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rule everything about me, life and death-and smiled at me and said, "I want you to burn. Burn yourself alive. Burn until I get tired of hearing you scream."

I felt a flash of pure, nauseating fear, waited for the compulsion to take over, but . . .

. . . nothing happened.

I slowly uncoiled from my protective ball. Kevin looked furious. "Did you hear me? I said burn, you bitch!"

I got up, flexed my right hand. It hurt. There were cuts in my skin from Yvette's teeth when I'd punched her.

"Sorry," I said, with a kind of slow wonder. "Don't think that works anymore."

I looked up and saw David's face touched by the same sense of intense, odd awareness.

"You're alive," he whispered. "You're . . . human."

And then his expression changed to utter horror, and he started to batter at the barrier between us.

I was human, and I was trapped in here with Kevin and the most powerful Djinn in the universe, who was completely under Kevin's control.

Trapped with a kid who'd just killed his stepmother without blinking.

Kevin echoed David's whisper. "Human?" I didn't like the hard, wet shine in his eyes. "Good. Maybe you can hurt the way you let me hurt."

Lewis crawled over the threshold of the barrier, dragging David's bottle with him. David reached down and pulled him out of the way, crouched down and exchanged a look with him.

They both looked at me.

Lewis drew in a painful, hitching breath, and said, "Do whatever you have to do, David, but get her out of here. Do it now."

David blew through the barrier like it wasn't even there, slammed into Kevin from behind and sent him flying. Kevin, off balance, tripped over Yvette's bloody corpse and into the rows of shelves that were still trembling from their last hard slam.

They tipped.

Black-sealed bottles fell. Some broke, hitting metal edges or each other, and even though I couldn't see any Djinn I could feel them, swirling like a hot wet storm in the room.

David grabbed me. He pulled me past Kevin, who was still squirming to get up. I tried to slow down, because I had the opportunity to grab Jonathan's bottle, but David's imperative was clear. Get me out. Don't stop for anything.

He shoved me forward, and I passed the barrier just a heartbeat ahead of him.

That was enough. His command was fulfilled, and the barrier slammed in place, knocking him backward. I reached out and touched him, but I couldn't pull him through, couldn't drag him to safety . . .

Kevin rolled over, still clutching Jonathan's bottle, and yelled, "You! Kill him!"

"David, come here!" Lewis yelled, virtually at the same second. The barrier dissolved. David lunged through.

Jonathan grabbed, and missed.

Something was happening inside the vault. I couldn't see it, not with human eyes, but when I used Oversight it looked like hell in there-tortured, writhing bodies, Djinn fighting each other on the aetheric, Kevin and Jonathan blazing like a white star in the center. I felt a chill of premonition and turned to Lewis, who was propped against the wall, looking worse than I'd ever seen him.

"I can't," he whispered, even though I hadn't asked. "I've got nothing."

If he had nothing left, David had nothing. We all watched as the black-sealed Djinn, free of their captivity, started manifesting in the real world.

Nightmares. They looked horribly disfigured, half demon, and they made a terrible sawing noise like metal tearing. Screams. A kind of scream I never wanted to hear again.

"Get out of there!" I blurted, and held out my hand to Kevin. "You have to get out, Kevin! Please! You don't know what you're doing!"

He could have. All he had to do was walk two feet forward, take my hand. Make the choice.

There was such a horror of devastation in his eyes. A dawning awareness that what he'd done had consequences, had a kind of history that was never going to let him go. Sin is like a stalker- you may learn to ignore it, but you can never hide from it.

He took one step, stopped, and gave me the emptiest smile I had ever seen. He said, "Concerned about me now? Too late, Joanne. I'm not gonna be anybody's bitch anymore. Not hers, not yours . . . I'm gonna have power. So much power none of you