and the black drag on my power fell away. The rebound slammed into me with stunning force, knocking me backward, and then I lunged for the railing again and saw David let go of the Warden.
Who fell, screaming, to his death.
There was nothing I could do. Nothing.
I screamed and covered my eyes from the sickening sight of his body crushing on pavement, his blood splattering in an arc as his skull shattered.
I felt his life snap like his bones.
David froze in midair, fixed in place, eyes dark and strange, body transforming from the fire of the Djinn to the black coal shadows of the Ifrit.
"Oh God..." It wasn't stopping. I felt every bit of energy being sucked out of me; the life, the heat, the baby oh God not the baby you can't David...
I felt everything around just... suspend. In some odd way, I kept on... outside of time, of life, of breath. It felt like being a Djinn, or at least what I remembered of it. Except I could feel some core of me screaming and coming apart under the strain. I wasn't healed.
Time had stopped. Pain hadn't.
Someone had intervened.
I heard the scrape of shoes on the asphalt behind me.
I turned and looked, gasping for breath, and saw Jonathan walking toward me through a flash-frozen world. People were locked in midstep, midword, midgasp.
He and I were the only things moving.
Unlike most Djinn, Jonathan-the most powerful of them all-looked human.
Middle-aged, with graying short hair. A runner's build, all angles and strength.
Black eyes, and a face that could be friendly or impassive or cruel, depending on the mood and the light. Just another guy.
And yet, he was so far from human he made David look like the boy next door.
"You have to help me," I began. I should have known that the sound of my voice would piss him off.
He walked right up to me, grabbed me by the throat, and shoved me against the rail so hard that my back bent painfully over open air.
"You're lucky," he said in a whiskey-rough growl, "that I'm in a good mood."
And then he looked over my shoulder at the frozen, twisted shape of David, stopped in midtransformation. The shocking ruin of the Warden's body on the pavement below. Jonathan's face lost all semblance of humanity, all expression.
There was a sense, even more than before, of some vast and terrible power stirring around him.
Even the wind was utterly silent, as if afraid to draw his attention.
"Jonathan-" I began hoarsely.
"Joanne," he interrupted, and it was a low purr, full of darkness and menace, "you just don't seem to listen. I told you to fix David. Doesn't look fixed to me. In fact..." His hand tightened convulsively around my throat and rattled me for emphasis. I gagged for breath. "In fact, he looks one hell of a lot worse than the last time I saw him. Not surprising that I'm very disappointed."
There was absolutely no mistaking the fury in him, even though it was cloaked behind a good-looking face and eyes that had all of the charm and warmth of black holes.
"I don't have time for this crap," he said, and turned those eyes back to meet mine. And oh, God, the rage simmered, red flashing points in black. Ready to break free. Ready to rip apart me, this bridge, the city, the world. He was that powerful. I could feel it rising off of him like heat from a lava flow. "I let you have your stupid little games and your stupid little romance, and it's destroying him. I don't have time for this. I need him back. Right now. This isn't some goddamn game I'm playing, do you understand that?"
Because he was in the middle of a war. I did understand. The battling Djinn had disappeared, but the aftereffects of their battle lingered like burned cordite on the raw air. If this was happening all over the world...
"I don't know how to help him," I croaked. "I've tried. I just don't understand how to do it."
I felt his grip on my throat tighten again. He pressed right against me, his thighs against mine, bent over me in a parody of a dance.
"Well, then, you're no good to me, are you?"
"Wait..." I tried to swallow. Pretty much useless. This was going to hurt so,