Total Eclipse

God, I hoped it was Fire. Please.

David was looking . . . odd. I guessed he didn’t know how to feel, considering that he used to have every right to talk to the Oracles, and now—being busted back to human—he wasn’t sure whether he’d even be allowed to enter their presence. Or survive the experience.

“Relax,” I said. “If whichever one it is hired us a driver, I’m guessing they’re not going to just kill us on sight.”

But it was a guess, pure and simple, and he knew it. I turned to Cherise and Kevin, who were waking up, yawning, stretching, and groaning just like David and I had done. “Before you ask,” I said, “we’re almost there. Wherever that is. And when we get there, the two of you are going to stay in the car. I don’t want you anywhere near this.”

“This what?” Cherise mumbled around a jaw-cracking yawn. “Ow.”

“You don’t need to know,” I said. “And you don’t need to do anything stupid, like try to rescue us, no matter what happens. Understand?”

Kevin nodded, not looking overly concerned one way or the other. Comforting. Cherise, at least, frowned and looked cutely annoyed, but she finally agreed.

Me, I was just hoping that wherever our newfound chauffeur was taking us had a bathroom, because I was in need. Badly. And my throat was parched, too.

It only took another five minutes or so after that for our driver to pull off the freeway, expertly whip in and out of traffic (which he could do with impunity, being Djinn and therefore beyond the reach of human law enforcement), and pull to a stop in front of a . . .

A mall.

He shut off the engine and sat there like a marble statue. David and I exchanged looks. I finally said, “Uh, hello? Instructions? Are we supposed to go shopping?”

His head turned. Well, it was more of an Exorcist twist, really—like it was on a swivel, not connected to the rest of his body. Creepy. Also creepy were his eyes, which continued to blaze an unearthly fire in a color that defied description.

“Out,” he said. Just that. And the passenger-side door flung itself open, David’s seat belt snapped back, and I felt a supernatural shove that sent me stumbling out onto the pavement. David collided with me a second later, and we steadied ourselves as the Mustang’s door slammed shut again.

Cherise and Kevin goggled at us from the backseat. Cherise tried the door. Locked. She held up her hands in defeat and mouthed, Sorry!

That was fine. The last thing I wanted was for Cherise to try her hand at slinging some power around. It wouldn’t end well for anyone concerned. She was so far overmatched right now that the Djinn in that car wouldn’t even have left a smoke trail in destroying her. Not that she didn’t have the potential inside of her—she did, in spades—but she had zero ability to channel and control it. She’d be more likely to blow herself, the mall, and whatever major metropolitan area we were in off the face of the Earth instead.

“Right,” I said, and steadied myself on my cramping legs. “I guess we go in?”

“Seems like it,” David said, and took my hand. He smiled. “Remember the first time you took me to a mall?”

“Yeah, that ended well. I almost got suffocated.”

“And you drove off and left me behind,” he said. “Don’t try it again.”

“Not a chance.”

We looked at the glass doors of the entrance like it was the gates of Hell, and after a second to gather our composure—well, I was gathering mine, at least—we moved forward and into the mall.

I don’t know what I expected to happen—maybe that we’d be transported to some other, intimidating supernatural place?—but on the other side of the doors was a busy food court, full of cheap tables and flashing neon and the smells of a dozen different kinds of food. Families with crying kids in tow. Teens traveling in packs, for whom nothing existed outside of their own insulated circle of friends. Seniors in walking shoes making the rounds. It was a bustling indoor community, with snacks and shopping bags and a life of its own.

“I love a good mall,” I said to David, “but I really have no idea what we’re supposed to do here. I mean, I could use a pair of shoes. . . .”

“If you’re going to shop, you’d better get Cherise, or she’ll kill you,” he pointed out. “But I think we’re supposed to do something else.”

“Well, it’d be nice if someone gave us a sign. . . .”

At the far end of the food court was the neon- lit entrance to a multiplex theater. The NOW SHOWING signs were giant TV screens, which I supposed was easier than the old stick-up letters.

One of them was flashing text in the biggest possible letters. It said ENTER HERE.

I cleared my throat and pointed. “Would you call that a sign?”

The letters immediately changed to read ENTER NOW OR DIE.

“I’d say so,” David said. “And not a welcome-to-the-neighborhood sign, either.”

Didn’t seem so. I tried to control the twisting of my stomach as we moved off toward the theater, threading past baby strollers and people just standing in the way. When we were still twenty feet away, the lettering changed again.

It said, in red flashing letters, FASTER.

“Crap,” I said, and dropped David’s hand to race him to the entrance. That drew stares. I wondered why nobody could see the sign, but then decided that the Oracle wanted it that way. It was meant for us. And it was meant to scare us.

It was working.

I plunged through the door under the flashing sign, just a step ahead of David, and stumbled into . . . fog. White, featureless fog, cool and damp and cloying on my skin. It felt thick and heavy and alive, pressing down on me as I stumbled to a stop, unable to see anything in the thick white mist.

I reached back and flailed for David’s hand.

He wasn’t there.

I spun around and scissored my arms wildly, trying to find him, sure he had to be right there . . . but he wasn’t. He was nowhere within reach. “David!” I shouted. “David, can you hear me?”

Nothing. It felt as if my words were swallowed up, as if the fog around me was so thick and heavy it was suffocating sound. It was like drowning in a cloud, and my breath came faster as the feeling of claustrophobia intensified. I held out my hands and took a step, hoping for something—anything—to tell me where I was. This was worse than being blind, somehow. It felt like I should be able to see, and my eyes constantly strained, trying to focus on nothing.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Oracle? You wanted me, here I am!”

The mist around me suddenly thickened, choking me, trapping me in a gelatinous blanket, and I struggled to get a breath that didn’t feel like a ball was being shoved down my throat.

A shape appeared out of the mist—but only a shape. A shadow, like glass filled with the same mist that surrounded me. No features, no face, nothing but a chilly kind of menace. It was terrifying, and I realized that I was seconds away from dying if I couldn’t get the Air Oracle to stop tormenting me.

I did the only thing I could.

I gave up.

I stopped struggling, stopped trying to choke in a breath, and relaxed. The mist supported me, flowing like syrup through my clothes, along my skin, caressing me in intimate and cold ways that felt repulsively invasive.

I let it happen.

The pressure of mist inside my lungs let up, and I whooped in a breath of air just as the edge of my vision started to go dark and sparkly from oxygen deprivation.

Human.

It wasn’t a voice, exactly, or a thought either. It was more of a vibration that didn’t register in my ears, but in my flesh. As if the Oracle was speaking through my bones.

It hurt.

I gasped, and suddenly the mist holding me up let go, dropping me to my hands and knees on the