Firestorm Page 0,18

"Sorry, but I'm not quite ready to sacrifice my people to save all of yours. I'm trying to find a way that it doesn't come down to that choice. That's what Jonathan left me. Responsibility. It sucks, but that's the way it is."

I swallowed my comeback, because there was real suffering in his eyes. "So what can I do?" I asked. "I can't just wait around for the final epic battle and make popcorn." Another smile, this one stronger and warmer. "You never could, you know. Always in motion."

"Damn straight. Basic principles of physics. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest. Things in motion require less effort to overcome resistance."

"I love your mind."

"Is that all?" I arched my eyebrows back at him, and his eyes sparked bronze.

He smiled, and then the smile slowly faded. "We can't do this."

Damn. The warmth inside me, barely felt, began to fade. "Why not?"

"Because it's dangerous. You begin to trust me; I begin to think you can trust me. That's a very bad idea." He stood up. "I shouldn't have come here."

"Then why did you?" I demanded, out of patience. "Dammit, don't come here and look--look all perfectly hot and good enough to lick--don't just show up and tell me that I can't trust you, because I do trust you, I always have, even when I didn't have any reason to do it! Don't do this to us! It hurts!"

My vehemence shook him. He honestly didn't expect that outburst--I could see it in the way he drew back inside himself, watching me. The bronze glints died in his eyes, forced back. He looked like a man. A tired, vulnerable, sorrowful man. "I want to help," he said.

"Well, pony up, cowboy! Now's the time!"

"All right." He closed his eyes, as if he couldn't stand to look at me while he said it. "You can't cut the Djinn off from the Mother. Oh, there's a way, but if you do, you only guarantee your own destruction. The Earth would go mad. It wouldn't just be humanity being wiped away, it would be every living thing in the world. She would just--reset the game and start over. What you have to do is become... Jonathan. Become the conduit for humanity, to her."

Finally, we were getting somewhere. "And how exactly do I do that?" He opened his mouth, then shut it again. No answer. "David, half an answer is worse than none. Tell me."

"I hate putting you at risk like this."

"Dammit, how could I be more at risk? I saw--" I stopped, because I intuitively knew I shouldn't tell David about the dream. At best, he'd dismiss it. At worst, it would raise false hopes that Jonathan was... somewhere out there. "I'm a Warden, and I'm on the front lines already. At least give me the tools to get the job done."

His head jerked up, and he fixed on me with such intensity that I flinched, a little. "I'm not sure it won't kill you."

"Well," I said after a shaky second of a pause, "that's a 'been there, done that' situation, and anyway it's not your choice to make, is it?"

And that was a long second of pause, from both of us. Precarious and painful.

"No," he finally admitted, and squeezed his eyes closed as he thought about it. "All right. I can't tell you how to do it--I'm not even sure how Jonathan did it, in the first place. But I can tell you where." He made a visible decision and opened his eyes. They were glowing now, Djinn-bronze flecked with ruddy amber. "You've been there once already. Seacasket." "Seacasket?" I tried to remember... and then I did, with a chilling rush of pain and panic.

Once upon a time, I had been a Djinn, and I had been sent to Seacasket by my master (if you could call a punk like Kevin a master, which was a stretch) to destroy the town. In fire.

David had stopped me that time. And somehow, Kevin's stepmonster Yvette had known that he would. It had been the trap she set for him, to get him back in her power.

"Seacasket's special," I said. "Yvette knew."

He nodded. "It's a--thin space in the aetheric. One of two or three places in this country where a human might be able to reach one of the Oracles."

"Oracles?" I'd never heard of Oracles, other than the ancient Greek kind. Or the software company. From the regretful look that flashed across his face, it wasn't something any human had