisted. Fast, relatively painless, not a huge amount of blood. Or he could snap his neck, though Orry was a wiry bastard and, as a cop, fully trained to prevent harm to himself.

No, the knife was better, far better.

“You going to stare at me or move the fucking boxes?” Orry snapped. “I got things to do.”

Eamon smiled slightly. “By all means,” he said. “Let’s move boxes. It’s easier than moving bodies.”

Blur. This time we jumped years.

Eamon, in a car, parked outside of an apartment building. Watching someone with field glasses. As with Cherise, I could feel what he was feeling. Unlike Cherise, what Eamon was feeling was completely alien to me.

I didn’t know people could feel that way. Dark, cold, detached. Mildly annoyed at the inconveniences.

He was thinking about ways to hurt the woman he was watching. I didn’t want to see any of that, but Venna wasn’t discriminating; if it was in Eamon’s head, it spread into mine like a sick, fatal virus.

Eamon was not a normal man. Not at all.

The woman he was watching, visible through the open sliding door of her apartment balcony, turned, sipping a glass of wine. Red wine.

It was me.

Pretty enough, he was thinking. She’d do, for a while. He liked fair skin. Fair skin showed bruises better.

It took me a breathless moment to realize that however sick I might feel about what he was thinking, Eamon didn’t plan to carry out any of his fantasies. They were just entertainment for him, a cold way to amuse himself during a boring job.

“You’re sure she’s the one,” he said, and I realized there was someone sitting in the passenger seat of the car next to him. A matronly woman, middle-aged, with a nice face and quick, friendly smile. “She’s the one who killed Quinn in Las Vegas.”

The woman shrugged. “That’s what they say. Doesn’t look too likely to me; just look at her. Not exactly Quinn’s level, is she?”

“Looks can be deceptive,” Eamon said, and lowered the glasses. “You’re sure Quinn’s dead.”

“As sure as I can be,” the woman said. “Cops found his SUV blown all to hell out in the middle of nowhere, no sign of Quinn’s body, but they found a lot of blood. Too much for him to have survived. They figure coyotes scavenged his corpse, or else the flood got it. There was a storm around that time, a real gully-washer. Could have carried his body for miles if he fell into the arroyo. Anyway, he’s dead for sure if he didn’t contact me by now. I’m holding some stuff for him.”

“Anything good?” Eamon asked, and looked through the field glasses again. Not-me looked polished and glossy, tanned and toned. Contemplative, as she gazed out over the horizon. She had an ocean view, apparently. Nice.

“A package from our friend Mr. Velez. Nothing too unusual this time. I was thinking of moving it through the East Coast channels, unless you had a better idea.”

“No, Cynthia, that’s fine. You do as you think best.” Eamon stretched, sighed, and put the glasses down. “She’s one of them, though. You’re certain.”

“She’s one of them,” the unknown Cynthia said. “I’d stake my life on it.”

Eamon started the car. “You are staking your life on it, love.”

Joanne Baldwin was, Eamon knew, the one Quinn had failed to kill all those years ago in the cave. How very interesting that it would come to this.

Blood would tell.

Blur.

Eamon with my sister. Eamon gaining my trust and betraying it in the most shocking way. I couldn’t possibly have hated anyone more after I saw what he was up to, but the betrayals just kept on coming.

Mine, as well as his.

Eamon trading me Sarah for what he supposed was a Djinn bottle-which it was, just a booby-trapped one that let loose an insane Djinn who couldn’t be controlled. Eamon fighting his way through a terrifying hurricane to cut me and Sarah loose from a tree, where the wind and debris would have killed us in a matter of minutes.

Eamon running away with my sister. And Sarah wanted to go.

Eamon coming back to me afterward, threatening Sarah again, but realizing that he’d lost his leverage. Not giving up, though. He was nothing if not persistent.

Imara was in the memories, too. Helping me. Guarding me. Terrified for me, as Eamon calculated how far he could push me-and her-to get what he wanted.

And David. That memory was crystal clear in Eamon’s mind. David had come out of nowhere, nowhere, picked up a fallen knife, and-The second you disappoint me, little man, the instant I think that you’re mocking me or even thinking about harm to my family, that ends. I watch you bleed your life away in less than a dozen heartbeats.

We’d left him, the three of us-mother, father, child. We’d been a family once. And David had loved us both with such intensity that it burned through to even a self-absorbed predator like Eamon.

Eamon respected him. And he liked me-in the same way he’d once liked Thomas Orenthal Quinn.

That turned my stomach.

What was worse, far worse, was that even as sick and horrifying as Eamon was, as far from human as I thought he was, when I looked at him with that dizzying rush of power, when his body dissolved into multilayered lights and networks of flowing energy, he was beautiful. Unique and beautiful and impossible not to somehow love for his damage and his brilliance and his fierce, unflinching intelligence…

I couldn’t help but go back for more. So many memories, every color, every flavor filling my empty spaces. His memories weren’t like Marion’s; hers had been astringent, like dry white wine. Eamon’s were red, bloodred, thick and salty and choking in their intensity. Horrors and wonders. Things that even in that state I tried not to see.

Venna yanked me out with her hand on the back of my neck, and her eyes were wide and very strange. The world lurched around me, tilted, and Eamon slid bonelessly off of the wall to collapse in a heap. Sarah cried out and knelt beside him.

“Oh,” Venna whispered. She didn’t spare any attention for Eamon, but she stared holes through me. “I didn’t know you could do that. You shouldn’t have, you know.”

When Venna let me go I staggered off, fighting nausea, not fighting tears. I needed a shower, a wire scrub brush, and bleach to feel clean again. Oh, God.

I found myself sitting limply in the sand, tinted with flashing red and blue lights. Shaking.