Thin Air (Weather Warden #6)

"What?" I demanded. "No threats? No I'm-gonna-get-you-sucka? Come on, get your big-girl panties on already."

"You're trying to trick me," it said.

"Not really. I don't have to trick you. You're going to trick yourself right out of existence; you can count on that."

"I'm going to destroy you."

"News flash: You made me. When you consumed my memory you created an imbalance of energy, and we know that energy has to go somewhere. Right? It's all balance. And what you gave me back was a chance to survive." I'd figured that out a while ago, but it still hurt to say it; the last thing I wanted to do was owe my existence to this creature. This land shark. "If you want to get rid of me, you're going to have to work a hell of a lot harder."

That pushed a button. A big, red, nuclear launch button. "I will!" it screamed, and there was nothing human about that sound, or about the raw will behind it.

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever. Is that why you keep using people to do your dirty work? Kevin? Cherise? David? And believe me, you're going to pay for putting your dirty little hands on David. Big-time." I made a show of checking a watch I didn't actually have on my wrist. "You know what? Drama period's over. See you around the schoolyard, E.T."

It was a risk, but I thought I could do it, and I did... I turned around and zipped along the path of lights, through the dilapidated, sad halls of Kevin's mind, all the way to the light at the end of the tunnel.

Out.

When I opened my eyes, I was standing right where I'd been, and Kevin had his head down on the table. He was breathing, but unconscious.

I put my hand on his head again, this time just to gently stroke his greasy, matted hair. "Not everything is a tragedy, Kev," I said. "Come on. Wake up now. Nightmare's over."

He did, lifting his head and blinking like a kid coming out of a long, difficult sleep. He stared blankly for a few seconds, then focused on my face.

"Did you get it?" he asked. He didn't seem bothered by the fact that I was stroking his hair. I didn't stop.

"Got it," I said. "Good job, man. Thank you."

He ducked his head, and I saw a dull flush build in his sallow cheeks.

"Kevin," I said. "What happened to Cherise wasn't your fault."

Cherise looked startled, and mouthed, Me?

She didn't remember.

Ah, the beauty of the human mind; I wasn't sure if that was her own doing or Lewis's; maybe he'd taken the bad memories away. Either way, I was glad.

"You know what I remember?" I asked. "I remember you going after the first enemy you found back in the forest. I remember you risking your life to even the score when you thought Cherise was dead, and Lewis and I had killed her. I remember the look on your face when you realized she was still alive." I looked straight at Cherise, who was a little flushed now, too. "He needs you," I said. "And you need him, too, right?" She nodded. "Better tell him, then," I said. "And Kevin? In case you're wondering, that's the reason you're going to want to live through this."

I pushed through the kitchen door and went through the empty library, back into the large common room where the fire blazed. My own reasons for living were gathered near the warmth. David looked up, smiling. Lewis raised the coffee cup to his lips without comment. The rest of them, including Paul, waited for me to speak.

"The Demon wants to go home, or at least reach home," I said. "Lewis. If I were going to choose a place where the veil that separates our world from hers is the thinnest, where would I go?"

He put his coffee down, leaned forward, and thought about it for a second. He exchanged a look with David, who frowned, and together they both said, "Seacasket."

I blinked. "You've got to be kidding."

If I'd hated the helicopter flight, I loathed the plane ride cross-country. But, given the time ticking away, not to mention the stakes, I thought I'd better suck it up, take the Dramamine, and try to avoid wincing every time the plane hit a wind shear, which was about, oh, every thirty seconds, give or take.

The Wardens had a corporate jet. Who knew? Apparently I now had the authority to commandeer it, or so Lewis told me once we were strapped in. "Shouldn't there be, like, paperwork?" I asked, and snugged my seat belt tight. "At least a signature card for that sort of thing? For security?"

Lewis had his eyes shut even before takeoff. "Trust me. If we live through this, you'll have enough paperwork to keep you in ink stains for the rest of your life." He paused for a few seconds, then said, "How sure are you about this?"

"Any of it? On a scale of one to ten? About a three." That was probably more honesty than he was looking for, I was guessing, from the pained expression that flickered over his face. "Look, when I was taking on Kevin's memories, I took on some of hers, too. More than that, I felt her...well, I can't really call them emotions. But there's a sense to it I really can't describe. I know that in the beginning her only goal was to go home-it's almost like a spawning thing for them. Even though her motivations have gotten more complicated, she still has that instinct."

"Then why do you think she was wasting her time with trying to take over your life?" he asked, and then looked instantly sorry he'd said that. "Not that your life isn't important or valuable..."

"Yeah, nice save. The thing is, I don't think becoming me was an end in itself. It was all about the Wardens. Think about it: Get enough Wardens together, set them to one common task, and you can get a massive buildup of power. Something she could use to rip a hole from this world into her own."

He looked ill, and I didn't think it was airsickness. "I would have helped her do it," he said. "We were talking about ways to reorganize the Wardens, concentrate their power. Nobody would have questioned her."

"It's not your fault."

"Sure it is," Lewis said, and closed his eyes. "I'm going to take a nap while I still can."

"How can you possibly sleep while..."

He switched himself off, pretty much just like that. I stayed put through the teeth-rattling jounces, and tried to pretend that I didn't hate flying at a cellular level. Lewis really was asleep. I hated him.

Now that we were safely in the air-if that was the right term-we were free to take our lives in our hands and move about the cabin. I unbuckled and made my way through the small, cramped area toward the back. Kevin and Cherise were sitting together, heads close, whispering; they looked up at me, and Cherise winked and offered a thumbs-up. I weakly returned it, crushing the back of Paul's seat in a death grip as the plane dipped and dropped unexpectedly, and he broke off his conversation with Marion to ask me if I was all right. I decided it was better not to lie, so I just smiled palely and kept going.

David was sitting alone at the back of the plane. He hadn't bothered with anything so superfluous as a seat belt, of course. He, like Lewis, seemed perfectly calm, and he was reading a paperback novel, one that looked vaguely familiar to me. Lonesome Dove. Larry McMurtry.

I dropped into the seat beside him and whimpered under my breath as our fragile flying machine sledded from one punishing draft to another. He closed his book and took my hand.

"Have we done this before?" I asked.

"Flown in a plane together? No. Mostly we drive."

"Mostly I understand why." I gulped and tried to relax. "So, you want to tell me about Seacasket?"

"Is that why you came back here?" He was staring at the cover of his book. He was wearing round little spectacles, and they softened the lines of his face and made him seem gentle and bookish. And hot, though the hot part was pretty much a given. "Information?"

"Thought it would be important."

"Information won't take up much time. It's a long flight."

Not a pleasant thought at all. It was already too long, as far as I was concerned. I wanted my feet on the ground-or at least, my butt in the driver's seat of a car. Now that was transportation.

"I need to keep my mind off of this," I said, and gestured a little wildly at the clanking, shuddering aircraft we were trapped in for the next eternity.

"Be careful," David murmured. His voice had drifted lower in tone as well as volume, and his eyes were half-closed, still focused on the book cover. "There are all kinds of ways to take your mind off of it."

Even in the midst of ongoing panic, that sounded...interesting. More than a little. "Mmmmm?" That was noncommittal, yet expressed...

David put the book aside, flipped up the armrest that separated us, and shifted to face me. "I want to try to give you some of my memories."

Whoa, that was not where I'd thought we were going. I'd been in a warm, happy place for a second, and now I was falling right back into Anxiety Alley. "Um...Venna said it wasn't possible for a Djinn to-"

"You might have noticed that we all have...specialties," he said. "Venna's the only Djinn I've ever met who can-sometimes-transport humans through the aetheric without damaging them, and she's got other skills that the rest of us have to only a lesser degree. Doesn't make her more powerful, necessarily, because she's deficient in other areas. Like controlling what you'd term Earth powers."

"Which you're stronger in."

He nodded slowly. Light flickered across the surface of his glasses. I wondered why the hell he was wearing them; was there such a thing as a physically imperfect Djinn? Was it just a comfort thing, like a favorite shirt or pair of shoes for a human being? Like his coat..."What's the deal with the coat?" I asked. I knew it was a non sequitur, but it gave me a chance to consider what he was saying, and how scary it could be to let David in my head. Or me in his, as might be the case.

He blinked. "My coat?" He wasn't wearing it at the moment, but it was draped over the back of his seat. Olive-drab, vaguely military from an era about a hundred years ago.

"Yeah. You don't even need a coat, right? You don't get cold. And it's very...specific."

His eyes widened this time. "Let me understand. We're on our way to stop a Demon wearing your skin from ripping a hole through this world to hers, possibly allowing other Demons to pour through, and you want to talk about my fashion choices?" He paused for a second. "Wait, coming from you, that actually might make sense."

I didn't answer. The plane rattled its way through another set of bounces, and I didn't have enough breath in my lungs to curse, because my diaphragm didn't want to function. Maybe, if I held my breath long enough, I'd just pass out. That would get my mind off of the flight.

"The coat was given to me," he said. "By someone I cared about."

"Yeah? What was her name?" Shot in the dark, but not much of one, and I had a fifty-fifty chance of being right, even at the Djinn level.

"Helen," he said. "The coat belonged to her son. She lost him in the war." Oh. I searched for a way to get him to tell me the rest, but he shook his head. "Wardrobe choices aside, Jo, while Venna might not have thought it was possible to share a Djinn's memories with you, I think it might be, if I'm careful and limit the scope of what we're doing. But you have to promise to let me lead."

Which took me down another path altogether. "You dance?"

That got a definitely odd look. "Of course I dance."

"Have we ever danced?"

He braced himself against the bulkhead, turned sideways in the seat toward me, and extended both his hands. "Find out," he said.

I didn't move. "I'm not sure if this is a good idea."

"Why not?"

"Because...it just feels-it feels wrong. I don't want an info-dump of how I feel about you."

He lowered his hands to rest on his thighs as he considered that. "You're not sure how you feel."

"Yes-no. No, I am, I just-look, I want to build memories, not just stuff myself full of how other people see me. It's confusing. And it's kind of painful." I met his eyes directly. "And it would be cheating for you to show me how deep this goes for you right now. It could scare me off. I don't want to be scared off."

I bit my lip in agitation as the plane's engines shifted to a deeper thrum. We hit a patch of slick-as-glass air, then steadied out. For the moment.

He didn't seem to have a response to any of that. I pulled in a deep breath and said, in a rush, "Did you sleep with her?"

"Who?" His expression went from blank to shocked. "You mean Helen?"

"No! No, I-wait, did you?"

He ignored that, finally getting my point. "You mean, did I sleep with the other you. The Demon."

I nodded. For a few long seconds, there was nothing but the sound of the aircraft, the distant buzz of what other people were saying, and the pounding of my heart.

"Even if I did," he said carefully, "it was because I thought she was you."

"And you didn't know the difference?"

He had the grace to look ashamed, and a little sick. "I didn't have a lot of time to think it through. And to be honest, I don't think I wanted to question it. Not when..."

"Not when you'd been bracing yourself to lose me forever," I said. "Right?"

"Right."

I felt my lips curve into a smile I couldn't control. "You sure you've got the right one now?"

His eyebrows slowly rose. "Fairly sure."

"Maybe soon we can upgrade that to completely sure."