Heat Stroke Page 0,26

private, and painful. " 'Behold, thou art fair, my love, behold, thou art fair . . .'"

"Hey! Don't quote that to me. You know I hate that." Jonathan stalked back over, stared down at the two of us. After a long, silent moment, something melted out of him. The anger, maybe. Or the determination. "You'd really do this."

David's fingers tightened around mine. "It's already done."

"You'd die to give her life."

"I don't think I'll have to, but if it comes to that, yes, I'm not afraid."

Something inside me went still. Very, very still. Focused on him, on his eyes, on the power pouring out of him into me.

Power I now understood was sustaining me.

"Please." David's voice had gone soft, low, resonant in the back of his throat. "Jonathan. Please. It's my choice."

He put emphasis on the last word, and I saw it hit home in the other Djinn, who folded his arms across his chest and looked away. Covering up pain.

So much between these two I didn't understand, and knew I never could. I hadn't even known him a week; they'd had half of eternity together. No wonder Jonathan had that hard, hurting edge to him. And no wonder he wanted me dead. I'd have the same impulse, if somebody showed up to rip apart a friendship that had that kind of history.

"Your choice," Jonathan repeated. "Oh, you're good. If I take away your choices, I'm no better than the last asshole who held your soul in a bottle. Is that what you're getting at?"

He was staring out the windows of his house. Before, it had showed a frosted white landscape, a washed blue sky. Now it looked out on a city street, masses of humanity moving like corpuscles in a concrete artery, every one of them alone. Gray sky, gray buildings, gray exhaust belching from the tailpipes of passing taxicabs.

He said, "You know how I feel about them. They're like a plague of locusts out there, consuming everything. And now you want to open up our world to them, too."

"Not them. She's a person. One person."

"One mortal," Jonathan corrected. "And there are days when every single one of them deserves to be wiped off the face of the earth."

It didn't sound like idle conversation. Jonathan turned back to face us, looking at the two of us. "But you're not going to listen to me. You never do. Even if this works, one of them will find you, just like last time, stick you in some damn bottle and make you a slave. You won your freedom, David. It's a precious gift. Don't waste it like this."

"I'm not wasting it," David said. "I'm spending it on what really matters."

Jonathan took that like a knife, with a soft grunt of breath and a flinch. He went back to the window, staring out, and suddenly I had a sense of something I'd missed before. All this power, all this massive ability-and he was trapped. Trapped here, in this house, in whatever reality he'd created for himself. Staring out at the world through those safe, distancing panes of glass.

And maybe, being what he was, being as powerful as he was, he didn't have a choice, either. He is the one true god of your new existence, little butterfly, Rahel had said.

A god who didn't dare leave his heaven.

"What if I die?" I asked. I must have surprised both of them; I felt David's reaction, saw Jonathan's as his shoulders bunched up, then relaxed.

"You're Djinn," David said. "You won't."

"According to him, I'm only half. So I can, what, half die?" I cleared my throat. "If something happens to me, does David get his energy back?"

"Nothing's going to happen to you," David murmured.

"Not talking to you right now."

"Yeah, well, you shouldn't be talking to him."

Jonathan answered my question. "Depends on whether or not he's stupid enough to die with you, or let you go. But yeah, if he let go ... he'd be himself again."

"So what you're talking about, when you say you want to fix him, is that you want to kill me."

Silence, from both quarters. Jonathan didn't deny it.

"Wouldn't advise you to try. I may not look it, but I'm pretty tough to kill," I said. "You can ask around. How many people you know survived having two Demon Marks?"

Jonathan half turned and gave