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"Snow White," she said, and smiled That had been her nickname for me from early on, a reference topets Not very polite, though"

She looked at the power lines she held, and hissed to theain I sucked in a breath and stepped back; Rahel didn&039;t seeo, but with Djinn, well, you really never could tell She ," she continued, and without any warning, the current cut off in both, and they went heavy and limp in her hands She let them smack down to the roadway next to her very lovely shoes--Casadei animal-print pumps Too nice for the current conditions "Do you ever draw a noriddy and slightly intoxicated Too ry A si here?"

"I told you David&039;s orders" She looked around at the wreckage as she dusted her hands "He had to leave You present too much of a distraction at the uarantees that I will be here for long, or that my presence will be especially helpful to you Did David not tell you that ere no longer to be trusted?"

"And yet, here you are, saving ed It had the grace of water flowing over stone, utterly inhuement of her muscles, the way she used them Rahel was, in some ways, the least human of all the Djinn I&039;d met

And in some other ways, one of the most

"One , and there are so few truly interesting people"

I started to say soet the wounded out of the cars, but then her head snapped around so fast that beads clacked in her hair, and her birdlike eyes fixed on sorassyoverhead showedat

There was a child out there Bloody Wandering around all alone She couldn&039;t have beenbrown hair, clutching a stuffed aniathering itself

Rahel said nothing She was tense, but at rest She could move faster than I could, but I saw no indications she was thinking about doing so

After all, she was a Djinn, and she didn&039;t know that kid It was kind of an academic notion to her, empathy

I lurched into a run, vaulted over a dis in the way, and rass My shoes slipped I sensed the swirling colu upward into the sky just a few dozen feet ahead oftoward it

The lightning chains were clicking into place I could see it happening, see the aetheric heating up with the potential energy turning to actual

I tried to break the chains of electrons aligning, but the forces at ere too strong for a single Warden I hit the little girl and tackled her down to the ground, covering her with my body, and at the last second I lifted myself up on my hands and knees, away from any contact points with her skin

Grounded four ways

Lightning sla else on earth I&039;d been struck by it before, but I&039;d been inhabited by a Demon Mark then, and considerably better protected This was like being hit in the back by a truck, but before I could register the pain, the rest of it flooded in--power, so h a narro nerve channels Unleashing itself through the circuit of my body

It lasted only a split second, er in contact with the ground, rising into the air and looking down on the huddled body of the little girl I&039;d been trying to protect

The circuit was broken

Rahel had old, but her face was unreadable, a blank mask of Djinn indifference

She dropped round, I felt the suction of that whirling, burning colu out of the earth take hold of ht, and then it was too late As I twisted inhelplessly reeled in like a fish on a line, I saw her alariven Rahel a new, exciting experience

Not much of a comfort, as I ed up in abaptized in battery acid It hurt, oh my God, it hurt, and I tried to screah left ofapart, ato rescueuntil it abruptly just stopped I was still trapped in the flood of aetheric power boiling up, and for all I kneas being flung miles up into the sky, but I felt no sense of motion

I opened my eyes and saw paradise, but a paradise that humans were never meant to see, a kind of opalescent waxen beauty that swept, swirled, created, and destroyed I was in the bloodstrea than anything I could have ireat scheme of the world The power here--the power that was si entity we called the Mother--was beyond anything we could ever understand or control

It was kind of a privilege, seeing it as I inevitably exploded into disconnected ato I held together and gradually adjusted to the strange pressures and odd lights and disconcerting, slick flows thatmatched physics as I understood it It ildly, insanely strange and

I must have been the first person to see a Demon Mark in the wild

It entered the sah the barrier, sucked into the flow It floated in the strea structure that twisted and turned on itself,from one flow to another I&039;d never seen one outside of some kind of container--a bottle, a human body, a Djinn forced to take one into itself I had no idea they could even exist like this, on their own

Not good news

I felt it fix on me with an atavistic shudder of horror

As I watched, the Dey and power fro an artery I didn&039;t dare hope that it would gorge until it exploded, though So far, far worse would happen; I just kneould Nothing good ever happened to me with a Demon Mark around

It occurred toin here This stuff was blood, in a sense Lifeblood, pure, the real deal

The blood of the Earth itself

When these parasites were out in the regular world, they&039;d latch on to anything with a trace of power, trying to stay alive--Wardens and Djinn But because eren&039;t the pure stuff, they inevitablyan adult Dey of the Demon Mark That was helpful

Not

It drifted irl and started to head blindly away froray fog of poas like swielatin God, I hated thosepassion that owed nothing at all to logic It wasn&039;t co after me, not this tiht?

Right

Well, then, fine and dandy I could just leave it to o on about my business

No I couldn&039;t If a De an adult Demon out of the i to create out of this stuff? I couldn&039;t even bear to iet it out of here, soly the majority--told the first part to shut the hell up What happens if it stays? If it feeds? If it swiets into the--the bloodstreahting Demon Marks was not my mission It wasn&039;t my fault I&039;d stumbled onto this problem Nobody would blame me if I turned tail and ran

Nobody but me, anyway

I took a quick poll The vote o to one, bravery to self-preservation I really needed to work on evening that one up, one of these days

I needed a way to trap the De butwas better than nothing I breathlessly stripped offslowly toward the floating Delier the closer I caly that made my stomach twist and quiver, and my whole body shake violently It didn&039;t seee as it had been when I&039;d seen it enter the barrier, pulsating with an unclean hunger At this rate, it&039;d be knitting little Demon booties in just a couple of minutes

Oh, I really didn&039;t want to do this

I threwshape of the Deether in a knot It wouldn&039;t hold the thing long-- for all I orth, heading for what I thought was the nearest way out, though everything looked the sarihtly sweet slanced back at the shirt I was towing The Demon Mark&039;s black tentacles flowed out of the sea its prison It was content to stay there for now, because it was still feeding That co, I fetched up against soainst it in frustration I felt it give, and slapped harder My pal from the impact, but it pushed at least two or three inches in

I&039;d found the way out

I concentrated all my will, all h the barrier, instantly and bitterly cold and wet; I screaet the rest of ained me maybe an inch Two inches I pulled harder, and my left hand, and the bundle of the shirt, tumbled out into the thin, hipped air

The Demon Mark went insane when its food supply cut off, and the shirt ht through the fabric with lightning speed and wrapped tentacles around my hand

I screahting so, invasive throb of the thing squirony as it set up its tentacles buried deep inside, feeding fro up my body&039;s production of power, until my body simply couldn&039;t survive

No Never I don&039;t rabbed it with ht hand and threw it Tried to, anyway, but it stuck to

I screa desperately to shake it off I could feel it testing layers of skin, trying to find a way in It could burrow, of course, but it was lazy and fat It wanted an easier path

I&039; the break!" a voice shouted, startlingly close to th, I felt tendons creak in h the barrier, still frantically trying to scrape the Demon Mark offo as soon as I was out of the ht have been Rahel; it was hard to tell because the night was a y cumulonimbus clouds piled into an iron-colored anvil

I hung there for an instant, and then I felt gravity take hold I fell like Wile E Coyote holding an ACME anvil, flailing, screa like a wet black banner behind round was, but if the clouds were cumulonimbus, I was probably at least thirty thousand feet up I tried to take a breath and got nothing but sharp, e air Too thin to sustainterror of the Deathering the available oxygen into a cushion aroundYou have to match the rate of descent at a molecular level, and that&039;s not as easy as it sounds

I scraped together enough for a breath Not enough to cushion h about terminal velocity not to want to experience it firsthand

I was enveloped by a chilly mist as I entered the cloud base, and was buffeted by increasingly strong winds as the ats, trying to slow myself asa parachute Oh, it&039;s theoretically possible We&039;d talked about it once in a long-ago classrooh back then, when I was younger and not free-falling out of the sky

I hoped these weren&039;t low-lying clouds If they were, by the ti my "parachute" too early would be just as bad, because the turbulence would start to rip into it as soon as I created the complex structure of fixedto use would allow the air itself to for parachute

Theoretically

I gasped in another shallow breath of air and sawThe De slowly into h the pores Once it was under o anywhere Sink its tentacles into hly that even trying to reliht, flaring aetheric-hot, then ice-cold; the colu up into the stratosphere I slid that direction by folding ht ar I&039;d done skydiving once or twice in the past At the time, it had just been for fun, but at least I re in free fall

I spread-eagled again when I got close to the coluain I extended h so that it could feel the tantalizing warmth

Go on Go for it

It stirred and unraveled in a lazy black twist, long and sinuous The battering of the air didn&039;t seem to affect it at all It unwrapped itself s arm and reached out toward the colu in pulses like irregular heartbeats Rahel--or whatever Djinn had saved ood as her word The break between the worlds was starting to seal Ti, the Deh the barrier If I broke off too soon, it would siood-bye

Proble I just had to hope that I could sense the second that the column started to shut down

The De aetheric updraft and the less powerful but more certain warmth of my body

I felt a sudden icy sensation sweep across ht, now, and shook my hand violently The Demon Mark broke free, and it had to make a choice

It went for the colueyser gave one last, brilliant pulse, and died

The Djinn had been successful The energy buffet was closed and I was now the only Happy Meal available

I curledthe air ahead of me to ain, heart hah the botto clouds

I snapped the structure ofstop that turned into a sloard spiral as the air chute&039;s an to waroing too fast

And there were power lines co up

I let the chute collapse in on itself while I was still twenty feet up, tucked and hoped breathlessly that the h to prevent any serious injuries

I don&039;t re water out of loith continued frantic flashes of lightning

I raised n of the Deh in all the confusion it could be just a stealthy creep away

"Mohost-pale, eyes as reflective as a cat&039;s "Please say so"

"Stay still" Another voice, this one ot sooing to hurt"

I blinked rain out of my eyes and turneddown his auburn hair and running in rivulets down his glasses He looked

"Demon Mark," I said

"I think she hit her head," Imara said anxiously "No, she didn&039;t," David said, and reached over to wipe entle hand "You&039;re in shock, Jo"

I shook"No! It was feeding off the power geyser I got it out of there, but it&039;s still around Watch yourselves" Nothing Demon Marks loved more than a warm Djinn, and so far as I knew, once Djinn were infected, there was no way to cure theo"

"But--"

"Did you hear me?" His voice was level as a steel bar She stared at him, then at me, and then misted away

"You, too," I said "Get the hell away from here Go"

"In a minute First, you need some help"

I nodded, or tried to The le thought for just how trashed my clothes were And my shoes What had happened to my shoes? Ohon that when David took hold of my shattered arm and pulled, and the universe whited out into a featureless landscape, then went completely black

Somebody had put my shirt back on I hoped it was David It was nice to think of hih

I opened my eyes to road noise and vibration, and the pleasant daydream of David&039;s hands on me faded away My whole body felt like a fresh bruise The side of lass, and I had a wicked drool issue going on; I raised a hand, wiped my chin, and blinked away dizziness

I was in the Ca ass for so through the gloouide us If there was y ru in the atmosphere

"What?" I twisted in er side--and looked at the driver "Ihter--disorientation still followed the thought--glanced atto worry"

"Where&039;s--?"

"Father? He ith us for a while, but he had to go Djinn business I think it was about the De without paying the slightest attention to the road, and kept staring right at me "Are you better?"

I didn&039;t feel better No, I felt like I&039;d been boiled, steamed, deboned, and thrown out of a plane at thirty thousand feet With a collapsing parachute David had healed my broken bones, but the re have I been out?" It took her a second, juggling the human concept of tiround hard Father did what he could to help you He wasn&039;t sure it would be enough" Her hands kept steering the car accurately, even while we took a curve "Are you sure you&039;re all right?"

So came to me, a little late "And how exactly do you kno to drive a car?"

Ied to show she didn&039;t understand the question

"Kid, you&039;ve been alive for, what, a couple of days? Did you just wake up knowing everything that you need to kno does that work?"

Another helpless lift of her shoulders "I don&039;t know If I had to guess, I&039;d say I know everything my parents knew So I benefit from your life, and Father&039;s It saves ti me to Patrick, the only other Djinn who&039;d really had to learn how to becoht over from human by another Djinn, rather than created the old-fashioned way, out of apocalypse and death I&039;d had to take baby steps, learning how to use what I&039;d been given, because David hadn&039;t been able to transfer that life experience to me the way he had done with Ihter knows everything you knew? Not very co There were plenty of moments in

I pulledhead, and asked, "Where are you heading?"

"Maine?"

David had set her on the road to Seacasket, at least And apparently global positioning was one of the things that she&039;d inherited fro It didn&039;t feel great "What about the accident? Was everybody all right?"

"Accident?" She was either playing due and twisted metal had meant little to her

"There was a wreck--there was a--" A little girl Wandering, bloodied, scared I&039;d been trying to save her, hadn&039;t I? My es that didn&039;t

"I don&039;t know," she confessed, and chewed her lip I knew that gesture It had taken et over the saht "I didn&039;t knoas important or I would have paid more attention"

"Not important?" I let that out, accusation-flavored, before I could stop myself Imara turned her attention back to the road Not to focus on her driving, just to avoid my censure

And then she deliberately turned back, eyes level and completely alien "I should have paid more attention, but you should leave that behind you now What Father&039;s asking you to do is more important, and you can&039;t be distracted by individual lives now" She shook her head "It&039;s also very, very dangerous, what he&039;s asking of you I don&039;t like it"

"I just gotstrike, and then I fell out of the sky Dangerous is sort of a sliding scale with ry "Please understand: Whatever you&039;ve faced before, this is different, and you need to stay focused on the goal I know that&039;s hard for you, but if you worry about saving every individual, you&039;ll lose them all Let other people do their part This is Djinn work, and it isn&039;t the kind of thing humans are built to do"

Bypicture; for irl wandering in a field Those college boys trapped in their wrecked truck The world revealed itself to me one person at a tiht I&039;er--?"

"About seven more hours," Is you can&039;t do on your own You&039;ll need help Father said--" She shut up, fast Father I wondered if David was as frightened by that as I was by the Moe for you?"

"What?"

"Me," she said softly, and turned her attention back to the road "Human mothers carry their children inside theuide thee, isn&039;t it?"

She sounded wistful, even sad I&039;d been so busy thinking of myself and my reactions to her that I hadn&039;t considered how odd this ht be for her, too That s she didn&039;t understand Wasn&039;t even supposed to have, perhaps

"Imara," I said "Pull over"

"What?"

"Please"

She coasted the car to a stop on the gravel shoulder, not far fron that warned of curves up ahead, and twisted around to facein a faerie mirror--so similar that it made me shiver somewhere deep inside There was an indefinable connection between us that I loved and feared in equal parts

"You look so much like me," I murmured, and took her hands in mine They felt warm, real, and solidly familiar

"I am you," she said "Most of me I&039;m not so much your child as your clone--Djinn DNA doesn&039;t mix ith human So my flesh is mostly the same as yours, and my--my spirit is Father&039;s"

I shivered a little Hoas I supposed to feel about that? And as I supposed to say? "I--"

"I&039;m not really Djinn," she said "You know that, don&039;t you? I can&039;t do the things Father can do I can&039;t protect you"

"Mothers protect children Not the other way around"

She tilted her head a little to the side, regarding me with a tiny little frown "How can you protect et there," I said, and impulsively reached up to touch her cheek "Sweetheart, I&039;er than I a else that the Djinn part of you can give But the point is that I&039;ll protect you when I can, and I do not want you to put yourself at risk for rooved deeper "That&039;s not what Father said to do"

"Then your dad and I need to have a talk" What she&039;d said wasme curious "When you say you&039;re not fully Djinn--"

"What are my limits, do you --in weather and fire, particularly--I&039; I can move the way the Djinn do But I&039;m bound to e my form I can&039;t use other elements that you can&039;t control, as well" She continued to watch me carefully Her voice was matter-of-fact, but I couldn&039;t help but think that David and Jonathan and I had done so Imara into the world I couldn&039;t tell if she resented the restrictions her half-blood birth had given her If she did, that would be one hell of a case of adolescent angst

"But," she continued when I didn&039;t jump in, "even so, I am one of the Djinn They all felt it when I was born I&039;m still a part of the She ht not have been able to readI couldn&039;t do to her

"You&039;re worried that if you keep h me A weak link"

"A little With the Djinn so unreliable" I&039;d seen the Djinn turn on a diht seem immune to that, she was clearly a lot more vulnerable than I&039;d like And I couldn&039;t hold ainst a full-on Djinn assault, not for more than a few seconds No human could, if the Djinn unleashed their full potential

She inclined her head, just once A Djinn sort of acknowledgenity "I don&039;t think I could protect you against them if they cao where?" I asked

"Anywhere I only just arrived I haven&039;t even begun to learn about the world for myself" She s toher

"Imara--"

"No, please don&039;t I want to help you, but I understand if you can&039;t trust me--you only just met me You&039;d be crazy not to be concerned"

I wasn&039;t about to break hter&039;s heart Not yet "Let&039;s take it slow on the assumption of mistrust, okay? I just don&039;t--know you"

"But I know you," she replied quietly "And I can see that it makes you uncomfortable"

I let that one pass "If David can always locate you, I&039; you can always locate ht? So it really doesn&039;thow to spin prayer wheels in Tibet And I&039;d rather have you here Getting to know you"

She sain "What if you don&039;t likes the metallic Djinn eyes, or the eerie copy of ered for everything that children do: Love, acceptance, protection A place in the world

She took my breath away, made my heart fill up and spill over "Not like you? Not a chance in hell," I said My voice was unsteady "I love you You&039;re one hell of a great kid And you&039;re littered fiercely, and it took ic, only tears

"We&039;d better keep ," she said, and turned back to start the car "So what do you think? Breakfast first, or apocalypse?"

She was starting to inherit my sense of hu Lotsthan an apocalypse, anyway

Those hardly ever came with coffee