Thin Air

The pilot’s cheerful voice came on to tell us to put our tray tables and flight attendants in the upright position, and the opal shield faded around us. The bed became seats, and we were back to reality. It hadn’t been a dream. My whole body was relaxed, languorous with warmth, deliciously sore.

“I love you,” David said. He said it quietly, without any drama, as if it were part of normal conversation. Which maybe it was, for us. Or could be. “No matter how this goes, that doesn’t change.”

I closed my eyes as the plane began a terrifying, jerky descent toward New Jersey.

He stayed with me until we touched down on the tarmac, but by the time I opened my eyes again, my hand was empty of his, and David’s seat was vacant.

He was gone. We were on our own.

The Demon was in Seacasket. Somewhere. I could feel that noise in my head, like subtle static on a channel I’d never known my radio had received before.

The process of shuttling my little raiding party from planeside to Seacasket wasn’t short, but it was fairly efficient; the Wardens, it seemed, excelled in logistics. That meant a passenger van, complete with communications gear and a hotline that Lewis immediately used to chat with somebody in an office. He hadn’t commented on David’s disappearance, which seemed odd to me until I realized that he probably knew where David had gone, and why.

Or maybe he was just distracted by Rahel, who’d shown up in the van without preamble or introduction, scaring the holy crap out of at least some of the Wardens, including Paul, who’d nearly jumped out of his seat. “Post-traumatic fucking stress,” he’d growled at me, and thumped down hard. “Last time a Djinn popped in on me like that, she was trying to rip my head off.”

Rahel raised one sharp eyebrow, elegant and amused. “I can’t imagine why,” she said coolly. She was in neon orange today, a beautifully tailored pantsuit with a tangerine sheer top layered over neon yellow. Matching fingernails that looked sharp enough to slice paper. She’d jazzed up her multitude of black braids with tiny gold bells and glowing orange beads, and she gave off a very faint chime when she moved. “You’ve treated the Djinn so well during your partnership with us, Warden.”

“Hey. This particular Djinn wasn’t trying to kill the institution.”

They exchanged the kind of look reserved for respected adversaries, and went to their separate corners, metaphorically. In actuality, the van wasn’t that big.

“I should help the driver,” Rahel said, and moved up a row to lean over to touch him on the shoulder. She didn’t speak, though, that I could see. I wondered what kind of “help” she was providing, and decided that maybe sometimes it was just better not to ask.

“It’s the town,” Lewis said, following my gaze. “I’ve tried to send Wardens here for more than six months. They never make it within twenty miles before they turn around.”

“That bad?” I asked.

“No. They just forget where they’re going. It’s part of the protections the Djinn put in place ages ago.” He nodded toward Rahel. “She’s navigating for him.”

The closer we got, the stranger the weather seemed. It had been cold and windy in Newark, with that chilly, damp edge that could only mean snow on the way. But as we moved toward Seacasket, everything went quiet, smooth as glass. Like weather simply didn’t exist, or was artificially flattened out to some even balance.

I put my hand up against the van’s window. Cool, but not frigid outside. The clouds had swirled away, and the sunshine seemed brighter than it should. The fall colors were gorgeous, and the leaves fluttered in a very slight, decorative breeze.

We passed a sign that announced we were entering the historic town of Seacasket, and I felt a shudder go through every one of us-not a reaction to what we were reading, but something else. Some force dragging over us like a curtain.

Rahel continued to sit quietly, communing with the van driver, as we drove through town. I stared out at what looked like a normal place, normal buildings, normal people. It looked too normal, in fact, a Norman Rockwell perfection that existed all too rarely in reality. Kids in this town would be happy and well- adjusted, with just enough spice of harmless rebellion for flavor. Adults would be content and well-grounded, going about their productive and busy lives. Crime would be low. Lawns would be perennially neat.

Too good to be true, although it was true at the level most people lived.

But up on the aetheric, it was different. There was a kind of illumination to everything that spun it just slightly toward the positive, and it was easier here than anywhere I’d ever been to move from the real world into Oversight-it happened in an effortless slide.

The veils were definitely thin here.

We parked on a main street next to what looked like the most picturesque town graveyard I’d ever seen, all gracefully sculpted willow trees, manicured grass, artfully aged tombstones. Ethereal. If I had to pick any place to get my bones planted, well, I could certainly do worse.

I tried not to think that it could happen sooner than I thought.

We filed out of the van onto the sidewalk, moved around in the Brownian motion of people who didn’t have any idea where they were going, and Rahel emerged last. She swept us with a look that clearly said, Hopeless, and turned to Lewis. “Perhaps you’d like to deploy them,” she said. “Unless you think they look less suspicious this way.”

I covered a snort of laughter with a cough.

“It’s Joanne’s show,” he said, which made the laugh on me. “We’re here for muscle, not brains.”

I smiled thinly. He smiled back in a way that made me paranoid about just how solid David’s privacy bubble had been on the plane. Surely I was imagining things.

Dear God, let me be imagining things.

“Spread out,” I said. “Rahel, Lewis, maybe you should each take a corner. The rest of you, find someplace to blend.”

There was a general shuffle, and then people broke up to assume their chosen locations. Except for Lewis, who was waiting for something else from me, and Rahel, who just wasn’t going to be given orders by some mere human anyway.

“Where are you going?” Lewis asked. I nodded at the open gates of the cemetery.

“I need to go in there,” I said. “Right?”

He exchanged a glance with Rahel, who inclined her head silently.

“I’ve been here before,” I said. “The other me, she remembers everything, including how to reach the Oracle.”

That made some fierce golden fire light up in Rahel’s eyes, and she looked hard all of a sudden. Cutting edges and slicing angles.

“Is the Demon here?” she asked. “Inside?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. At least, I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel that specific. But she’s got to be close.”

My own voice said, from right behind me, “She is close,” and something hit me with stunning force. I was tossed forward and collided with the stately brick wall. I somehow managed to get my arms in front of me, which resulted in some bad bruises but no broken bones, and tried to summon powers to fight.

I had nothing. It was the same eerie, dead flatness, so far as access to power went, that I’d experienced in Sedona when I’d tried to fight Ashan. Oh, boy. Not so good, because although my powers were on the wane, my evil twin’s supernatural abilities weren’t.

Because, of course, she was supernatural. Like the Djinn. It was in whatever passed for her DNA.

Well, one thing she wasn’t, was immune to a punch.

Lewis stepped up and gave her a solid right cross, snapping her head back with real violence. But even as she staggered backward, I heard Rahel scream, “Lewis, no!” and saw that Evil Twin, who looked more like me than I did with her glossy, sleek hair and vibrant, glittering eyes and perfect skin, had grabbed hold of his wrist.

She yanked him forward, body-to-body, and met his eyes with hers, staring deep.

Rahel paused in the act of moving toward them. I shook the stars and explosions out of my head, trying to see