Thin Air Page 0,90

asked. "We just give up?"

Venna threw me an all-too-human look of exasperation. "No," she said. "We take him to another Oracle, that's all. I'll-take him out of here."

I didn't watch how she did it, but I heard Ashan scrambling, and heard him cry out, once. Then they were gone, and the door shut behind them.

I didn't take my eyes off my daughter, the Oracle.

"Can you hear me?" I asked. "Imara?"

Her eyes slowly swirled back to that lovely shade of gold, but she didn't smile this time.

I waited, but the candles began to dim, slowly winking out one by one. While I could still see her, I said, "Please say something. Please, baby. I need to know that you're okay."

She was just a dim shadow against the deeper shadows, a glimmer of gold eyes in the dark, when she whispered, "Hang in there, Mom. I love you."

And then she was gone.

I sat down hard on the pew, put my face in my hands, and prayed. Not to my daughter. Not to the Earth, whoever that was.

I prayed to God, whose chapel it was. Who'd built this glittering, beautiful, hurtful world with all its magic and deadly sharp edges. I needed a higher power to get me through the rest of this, because I didn't think I could do it by myself.

I don't know if He answered, exactly, but after a few minutes I felt a kind of peace inside, a stillness, and an acceptance.

My child wasn't suffering, and she wasn't totally beyond my reach.

Maybe that was enough.

I scrubbed my face clean of tears, got up, and went to find Venna.

Venna had Ashan-actually, he was on his knees, and she had one hand on his shoulder. It didn't look like restraint, exactly, but I was sure it was. He looked worse in the merciless glare of the motion-activated spotlights on the concrete stairs-bleached, grimy, with an unpleasant light of madness lurking in those blue eyes.

He'd killed my daughter. And if he'd gotten his way, she'd have been completely dead, not sitting in there in the chapel, elevated to some level I couldn't understand. In a very real way, he'd still taken her away; Imara the Oracle wasn't Imara at all, not the way I'd known her.

You never knew her at all, some cold part of me said. You never had a past; you never had a daughter. Remember?

That was the point. I didn't remember. And Ashan had done that to me.

Miles to go before I could see that put right.

"So," I said. "Where now?"

I'd expected her to hesitate, but instead, Venna promptly said, "Seacasket."

"Pardon?"

"It's in New Jersey."

I hadn't forgotten geography. New Jersey was a long way from Arizona. A long, long way.

"We should go," Venna said. "I can drive when you get tired."

Yeah, like I was going to let a kid behind the wheel of that car. Even a many-centuries-old kid. "One other thing," I said, and pointed a thumb at Ashan. "He needs a bath. I'm not smelling him all the way to the East Coast."

Ashan shot to his feet, running like a rabbit for the rocks, not the stairs. "Hey!"

He slammed face-first into an invisible wall, staggered back, and whirled to face us. Venna had broken his nose, and it was streaming blood. Not a good look for him. When he tried to come at me, Venna stopped him again with just as much force.

"Ashan," she said to him. "You know you can't fight me. I'll just keep on hurting you."

He tried it again, as if he hadn't heard her, and I winced this time at the sound of flesh and bone hitting the barrier. "He's trying to make you hurt him," I said. "He wants you to kill him."

Venna blinked. "That's odd."

"That's human. And kind of crazy."

"I will never understand mortals," she said, sounding aggrieved. "How do I stop him without hurting him?"

"Let me handle it."

This time, when he lunged at us, I took the Taser out of my purse, switched it on, and zapped the holy living shit out of him. Ashan convulsed and went down. I crouched next to him. His eyes were unfocused, and there was blood dripping from his chin in a gory mess. "Ashan. Can you hear me?"

He could. He just didn't answer. I could tell from the immediate flicker of rage in him that I had his attention. The shock had incapacitated him, but it hadn't done much to make him like me any better.

"Venna's going to keep you from doing any damage