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the length and depth of Jonathan's.

Jonathan must have read my mind. "This is going to be hard, you know. Getting David back. She wants him bad."

No answer to that except the obvious. "So do I." I saw the flash in his eyes, and amended it. "We."

His ghost-smile manifested again. "Then let's go get him."

The cord binding me to David had shrunk to a thin, barely perceptible thread. Worse, it was shaking. I could feel the tension in it. No telling how strong it was, how much strain it could stand, but I had the distinct feeling that it was close to the breaking point.

And my time was almost up, anyway. On so many levels.

"You understand what we have to do," Jonathan said. "Travel in the aetheric's too damn dangerous. Just skim the surface, stay as close as you can to the thread. I'll be right behind you."

We hadn't told anybody else except-at Jonathan's insistence-that creepy gray-suited Ashan. "You're sure about him?" I'd asked out of the side of my mouth, as the door shut behind him and locked me and Jonathan in what looked like a study. He liked fishing, I gathered. Lots of books on the subject, and some big mounted piscine specimens frozen in midthrash on the walls.

"Ashan?" Jonathan finished writing something down, reached in a desk drawer and took out a seal that looked massive and antique. He brought it gently down on the paper. When he took it away, there was a glowing design in the paper, nothing I could read or even vaguely recognize. "Kind of an asshole, I know, but he's reliable. Anything ever happens to me, he gets the big chair."

"Not David?"

"Not anymore." The tone was so colorless I knew there was pain behind it. "You're good to go?"

"Ready." I wasn't, really, but there didn't seem to be any really good choices, otherwise. Jonathan put the paper on top of his desk, turned to me and gave me an after you Alphonse gesture.

I took a deep breath and flowed to mist.

In Oversight, the thread stretched out toward the horizon, thin and glittering and still somehow alive. I touched it, wrapped myself around it and started winding around it like a vine snake. Moving fast, but staying in the physical plane. The thread had aetheric properties, which worried me; I couldn't stop to help Jonathan if he got badly infected. I couldn't be sure, but I wasn't seeing any blue sparkle, other than a stray particle here and there. So far the connection looked clean.

The thread traveled through Jonathan's house, straight out through the roaring blaze in the fireplace. I didn't dare phase out completely, but I tried a moderated waveform to travel on, to avoid the fire. If it was a real fire at all. Nothing around here was what it seemed, especially not Jonathan. He didn't feel like a Djinn at all, especially now that we were both in an incorporeal state. He felt . . . hotter. Stronger. More present, somehow.

My waveform skirted perilously close to a place I didn't want to go. I saw blue sparks dancing close, and dropped back down. Jonathan's place was still relatively spark-free, at least so far. I wondered if his defenses were good enough to protect all of the Djinn who'd taken refuge in there. He hadn't seemed all that positive in his outlook. It's going to be one giant blue snow globe in here soon.

Even as I watched, a single blue spark flared against my aura, then two more, drifting gently and then falling away. The stuff was getting through, after all, just very very slowly.

I flashed through a barely seen crisscross of bricks and mortar, winding along the silver thrumming thread as fast as I could. I moved out of the darkness, into what felt like sunlight. I soaked up the wild, undirected energy gratefully; without David's infusions of blood-rich power, I was rapidly getting tired.

I looked behind me on the thread-directed my awareness, actually-and sensed that Jonathan was still with me, whispering his way along with every evidence of perfect ease. Well, well. I wasn't overly surprised. I didn't imagine there was much that Jonathan couldn't do, if he really wanted to. Except that this might be the first time in a long time that he'd left his . . . sanctuary, and there might be a learning curve for him out here