Heat Stroke Page 0,29

long-legged strides. It really was a beautiful day; the sun caressed my skin, covered me in a sweet warm blanket of energy that I sucked in greedily. Around us, a constant symphony of honking cars, sirens, loud voices-energy to spare. You gotta love New York City. Kick the crap out of it, and it just rolls over and comes back for more. Me and the Big Apple had that in common. That and a certain brash, trashy style.

"So who's Patrick?" I asked, eventually. "Friend of yours?"

Rahel's snort was rich with disgust. "No. We don't travel in the same circles."

Wow, even in the world of the Djinn, you could be unpopular. Who knew? "So what's wrong with him?"

"Nothing. We're only very different."

"Yeah? How? He into the business casual look?"

I earned a narrow, amused look from beast gold eyes. "He thinks the best way to learn to be a Djinn is to learn to be a slave."

I missed a step. Rahel kept on walking, but slowed enough to let me catch up. "And this is the guy you're taking me to?"

"Neither of us has a choice," she pointed out. "I am bound to obey Jonathan's orders. So are you."

"Yeah, speaking of that, why?"

She shot me a wide-eyed look, and her hot amber eyes were nearly human in their surprise. "Why what?"

"Why do you obey him?"

She shook her head gently. "I do not have the time or energy to teach you all of Djinn history in a day, but Jonathan commands our loyalty for a reason. If Patrick is the place you've been directed to go, I will deliver you, and there you will stay. That ends it."

Maybe for her, but I wasn't used to taking orders without the chance to argue about it first. Still, no point in arguing with Rahel. I knew from experience that she could crush me like an ant. "So where is this guy?"

She pointed. I blinked.

"You're kidding," I said. Straight ahead, at the end of her pointing finger like she'd conjured it up out of the ground, stood the huge stone and steel tower of the Empire State Building. Well, the blurry outlines of it. We were a long walk away. "Do these look in any way like L.L. Bean hiking boots to you?"

Rahel flashed me a blinding, sharp-toothed smile. "Then put on comfortable shoes."

I sighed and fell into step with her. Some days, it just doesn't pay to have fashion sense.

New York is interesting on every level, but especially on the aetheric. In the physical world it's layered like a wedding cake, history on history; dig far enough down in those sandhog runnels and you'd find graffiti left by the original Dutch settlers, and by the long-ago-evicted Indians before them. In Oversight, New York isn't about bricks, cement, and streetlights- it's all about perceptions and energy. One enormous storage battery, stuffed with good, evil, rage, peace, fury, love, hate, and ambition. It shoots up into the aetheric for miles, a fantasyland of constantly changing illusions.

It was brighter today than it had been the last time I'd seen it, a kind of fierce pride spiking from every structure, even the tenements tainted by anger and despair.

The Twin Towers still existed, on the aetheric plane. When we came into a space where the buildings would have once been visible, I stood and gaped, feeling cold prickles all over my not-quite-human skin. The ghosts of the two buildings rose like glittering ice into the gray sky.

"How?" I stuttered, but I already knew. It was there because it lived in the hearts and minds of millions, maybe billions of people, and until that faded, it would remain in the aetheric. "Because we remember."

Rahel nodded soberly and said, "Humans have power. Creating, destroying, remembering ... all acts of great power. Greater than any of them know."

There was something humbling about it. I could sense the incredible force of power even from where I stood. "Can we go there? Take a closer look?"

"Not you," she said. "Too young. Too much power. For you, it would be like standing in the heart of a sun."

She shooed me on. We moved at the fast pace of foot traffic. This time of day, rush hour was in full swing-people striding to work, women in business suits and Air Jordans, bike messengers weaving in and out of the honking, stinking, creaking