Windfall Page 0,14

to ensure I'd survive a trip to Las Vegas; and facing down the one Djinn he couldn't protect me from-his best friend, Jonathan. And it had worked, too. Jonathan hadn't killed me. He'd even shown some signs of thinking I was a little better than pond scum, which was a huge improvement. "Tell me how this is supposed to happen, then."

He shook his head again, David-speak for I don't want to talk about it. I waited him out, watching his face. He finally said, "It may not happen at all. Djinn children are rare. Even then, they're only born to two Djinn. A Djinn and a mortal... it's not... She exists inside you as a potential, but-she may never survive."

"Jonathan said she could only be born if you die."

His eyes slowly came up to meet mine. "That's... probably true. We come from death, not life."

Djinn were very hard to kill, but David was fragile. When he made me a Djinn, he'd fractured something vital inside of him into two pieces, one of which he'd given me to keep me alive. Even when I'd been granted the gift of humanity again, that root-deep fracture had remained. And then he'd gotten in the way of an Ifrit, who drained him nearly to death.

And now he was hanging onto the fragile thread between life and that kind of living death, of losing himself. If he stayed outside of his bottle for too long, or used too much power, he'd become an Ifrit, a thing of ice and shadow. A thing bent only on feeding on others.

As if he'd followed my thought, his hand on my back went still. I felt a shudder run through him, and his eyes dimmed just a little.

"David?" I sat up. He eased back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

"I shouldn't have done this to you," he said. "I should never have done any of this to you. You deserve-"

"Don't do this to yourself. None of it is your fault."

He closed his eyes. He looked suddenly very, very tired. Human. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"No! God, no." I put my hand on his chest, then my head. My hair spilled dark over his skin. "Well, not any more than I wanted you to, anyway."

"I'm afraid I will," he said. His voice sounded distant, worn smooth by exhaustion. "No, I know I will; I can sense it." His eyes opened, and the last embers of copper flared in orange swirls. "You can't let me. I mean it, Jo. You have to have defenses against me. You have to learn..."

The fire was cooling under his skin, the light in him going out. "I have to go now," he said. "I love you."

I kissed him, quickly, lovingly, and said, "I love you, too. Go back in the bottle now."

I felt the sudden indrawn breath of his passing, sank suddenly down in the welter of disordered sheets, and when I opened my eyes again he was gone.

Nothing left but an indentation in the pillows.

I turned over, slid open the nightstand drawer, and took his bottle out of its protective zippered case lined with gray foam.

I started to put the stopper in, but then hesitated. At some very deep level, he was still part of me, drawing on the magic I possessed; putting the stopper in the bottle meant cutting that connection, and although he hadn't said so, I suspected that the more I could give him, the better. I'd have opened my magical veins if it could have made him better. Hell, I wasn't in the Wardens anymore; I wasn't directing the weather or saving lives. I was just a poverty-level member of the vast, unwashed paid labor force.

I needed him for completely different reasons these days than making miracles happen for other people.

I sank back on the pillows with a sigh. I didn't actually know if he was recovering, or, if he was, how quickly; I'd need the opinion of another Djinn to find out, but then, none of the Djinn had been around to visit since I'd left the Wardens. They were staying clear. I figured Jonathan had something to do with it. The last thing he'd said to me, in a flat, angry monotone, had been, You broke him, you fix him. The unspoken or else had been daunting.

Jonathan hadn't dropped by since I'd returned to