Ill Wind Page 0,117

good girl, Lewis is saved, everybody's happy."

"Not me," Star said. "Not unless I get back what I had."

I swallowed bile and said, "Then you live to scheme another day."

She frowned, grooving little lines between those fine black eyebrows, and studied me for so long, I thought she'd gone blind. "That's stupid," she finally said. "Even if I do free David, I still have the book. I can take him back any time I want. What's the point?"

"Well, that's the second part. You let him destroy the book."

She laughed. "Never happen. Let me tell you my scenario, Jo. The house burns. They find bodies. Nobody's ever sure who belongs to who, except that me and my new que lindo Djinn end up living the sweet life on a tropical island, with nobody to know it. I don't need both you and Lewis, you know. I need only one of you, for David to take the Mark and give it to me. After that, you're all better off dead." She smiled slightly, and it was bitter and ugly and hard. "Well, I'm better off."

She played with fire on her fingertips. She stared at it, then moved it closer to my face. Closer, as if she were trying to see by the light of it.

She set my hair on fire. I resisted the urge to scream and roll around, and beat it out with the palm of my hand. The smell of it lingered between us.

"Just a sample," she said. "How'd it feel?"

I froze the air around her, so cold, I saw frost form instantly on her skin. She cried out and jerked away in panic.

"About like that does," I said. "Don't push me. I'll give you freezer burn so deep, they'll have to microwave you to hear you scream. You start this, you know we'll both die. How does that help either one of us?"

Something wavered in her eyes. She reached out and pushed my burned hair back from my face, and for a second there wasn't a gulf of years and secrets. "You'd really do it? Tell them it was you?"

"Yeah," I said. "I will. Doesn't matter anymore- they won't let me keep my powers. I'm too far gone with this damn Mark. My life is over, Star. I know that. At least let me do something useful."

Star nodded, looked at David, and got up to go to the worktable. She took a small bottle out of a drawer and set it down next to the book. She paused for a few seconds, looking up as if she could hear through the floor above us. Maybe she could. "Company's here," she said. "Marion and her merry men, seven or eight at least. Enough to keep us busy, if we wanted to make a fight."

"But we're not going to," I said. "Right?"

"Right." Star lifted the bottle in her hand, looked at it from different angles. "Weird, how a Djinn always has to be sourced in glass. You'd think with all the advances, we'd be able to use plastic. Stupid fucking rules."

I didn't like her sudden change of focus. "Star, it won't work! If you order David to do this, he'll be destroyed. Even if he's not, you can't order him to give you the Mark. He can't do it. Once he takes it, it won't leave him until it wins and eats him." I was getting desperate-sweating, exhausted, scared. My head hurt. I could still smell the weirdly disorienting aroma of fresh-baked cookies wafting down from the kitchen. "Come on. Let's all walk out of here alive, at least."

She looked at me for a long, wordless few seconds, then cocked her head to the side. "Why?"

"What do you mean, why?"

"Why do you want to save me? First Lewis, now you. Why?"

I couldn't even believe she was asking. "Because I love you, Star. Don't you know?"

Her eyes filled up with tears, but none broke free. She blinked them away. They left a hard, unsettling shine behind. "Love you, too," she said. She turned the bottle, staring at the facets of glass. Held it up between us and let the light gleam through. "You know, there's one thing I could do."

I felt a cold surge of dread. "Yeah?"

"Last resort, I could have David take the Mark, seal him in the bottle, and then it's your word against mine. Or maybe you