Windfall

Without opening my eyes, I whispered, "David. Get back in the bottle, now."

I had no way of knowing if he had. Hopefully it would give Jonathan some space.

Maybe David would even recover a bit. Maybe, maybe, maybe... everything was so screwed up. I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes until I saw stars.

The warmth in me felt foreign, like artificial life support. Jonathan had warned me it wouldn't last. How long did I have to find an answer, one that wouldn't destroy David in the process?

Cherise was saying something about us being so fired; we were the better part of an hour overdue for the shoot, of course, not that I cared. I just wanted to go home. I felt the thrum of the engine as she started up the Mustang, but then she slammed it back into park and reached over and grabbed me by the shoulder.

I looked at her. She was the picture of astonishment, from her raised shaped eyebrows to the shiny, lip-glossed O of her mouth.

"What?" I asked.

For answer, she shoved me forward and put her hand on my naked back.

"Hey!"

"Joanne," she said, and slapped me lightly there, several times. "Your burn. It's gone."

A parting gift from Jonathan. For completely different reasons than her subsequent declaration of a miracle, I found that more unbelievable than anything else.

I wanted to go home. Cherise flatly refused to turn the car around, since we were so close to our destination. "If I'm going to get my ass fired, I want them to do it to my face," she said grimly, and hit the gas to power us around the fast-moving traffic and down the off-ramp.

The shoot was being staged in a used-car lot. Of course. Some sort of promo tie-in with the local junker dealership. Cherise shrieked the Mustang to a sliding stop in a convenient space and eyed the salespeople mistrustfully as they appeared like-well, like magic.

"Nobody touches my car," she said to the Alpha Marketer, a big ex-football-type guy with a flattop haircut and that I'll-make-you-a-great-deal gleam in his eye. He grinned and gave her the thumbs-up. "And save it, gorgeous, I'm not in the market." Maybe not for a car, but her eyes skimmed him up and down, giving him the Male Blue Book rating. It must have come out a ka-ching, because Cherise came out with one of her famous smiles. "Watch it for me?"

"Absolutely," he said, and handed her his card. "Anything you need, you come straight to me."

She slipped it in her back pocket with a wink, and hustled me up to the cluster of people near the main building. I went, barely aware of moving. I just wanted to collapse in a heap and cry.

Marvelous Marvin was not in a good mood. He was pacing, face flushed under the pancake, snapping off orders to some poor intern who looked anemic, asexual, and on the verge of giving notice-or possibly expiring of an asthmatic fit. Marvin still had his makeup napkin tucked into his collar. It was not a humorous sight.

The camera crew was lolling around, looking happy as clams. As well they should be, at fifty bucks an hour or more each. One was catching a light nap in a portable chair with a sunshade.

"You!" Marvin bit off as he caught sight of us. "You are fired, get me? Fired! Both of you!"

I mustered up some sense of responsibility. "It's not Cherise's fault," I said dully. No, it was my fault. I kept replaying the Warden's fall, his impact on the concrete. He'd been young. Too young to die like that, caught in the middle of something he couldn't understand.

"I wasn't talking to her, and anyway, I don't give a shit whose fault it was, you're both fired! Look, I can get pretty girls twelve to a dollar out there on a beach; I don't need you two with your prima donna attitudes..."

"Hold up," said the director, who was watching a portable TV in the shadow of a minivan with the channel logo painted on the side. "Come here, Jo."

I came. Cherise came with.

The director-Rob-pointed at the screen as he took a bite of his cheese sandwich.

"Is that you?" He looked up at me as his finger touched a tiny, foreshortened figure on the screen.

"Yeah, that's her," Cherise jumped in when I stayed quiet. On the screen, the Djinn didn't show up-just us humans. The Warden on the railing fought for his life, flailing against the air. "God, Rob, she tried to save that guy. She really did."

He turned his attention back to the footage. I closed my eyes when I saw the Warden's feet slip off the railing for the fatal plunge, but not before I saw myself lunge forward. Didn't seem like I'd reacted all that quickly, but there it was, in grainy news footage. It looked as if I'd been trying to grab his hands or something.

"Jesus," Rob said quietly. "Joanne, I'm sorry. This is terrible." He thought about it for a few seconds, then raised his voice. "Yo! Doug! Change of plans! Let's get back to the station right now. Get on the phone to-what channel is this?-Channel Four-and get whatever raw footage they have. Feature story. Get Joanne and Cherise on camera with-who's up?-yeah, Flint, and do the standup with them on the bridge, if you can. If not, studio. We need to get this now."

Marvin had followed us. He ripped the makeup napkin theatrically out of his collar. "What are you talking about?" he thundered.

Rob glanced up at him, then back down at the screen. "Sorry, Marvin. I'm scrubbing the promo."

"You can't do that!"

Rob tapped his baseball cap. It was dark blue, and it said in big, white, embroidered letters, NEWS DIRECTOR. "I believe I can, actually."

Marvin turned and stalked away, tossing the balled-up napkin at his intern, who fumbled it and had to chase it under a freshly polished Toyota.

"You want me to get into the Sunny Suit for the interview?" I asked bitterly.

Rob looked up and met my eyes. His were gray, sharply intelligent, and utterly calculating.

"From now on, you don't wear the Sunny Suit. Somebody else does," he said. "Maybe Marvin."

In spite of everything-even the crushing uncertainty and grief of not knowing where David was, what was happening to him, the guilt and shock and horror-that made me smile.

Cherise cocked an eyebrow. "What about me?" she asked. Rob gave her a more guarded look. "I'm not fired, right? So, are you going to need me today?"

"Just for the interview, Cherise. But you'll get the full appearance fee for the promo."

She nodded soberly, took a long look at me, and reached behind Rob and took his navy blue windbreaker off the back of his chair to drape it around my shoulders.

I was shivering. Delayed shock. Outright fear.

I needed to get home.

The interview took hours.

By the time I staggered in, it was late afternoon, and I was absolutely exhausted. No sign of Sarah, which was lucky; the last thing I wanted to do was put up with my sister's cheery enthusiasm about her new beau right now.

I shed purse and shoes and stripped off clothes as soon as I'd slammed the bedroom door shut, threw on my warmest and most comfortable bathrobe, and curled up on my bed, pillow in my lap.

I opened the bedside drawer and took David's bottle from its case. It gleamed blue and solid and cold to the touch, but it was just a bottle, no sense of him in it or around it. I didn't know if he was in there. Didn't know if he was suffering. Didn't know if he even remembered who I was.

I took hold of it and thought about how easy it would be, really. A quick, hard swing at the wooden nightstand.

I'd promised Jonathan that I'd set David free, but if I did that, it was like giving up hope. Giving up everything. I didn't think Jonathan could save him, and while I might not be able to either, at least David wouldn't get any worse inside the bottle. If I did set him free, he might complete the transformation to Ifrit. He'd almost certainly start preying on the most powerful source around-and that meant Jonathan.

But most importantly, I might lose him for good this time.

Jonathan's artificial life support was still going strong. I had time left.

I couldn't do it. Not yet.

I curled up with his bottle held close and cried until I fell into an exhausted gray twilight sleep.

Dreaming.

The mountaintop was familiar. I'd been here before... a small, flat space of empty rock, surrounded by the sky. Far below, canyons cut deep into the earth.

Dry, for the moment, but I knew how fast they could fill and flood. Water was the most treacherous of the elements.

I was sitting cross-legged, warmed by the sun, wearing something white and sheer that barely qualified as fabric, much less cover... ceremonial more than functional.

There was no sound in my dream but the dull whispering rush of the wind. The breathing of the world.

I felt a warm hand touch my hair and fingers sink deep into the soft mass. Where they touched, curls straightened and fell into silk-smooth order.

"Don't turn around," David's voice whispered in my ear. I shivered and felt him hot against my back, hard muscle and soft flesh. As real and honest and desirable as anything I'd ever known. "You have to be careful now, Jo. I can't protect you-"

"Just stay with me," I said. "You can do that, can't you? Just stay."

His hands moved down to my shoulders and bunched gauze-thin fabric, then slid it free to drift away from my skin. "If I do that, you'll die."

"I'll find a way."

His kiss burned hot on the side of my neck. "I know you'll try. But you have to promise me that when the time comes, you'll make the right choice. You'll let go."

I had a nightmarishly slow vision of David's hands opening, of the Warden sliding loose and falling to his death. Only this time it was me falling, screaming, reaching out.

I was toppling over the edge of the mountain, toward the currents below.

David grabbed me around the waist and held on.

"Don't let me hurt you," he whispered, and his voice was shaking with strain, vulnerable with need. "Stop me. Please, Jo, you have to stop me, I can't do it myself..."

I looked down to where his arms were around me, his hands touching me.

Black, twisted Ifrit hands. Angles and claws and hunger.

"Please," he whispered against my skin, and he sounded so desperate, so lost.

"Please, Jo. Let me go."

"I can't," I said numbly.

"Let me go or let me have what I need! I can't-I can't-" He exploded into a black, oily mist, howling, and was gone.

I collapsed forward, the white gauze drifting over me in the relentless, murmuring wind, and screamed out loud, until I woke up.

My sister was home. I could hear her moving around out there in the living room, humming something bright and happy. Probably something classical; Sarah always had been more cultured than I was, from the early days when she'd looked forward to piano lessons and I'd cut them to go chase baseballs out on the corner lot. I didn't hear Eamon's voice. I realized I was still holding David's bottle in a death grip, in both hands, and put it back in the padded case in the nightstand.

You promised, a little voice whispered in the back of my mind.

I had. But I wasn't ready.

I closed the nightstand drawer, shuffled into the bathroom, and winced at the glare of the bright, unflattering Hollywood lighting. I looked like crap... swollen eyes and bedhead. I struggled through combing the tangles out, got my hair more or less straight, and decided to leave the eyes as is, except for a quick application of Visine. I tossed on a crop top and tight low-rise jeans (artfully, though not intentionally, bleached in a random pattern, thanks to an accident with the Clorox Fairy) and walked out barefooted into the rest of my world.

Which was in surprisingly good order.

Sarah was cooking. She had fresh, bright vegetables laid out on the kitchen counter and was whaling away with a gleaming oversized knife. Behind her, a pan simmered with a pool of oil. She looked up at me and froze in midaria, then forced a smile and went on with her chopping.

"Hey," I said, and sat at the kitchen table, staring at my hands.

"Hey, yourself." She did something in my peripheral vision, and then a glass of wine appeared on the table in front of me. White wine, silvering the outside of the glass with chill. "Will that help?"

"Help what?" I sipped the wine. It was good, light and fruity with a kick at the end. Dry finish.

"Whatever the problem is."

I sighed. "It's more of a rotgut-whiskey-out-of-a-paper-bag problem than a fine pinot grigio problem."

"Oh." She retreated to her vegetables again. "You've been dead to the world all day, you know. Eamon's coming over for dinner; I hope that's all right. I was hoping your, ah, friend could join us. David. The musician."

Oh, God, it hurt. I took another gulp of wine to dull the knife-sharp pain.

"He's touring."

"Oh. Too bad." She shrugged and kept on with food prep. "Well, there's plenty. I'm making chicken primavera. I hope you like it."

As I had no opinion, I didn't answer, just sipped wine and stared out the patio doors. The ocean rolled in from the horizon, and it was a beautiful twilight out there. We didn't face the sunset, but the faint orange tinge was in the air and reflected off the sheer, glassy points of the waves. The sky had turned a rich, endless blue, edging toward black.

I'd been asleep a while, but it felt as if I hadn't rested in days. Everything felt sharp and fragile and not quite right.

I let it fade into white noise as Sarah scraped meticulously dismembered vegetables from cutting board to bowl. She left the veggies and checked a stock pot on the stove, which sent out an aroma of chicken and herbs when she lifted the lid. I didn't remember owning a stock pot. It looked new. Like the gleaming chef-quality knives. I couldn't remember if I'd gotten my credit card back. That worried me, in a distant sort of otherworldly way.

She kept talking about my neighbors, whom I guess she'd spent the morning chatting up. I failed to follow, but it didn't really matter; she was babbling with an edge of nervousness, the standard Sarah tactic when she was trying not to think about something else. I remembered her doing this in high school, getting ready for dates with Really Cute Boys. She was nervous about Eamon.

"... don't you think?" she finished, and began draining the chicken. She saved the stock, I noticed. The better to boil the pasta.

"Absolutely," I said. I had no idea what the question was, but she beamed happily at the answer.

"I thought so. Hey, give me a hand with this, would you?" She was struggling with the weight of the stock pot. I got up and grabbed one of the side handles, and a hot pad-those were new, too-and helped out. She flashed me a grin that faded when I didn't grin back. We drained the chicken in silence. The stock pot, refurnished with broth, went back on the burner and got a new load of pasta.

Sarah dumped chicken and veggies into the oil-prepped pan to saut�.

"Is it David?" she asked as she expertly stirred and adjusted the heat. I blinked and looked at her. "Did you have a fight?"

"No." There was no easy answer. She took it for the avoidance it was and concentrated on her cooking.

I'd turned off the phone before collapsing on the bed this afternoon; I wandered over to the wireless base and saw that there were messages. I picked up the cordless and punched buttons.