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No answer She transferred her unblinking stare to me, which at least enabled the doc to etaway

"There’s a book," I said "The kind of book Star had You know the one And Bad Bob has it"

Her eyes went black Stor entirely different about her, suddenly

I held myself very, very still

"A book of the Ancestors?" she asked I nodded I was very careful about that, too "Then he has power he should not have Like Star"

"Does that change anything?"

She never blinked, and her eyes stayed black "I don’t know," she said "I will find out"

That sounded ominous She blipped away before I could ask how she intended to go about doing that, and I didn’t think any aet her back Not now

David was still in the shielded roo abstract sculpture, trying to find ot his attention; he shook his head, as if he was trying to clear it, and cah the decontamination door One of the NEST nored it and came directly to me

"Radiation," I reminded him

"I shed it in the room," he said "How about you? How do you feel?" Oh, the joys of being DjinnI wondered how ht now Too much, almost certainly The Earth Wardens had done their work, so I was probably going to feel sick, but not drop dead

Probably

"Fantastic," I said sourly "Do you recognize him at all?"

David’s head shake was just as certain, and just as regretful about it, as Venna’s had been I could see how frustrated he was, how baffled by his inability to comprehend as in front of him, and it scared me, too He was one of the most powerful entities on the face of the Earth He shouldn’t have this kind of blind spot

I was trying not to think about it as an Achilles’ heel, but that was gettingran through my head and the person imprisoned on that wall and ia

They wouldn’t know hi drop of my stomach Venna, Rahel, all the Djinn - they’d just stare at his body and not knoho the hell they were looking at They wouldn’t even remember him at all

Of all the possible ways to destroy someone, that had to be the worst

It reminded me, with a sudden snap, of how Ashan had tried to destroy hter had died He’d tried to strip away not just my life, but the hter, which hy I was still around, but there was so fundamentally si now, to the Djinn

The Mother had intervened to stop hiht, that had rounds of the chapel in Sedona, on as, for theht not apply for David out here

The ansas in the book It had to be in the book

"David - " I choseVenna’s extreme reaction "The book, the one that we looked at earlier - "

He raised his eyes to meet mine, and I saw surprise in them "The Ancestor Scriptures"

"You remember them"

"Of course I remember them"

"And what about where we left them?"

"In a vault," he said promptly "Locked up"

"Where was the vault?"

He opened hiscary, then blank "I don’t know," he said "How can I not know?"

"David, what did the book say about Un bronze

"Don’t say that" His words had the ring of command, but I was no Djinn

"You have to listen to rabbed me by the arm "Don’t say it Don’t"

"David, stop it!" I yanked free He hadn’t used Djinn strength on h to piss rabbed, not in that way, and he knew it "It’s connected to what Ashan did when he messed with our reality, to try to erase me from the world Bad Bob reappeared about the sa, it’s a tool of Un it - "

His eyes flared black, like Venna’s "Stop," he growled