Thin Air Page 0,51

and I obeyed, because I felt the Demon close, very close. The blackness swept over me like gravity, as if I were going to be pulled into her and destroyed, smashed apart at the cellular level.

And then it faded again, slowly, leaving me weak and sick and somehow...less.

I found myself being yanked upright by some tremendous force, and held there when my knees wobbled. I couldn't see anything near me, but then, when I looked down, I couldn't see myself, either.

"Hold on," the voice said. "This is going to hurt."

She wasn't kidding. Heat swept over me, and then a feeling of being instantly flash-frozen, and then every nerve in my body screamed as one...

...and then I was on my knees in deep, soft carpeting the exact color of caramel.

I pitched forward, face-first, and tried to scream, because whatever had just happened to me was wrong even by the considerably liberal standards of wrongness I was getting used to.

I couldn't make a sound.

I watched as my body started to come out of its invisibility, growing shadows first, then a kind of translucent reality, and then I was flesh and blood again.

And I could scream, but this time, I managed to lock it in my throat and moderate it to a helpless sort of whimper.

My benefactor-if you could call her that-walked around to face me. I looked up. Not far up, because she was only about four feet tall, cute as a button, a perfect little blond girl with inhumanly blue eyes and an outfit straight out of Alice in Wonderland, complete with patent leather Mary Janes.

"You can get up now," she said. "I don't think you're hurt."

Not hurt? She had to be kidding. I rolled slowly on my side and worked my way up to a sitting position, bracing myself with my arms. Standing up was not on the menu, not yet.

"What-" My voice was a hoarse croak; I cleared my throat and tried again. "What the hell did you do to me? Who-?"

"My name is Venna," she said. "I'm Djinn."

No freakin' kidding. I stared at her mutely, and she folded her hands over the front of her white pinafore and stared right back without blinking.

"You don't remember me," she said. Not a question. "You used to call me Alice. You could call me that again, if you like." She said it with the generosity of a noble dispensing a penny to a peasant. I just kept on staring. Why I'd know her as Alice was pretty self-evident, given her appearance. I was waiting for the Red Queen and the Mad Hatter to join the party. "I had to take you away. You couldn't fight her. She was taking you apart, and if I hadn't stopped you, you'd be dead now."

I finally found my voice. "Did David send you?"

Venna's blue eyes didn't blink, and her expression didn't shift, but I sensed that she was choosing her next words too carefully. "David cannot send me anywhere," she said. I wanted for her to get around to a further explanation. It wasn't forthcoming.

"I need to go back," I said. "She'll kill everybody back there."

"No," Venna said. "She killed the ones who saw you together. Now she's convincing the rest that she is you."

"She-wait, what?"

"She's given herself up. She will tell them that she has recovered her memories-and that will be true, because the Demon already had them. She will tell them that she's you, and..." Venna shrugged. "They will believe her."

"But-that can't happen. That can't happen!" She just looked at me. Obviously, it could. "They'll know. Lewis will know."

She was already shaking her head. "Any doubts can be explained away. She's been through a great trauma. Any of them can tell that, and they won't disbelieve her story."

I grasped at my last straw. "David! David will figure it out. Hello, mother of his child! Surely he knows me better than-"

"He would know if she could be perceived as a Demon. She's different now. He also has no reason not to accept her." Venna's eyes seemed to get deeper, darker, and scarier. She looked twelve, and twelve hundred. Twelve thousand. "You can't win this by going against her. It will only destroy you, and everyone who believes you."

I found I was able to get up, and staggered across the carpet to a king-sized bed, where I collapsed in an untidy sprawl. "So what am I supposed to do? What if she follows me?"

Venna cocked her head at me, interested as a robin with a